Last weekend I visited my sister, Maris and his newly born daughter Marta. It’s quite strange feeling to be an uncle now.

Winter is come to his end and 2 weeks ago I take part in skiing championship of Riga city. Of 10 or 11 competitors in elite group I finished in 4th place, and quite far from podium, but I satisfied of my result, because later looking up at competitors names in competition protocol I saw that 5 of them represented different skiing sports club. On 5 km of skiing I lost 2 minutes. So I will try to improve my results in hard training in summer. I already buy roller skiis for that.

My cousin Igors will going to be married and he invited me to his weddings in next month. I hesitated for a long time because he live in Belarus 600 km from here and different more formalities with visa and insurance i should pass.

Last two days I spoiled my nerves with such laptop my coworker asked me to repair. Bloody laptop had a partly damaged HDD, which was not being visible from Windows XP formatting tool and many others “fix and repair” tools, but was seen in BIOS. Strange but Windows 7 saw this HDD and I was able to format and save users files this way. Fortunately Windows 7 is not required huge PC parameters, and I ought not to try leave Win-XP on it

After done reading my first English book Memoirs of Geisha I fall into fancy to read one after another. Elza granted me one as a present, and later I bought one more, but unfortunately they is written in extremely complicated language with so many American idioms and complex sentence structure , that I could barely understood context of few introducing chapters and then I just discontinue reading. Probably I should start reading some easily understood books as Harry Potter or Lord of The Rings.

Already for more than a month unusual frosty winter remain! I remember when I was 9 – 10 year old boy such kind of winter was most common thing, but nowadays is rarity to see deep heaps of snows in our latitudes. I take advantage of this and about 2 or 3 times a weak go skiing on skiing track of Rīgas Uzvaras parks. Next month i plan to take part of couple competitions. In 6-th of February Skiing of Apkārt Alaukstam and in 21-st of February Skiing of Sigulda will occur. Skiing of Apkārt Alaukstam is most exited form me. I remember 10 – 15 years ago I take part of this even every year. A lots of inhabitants of Vecpiebalga including my classmates emulate between each other and then walked around corridors of school and showed off, after master of physical training marked him three tens in his diary. .

New year came in my job with new unpleasant surprises, for example there is no health insurance anymore which gave me 100% discount in sports clubs, now my only physical activity is skiing and I hope frosty weather remain 2 or 3 month more. But health insurance actually is smaller matter, biggest worry is about my job responsibilities and salary. Considering of decreased budget of Riga city a lot’s of people is fired from job, and those who stay are forcing now to work with lower salary.

Few weeks ago rumor was spread in our office rooms. Starting from New Year there will not be available health insurance anymore. Just a month was remained till New Year and of course like as everyone as I wanted to take advantage of bonuses that is left available. I make a registration to dentist and orthopedist with an idea to get assignment to rehabilitation center of Jaunkemeri. Our health insurance provides 150 lats limit of concrete measures of rehabilitation. I was lucky with orthopedist. He was nice fellow and sign assignment without the questions. After a several more formalities with insurance company I was on my way to Jūrmala ready to different health improving procedures.
Rehabilitation continues 6 days and now is annual evening when I play video game, read book, watch TV, write something in English or do something else. Here is no internet and I am forced to write in simple MS word document. To be more exact here is an internet but it is available only near registration area on two very slow looking PC’s and price is just awful – 2 lats per hour.
After checking here in Jaunkemeri I should visited two more doctors to establish my diagnose. Actually I am not too ill as it seems, I only have small injury in bottom of my legs. Different procedures had set up for me, for example mud applications, swimming pool, magnet therapy, gymnastic, fitness, sulphureted bathtubs, underwater massage, which was charged procedure and I have to pay additional 10 lats for it. Procedures is very enjoyable, and I certainly feel much better.
Feed here is for free, breakfast, dinner and supper, but portions is too small for me, luckily one of my coworker after procedures go home to Riga often in the afternoon and then she go back in next morning to procedures. We sit at one kitchen table so her portion then goes to me . Every resident here live in double rooms, I don’t know maybe few single rooms is available but they wasn’t offer to me. I live with guy named Jurijs. I am talking with him in Russian and he lived and worked in Norway last 3 or 4 years and came to Latvia to treat his hand. Jurijs is big chatterbox. Mainly he talks about his life and work in Norway, how he lost his job there, about Norway’s and Finland’s nature. He showed me thousands of pictures of Norway’s nature and his exjob area. He even demonstrated PC software for me, which is used in his exjob. Software is about how to model different components of steal. He often talks about how bad is here in Latvia and how good is there in Norway or Finland. I notice that is recently quite popular subject between many peoples.
Only 2 days left here in Jaunķemeri for me. Ice hockey game Latvia vs Denmark will show by TV in this evening. TV set here is much smaller than my previous one in old flat, so it will be difficult to spot something. Maybe I change my mind and will go and play with another’s coworkers some card game in the opposite room. During those days here in Jaunkemeri there was a lot of snow fallen. Finally! Definitely I will be on skies this Saturday and rushing around skiing track of Torņakalns.

My coworker Arnis called me about two month ago, and offers to hire his one-room flat for acceptable price. I agree together with Elza to see around his flat.  Initially flat was under construction and there was no quite vision of what will it looks like. But my friend Arnis promised that all be all right. I imagined that it was much better for me considering the flat which i hire already, isn’t in best condition and prize is a little bit higher.

A big flat TV set was my biggest eagerness for a long time, but my exflat’s furniture arrangement was too oppressive for new TV set and, instead i have to bear discomfort of old small Russian made TV set and TV signal was as terrible as i should seat about 1,5 m away from television tube to watch ice hockey game.  Straight away i started looking for different kind of TV set models for my new dwelling place.  My requirements were FULL HD, 42 inch diagonal, USB input and prize under 500 Lats.  I started looking for cheapest Samsung and LG TV sets, because Gastonz already have LG one and recognized as good one.  After a week of searching I decided to choose Panasonic Viera TX-P42S10E. And partly I was assured by this guy.

In despite of higher price comparing with LG and others,  with similar equipment Panasonic had very sharp and warm colors.  Maybe is this because Panasonic is plasma TV set!

When TV set were bought, necessity of FULL HD player appeared.  Initially I was ready to purchase new home cinema equipment, but then I change my mind and bought new laptop Acer Aspire 5738, with powerful Pentium Dual Core 2.1 CPU and ATI M Radeon HD 4530 VGA

When was time to checking into new flat, Arnis still renovated it.  Some paint bucket and brushes was placed in the kitchen and was not taken away till next day of living there. There was no kitchen cabinets at all only one top of the table of kitchen with several table legs.  So I already ordered my own kitchen cabinets. But in general flat is very nice and comfortable, much better than previous one. I hope Arnis will allow me to live there more than one year in spite of contract that we signed to one year.

My friends to salt-bred evening will be invited only after my new kitchen will be setting up.

Yesterday I had an opportunity to attend Marylin Manson concert in arena Riga. Thanks to Maris, who gave me 2 tickets one day before. He apparently didn’t prefer that kind of music . And I didn’t either, but some of Manson’s song’s is quite close to my heart, especially stunners like Sweat Dreams, Rock is dead, Coma white, This is the New Shit. I started listen Manson’s music in the time when I lived in RTU hostel together with Martiņš, who often used to heard Manson. I am quite home-sitter person commonly, that’s way the last time when I attended such foreigner artist was 3 or 4 years ago, when band Rasmus sang on stage of Mežparks.
I and Elza were a little bit late and there was already warm up band took a floor. Then we took our seats and after warm up group there was quite long break, when stage for Manson was going to prepared. After a while, black Devil comes out and some sickly fans almost fall unconscious. Honestly, I don’t like stage artists, hard rockers like Manson, but he is unique showman and awesome personality and definitely earn my respect. I had a quiver on my skin in some moments how awful and fearful he was. Of course the pronunciation of Manson was way of perfect and even when I knew words of some song, I didn’t quite understood what he sang about. But it’s understandable, I even wander how he could spoke a word after such mad screaming.
Of course it’s a last time when I attend Manson concert, but he leaved great impression on me!