Dash IT! from Alexandr Tanana on Vimeo.

For lunch today my parents took me to Lido. Lido is a restaurant and a small amusement center located 10 minutes away from the center of Riga. Not only does it look like a building from the countryside of Latvia, but the food there is also traditional and specific to the more rural regions of Latvia. And of course it is extremely delicious!

---

The atmosphere both outside and inside is very calm and beautiful. Plus since the song and dance festival of Latvia is happening right now, everything has more traditional themes then usual. And there was a group from the city Rezekne who was singing some folk songs and tunes, here is a video:

Album with photos (scroll half way):

ラトビアと言えばやっぱりユールマラだな〜  Ja tu gribi kaut kur atpūsties tad brauc uz jūru, uz Jūrmalu! Солнце, пляж - отдыхай, плавай, загорай.

Jūrmala is a small city on the coast line 20km away from the capital Rīga. Its like Goal Coast in a way, nice beaches, lots of people and a lot of attractions. I went there with my family and our family friends just for a stroll and to spend the nice day outside at the beach.

Here are some pics on my

When I arrived back home and set foot in my house again after 3 years of being abroad, I could not help but notice the 12 year old TV in our living room. It was a Sony Trinitron and looked something like this, I dont have a picture of ours and we already gave it away. とにかく、it was old and outdated, a serious upgrade was required. Thankfully my dad was on my side on this one and so we set out to buy a new TV, yay!

---

One of our (Latvias) main electronic companies, Elkor, had a sale on Samsung TVs, so naturally thats where we went. At first we were contemplating on getting a 50” model, but after some measuring it was evident that a TV of that size simply wont fit in between our cupboards and wardrobe.

So we decided on looking at various 46” models instead. The one that caught my dads eye was the F8500 series TV. The reason was that instead of the 1700Ls price ($3400) there was a 600Ls discount and thus it was only 1100Ls ($2200). Can you imagine that?! A $1200 discount on a TV which was made in Q2 of this year!

Aside from the very alluring price tag, the design on this model is something you would expect Apple to make. Brushed aluminum, beautiful curves, elegant design. I was sold just by that. The UI of the OS is still Samsung, but I can live with that.

This baby has everything you would want and more. Smart TV, Internet connection via Wifi or cable, 3D, even a Siri-like voice command interface and a Kinect-like gesture control system. The last 2 though don’t work perfectly, but hey they are not the main selling point of this TV, so I don’t care.

The image is beautiful. When watching 1080p shows, YouTube videos or anime it is just breathtaking. The colors are so pretty and everything looks like its in 3D even without the glasses.

Three times I tried launching .mkv files through a USB and the TV crashed on me every single one. But playing anything from my MacBook Air via an HDMI cable works so I am happy.

Here is a link to a review of the TV when it was announced and the video of announcement itself.

2013 summer season of anime has officially started today with a marvelous new show by Kyoto Animation: Free!

Here is a list of what I am looking forward to and picking up, not guaranteeing that I wont drop some though:

---

1. Free! - Hot guys swimming. Need I say more? ah yes: made by KyoAni. next
2. _Danganronpa* -  Survival game, based of a video game, sound cool, my fellow club members are saying it will be good, so might as well
3. Monogatari Season 2 - Based Shaft, most anticipated series of this season. Lets see if shaft can make it as good or even better than Bake 1
4. Genshiken Nidaime - Currently watching Genshiken 1 and 2, loving the series and the characters, definitely looking forward to this. Its an anime about an anime club, how can I not watch it.
5. The World God Only Knows III - An anime about a video game god conquering girls season 3, yea of course. I read most of the manga so looking forward to seeing how they anime this arc.
6. Blood Lad - people say its gonna be good, so why not. Vampires.
7. Watamote! - as mentioned here, I AM SO HYPED FOR THIS.
8. Gin no Saji - a guy goes to the countryside to study farming… Not that intriguing right? Made by the same guy who made FullMetal Alchemist.
9. _Kimi no Iru Machi_ - great manga, good OVAs. Expecting the anime adaptation to be good as well. Love story with drama.

Oh wow I am planing to watch 9 thing this season. Where will I find the time O.o

 Click on image for website with the chart.

This afternoon (night in Sydney) my friends were complaining about another change in their daily life. This time it was the CityRail website. According to Wikipedia: “CityRail ceased trading on 30 June 2013 and was replaced by Sydney Trains and NSW TrainLink.” Which of course means that the website had to be redesigned as well with the new company logo and new colors. I personally don’t mid the new orange color scheme , they only changed the color itself but not the gradient. I wish they would get rid of that 3Dish look of the buttons and headers of the timetables and trip planer. But oh well I can’t really complain.

---

People don’t like change, it doesn’t really matter if the change is to the best or worst, but its done, get used to it. In this case, they didn’t change the functionality, they only changed the color scheme and the logo, so really its not that big of a deal.

Also what my good friend Cindy said on twitter: “It’s the reason why they had to do trackwork - website revamps”. If this is true, god bless Australia.

After my crazy flight yesterday I am home, finally, after 3 years, I am home. Riga has barely changed in these past 3 year that I have been away. Some improvements here and there, we got new trams! (pics on Flickr, and link at the end of the post). There are so many things I have missed, like our beautiful and quiet parks, our gorgeous Art Nouveau style architecture, our clean fresh sea air, our delicious european food (+ potatoes) and of course our blazingly fast and reliable internet.

My main purpose was to get a new passport as this one is about to expire in November, and of course to see my parents. But just after one day of being back I feel like I have never left. There are so many things that are dear to me here, so many memories, so many feels. I will be back in Riga for another month, I will keep posting some stuff out what is happening here and what I am up to and of course continue my regular posts about tech and anime (especially with the new season starting next week).

link to photo album:

(That is not my plane)

It was a good plan, a simple plan, nothing crazy… But it turned into soooo much more because of one small mistake, one small slip up… I am talking about my trip back to Latvia. The original plan was to fly from Sydney to Singapore, spend 1 night and most of the day there with my good friend Wilmer then catch a flight from Singapore to Helsinki the next day, lastly connecting to a flight from Helsinki to Riga. Well the Qantas check in people at  Sydney International Airport had a different plan for me…

---

Prequel

The whole reason I am heading home instead of my usual 1 month trip to Japan over the holidays is because my passport is due to expire in November (4 months away). And since Australia does not have a Latvian embassy, so I pretty much had no choice but to go home. That was fine, I can see my family and the leftovers of my high school friends that are still there.

The first problem came to be when our tour agent accidentally booked my tickets from Singapore to Helsinki on a wrong date, so instead of spending 3 hours in transit in Singapore I had to spend 27. Bummer… Well I came up with this great plan that Wilmer would pick me up and I would just hang out with him for the day. No problem right? Latvian citizens don’t need a visa to singapore if staying under 90 days, so I thought I was all set. Thats what the plan was, up until yesterday when I went to check in.

26th of June, 11:30am

My flight was at 1:05pm so I arrived two and a half hours early. The lady at Qantas check in informed me that I will not be able to disembark into Singapore as my passport is only valid for 4 months, but the law requires a foreign passport to be valid for at least 6 to enter the country/city. That was the first blow. Then she (and 2 of her colleagues who she called for assistance) told me that I am not allowed to spend more than 24 hours in airport transit as it breaks some other rule… So they said that I have no choice but to change my flight. I went to the Qantas ticket stand, explained my situation and asked if there is a possibility to get on tomorrows flight. And the answer was… NO. All booked all full, they cant help me. This is when I started to lose it, I called Finnair (the other airlines which I am flying with) office in Sydney to ask them to change my ticket from Sing to Helsinki from the 27th at 11:30pm to the 26th at the same time. And of course they couldn’t do that. So I woke up my mom and asked her for help, she tried getting hold of our travel agent, but that didnt work (obviously it was 4am in Latvia at the time).

The moment I found out I cant disembark in Singapore, I called Wilmer to inform him of the situation. He was amazing! He kept me calm and helped me find other routes with other airlines that would get me to singapore before 11:30pm on the 27th. A huge thanks for all the help and I am sorry I couldn’t meet you in Singapore.

I was already ready to give up and go home, but I had 1 last chance. It was 12:05 already, so 1 hour left to my flight from Sydney. I went up to the Qantas check-in counter again, and there was a different lady. I explained to her the whole thing and she said she will help me get around this and get me to Singapore today. WOW! She tried her best but then another problem arose… Apparently the flight I was supposed to take was already full cause I had a very late boarding. (Well its not my fault your other staff told me I couldn’t take this flight!). She called a manager who offered me to go to Singapore with British Airways at 3pm instead. At this point I was happy to accept anything, as long as I can leave Sydney and get to Singapore in one piece. They somehow managed to check-in my baggage (though I doubt it will reach Riga, will write an update when home) but I had a boarding ticket to Singapore! YES! The nice lady from Qantas also gave me a $30 food voucher to have lunch, because I had to change my flight.

So at this point I was frantically calling Wilmer and my Mom and telling them what is happening. After finally getting my boarding pass we (me and mom) decided that we will change my flight from Singapore to Helsinki from the 27th night to the 26th once the travel agent opens up at 8am. While I was on the plane, my parents did just that!

Singapore (26th 9:40pm)

8 hours later I am in the most beautiful airport I have ever seen, Singapore. My parents changed my tickets so I had to board the 11:30pm flight to Helsinki today (26th), meaning I had less than 2 hours to re-checkin and tell them to find my luggage. Well lets hope they did.

The 12 hour flight to Helsinki was good, I slept for 8 hours so I feel kinda ok. They also served strawberry Meiji yoghurt for breakfast!!! That made me really happy.

Helsinki (27th 6am local time)

So now I am sitting here in Helsinki airport, waiting for another hour for my flight to Riga when this crazy journey will end. I feel fine and I am relieved that I this whole situation managed to sort itself out without any extra costs.

Riga (27th 1pm)

I am now home, safe and sound, eating all the delicious food my mother made for me.

Hey, have you heard? There is a new movie out by Pixar called Monsters University! Yea that right its a prequel to Monsters Inc. Why am I telling you this? Well today is the day it got screened in Australia and I went to watch it.

---

Its everything you would expect from Pixar. Stunning animation, amazing voice acting, funny jokes all around and of course characters you just love. The story is set before Mike and Sully went to work at Monsters Inc. as scarers, its set at the university where they got their education, *cough* well kinda, and one might say thats the period when they had the best time of their lives.

Since I am a university student now, not in America though, I can relate to most of the jokes and funny moments of this show. Like seriously when I was given the orientation in my first semester uni seemed like such a bright and happy place, but alas that was a mask hiding the horrors of education within.

This movie is about effort, its about overcoming everyones expectations and showing what you can truly achieve, it is about the values of teamwork and friendship, and of course about being smart and finding your way out of any sticky situation.

As I have seen all of Pixars wonderful movies over the years, they have set a very high standard for themselves, so I can not say that this is their best movie, it is a very very very good one though (as are all of their movies). I don’t really rate movies, but if I had to, I would give it probably an 8/10.

Trailer:

When I went to Canberra last wednesday (13th June), on the bus there I listened to Bus romance by Chatmonchy. Well this whole week I could not get this song out of my head. I found the music video (MV) for it on vimeo, lets hope it doesnt get taken down.

I have heard of Chatmonchy before, but only because she sang the song Thermae Roman which is the ending theme for the anime Thermae Romae. I instantly liked her voice and style of singing, but didn’t actually bother to download any of her other songs. And then here we are almost a year after I watched Thermae Romae, I hear Chatmonchy again!