Wu Wei

Feedburner RSS (update: thank you Google for losing all my feeds)

I just noticed my Feedburner RSS Subscriptions have dropped from the usual 90s to 4.  I was fiddling with Feedburner Newsletter.  I don't know whether that had anything to do with it. 

I apologise.  Please come back.

Update

It seems Google has taken over Feedburner and forced us all into Google accounts.  Although Google promises to transfer all the feeds, it has managed to lose all mine.

Thank you Google.  I am really looking forward to the wonderful new services you are offering, if they are all like this.

Film and food blogs anyone?

Making some progress on reorganising my blogroll, but realised it is quite thin in some places:

only two blogs on books (one is really a techie blog)
no blogs on film (any suggestions, preferably for art house or classics, as I can't be doing with Hollywood much)
only one blog on music
only one blog on food (which I haven't been reading lately but will try again).

The problem with all the travel is that culture gets rather local and so I read country blogs rather than culture blogs.  Not much point in reading about plays and music I never get to see.  And cooking takes a back seat when you can't always get the ingredients, there's perfectly good food here, and it's cheap enough to eat out a lot.  But it's good to cook something which you have read about that makes your mouth water looking at the pictures.

So please send me your suggestions.

Today I had a great day  touring the Tbilisi food market (fully open on Sunday, despite the religious Georgians) and came back with plenty of fruits, vegetables and nuts.  It's already quite warm here so we are not stuck with only winter vegetables. 

If I'm going to be here at least another year, it's time to get serious about cooking Georgian food.

Books, Films, Music, Food. More revisions to my blog roll

This is a bit pathetic for a list, but suggestions are always welcome.

Books
Lotus Reads

Films
Er, now I realised I don't read any blogs about films.  Do you?  if so, recommend some in the comments,please.  Living in out of the way places means you don't get to see many films, or at least only Hollywood films which I don't have time for.  I'm more of an art house type.

Music
Viola in Vilnius (and books sometimes)

Food
Chocolate and Zucchini

Stuff I'm going to do sometime when I retire
Irish Arts Blog

Blogroll Georgia

I'm in the process of redoing my blogroll. It's been a long time since I updated it and it seems to be several countries behind. I tend to read blogs as feeds in netvibes , with a separate tab for each country, plus one I read everyday. Although I searched for some easy way to transfer the links to display (without the feed), or some widget to do it, I couldn't find one. Anyway here is my Blogroll for Georgia. Eventually there will be a link in the sidebar.

Christmas widgets

It's that silly time again.

The Netvibes Christmas Tree widget is fun. Get it here: http://fr.eco.netvibes.com/widgets/297402/christmas-tree

More quirky Vilnius

This post has photos taken at the end of October.  My internet has been either down or so slow it has been impossible to get the photos on a post till now.  Some of them were taken when it was going dark and I forgot to change the settings on my camera. 

In no special order:

 

No, I don't know who it is or why he is planted in a square off Vilniaus gatve.  It's not even listed under Wacky Vilnius in VIYP. 

I spotted this on a bus shelter. It's a poster from the 1930s, claiming that consumers needed protection from speculators, middle men, agents etc. I wonder why it was chosen to advertise an exhibition of old posters. Antisemitism is growing in Lithuania.

I spotted this on All Souls Day.  Someone had set up a little shrine with candles  and a bicycle painted white. Not clear whether someone was killed here.

 

In Vilnius there are lots of old churches, so I was not surprised to see this copper dome waiting on Dominikonu to be hoisted onto the roof.   However I turned my back for a moment and suddenly there were two.  One day later, the bell tower was already working and the bells ringing out.

This notice at the entrance to Uzupis, declaring the Uzupis republic is nothing new.  But I hadn't seen the 4 languages underneath before.

This is one of the cosy cafes for which Vilnius is famous.  It's by the Uzupis Angel, and decorated (as you might expect) with angels.  Not sure why they have the Latin motto but it sounds good: Coelum est in nobis, which seems to translate as "heaven is in us", a noble sentiment.

In a courtyard we spotted this statue.  If you enlarge it you will see the reason for the steps thoughtfully placed so that you can put your All Souls candles by the feet.

And here is the Uzupis Beauty Salon for Top Dogs.

This traditional wooden cottage (behind the fence) doesn't have gnomes in its garden, it has storks.

This is the one we found most bizarre.  It's a photo of a plastic surgery clinic, at around 6pm.  Now you would think that customers would not be so keen to have their plastic surgery exposed to the world, without blinds.  But when we went past, all was visible.

And adding to my collection of musical public transport, here is the bus dedicated to Vagneris (Wagner to you and me).

Technorati tags: Vilnius, Uzupis

Slowdown

Apologies for the lack of posting.  My internet has been down at home, I've been busy at work.  Politics here is too depressing to write about. 

Perhaps it's just the general slowdown and bad news everywhere that is affecting me. 

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. 

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.    

Off on my travels again ....

I'm back in the UK at the weekend then off to Lithuania. Not sure how much blogging I'll manage in between the doctor, the hairdresser, the retail therapy, the Cowley Rd food etc.