It is a bright and merry holiday in the Orthodox world today – Christmas is being celebrated.

My sincere greetings go out to all of you and if you’re into Russian or Latvian, please take your time and watch, or read on, the Christmas Message of Metropolitan of Riga and all Latvia Alexander.

Merry Christmas!

Riga, Latvia Twitterverse, get ready!! Right about next Friday, June 19th 2009, when the time hits 6 PM – the event will unfold.

Twitter users that happen to be in town are gonna gather up for an informal meetup at the one and only Pulkveža Brieža KID spot.

The Friday night was chosen after a pretty hot discussion on Arturs’ blog, who has taken the role of an organizer from the jump.

Word on the street is that some people from over the pond are gonna attend as well. Arturs reported that Valdis Krebs (Cleveland, OH) is supposedly to make an appearance. And Marissa Plume (San Francisco, CA) replied to my tweet stating she’d like to join. Other non-local tweeps calling Riga their location next week are warmly welcome of course, too.

See y’all there!! Tweet!

Last week, I found a free newspaper called “New Riga” in my mailbox. The piece of paper turned out to be a political advertisement, a campaign of LPP/LC party. Run, of course, by Ainars “Who Else Could It Be” Shlesers.

The man is eying a chair of Riga Mayor, which prolly is a good thing. And looks like he’s fitting in just as nice.

I observe the Transportation industry in Latvia for several years now, that’s why former minister Shlesers’ work has not went unnoticed. Perhaps because of my past in-depth interest in railways development and building of Rail Baltica – my ex missuz, Olga, is transport & logistics specialist, so couple years ago, when we were cooking the Masters work together, I had even been to a meeting in the Ministry of Transport, doing research.. Perhaps because I have went to sea myself, and am still interested in what’s going on in shipping, ports and around ‘em.. Perhaps because I like to fly and follow Riga Airport’s success.. Perhaps because Mr. Shlesers himself has managed to gain attention with his charisma, positiveness, targeted actions..

But perhaps, however, that is a perfect job of PR peeps. As a Communications Pro, I know of course what’s behind all of this. I know how this type of political papers and publications in those are being born. I know how thoroughly the questions to “ask” in the interview with Shlesers are chosen. I know how many times it’s thought and rethought back and forth, what and where, in what order to feature..

Nothing bad here though – a brand is being built, attractive package in the making, all for a good, quality product. Similarly like cottage cheese snack “Kārums” or, for instance, “Zelta Zivtiņa“. Only that, here it’s essential for the product to be made as delicious when the time pass and not to change for bad – which sometimes happens with politicians. Promises given during the election campaigns often wind up not fulfilled. That’s why hopefully everything that Shlesers & Co are talking about will be carried out in case of his win.

Gotta wish some luck, a good one, especially that there’s my Maritime schoolmate, Pavels Rebenoks, proudly occupying #51 on LPP/LC election list. Big Time!

I learned what’s anime not too long ago – after watching the legendary Cat Soup cartoon. It kinda had a dual impact on me, so I’d like to discover the world of globally renowned Japanese animation to the full.

Exclusive opportunity to do that on a big screen is offered by Japanese Animation Festival AnimeFest 6. The event will be held May 2 – 3, 2009, at the World Trade Center in Riga.

It will be already sixth anime festival that is being run in our city. My good friend Alex, who is the organizer of AnimeFest, promises to kindly hook me up with some tix, so I guess you can meet me in there.

じゃあ、また!!

As our lives tend to rotate more and more around Twitter, I can’t help but join the orbit – or.. ehm.. tworbit?.. (Yeah, everything His Twitterness touches, get a smooth lil’ tw prefix – it’s like Snoop’s izzle, you feel what I’m sizzle?)..

Anyway.The twaily twonderings around made me twumble upon such thing as an Earth Hour. I didn’t tell you earlier as I was sick – I put the banner on my site though (it’s up until the late March).

So what’s it all about? The climate change.

Global problems like that are usually far from regular people, but the Earth Hour is an opportunity for us to show – that we care about our planet. Or not.

It’s like global election. Your vote – is your light switch. Switch it off for one hour to Vote Earth, and live it on to vote global warming and die slow.

I am definitely plugging out all of my electrical equipment and shutting down lights around the house. Been always standing tall for the green planet, clean environment, reducing carbon emissions, all of that stuff!! So I am surely voting Earth and urging you to do so! March 28, 2009, 8:30-9:30 p.RSVP.

By the way, it’s real cool to see the Pasaules Dabas Fonds – Latvian partners of WWF, the global conservation organization, actively propelling the local movement for the Earth Hour. Including spreading the word on the aforementioned Twitter.

This BarCamp week-end has been much more spiritual for me than in some other way technical, geeky or otherwise. Some of y’all know from my tweets that I was about to become a Godparent on Saturday. Christened a new born baby boy by the beautiful Russian name of Gleb – a second son of a happy couple consisting of my best homie, maritime schoolmate/coworker Olegus and his wife Marina.

As I am of Orthodox religion, the holy mystery took place in one of Riga’s Orthodox churches – Holy Trinity Church of Pardaugava. It’s actually the only place in the city with Baptistery separated from the Church itself in another small building. The process went on there and was guided by a priest Sergiy from The Church of Holy and Right-believing Alexander Nevsky – the church I was baptized at.

What I’d like to share is that it’s such a wonderful feeling of becoming a Godfather. I recognize the responsibility and my role in spiritual upbringing of Lil’ Gleb, who is just 2 and a half months young. I totally see myself as a mentor for his personal development. And together with his Godmother Anna, for the boy’s Christian education and knowledge of good Orthodox traditions. So much thanks go out to Olegus and Marina for providing this amazing opportunity and entrusting this important task.

I was ready to go to sleep when I thought I’d check my Twitter page and then I saw this tweet from Janis Krums with the TwitPic link.

At first, I thought the picture was unreal. Some kind of joke? The making of Lost-like video or something? I thought Janis is on a movie set or a photo shoot somewhere. There was not a piece of joke to his tweet though.

A plane crashed into the Hudson river in New York. The aircraft went down to attempt emergency landing after being hit by a flock of geese. Everybody’s safe, thankfully. Except for those birds, of course..

And what a nice example of citizen journalism by Janis who was amongst passengers on a ferry rushing to rescue the survivors. Twitter went crazy later on with retweets and stuff but Janis was first! Big ups!

Just a coincidence that we started following each other this week over some NBA tweets. Janis messaged me promising to entertain. Job well done homie, I owe you a beer when you’re in Riga =)

Mayn, ain’t nothing real overwhelming happened last night actually.

Maybe I feel like that cause I was shooting hoops over in Pardaugava and missed some of the live action? TV, breaking news type of live action, I mean.

The reporters seemed like nearly enjoying this mess. I don’t know but to me, this whole riot thing doesn’t look like something crazy-violent-destructive civil disorder or whatever they might call it.

Some stores damaged on Smilshu street, broken Parliament windows, police cars overturned. And no tear gas (I mean I saw a cop on TV using a hand-held spray, but that’s about it), no plastic bullets or water cannons used against the rioters. Couple hours and it’s silent.

I hear people saying that police were not ready and was kinda slow. But that’s because the whole riot was “slow”! There were no organized actions, the whole thing was chaotic, so I guess cops just stayed low-key on purpose, not to provoke the crowd. So it appears they did a pretty good job.

And after all, the rioters were several hundreds mostly drunk youth who stayed in the Old Town following the protest on the Doma Square. Thousands of protestants who gathered on the Square demanding the Parliament resignation were peaceful and bounced away in a few hours.

Thanks God it’s all over though.

More than 100 arrested, tens hurt and hospitalized – and do we need it? If the Parliament resigns, will shit change? I guess it just stays the same.