The method in the madness

If someone robs you, you have to rob someone else. Otherwise you break the chain - you're the weakest link.

A perfect breakfast song

I looked at you and saw that you wanted to... jump in the poo, jump in the poo.

If it's still Q&A day...

Q: "What should you do if your nose just won't stop bleeding for half an hour?"
A: "Sing 'Bleeding in love'!"

P.S. No, seriously - I did that. Though that didn't help it much.

geo-apololitical

Q: "How can you tell an Australian band without any direct hints?"
A: "If the song starts with a line like 'We can remember swimming in December'"

rererevisting

Best things in life aren't the ones that happen to you, but rather the ones you build to happen.

too unstressed

If you can't impose on yourself some certain level of stress in order to do what you're supposed to do, then sooner or later you find yourself doing nothing but pleasing your ego.

Kelly, watch 'em!

If you can't get something that you want, but don't need - call it a star and just let it twinkle on.

Estonian puzzle

In principle - any unsolvable problem.

Tanel: "My Skype messages never reach my mate who's sitting next to me!"
Urmass: "Chill, it's an Estonian puzzle ;)."

Another french lesson?

Apparently Daft Punk, Air and Justice are just the visible part of the iceberg :).

Sorry, but pwnage :D

While seeing this stuff for the first time this evening on telly, it got me and and my room mate LOLing and almost ROFLing for a while - I guess that especially because of that initial sick-till-back-teeth women-screaming-scene-cliche caused annoyance which gets flipsided into a complete pwnage :). So I just couldn't resist to share... a bit.

Scientific laziness

Hey, you're more than 2 clicks away - scr3w you!

Kra kra Krakow

Last week, for 4 days I joined the trip to Krakow, didn't get impressed by city that much, though spent some quality time up there. It's a pity that the most of my course mates had went there once I was in Latvia for the Easter break, so the Thai supermodel Pung had to make up for the numbers :).
Dzen dobry, I got really polished :).

With the Thai supermodel outside the mine. If you look close enough you can see that I can't straighten my middle finger as the distal phalanx of it is quite loose - worth to mention, rrright?! :D

Dinner in the salt mine 130m underground. Chandeliers are from salt crystals, of course ;).

Check out that lone sneaker that's hanging down from that dirt

The mapping of our location (the red dot in the map) in Czech republic

The rest of the pics here.

the flow

kaksikaks ist vorbei und kaksikolm - schon dabei.

P.S. I think it's about the very moment to introduce you to amazing world of Estonian numbers, so that I don't have to explain myself each and every time :)

C'mon just admit it - we all love egoists. And moreover - the love in 98.4% of cases is an ultimate expression of egoism.

Nosprāga!

Tēti, tēti, kas notika ar kaiju?

Once you pick apart the fun part, the remainder isn't necessarily all true.

Minimalismi.com

As by this commercial entry Uroš grants me 10% shares of his franchise, I was too tempted not to refer to his amazing site about the minimalism design - chairs, sofas, chairs, lamps, chairs... curious stuff with sense - the minimalismi.com.

laik a zuppā-modell

Take away the personality and you're a perfect template

Being on time to skate

It didn't even take a year for Artjom to give me the skating pics... at last. So these are some hailaic.
It's not that my butt is so huge, I just move at a supersonic speed :). In any case nice shot by Artjom.

Teaching my asian coursemates the right moves is a tough task. Application for the next season's lessons has already started :).

Sveiki, te es ;) ^'

Pung, me, Nhung. And I'm standing on my knees, btw.

More panoramic views at my previous skating entry. And here are the rest of the pics.

' Use google translate in a case of a serious lack of basics in latvian :).

Unknocked, unkicked, unslammed

Only thereafter you learn that the most of all those doors you passed were open.

On optimism

I'm always fine unless otherwise

undelusionization

It's all about the corks, fillings and substitutions. I've no right to judge anyone for the means they weather a temporary loneliness, just gotta beware of not falling in any of those upper categories, unless you're in somewhat a masochistic mood.

...or stupid bastard lovers

we are all awkward attention loving bastards... or just stupid

No it's knot!

Latvians say that if you want to remember something, you should tie a knot*. So if you run into something that doesn't necessarily make any sense, it might as well be the case when it really doesn't - it might be a knot - smthn that has no meaning in shape, but rather in the knotter's memory tape's recorded content while tying it up.

*it has nothing to do here with marrying someone

On drinks

Once opened champaign needs a cork to keep the sparkles.
Sometimes it's whatever the cork.

Russedress. Che?!

Did you know what a russedress is? Well, neither did I. In any case it seems like some mania in Norway. Nevertheless I hope it won't get anywhere near Austria or Latvia, just to save my eyes from that kind of sight.
You know those Norwegian girls could have worn sacks and socks while still looking good. Though simple life in Norway doesn't sound bad at all :).

Russedress is a complete turn on...

Russedress - sounds like fun... in a booth? A booty-call?! :D

And when it's mania...

Whatever there was with their taste, Norway rocks... unconditionally... and here is me in the Norway :P

mhm

they say that you don't get accustomed to anything else faster than the comfort, but always feel every little bit when it's taken away. Regarding studies, I guess that the bug is the sloppiness - once you let yourself be sloppy about your work ethics, it's a pain till your back teeth to do it again in a somewhat conventional way.

livelearning

I guess that when meeting an American for the first time, you shouldn't make jokes about American little competence in Europe's geography, United States of Europe etc.

nests live

Ever watched bird's nest live instead of football or pressing F5 in your e-mail all the time? Well it's a great find, at least for me. There are like 5 estonian live stramings from the bird nests and one from Latvia. Latvian eagle's nest as much as I checked is empty, but maybe you get luckier.
Though the estonian owls are almost always there, especially the small owlings, who aren't about to get out of that trunk still for quite a while. And you can watch it 24-7 as it's infrared camera, comparing to the other cameras.

And then there is another estonian bird's nest (fixed link) - the one of The White-tailed Eagle. Ain't my screenshot just great? :)

The full list of the nests can be found here.

Latvian summer desert

Siekaliņa tek, ko?! Es zināju :P!

beating off the dribble

you know, life's like basketball - if you only take the sure shots, you have a higher percentage, but lower the score.

Kuldīga - jumping vimbas '09

Only the most athletic ones get to the breeding places...

Here's the live action jumping vid. Obviously these guys have grown up over the last year, when they looked like that.
The court house:

the rest of the stuff:

The full-sized gallery here.

P.S. Initially I got mislead that these are Salmons, but that doesn't take much off the spectacularity :).

It is what it is

Used often in the business world, this incredibly versatile phrase can be literally translated as "fuck it."
  The client changed the deadline to today? Well, it is what it is.

half in love with Elizabeth

Elizabeth means money, how come you didn't know?! how come you knew before i did? how come i didn't know? how come i tell you the things you know?

things change. you know... especially when you move your white ass. a bit...

It's such a delight to observe everybody else age, fatten and nerdify while, at times seemingly, heading the same direction.

leally

While teasing another, we actually tease ourselves with the notion that we actually intend what we pretend to intend.

flashy flasche

You know there's an issue about the bottles, the empty and the full ones. They're never nothing more than the bottles.

An ultimate teaser

Smthn that's chillin' on your palm, but you can't grasp it.

ever felt like being up for grabs?

Spring in Wien!

Der Hundredwasseraufsprung

Der Hundredwasserabsprung

Das Riesenradsanstand

And how do you go about this?

Some things that are making their own way to you don't want to get found, in fact - they don't even want to get in your reach. They just want to see your approach to them.

You gotta love those yankees

  "One of my favorite stories was over the spring time we met [Knicks rookie] Danilo Gallinari, who speaks Italian and he was speaking Italian at the dinner table. Derrick was just kind of watching and he was like, 'Man, that was pretty cool, he can speak another language.' So he asked if we could help him learn how to speak Spanish, like get him a self-taught book for dummies or one of those things that you buy in the bookstore because he wanted to learn, he wanted to be in on conversations. That's him. He always wants to figure things out."
  No wonder they have in a use a term "bilingual person" - the one who can communicate in 2 languages.

The brainbreakers

  Ever tried to take a blur picture of a book page and then read it on PC afterwards? Well, I did. And it didn't even take a half page of reading for the brain to start twisting and the mild headache to come across. Like a PC with a wrong video card driver that still shows up the right picture, but takes much more resources from the hard drive such that the ventilator spins like hell. OK a sloppy one, but curious cos it's the case with my PC - it's like an airplane at times :). Anyway the story is about crowding your brain with data which takes too much resources to process. And actually the funniest thing was then when I was reading not thinking about what I see, I read as fast as I would do it while reading a clearly readable text - so to make that little magic happen the processor apparently starts to consume too much of the brain resources :).
  Actually there was a scientist who experimented with the glasses. Namely, he made glasses out of such lances, so that they display the world upside down and after 2 weeks his brain adjusted and he saw the picture the right direction. Yeah, though after taking off the glasses, it took about the same time for his brain to turn all the stuff upside down again.
  A similar thing happened just today, the professor in the lecture was talking about an array p making several examples with it while consistently at all times writing on a blackboard b. So I started write down p while he was talking and after several instances I realized that he writes down all the time b, not the p that he is spelling while misspelling the b. So at times I when I listened and wrote - I wrote down p and when i copied from the blackboard I wrote half the times b, half p. And some light brain-distress appeared again as it was percepting one thing, but had to do an unconventional another one - wasting too much resources on a previously well-shaped routine.
  In fact the headache is just a signal that something is wrong, while we may not feel it or we're not sure about it - it's like a little indicator lamp in the car, which shows that the engine is too hot or the oil level is crucial, while the car is still rolling. Of course getting rid of the signal is the easiest way to relieve ourselves from being bothered, but then we loose the join that leads us to the source of the problem, before it makes the whole system to blow up.

take only what you need from it

Format your hard drive, and then even observing as the toilet paper rolls across the floor, will bring you so much joy.

Perpendicular panorama

As Andrejs called this picture one of the best panoramic pics of Riga, he has ever seen, I felt like having very little options not to repost it eventually here :). In particular because of the unusual perspective. And it's been too much of blahs already. Once again it's taken from the gripping daily pic blog of Riga.

overlaying

It's funny how we write off such initially promising perspectives, just because of having too much time to think about them.

What else can I say?

A: "What are you going to do with your sandwich?"
B: "Sit on it!"

Utopia

Finally, you return home to your room one day and all the toys and puppets, scattered all across the floor, lay still there just as you left them.

So just let those teach, who don't have a judgment of their own.

Next step in geekination

I took a nap and dreamed about having a skype chat and the happenings in it.

Inhaling the rain

Vienna is better when wet. Seems like the rain completes it. The rain gives it splashes, sounds, new reflections and for the inhabitants - a chance to fulfill the purpose with which they've brought the umbrella with them. Even the steep roof at the opposite side of the street twinkles in a bliss of its regained glow. And I can't await to take my umbrella and go for a 30 min walk to my university to the exam of Nonmonotonic reasoning!

So it's just take it or not

Frankly, everything you're allowed to lift up is yours.

Ain't funny

Actually there's no better way how to instantly stress me out than just by saying: "Tell me something interesting!"

Rocco's pearl

How do you avoid an Estonian bullet?
Just step aside!

Snowdays

hmm

Funny, that I'm always happy to greet the most annoying person around. The delight is usually halted by around the third sentence uttered by him. And I'm looking forward to be delighted to meet him again. Strange.

golden advice takes golden ears

Hungarian ticket controller

That little rebel completely freaked me out

liquidity

Everything's better with a price on it.

duh!

When you first get to like a girl without any make-up, from then on make-up won't convince you even more about it - rather opposite.

On common trends

Life is a social experiment

Being a minority tends to be a refreshing change.

pif paf

Everybody likes to be liked. Some of us like to pursue the appeal towards them. They've well shaped-up routines to ensure their success on their way to the goal. They're doing pretty well unless the object realizes that it's all about his appeal not him and doesn't want to appear on the scoreboard.

5P truth

Proper preparation prevents poor performance.

The awkward switch

Starting to speak to a person in a preferable foreign language of yours, while knowing well that you speak his mother tongue better than he does your chosen language, is a recipe for disaster. Eventually you find yourself unrestfully considering when to make that awkward switch.

You quit by naming the game

the bounds of humor

You can't make fun of something that in general doesn't exist

Mac without keyboard

Apple makes yet another major leap in its minimalism efforts. I think this is a must-have for all of those tech fans.

Running in background villain.exe

Just found this hilarious picture in Ļena's picasa albums. I hope she doesn't mind me posting it here and even if she does then she will have to catch me first :P!

On decisions

  I used to ponder upon the decisions i've made in my life that have brought me to that particular point of presence - being wrong or right to turn left or right. Of course it doesn't matter much, actually it doesn't matter at all, if you don't learn from it. But that's yet another banality, as well as statement that people often make that they don't regret anything that has happened in their lives and the decisions they've made, because they look from the point-of-now and if it's all good, then it means that being wrong at some points of their lives has eventually lead them to the right path.
  After the decision has been made and we've already faced the consequences, we tend to judge whether it was right or wrong - more often I find myself thinking that I've made the wrong decision, because of unfulfilled expectations or smthn. But then you find yourself thinking - maybe the other alternatives were even worse? Maybe all of them were good but it was all the matter of performance. Yes, then you come about issue of performing under conditions and situation you're at - perform your best in situation of now. You can screw up all the great chances that come across and might as well make a wrong situation better.
  Then again, I look at the persons around that have done the right thing even if there was really little information given, just relying on their senses, intuition and ultimately - the golden state of mind. Right! Keep your poise, take a breath, push the button and don't let the leash go to loose. Determination of course is another story :).

the dream

Build it and they will come

Oh my god, you think I'm in control

So much for psychedelics. First I saw the clip I was smiling and laughing all the way both because of the lyrics and the expressions.
This is good, but the other track even better - I like you so much better when you naked. You couldn't even call those lyrics explicit - they're just too straight and unambiguous :). In either case surprisingly amusing stuff from Norway.
Undoubtedly those emerging indie girls come running at me starting from "Ting Tings", "M.I.A", "The Gossip", "Metric" and then "The bird and the Bee", "Florence and the Machine" and etc. Makes me wonder how much there is out of my scope - really frustrating the thought :).

Obstacle course

The location changes, but the trends stay the same. There must be some international directive with a purpose to keep the men away from women shops - the ones of hygiene and the domestic chemistry stuff. The aisles are so narrow, and the turns may appear to be too costly as you really have to watch out not to catch anything while cutting the corner. But there are some better surprises like suddenly a box of some hairspray or lipsticks in the middle of the aisle, which you can't surpass without leaning. But ultimately the coolest stuff of it are advertisement posters hanging down from the ceiling at the height at around 1.90 all over the shop - Herzlich Willkommen! Verdammt!

Sticky rubbish

Mostly you don't need all that rubbish that comes along, you just need the bin.

Reinforcement learning

I have to beat my head against the same wall for 10 times on purpose to be able to escape it the 11th time while being blindfolded.

Don't be late we gotta skate

Last week, I finally had a chance to tryout my skates on the Vienna ice. After the Christmas market has been removed after the new year, now there has been settled a gigantic skating place - even bigger than Lido in Riga. Fun thing about it is that there are many lanes that are connecting the main pools, so that you don't have to just go in rounds and circles but you can go on the track around the park like in a race lane or smthn. And the site is spectacular as well - on the Ratsplatz. Those pics are taken from an Austrian site that post picture from public places and events.



My course mates Natalia (in front), Oana(behind) and Nhung made me a good company.

zuppā

Wie man verdoppelt den Preis von Kartoffeln? Umbennent sie als Erdaepfel.

Somewhat a clumsy studying anthem

Thrust your instincts,
Pull your senses;
Whip the excuses,
Strip the complaints.

Never the case when it's not the case

You're asking for commitment while I'm somewhere in between