Wu Wei

Carrefour-- an electricity supplier

Commissioner Piebalgs welcomes the entry of a
supermarket chain as a new electricity supplier in the Belgian market

Energy Commissioner, Andris Piebalgs has welcomed on 29 May the launch
of Carrefour Energie EcoPlanet, a program that will make the supermarket chain a
new provider in the Belgian electricity market. The Carrefour Group, one of the
Partners of the Sustainable Energy Europe Campaign, is the first European
retailer to sell electricity to final consumers.

So reads the latest press release from the European Commission. Don't they know about the Lithuanian supermarket chain that bought the Western Electricity Distribution Network in Lithuania? Since Piebalgs comes from next door Latvia, you would think he knew, at least.

New Europe showing Old Europe the way, perhaps.

On the other hand the shareholdings have got more tortuous, since the days when Western Electricity Networks just went by the name of Vakaru Skirstomieji Tinklai (VST).

At that time, in a privatisation, the government shareholding was bought by VP Market, owners of the Maxima supermarket chain based in Lithuania but now expanded throughout the Baltics. VP Market is the company which brought the Acropolis Hypermarket to Vilnius.

Then in 2004 VP Market set up the company NDX Energija to operate VST and has been buying up the other 20% of shares held by small shareholders, including some originally held by Sweden's Vattenfall and then by Germany's E.ON Energie.


Since then, a new company called LEO.LT (Lithuanian Electricity Organisation) has been set up by the government owned electricity companies and NDX Energija in order to make plans for a new nuclear power station.

It's a long way from the supermarket business.


Technorati Tags: electricity, supermarket chains, Belgium, Carrefour, Lithuania

Quirky Batumi

My meeting finished early, it wasn't raining and I had instructions to get more money after the blowout last night.  If you are a woman boss, Georgian male dignity does not allow you to pay for anything, so I go round rather like royalty, cashless, with the male office manager paying for everything.   Since the account is in my name, we normally go to the bank together, and I hand over the cash to run the office. 

I found the bank, but it was hardly possible to get in the door.  The queues were 5 deep at every counter, even if I could work out which counter I needed to go to.  So I gave up and went for a walk down the street looking for a cafe.  Here are some of the quirky things I found just in 50 yards of K Gamsakurdia St.

    

A rather neat Georgian church on the main street (most  seem to be on the top of a hill).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This plaque on a wall looks pretty much like the normal plaque for a writer or a poet.  Reading the Russian, I realised it was actually dedicated to a midwife and gynaecologist:  Iosif Ilich Charkviani 1888-1959.  I don't think I've seen many plaques dedicated to a midwife.

 

 

 

 

 

      

Here we have a notice marking "The Consulate of the Estonian Republic was located here from 1920 to 1921"  in Georgian, English and Estonian.  The Democratic Republic of Georgia  existed briefly between 1918–1921, and presumably needed consulates immediately. 

The signpost is in a rather nice wrought iron design like a weathercock.

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a relic of the Soviet Union: a truck selling kvas, a beer-like drink made from fermented bread, which appeared on the streets every summer.  This truck has been tarted up with flowers and yellow paint.  No kvas seems available though.  It seems to have gone the way of the gassy water coin-operated machines which also operated in the summer on every street.

 

 

 

 

I didn't manage to find the Cafe Europa (which I look for in each town). but if I can't go to Literatu Svetaine in Vilnius any more (it's closed down) I can go here: Literaturuli: a very nice cafe with delicious cakes, good coffee, free wifi, friendly staff and a book shop.  What more could you want?  (Well, maybe sun, to sit outside?).

 

 

 

I went back to the bank but the queues were still 3 deep.  I hoped it was not a run on the bank. 

Later I discovered that the cafe is part of a small chain, with some in Tbilisi as well.  They are owned by the wife of Zurab Zhvania, the Georgian Prime Minister mysteriously found dead in 2005, from carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty space heater while his bodyguards outside noticed nothing.

Technorati tags: Batumi, Georgia, Estonia, Literatuli, Literatu Svetaine, kvas, Zurab Zhvania

Trip to Batumi

Here are some highlights from our business trip to Batumi.  It rained most of the time so nothing spectacular about the beaches (big pebbles) or sitting in cafes enjoying the view.

The drive takes six hours along a reasonable road, (no motorway, and single carriageway (one lane each way) most of the way.  We had lunch in a cafe by the roadside (excellent food, nice outside seating by the river, awful toilets).  I don't know its name, but it's located where the road runs through a valley in the mountains which divide West Georgia from East Georgia.

On the way we commented on the lack of agriculture, which was a bit surprising and the lack of wild flowers, like in Greece where they would be wonderful at this time of year (or more probably dead from the heat).  But the scenery was very green (and wet) without that brooding gloominess that Bosnia (and Herzegovina) has.

Eventually we drove along the Black Sea coast from Poti, admiring the rain, and realising it was the usual British Public Holiday (wet) weather.  We checked into our hotel, Hotel David, pretty much like Hotel Hecco in Sarajevo (see post here).  12 rooms, more or less empty except for the five of us.  Good free internet, not much English and scarcely adequate breakfast.  All for an overpriced 80 dollars.  45 Euros (like Hecco) would have been reasonable.  Still, very comfortable.

For dinner we went to the Old Ship restaurant for some traditional Georgian food (we were 3 Georgians, 1 Brit and 1 Greek), and since it was Independence Day, some dancing and singing. The restaurant is in an old wooden ship, on two levels and the food was excellent.  Here was how the main course and desert were served:

    

The grilled meat, fish and mushroom pyramid of sword sized skewers was hard to dismantle.  The fruit arrangement with its swan cut from an apple was an original.

Technorati tags: Batumi, Hotel David, Hotel Hecco, Old Ship.

Not quite Yggdrasil?

Another gem (if you like trees), with a Batumi tag from Flickr. Can't decide whether it's autumn colours or an acer.





Taken by Antonis

For those who weren't brought up on Norse myths:Yggdrasil

Firm friends

Found while browsing photos for Batumi on Flickr, ready for tomorrow's trip.




Thanks to SaMedia

Technorati Tags: cat, dog, batumi, georgia

Exhibitions and elections

This post comes to you live from the Caucasus Build Expo at which we have a stand and a wireless connection.

Today is a holiday because of the election, and most of the visitors to our Expo are fathers bringing their children. So we are not having many customers interested in our business. But it has been interesting for us to see some of the building products on sale, most of them imported, from Turkey and Russia.

There is no air conditioning in our pavilion and no cafe as anticipated, so we are not very well prepared, or very comfortable.

There is not much news on the election. One of our staff was put off by the long queues at the polling station just round the corner from the Expo, so we gave her time off to vote when it got too boring. Nothing much was happening on the election reports on the internet either.

Another of my office staff says that their relative was asked which way he was going to vote by his employer. They were both shocked. Other stories are going round about employers requiring passport numbers for people's relatives (presumably so their votes can be checked) Back to Soviet days, it seems.

Actually can you imagine anyone would actually bother checking an employee's relatives' voting habits these days? The boredom of looking through the voting lists? I guess the threat is enough intimidation. You could probably get away with making up a number or just giving one or two digits wrong like a typo.

Fire walkers

I always thought fire-walking was a Baltic thing. Michael Palin showed it for either Lithuania or Latvia in his TV tour of the new EU member states. I don't think it added a lot to the general knowledge of life in the Baltics but it was interesting that still people wanted to do it. It's a bit more ambitious than jumping over the Jonines bonfire on the longest day.

So I was a bit surprised to see it also occurred in Greece as well. An article appeared in the latest Hidden Europe newsletter. There it seems they choose a different day:

Just north of the ring road (round Thessaloniki) is the small town of Langadhás, which this week comes alive for the feast days of Saints Constantine and Helen. The commemoration of the saintly duo involves a three day frenzy of folk piety, commencing tomorrow with a remarkable display of fire-walking. Dancing on hot coals is a fiery test of faith, yet the pious fire-walkers of Langadhás really seem to survive quite unhurt.

The Orthodox Church in Greece never seems quite certain what to make of the fire-walkers, refusing to endorse the Langadhás spectacle as evidence of the supernatural. The practice is not limited to this single Greek village, but pops up elsewhere in the southern Balkans, most notably in some of the deeply devout Orthodox communities of the Strandzha mountains in southern Bulgaria. In the village of Bulgari, a tiny spot tucked away deep in the Strandzha, the fire-dancers also come out to mark the feast days of Saints Constantine and Helen - but because Bulgaria still uses the Julian calendar for many ecclesiastical matters, the annual bout of Bulgari fire-walking is not till early June

You can read a scientific explanation of why it sometimes works for those who believe it here, but it seems it may not work for sceptical scientists.

Another interesting fact I discovered trying to find some photos is that there is a firewalking training institution in the US, (in California, where else). Some Lithuanian "graduates" now run their own "school". Their rather attractive website explains how overcoming your fears can be part of successful management training.

In the modern world of business companies are in the state of everyday struggle for market share, in the times of increasing global competition every day is a struggle: you either grow or drop, floundering or taking small steps is equal to defeat. Firewalking helped ancient warriors to accumulate determination and energy for victory.

We have developed special training programs for teams from business enterprises, operating in an especially competitive environment and facing uncommon challenges. We are ready to pass over the ancient wisdom, which used to be accessible only to the elite and which will help to mobilize the immense inner reserves of every person or a team.

Go for it then?

An alternative "May Day Parade" in Vingis Park

Alfa.lt shows how the Lithuanian army demonstrates what it can do here:

Lithuania's military on Saturday held an "open house" in Vingio Park, where it set up a large camp that took the public on a journey through the ages.

Medieval knights held mock battles, performers sang the songs of the "forest brothers" (partisans who resisted Soviet occupation in the aftermath of WW2), and kids got to clamber inside modern helicopters and military vehicles, meeting the troops who've operated them in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kosovo.

Lithuania's honour guard showed off its marching drills. Parachutists, reconnaissance teams, and stunt pilots gave live demonstrations. Children took part in races to see who would be fastest to make a bed and build a tent.

There's a lot of photos. Just a selection below.

Maybe this will not deter any enemies, but surely it is a better way to recruit to a professional army, than a show of military might. As armies are increasingly drawn into peace-keeping activities rather than fighting* wars behind computer screens, then communication skills with the locals are increasingly important.

The injured soldier is particularly gruesome in the enlarged photo, on the alfa website.

* I mean real peace-keeping, not the sort in Abkhazia.

Give us back Simferopol

BBC World tries hard but doesn't always succeed.

This morning it continued with its support of Georgia against Russia. The reporter who got into Abkhazia described the "frozen conflict" there as the conflict in the remotest part of Europe which nobody knew and everyone had forgotten. If I wasn't in Georgia myself and knew a bit more about what was going on, then it would be easier to think "let sleeping dogs lie", then.

However, now that Luzhkov is saying "give us back Simferopol" it is really clear what Russia's strategy is in its neighbourhood. This despite all the international agreements covering Russia/ Ukraine borders.

It is obvious that NATO does not allow countries to join if they still have unresolved border conflicts. Especially if they are unresolved with Russia. So Russia has an interest to make sure the conflicts are not resolved and even create new ones, which can be dragged out through international courts if necessary for however long it takes, without any fighting.

So we know what to expect while Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova try to get into Nato.

Ashton's ballets in Tbilisi

So today I went to the ballet for the first time. Well first time in Tbilisi, I'm not quite that uncultured.

Connections got us a front seat at the 1st loge.
It was billed as Frederic Ashton's ballets, and since none of us were ballet buffs we weren't sure what that would mean in practice.

The opera and ballet theatre has seen better days, and seats are still cheap. Although the auditorium is quite quite small on plan it has 5 galleries of seating above the stalls, so holds quite a few people. It was practically full for the last day of the 3-day performance. It was a matinee, so full of children reasonably well behaved given it wasn't a children's programme.

We got "A Birthday Offering" in Act I, pas de deux from Thais, Sylvia and La Chatte in Act II and the full Marguerite and Armand in Act III.

Thais was very sexy, as required by the story of a religious fanatic who tries to rescue a courtesan. Sylvia more classical, as a Nymph of Diana, accompanied by a more down to earth male dancer. He dispensed with tights revealing nobbly knees, not enhanced by supposed hunting kneeboots of an unfortunate purple and beige colour, making them look more like rugby socks. A hairy chest revealed by a modification of the tarzan costume, (no leopard skin but the usual one shoulder exposed) did not improve the impression. In La Chatte, a rather appealing cat stretched and prowled but was let down by a late arrival (it seemed to me anyway) of the radar controlled mouse. In order to keep up with the music, she had already leapt on the chair and "screamed", eventually jumping down in a tizz when the mouse finally appeared. The mouse got a special "bow" from the rest of the cast at the end. In case you are wondering why this was necessary, the full title is La Chatte metamorphosee en femme.

The theatre outside the auditorium is very dark and dull: no photographs of previous performances, no proper bar, nowhere to promenade, to see and be seen. Although it was a matinee, we managed to find a bottle of wine, but when we went back for more, it was the only one, so one of us had to go without. Not recommended!

The third Act was Marguerite and Armand, originally written for Nureyev and Fonteyn. It seemed it had "died" with them and only recently been revived for other artists. I can't say what it must have been like with the originals but Nina Ananiashvili and Vasil Akhmeteli were fantastic.

The performance's only bad point was when I got home and found my phone had vanished. I dashed back with a colleague and eventually got in round the back way involving coming on stage, back into the auditorium. Luckily the phone was still under the seat. On the way out again we found the photo exhibition on a wall backstage (a funny place to put it).

Checking facts on the internet to write this, I found this interesting snippet about Frederic Ashton here:

He had a sense of humor in person to match the one he displayed on the dance stage, and among those who enjoyed it was Queen Elizabeth II, whom he once taught to dance the tango. Ashton could mimic various well-known British personalities including the queen, who, it is said, retaliated with an Ashton imitation of her own when she heard about his routine.

Technorati Tags: ballet, Frederic Ashton, Tbilisi