Wu Wei

East in the West

After rushing round last Friday finalising the purchase of my apartment, I met a friend for lunch on Saturday.  I hadn't seen her on her own for a long time so we had a long lunch in a Chinese restaurant catching up on family plans and life in general. We had the delicious aubergine with soy sauce which seems to be a peculiarly Lithuanian Chinese delicacy as I have never come across it in the UK or anywhere else.

My friend is taking lessons in Chinese painting, something new for both of us, so we rushed off so she could show me the gallery and meet the teacher, the wife of the first Lithuanian ambassador to China.  She has a tiny gallery called Bamboo Gardens, with a tea room and Japanese garden in a courtyard off Pilies.  There are lovely photos on her website here. Unfortunately only in Lithuanian.

So when I get more time in Vilnius, I shall sign up for lessons.

Technorati Tags: Chinese art, japanese garden, vilnius

More Europe

Ukraine tries again.

The FT reports Yulia Timoshenko as saying:

Today, countries that once chose to remain outside the euro – Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, even Switzerland – are reconsidering. Hungary, Poland and others wanting to join the euro are committed to redoubling their efforts. As usual with European crises, the best solution for Europe is more Europe. That “more Europe” also needs to include every European nation.

Before the big enlargement in 2004, it was noticeable how enthusiasm for Europe is stronger when outside, then a healthy scepticism set in, after entry. 

Interesting how the pattern repeats with the Euro, for those outside (even for some Brits now, Euro entry is discussable again.

Read the rest of her speech here: 

Another blogger in the family

When Sloph went off to Moscow to learn Russian for three months, we told her we expected a blog.  So far we have had a regularish newsletter which has been hilarious as well as informative.  Now she is complaining that nobody answers it.

She only told me just now that she has posted the newsletters on a blog, Notes on Moscow, so now I can hopefully pass this on and she can get some comments, for encouragement.

UPDATE:  a quick migrate from Blogger to Wordpress, now go here

Here's an example from the last post, on Russian manbags:

i've also realised that while i have commented on russian womens fashion sense, i have neglected to draw to your attention to russian male fashion and i feel the time has now come to introduce you to the russian concept of the manbag:

for many weeks when i was first here, i thought that russian men were simply very chivalrous and carried their girlfriends handbags for them. as the weeks went on though, i started to notice that men were carrying these bags regardless of whether there was a woman with them or not, and that in restaurants they dipped into them for their wallets and mobiles, forcing me to come to the realisation that they were in fact the man's own bag.

Requirements for a russian manbag are as follows:
1. the manbag should ideally be large, with a designer label on it (fake if necessary)
2. small bags are acceptable only if they are of the ladies evening clutch bag variety
3. diamonte, flower designs, shades of pink, and other embellishments are all entirely acceptable and even desireable
4. while across the shoulder varieties are acceptable, the usual choice is worn on one shoulder, in the crook of the elbow, or carried in the hand when the strap design is too small to allow for the arm to pass through it
5. although colour and designer labels are, as previously mentioned preferred, colour coordination with the rest of the mans clothing is not, thus allowing the bag to stand out even more in its incongruity. most common will be a particularly girly looking pink shoulder bag, with a gold chain shoulder strap, coupled with a leather studded biker jacket and army boots or alternatively, full business suit
6. under no circumstances are any of the manbags described above viewed as remotely gay, and if one were to suggest as such to the wearer, this would probably provoke a fight.

This seems to be a subject Carpetblogger should pronounce on, as she is the expert on Russian style and dyevotchkas. 

Winter has started ( with update)

Not having had much snow for a while, the sprinkling in Vilnius yesterday seemed quite pretty.  It seems that other cities had it worst, as I am now still in Vilnius airport waiting for a flight, when I was supposed to leave last night via Riga. 

No signs of our flight yet and earlier ones haven't left either.  Still the internet is free and I managed to send some emails.

Update We were amused or perhaps irritated by two crusty old Lithuanians who seemed to think the snow was the responsibility of the airline manager and wanted to see him to put him right. While we queued at 11pm to get our tickets changed for tomorrow, thinking we had missed our connection from Riga to Tbilisi, they were busy haranguing everyone in sight, and demanding the flight to Riga left NOW. We were betting that they would land in Riga just after the flight to Tbilisi had left. When we finally queued in Munich for our flight to Tbilisi a day later, we were amused to see they were there too. Munich is not a bad airport to wait in, but more delays in Vilnius meant there wasn't much time to go into town to see what there was to see, so we just hung around. I was introduced to the delights of the Bismarck sandwich, which apart from the name would probably transplant well into Lithuania, since it is herring. But then Lithuania doesn't do sandwiches or snacks for lunch.

Free market consumers

Georgia's energy policy as expressed by the then Prime Minister:

The government made it clear that it was not interested in energy conservation: Georgia is a poor country, it can not afford energy efficiency; and:  Energy conservation should not be a subject for government to regulate, but you are free to create consumer demand - let the market take care of the matter.

Even in that home of the free market, the USA, energy efficiency is not left entirely to the market, as you can tell from the subsidies encouraging solar power installations in California.

Well, now he is an ex-Prime Minister, and we hope the new one will have better advisers.

Perhaps they will point out that Georgia is trying to join the EU and should pay some attention to what governments do there, rather than trying to join the USA, where even there, there would also be some (increasing) requirements to regulate the free market. 

As for the idea that Georgians do not need energy conservation, tell that to gas consumers who have just had a big price rise.  Clearly the guy did not know about that coming.

Technorati Tags: energy efficiency, gas prices, Georgia

Welcome back

"S priezdom" says the door man as I get to the office early.  "Your letters are on the table upstairs".  These little things make you feel glad to be back.  I missed the husband and wife on the fruit and veg stall that I pass on my way to work everyday.  It was too early for them, it seems.

Strictly speaking he's the security, but as he's older than me and spend most of the time fixing his car, he's more like a doorman, and a younger guy sleeps in his cabinet overnight, as a (perhaps) more effective security.

But is there electricity? Yes he says.  Mine was off at home so no breakfast.  Power cuts are much more frequent since the war, so we now have a generator in the office.

The "letters" are my subscription Economist.  Three copies wait for me.  I open them but there's been so much happening in the world and so many flights in the last two weeks that I have  already  read them. 

Extra hits?

Yesterday I had a lot more hits than usual, with a lot of page loads.  I know I just started posting again but I didn't think the post on the theremin was so exciting.  But then I saw that most of the them came from     www.alphainventions.com.  Go take a look, if you have a blog.    

Would you trust this bank with your money?

It seems that there is no limit to what some banks in Georgia will do at the moment.  Not only do they have no money but one of them take yours to compensate.

A friend of mine had a plan to go to Germany to buy a car to replace the one hijacked by the Russians over the summer (note to Georgians, better not to have a very flash car in these circumstances).  Luckily this scenario is covered by insurance in Georgia.

Delays in getting a Schengen visa meant she had to put it in a safe deposit box until she was ready to go.  When she went to get it, she found the bank had taken stolen it, to repay a loan, for which she had been completely up to date on the repayments.

When challenged the bank claimed that due to the globalbanking problems, banks have the right secure loan payback from any possible accounts.  Without permission? Without a polite letter asking you to pay back the loan.  It seems more akin to highway robbery to me.

Of course I haven't mentioned the name of the bank or who knows what other tricks they might get up to.

Theremin

Got back to Tbilisi at 4 and slept till 1.  Got into my usual weekend listening to Mezzo and reading the Economist.

Today Mezzo doesn't seem to be having its usual repeats.  I looked up to see what looked like an arthritic hand conducting the music. But at the back of the octet,  it wasn't in the right place for conducting, and it kept flicking it's fingers about as if it was playing an invisible stringed instrument.  Eventually the camera panned to show a young woman attached to the hand, with another hand doing similar but different strange movements. Finally I connected this with the part of the music that consisted of  high pitched eerie sounds, but rather expressive, and not really "electronic".

You can read about the theremin on Wikipedia here.  It seems it was the first electronic musical instrument and is still popular now, though I must say I had never heard of it.  It was invented by a Russian, know as Leon Theremin in America, who has his own curious story.  He died this year on November 3.

Here is how it works (from Wikipedia)

The controlling section usually consists of two metal antennas which sense the position of the player's hands and control radio frequency oscillator(s) for frequency with one hand, and volume with the other. The electric signals from the theremin are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker. The theremin is an electrophone, a subset of the quintephone family.

To play, the player moves his or her hands around the antennas, controlling frequency (pitch) and amplitude (volume).

The theremin is associated with an "eerie" sound, which has led to its use in movie soundtracks such as those in Spellbound, The Lost Weekend, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. Theremins are also used in art music (especially avant-garde and 20th century "new music") and in popular music genres such as rock.

Back to more usual subjects soon.

Technorati Tags: theremin, electronic music

Ancestor worship

Sorry about the lack of news, I'm busy hunting for an apartment in Vilnius.  The difference between what you get in Tbilisi and Oxford is quite interesting, but more on that later, when hopefully I am successful.

Lithuania has the dubious claim to be the last country in Europe to become Christian in 1200 and something. It manages to incorporate the older pagan ceremonies into the "new".  So on 1st November (All Souls) everybody goes off for the "once a year" tidy up the family graves, bringing candles to light and leave on the graves. 

In our family ritual, since we don't have any ancestors in Vilnius, we just turn up when it's gone dark to admire the pretty lights and (this time) duck back into the car, as it was cold and wet. 

Neither of us had cameras we could use effectively, or perhaps we are just no good at photography at night.  Here's the best anyway.

We usually usually go to where there is a road between two cemeteries, both of which rise up a hill either side of the road.  So the hill is full of little lights. 

        


  Technorati Tags: All Souls, ancestor worship, Lithuania