Little by Little Latvia!

I watched Eurovision song festival the other day. Congratulations, Latvians! I am happy for you. But I also have a theory to explain your success.

It is not a secret, that foreigners do not remember the name for Lithuania. They usually use this phrase when talking about Lithuania: "L...L...Lllatvia??"

So, I hypothesise, that Little by Little Lithuania turned into Latvia. :D

P.S. Congratulations to Estonians as well, for representing Swiss nation.

How did I like my studies?

Anticipating many questions from friends and acquaintances about my studies in RSM Erasmus University, I decided to prepare a standard answer to this question. As usual, I will use an analogy.

>>>>>
Studing here is like picking mushrooms (lit: grybavimas). When you go to pick mushrooms, you normally find some, but even if you don't, you are delighted because you have had a stroll in the forest, relaxed or met many nice animals and birds. One day you find more mushrooms, the other day you find less. But overall, if you go picking mushrooms for 9 months, you definitely end up with a great pile of mushrooms (assuming it is the right season).
So, here I am with a huge pile of different mushrooms...
What I am going to do now, is try to cook them...and ultimately see, which of them are edible.

That's what I can say about my studies.
After May 25 I will enter the part-time mode of studying: I will be writing my master thesis in Lithuania and working at the same time in OVC (www.ovc.lt), my previous job.

Synergies in religions

Co-existence of several religions in one country is good. Good for me. Good for my shopping exdperience. I explain:

Muslims celebrate Friday. ==> go to christian groceries on Fridays.
Christians celebrate Sunday ==> go to Turkish groceries on Sundays.

The rule does not apply to Lithuania: Maxima always works.

Economy beats ecology

In the Baltics we have a great practice of re-using old beer bottles. In Holland they also have the same system. Around 90% of beer, coca and other bottles are returned for re-use.

As you might know, reusing of old bottles is much more ecological than recycling. Despite this fact, Holland decided to abolish reusing practice and start recycling all wasted bottles in the country. WHY!?!?!?

Because: EU said that by requiring to set up a bottle re-use system, Holland is protecting its market from foreign breweries. For instance to Svyturys it would be VERY expensive to collect bottles in Holland. That is why EU demands to provide fair competitve conditions to all players. And now all bottles will be simply collected and burnt/scraped/recycled.

My business society teacher is now probably crying. She is very emotional.

Rooms vs. dishes

Today I discovered, that there is a similarity between unbreakable dishes and a common room in my apartment.
The similarity is the following:
-I know, that I can break unbreakable dishes, but I do not dare to try,
-I also know, that I can clean the common room, but I do not dare to try.

My common room is uncleanable.

Amazement in pricing

I boaught a coliflower one day. From a turkish shop. The price was qouted per piece/per stuck. And that inspired a question: what does it take to be able to qoute prices 'per piece'?

Basically it means that you have to be able to grow exactly the same size coliflower for many many coliflowers. That also means that somebody is literally checking the size of each head before cutting it off. Walikng in a greenhouse with a meter an checking every single head! Imagine!
Impressive.

Dutch ignorance

Ignorance of Dutch people to things happening beyong Holland borders never stops surprising me. Some of my recent occurences of this type:

One Dutch person saw me browsing www.Delfi.lt. He looked at it to make sure that writings were "from left to right".

Another citation from a Dutch girl: "Those countries, like Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary...they are a bit backward...eh, right? Is Latvia (i.e. Lithuania) also like that?"

And: "So, Tadas, how much did you pay for your dyploma?"

...strangely, somehow I start loving Soviet Union for acknowledging that Baltic States were known, significant, even important countries, which were so desparately needed in the Union. Ech...

After a while

Yeah, it's been some time since the last post I made. Time to katch up. And as a coincidence, I've just discovered something new about Holland.

So, did you know that
US has Silicon Valley
Estonia has Genetics Valley
Lithuania has Sauletekis Valley
and in the same line Holland has Food Valley (www.foodvalley.nl/english).

What is it? Well, as you can guess, it does lots of reasearch about food, flowers, biotechnology and similar. It is said to be probably the best in the world in its area. Cool.

And, of course, it is situation somewhere in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of Holland.