"Polite" British people in Riga

Already some month ago, a seriously drunk British male, aged 30, decided to relieve himself. Unfortunately he chose to do it on the National freedom monument of Latvia. Now to say that Latvians hold this statue in high regard, it would be an understatement. However, the really good news were that he was spotted by the local police, and duly banged up. Unfortunately under Latvian law the maximum sentence is likely to be a fine of Ls 250.00, (approximately 5600EEK) To tell the truth, if it was left to majority of latvian people, then he would be locked up in one of Latvia's "finest prisons" for a lengthy period of time. This incident, whilst in the great scheme of things, is no major misdemeanour, and once again indicates the quality of British (in this case English) "polite" people that Ryan Air flies into Riga.

Some facts about NATO summit...

We all knew it was going to happen, but it was still a shock that on Tuesday morning, when the better part of Riga was partitioned off, behind miles of Steel barriers. Not sure if this was to keep the NATO participants in , or keep the citizens out.The city was almost surreal in its appearance. It was almost totally deserted, with only a few people on the streets, and absolutely no cars, and even if there were some, then those were the official ones. Clearly the citizens of Riga had taken the advise of the government to heart and stayed away. Only limited access into the old town - in fact only three ways you could get in, but strangest of all was Livu square, complete with the wooden huts so familiar when a fair is one, the trees were decorated with Christmas lights, all very twee - no people of course, as presumably all the 5000+ NATO attendees were otherwise engaged serving their masters, be they political or media type.

Speaking of security, the interview was given by Mr Blair outside the Hall where the meeting was taking place. He simply walked out of the building, over to the waiting press, spoke his few words, answered some question and strolled back into the building. All on his own - no minders - nothing - wonder what would happen if George did the same thing ?

Finally a thought for all the various guests as they leave Riga, aren't you wondering what their memories of Riga will be ? Well, each of them has been given a special gift - Mittens !

UFO in Latvia

We have seen lots of movies like "The X-Files", where people try to find out as much information as possible about UFO and alike paranormal issues. In real life there are also different organizations that are related to UFO things.
What is interesting-there are some UFO investigators in Latvia as well! You can find out about their projects here and here.

Earlier I thought that things like pictograms in cornfields, strange bedsores in aerophotographies and really observed unknown flying objects are only in USA or other places, not Latvia. I guess I was wrong. Our investigators have discovered some pictograms in cornfields of Malpils.

Flowers in Winter

This November in Latvia has been unusually warm. In surroundings and centre of Riga full blown flowers can be observed. More over, we can find mushrooms in the forests again!
In the parks of centre of Riga you can find daisies and in forests of Latvia it is now again possible to gather chanterelles and even russulas.
Some botanists claim that if there is such a warm autumn, it's no wonder that mushrooms and flowers grow out again. Moreover, they mentioned that there have even been cases when lilacs, cherry-trees and strawberries bloom.

Tomato Combat

There are lots of portals in Latvia, that offer creating your profile there, upload your photogallery, find other users (make friends), chat, send letters, send virtual kisses, presents, flowers etc.
Some of them are very popular like frype.com (in latvian-draugiem.lv) and one.lv.

One might say that there is rivalry between those. In order to develop their portals, they are presenting really droll new features.

For example, if you send sms with certain prewritten codes to a certain service phone number, which, of course, is not for free, you can see in the display all your profile visitors. You can also give grades/evaluations to the other users' photos, send them presents and flowers if you like them and by now-you can throw virtual tomato at them, if you don't like them!

Electronic Signatures

Starting from October 4th, latvians have a possibility to have an access to long awaited electronic signatures. Latvia's Post is now the only one certification service provider in Latvia. For the service presentation a new service web page is made. However, at the section named USPS politics and regulations of this web page, all information is in english, although isn't that true that this information should be in State language, as the majority of those people who will be using electronic signature are latvians?

More over, lots of links don't work.

And the greatest news for all spamers and other pranksters-the information about certificate owners, such as first name, last name, personal ID code and e-mail addresses can be easily found on internet! If we consider that all the cerificate numbers are squently arranged, no wonder that computer freaks can easilly make programs, which they need for completing their little evil deeds, and... cheers! It's all for free!

Things are getting easier!

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