Not quite a complement of the compliment

People only complain about the things they like. Otherwise they wouldn't care.

I felt stupid

Good luck in getting this out of your head ;).

Great players have a short memory.

Sorgenfrei

Das Leben ist einfach und kostenlos

A forest

More forest here
Here's the song (do await that guitar solo):

Ok, ok here's another one

Just couldn't resist - a rare chance to check out the military supermight of Latvian army combined with a nice panorama. Taken from tvnet.lv.

Latvijai 91

So let this nice rubbish bin be a symbolic greeting to Latvia on its 91st birthday ;)!

P.S. The 2nd line is in Livonian. To complete the list of minority languages in Latvia there should be as well:
Спасибо, Paļdis, Дзякуй, dziękuję and of course ačiū ;)!

Blame it on finnish radio

From one side it would be good that Estonia gets euro in 13 months, while Latvia can't even dream about it - we won't have to go far to find ourselves almost in Western civiliziation.

I wish

I wanna embody stupid's happiness - be stupid and happy. Or maybe happiness is too much to bear. Especially for a polar bear.

The more I ignore them, the closer they get. I'm waisting my time - gotta buy uzi or smthn.

The more I'm sleeping, the more tired I get. I'm waisting my time.

Mārtiņdiena

I received a nice postcard from my parents and some sweets on my nameday. It appears that in Latvia there are 13'400 persons with name Mārtiņš, which is more than 1% of all men and around 2% of Latvians. But as much I've seen that for the guys who were born in '85 - '87 the percentage could be even more than 10% because in my class at school I had 4 other classmates called Mārtiņš and in the other places I meet people my age there's a fairly good chance that the other guy's name is Mārtiņš as well. Though I'm not sure whether this sudden increase in popularity of this traditionally Latvian name was related to national revival or just some random sparkle of poupularity.
I know I know - the blue sky is not for me, and neither that road covered by the roses.

justification needed

Even the worst democracy in the world is better than the best dictatorship. Interesting claim. Can you prove this by induction?

Though neither sound, nor complete

Only 5 letters part each man from being a superman

yeahgreatwhen

Life: "Miss you, see you soon!"
Me: "Yeah? Great! When?"

"You know, go to youtube and type.."

never happened. i mean that typing stuff. golden advice. nevertheless.

schizophrenia

It's when you have too much personality for just one person.

... but they never believe anyway

A: "So what's the driving force behind you?"

B: "Propeller!"

... and I'm cool with it

You're cool, cos I cool you

It's the season

A gripping snapshot sensation collection of Riga in autumn. Or rather Autumn in riga, cos it's more about the season not the site. Here's the song ;).

Advisory service

Sometimes the best way how to help the people who really do care about you is to be happy.

neat

right? :)

Guten Morgen

Everything Everything - My Keys, Your Boyfriend. The live record for BBC radio - it just completely distresses the joint in between my ears and brain. Or it's again all about that synthy and falseth combination :).

Muahuhihi

Vice versa but completely opposite

It's naive to think that screening the monitor is anything close to monitoring the screen.

P.S. Off-topic - ever seen this one (just recalled it while pondering upon the facets of monitoring and screening)? :)

Induction?

Ok, so now it's all up to me. The only problem is that it's all up to me.

Tagad tikai jāieinstanciē objekts...

A: "Zini, es arī"
B: "Ko?"
A: "To pašu"
B: "Nu jauki, jauki..."

Explains almost everything

Inertia and induction

How do you spell gõdžāss?

It's very gut to become an e-mail

A: "Do you have anything with you?"
B: "Eeeem... nop"
A: "Then go to the end of the snake"
B: (blinks), (blinks)
B: (Goes to the next stop)

The more you mention self-confidence the more it's an issue for you.

citadiena.lv

Liekas, ka tas ir pats labākais veids kā atbildēt uz visticamāk dažu neapmierinātu oligarhu caur ārzonām organizētajai "Dienas" torpedēšanai. Lai veicas partizāņiem!

Lernenkennenlernen

There are some things that we learn by doing. Like... learning.

Library revisited

As I just made it to the elevator to go up the 4th floor of the library, I saw two girls hurrily rushing from behind to make it to the same elevator, first I pressed the button 0, even though I wanted to press 4, but the display nevertheless showed 4 - nice. And thereafter the girls were almost there at the doors, so as a gentleman, I waved my foot at the sensor a couple of times as the doors were closing and the doors opened. Of course the said "paldies" and as a reflex I answered "lūdzu", not even noticing that we've just talked Latvian and afterwards we didn't say a word no more. Then I sat at the nearby desk from them and noticed that they talked Latvian (yeah, quite Estonian reaction from me) and of course started a conversation with them by saying that I must have known if there are 2 new students from Latvia and bla bla bla. Anyways and then happened something really unexpected - there were like dozen of unseen students talking Latvian at Bolzano's library. And another surprising thing was how they looked - guys with fancy but smart haircuts and the girls without boosted looks - very non-Latvian - if I haven't heard them talking, I would have never guessed that they're Latvians. Ok, there was as well a bit thick guy who I couldn't quite figure out whether he was a boy or a girl.
After recovering from the shock there was in general a quite curious thing going on - a guy was singing Enigma - "return to innocent", but with his own made up quite smart and funny lyrics in the instrumental gaps. But of course it's the library and you can't do like that there, so everybody was disturbed even though smiling and at last on the clock display it appeared "SHUT UP". Don't know how the library's administration achieved it, but they definately deserve credit for it.
And then there was some part that I don't remember, but in any case I'm here now, finally awake :).

->

Life is worth waiting. Or rather waiting is worth life.

Science fiction

Maybe giving 7 billion loan to Latvia with a purpose "to make things right" was the same as giving all the needed tools to a pig and tell it to build a space ship.

A path to success

I'm no scientist, no theoretician. I'm a practician - just like Thomas Edison (in the sense of being no scientist :), who invented the Glühbirne. I beat my head against the wall till it breaks - the head or the wall.

iņķerņešnl

A: "Glaubst du dass mir ist ein afigenna good vieta?"
B: "Che?"

An unsocial day

Change of environment often comes with some interesting sequences of happenings like today, when I moved (back?) to Vienna. The 1st Oct hurray! NOT! Ok anyways, so here it goes:
1) Sleep in a night train with almost maximal lighting on - luckily got through with only vorteilscard application not having paid. Fortunately my expectations fulfilled - I was able to sleep in the train for some good 4 hours - not close to enough but anyway..
2) A walk from the Westbahnhof to my new dorm - at around 1 hour on foot. Thought that it should be smthn like refreshening my Vienna insights, but at the end appeared to be damn tiring - especially those uphills with my 20kg bag and 10kg rucksack on my shoulders. Looks like I've lost not only 6kg but percentually more strength as well.
3) Of course I wasn't able to move into the dorm at 8.30 as it should have been possible to happen, cos of course they hadn't had checked the rooms, which postponed the whole procedure till 14.00... and I was damn tired already. At least there were some buckets of internet at faculty which is luckily 15 mins on foot from the dorm.
4) As the others were browsing along in the computer lab room, I was snoozing with some intervals of conscious browsing - working on thesis of course wasn't anything viable at such a state. I hope I didn't snore at least.
5) Ok once having had patiently stood through the queue for 1 hour and having listened to czech more than I've ever needed, I got at last in my room at 15.30... So next part - gotta check whether my bike and stuff are still there at my previous dorm... 45 mins walk, of course.
6) Nice downhill walk and guess what - I ran into 2 students that were speaking in some common language... -lithuanian-? NOT! latvian. I mean Latvian is no Russian - you can't just walk in a park and meet a Latvian in Vienna, running into latvian in Vienna is less probable than running into one in Sydney (which actually happened to me), the probability is about equal to seeing a speeding Estonian driver. Anyways, I gotta know about 50 euro Semesterkarte, I hope it's not a bad joke - gotta verify this one.
7) Some hospitable (ok not at the beginning as he asked me whether I'm a Czech (Which is only a bit less offensive than being asked whether I'm a Russian :) and was asking some questions to verify if i'm not just going there to steal a bike) finnish let me in to my bicycle and sacks of stuff. Afterwards I regreted that I didn't manage to demonstrate my finnish skills (terve, uksi, kaksi etc :).
8) A fun ride - having packed all my stuff in the big bag I rode bike with one hand and with other held the bag's handle whilst the bag was rolling on the streets on its trolleys. At first I got seriously unsure about the balance, but at the end I could even correct the trajectory of the bag so that it doesn't fall down and carry me with it :). In either case suddenly I felt popular... all eyes on a guy with a big bag disturbing the cars and other cyclists. Sometimes you have to be egoist... when it matters.
9) At last home, chunks of sleep, heaps of czechs (mostly czechitas :) in the neighbourhood, maybe I'll catch up czech to the level I did with Lithuanian. Probably not. It's not Bolzano and I'm getting more and more unsocial :(. Age and mentality takes its toll.
10) Yeah and then there was a locker game - I felt like in a tv show - you have 2 keys - one for the locker in the kitchen and one for the locker in the fridge. Of course it would be completely unnecassary to enumate those dozen smthn lockers... So the variance wasn't on my side - the last locker did unlock and in the fridge I had to retry to find mine.
11) And the last but not the least - I hope my room mate will be a monolingual germanophone. Probably not gonna happen....

And now it's just a lazy sloppy coding night, which will probably once again result in a ~30% expected effort and the sole excuse will be once again - too little constraints. At least the "we are scientists" album, I found on my pc, beat my expectations - song by song nothing special, but the whole album together as a monolite energizer - smthn like power indie :D.

P.S. It's not that I'm going to write every day or even every week such stuff that completely abuses my blah's format. No resolution either. And this one doesn't make much sense as a whole either, so better stick with the sloppy conciseness as unfolding tends to roll away from the sense (of course if there's any).

shell: tourist

When in Italy you immidiately start to speak in English, then it means smthn like "mercy, please"!

O rly?

A: "Are you french?"
B: "Yeah! How did you know?"
A: "By your accent."
B: "But I don't have an accent!"

All ride?

A logician will let you drive his car only if you know how to dismantle its engine, name all parts of it and thereafter assamble it back so that the car goes at least as good as before.

Fruitless reasoning

having lots of time to think doesn't necessary broaden the set of viable options... much... generally...

P&P

Mostly you can't escape being on the weak side, though what you can avoid is being on the sucker's side.

For the remainder of the year

To do a single thing right.

Mapping

It's all just a game, even when at stake is everything.

some for gold, some for a hand to hold

Great stuff for post-fail mood :).

Infernity

Nothing can help a guy whose burning ass doesn't make him run

Freak in Italy

No, I'm not cold!

Even Steven kh kh

A: "Hi, I'm so happy to see you again!"
B: "Oh, you're still alive?"

While sitting at cafe

It used to be a modern trend to display the IT and technology surge in overall by a guy sitting somewhere anywhere else but office with his laptop. Now I hope it will gradually switch to the notion that either he can't organize his time or he's just addicted to it.

The most scoring ego's argument

Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.

Still an animal

At last the most animalous song has been hooked up with an animalicious video. And as well it pleases me to see that Friendly fires have made the nerdiest Caribbean-theme video so far :).

Alt "piece of cake"

you don't need a calculator to figure that out

Converging accents

After returning to bz somehow one of the first things you recognize are the accents of the others - seems like they've got even more characteristic then they were, so that it takes more efforts to get the sense. Or maybe it's just the matter of adjusting (to English in general?) and in a week I won't notice any difference. In either case I guess that you use the English in the environment where it's nobody's mother tongue your accent might improve till it converges to some "best possible". But the same time it might evolve in the wrong direction if you feel too comfortable with the way it's easier for you to talk (not the way that should be correct by the standard) and you don't see any obstacles in conveying your ideas while deliberately worsening your accent.

Tvoi plastjinki slushala ja... la la la

So far one of the catchiest tunes of Russian pop music this year, yet not a banal one. Of course a hot girl hanging around in underwear doesn't spoil much the impression of the song :).

I guess that afternoon commercials breaks could be called "housemaid's dream"

Moral of the day

Don't disturb a guy when he's watching Avril Lavigne - Complicated.

The spice of life

You can't miss places you've never been. That's why some can be complete while being no one.

time planning refinements

Don't expect anything, but leave space for the probable best. Cos sometimes good things happen just because you are who you are.

take a pickchaah?

If you experience something exciting/thrilling/moving or whatever uncareless and the next thing on your mind is how to record it - either by taking a picture or "changing the status/blogging" then what's the sense of yourself in experiencing the process whatsoever?

Šaursliežu dzelzsceļš

a.k.a. Narrow gauge railroad is not only a common tongue twister (wanna give it a try?), but as well a reality at least in a stretch of 33km from Gulbene to Alūksne. The rest of the routes these days are either closed or adjusted to normal railways, but this one was revived as some sort of a cultural heritage and a tourist attraction.
You can compare here the gauges.

Some tourists :)

This train station boasts with an advanced infrastructure

The interior of our car

Endstation!

The rest of the stuff here

Shopping abuse

Today as I was about to go home, it suddenly came across to me that I've not been to the Rimi for a month or so and that I quite willingly want to go there. An awkward desire, gotta admit. So I went there, wandering a bit in a tourist mode, and realized that I don't need anything. I went to the shop to buy nothing. Instead I was looking, looking around and it felt like wherever I would look, my eyesight rushed into the looks of others that were seemingly staring at me right at the same time, which made me feel like an elephant in a glass store which needs to be monitored so that it doesn't break anything. Or maybe it was just an illusion :).

People who have a moral compass don't moralize.

Alleys in Vidzeme

Around Vidzeme there are many old alleys of oaks, birches and lindens many of which have been planted still in German baron times in 19th century (some oak alleys might be even older than that).



Surprisingly there was an Orthodox christian church in a region which doesn't have such a large number of Russian population.

Yet another breakfast song

And... it perfectly fits to all of those ontology profs who always make an example of human being being a subset of animal :).

One of those up against the mirror queries

How does your life relate to what you're doing?

a like

I'm like myself when I like myself

tin food: the good, the bad and the ugly

If you don't say it once you feel like saying it then thereafter it's just a piece of tin food.

TUW approach

Keep it simple - determine the complexity of everything you're about to do.

The gray dune in Pāvilosta

Gray dune in Pāvilosta is a prohibited area because of the unique biotope with many prohibited plant species that you wouldn't find elsewhere. For non-botanic an awkward thing that you can observe there is the grassland covered all over with lichens (that gray thing which the name of the dune arises from), great wild scenery and by turning around - a chance to observe quite a few windsurfers and kiteboarders.
Here's the weed teasing the clouds

The gray scene

A pic from another place nearby - I just liked how the butterflies have chosen the blossoms that contrast their own color.

Here are the rest of the scenes from thereabouts

you're just some racist who can't tie my laces

Sometimes you have to make two steps forward in order to understand what happened two steps back. But mostly it just gets you in woods :).

At the end of the day you're just another guy without a guitar

On integrity

After preparing a T-shirt present for my cousin (and her daughters (who should not know where the characters come from)) who has mathematical grade, I couldn't figure out whether it's nerdy-fun or nerdy-miserable - in either case it was the best I could come about :).

[19:13:57] Mārtiņš says: thesis is no vacation

North fort at Karosta

Karaosta (literally war-port) was a place you wouldn't find on the map during the Soviet times - a whole district of Liepāja was a military base and inhabited by Soviet fleet. After the Red army eventually withdrew in 1994 it has become a free-access place with many disturbing, but in many ways curious scenes - abandoned block houses, haunted Czar time houses, traces of military facilities etc. For me the most gripping site was the North fort - a defensive fortress of Russian empire which was blown up by retreating Russians in 1915 during WW1.
Here's a view from the mall

Baltic sea shows no mercy - those immobile concrete structures lay where they used to be in 1915. Now there's a nice bay :).

Nice...

On posts like that the cannons would be placed on. The name of the site could be concrete bay :).

A peek through the cells,

From the other side the cannons would get supplied.

The whole stuff here

no good

The time is ticking out, but seems like every sack I've every carried has been one-time-use only.

Hedgehog at my backyard

It's no rarity to run into a hedgehog if you hang around a bit in a country side or just in some park in Latvia - like spotting a possum in Australia, squirrel in Vienna or bats in Bolzano. Anyway at each time you get excited all over new, even though it's just a... just a hedgehog :).
Here it is at our garage's door.

Another angle :)

And us 2 :)

Even scarier than that shut-the-....-up thing

Whip your lip!

The Giant Pandas at Schonbrunn Tiergarten

Schonbrunn Tiergarten is one of the few Zoos in Europe where there are Giant Pandas, so paying 14 euros to see them seems quite a bearable price (or maybe pandable khem khem). Anyway you can't postpone checking them out forever so at one of my last days in Vienna I saw Giant Pandas for the first time in my life. Even though it wasn't as amusing as watching koalas in Sydney (those in Vienna were asleep :/), it's still arguably the main reason to visit the zoo at all, especially when you know that the zoo has to pay a loan of 1M dollars a year for each Panda to the Chinese government.
Willkommen!

A lazy panda

The only panda at TU Wien at last met another one of her kind

We got lucky enough to be on time when they get fed with bamboos

And here's a video ;)

And here's the whole stuff from the Zoo ;)