Friday, January 30

Pros of hitchhiking and poposljitsja

Yesterday I was hitchhiking to Stip. Not only I saved money, but I also got presents: calendar, a set of coffee cups with Macedonian symbols, dzhevrek, and a business card.

Poposlitsja (for translation look here) is still one of my hobbies. In Stip I visited the honorary consul of LV in MK: a wealthy guy who owns a winery. So I got to try some nice wine with a nice dinner of pastrmajlija plus 2 bottles of wine to take with me.

Wednesday, January 28

Linguistics and Politics

1. From a guide on Sofia:
"Bulgarian is a Slavic language most similar to Serbian and Russian. Macedonian is a Bulgarian dialect in fact."

2. From a conversation with a waiter this morning in a hotel in Skopje:
He: So Latvian and Lithuanian is the same?
Me: No, not really. They are quite different.
He: Like Macedonian and Serbian?
Me: No, the difference is bigger.
He: Like Macedonian and Bulgarian?

Thursday, January 15

Tele2 sucks big time!

Now I cannot send sms anymore at all... (before there were maybe some happy days once a week I could sms). So far for a company, which is run by sheep. ==> watch the commercial

I really liked the analogy - maybe let's try to establish a freight company that is very cheap, but does not deliver anything? (copyright belongs to a friend)

But while looking for an alternative (cheap) operator I found this beautiful card called Halebop and the best example of how sometimes websites in this so-called English speaking country work: click here. There is a tab called "Other languages". Very ambitious. When you click on it you get a site with a heading "Product information in other languages". Still very ambitious. However, the only information is a link to a file called "International pricelist (in Swedish)"... so far nothing more than ambitions.

And... my head is beating from conceptual stretching and pulling, conceptual beating-each-other, conceptual hitting-you-back. And I feel like replying to people: oh silly you, it's just a social construction... don't you see it?

Monday, January 12

Blues

I am feelin blues for my dear laptop, I hope he is strong and will make it for another hundra ooor...

Can anyone explain me why there are so many people pulling smaller and bigger suitcases around Uppsala? It's is a question not only from now but since I arrived here

And after the jympa today, I witnessed how a poor granny rode into the barrier at train tracks. I don't know what went wrong but the barriers on the left side but they did not move up, just on the right side. And I guess that's was something that the poor granny did not expect. And it was already dark to see well... Kind of a sight you see on American Funniest Videos, but was not so funny because I was feeling sorry for her.

And damn I have a feeling that my throat is gonna go bad... damn damn damn

(but I enjoyed the party yesterday!)

Tuesday, January 6

tillbaka hemma

Yes, it does feel a bit like coming home. One of my feet is now stably in Sweden: the country of guys in tight jeans and girls in sweatpants, the country of messy hair, the country of happy, there-is-never-a-problem-if-you-have-forgotten-your ticket train conductors.

While waiting for my train at the train station in Nyköping, I observed a curious phenomenon:
3 young Russians
1 could be Georgian or some other Caucasian who first at the bus stop addressed me in Swedish
1 could be Central Asian something young guy with a bit Asiatic features
1 middle aged Italian who was very talkative to the bus driver in English
all these people found a common language, i.e. Russian...
I was sitting there with my book, not really reading more than 2 sentences per 10 minutes, and following this theater scene of buying tickets, changing money, helping each other... the Georgian and the Italian appeared to be extremely willing to help. And the clients/actors entered and exited the stage/station one by one

Now at home, drinking the mint tea from my garden back home in LV. Going to finish the last pages of Ayn.

Monday, January 5

and so this is (not) xmas (anymore)

I am starting to pack and taking the morning plane back to Sweden. This time I was here I started to appreciate Sweden, it's ain't such a bad country and it is still some way ahead Latvia. I don't know if it is really getting worse or it is just the problem of my changing perspectives, but hell what's the hell is going on in this country (Latvia)? Ok, politicians were thugs also before but they seem to be getting too rude and too sure they can get away with it. Not talking about this mystical social construction of "crisis". I don't say that there is no crisis, but you can definitely sense the social construction of the idea of crisis (read Hacking "Social Construction of What?"). The same as there was a social construction of "inflation" here which was much above what was realistic levels of it and getting into such ways, talks, interpretations etc. where it did not have to appear at all and being used as an excuse for everything (mostly increasing prices (heh :)). Now crisis is used for the same purpuse (hehe - increasing taxes, prices, firing people, reducing salaries, making people work more, hehehehe... oh so logical). And what can we do - we have a crisis!

Maybe my current mood also has something to do with Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" which I am currently dutifully finishing. I am still skeptical about this book, but I cannot fail to notice that it is influencing the way how I look at the things. When the plane from Dublin landed in Riga with one wheel (well, was not really one, in fact only one blew up while taking off), my mom was saying almost with tears in her eyes (I have a very sensitive sentimental mom, which ain't that bad but is a fact) that they were lucky. So I attacked the word "lucky", because the pilots simply did their job and did it well. But I have never been really into superstitions anyways, and in big lines her code of moral is my code of moral. And for me it is just so natural and childish almost like my ex-boyfriends principles. Well, Ayn does a good job putting them down onto a paper and filling with them more than 1000 pages... still I think I enjoyed "Sophie's World" more. And she really sounds a bit too much in some places...

Well, but just it is curious to read it exactly now, in the current "times of emergency" and see these stupid faces described by her so well among the Latvian top leaders.

Ah, I will discuss the bugs of holes in Ayn Rand when I meet Katya, maybe I need to make a list. For the beginning, the same science has proven that our 5 sences can easily mislead us (don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that), 2ndly - we cannot replace our morality with rationality. Killing can be rational sometimes and it is not rational at all to feed those alcoholics, which are not freezing on streets at minus 15 and sooner or later gonna freeze anyways. If we did not have these centuries-long built moral feelings, we would not feel bothered maybe. Then it would be totally rational to leave them to freeze to death. Now because we have this irrational morality, it is rational to do something about them because otherwise we will feel guilty. So there is some kind of contradiction and vicious-circle-egg-chicken thing... I am a simplifier, naturalist, rationalist, objectivist, but I am still aware that Dr. Stadler is also true: "what can you do when you need to deal with humans..."


Celine Dion - Happy Christmas (War Is Over)

Friday, January 2

Sunny one so true, I love you.

I just simply love sunny winter days.

Song: Boney M - Sunny