It has been more than week since I last updated my blog. Obviously it is the vacation time and the Summer holidays has left a definite imprint on the way of life of most of the Latvian inhabitants. It is a nice summer weather and many people are travelling to European cities and resorts these days. There are those who preferre to use their own car and then there is rather big number of people who use the services of the Riga International (RIX) airport. Due to several visits to the RIX lately I have witnessed negative developments in the airport departure zone. Namely the check-in system for the SAS& Air Baltic single queue in the RIX is a DISASTER! During the morning, noon and afternoon airport rush hours the airbaltic.com single queue is unbearable. Airport management established automatic check-in mashines but I have never seen them actually working. In the meantime the queing travellers are made needlessly angry. It sems that Latvian Transport Supremo and his cronies in the RIX management board are either blind or careless? Anyway, in the situation when there are chronic labour shortages at the times of booming economy (circa 10% of GDP growth this year), and technological innovations are simply left neglected, it is not only ethically wrong, but it is also simultaneously impossible to open ever new destinations and to plan a major overhaul of the RIX departure terminal.
In the meantime there were rather many friends & acquintances visiting me in Latvia, and, I am still busy with preparing for the new academic year and sitting in the driving seat of my dissertation writing again, good!
My sister is visiting Salaspils with her husband and little Marta for their summer vacation. They arrived safely and we are having a jolly good time all together sharing memories or playing different table games during evenings. At the end of August also Bruno & Gunta Hirsch should arrive from Boston (MA), thus the family gathering this year would be memorable indeed!
This Tuesday Mrs Inga Skrūzmane was celebrating her birthday in the Blondie bar in Riga. Mrs Skrūzmane came home from Tashkent (Uzbekistan) for the summer holidays and her party was both jovial and omenous for me due to meeting a very special person there. Since the last March, when I visited Tashkent, I had not heard anything from Her. She arrived at the Inga's birthday party straight from Istanbul and the following days, among many other things, were spent in rich discussions and warm reflections. Visiting the beach in Vitrupe was the first visit of the beach this year. It was eventful and seeing former and present students at the Maurīcijs night club yesterday night was a nice reminder about the significance of the Summer season as well. Thus, to conclude the first week of the August 2007 one issue is rock bottom sure - there are definitely terminal changes in the air for me. The reflections and rich discussions allowed me to have answers to long awaited questions and enabled me to see the light at the end of the tunnel!
P.S. Politics in Latvia is customarily summerly, and the predicted reshuffle of the government is rumoured more and more noisily in the Latvian media. Latvian incumbent PM swore that there is NO reshuffle of the present government envisaged, and as a major reason for that he mentioned that all the ministers are busy preparing the deficite less 2008 financial year budget..oh, la, la la & GOOD LUCK PM! Nevertheless, the public opinion has long lost trust in Mr Aigars Kalvītis (just remember how fans where whistling before the official ceremony of the opening of the friendly Latvian-Lithuanian basketball match...), and it seems that we are definitely going to see cosmetic changes in the Latvian government even before the start of a new school year.
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