In Latvia, one could still send a telegram at a post office. The authorities say the service is popular and they don't intend to eliminate it any time soon.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
The Linguistic Enviornment
2009
05.14
05.14
RIGA – Two young Russian men climbed aboard a bus that I was taking back home from a busy work day. Both are in the late 20s – one was carrying around a one-year-old boy. The two guys spoke loudly to each other, which is an abnormality in the country where everyone is trying to keep to themselves, especially on public transportation.
On the next stop, three young girls boarded the bus. They were probably around 15 or 16. Their faces soiled with heavy makeup. They spoke Russian.
“Hey, girls,” said the man with the child.
The girls ignored him and suddenly switched to Latvian. The man left them alone. When the two guys left, the girls switched back to Russian.
True story.
A remedy for the hangover
2009
01.13
01.13
RĪGA – The Nordea macroeconomic review (available in PDF)in September put it rightly: “Latvia: the Party is over.” After several years of robust growth, Latvian economy is now in a slump. The economy is expected to shrink by as much as 8 percent this year, resulting in massive unemployment the likes of which we probably haven’t seen since the early 1990s.
Riding the populist wave a head of the local elections this summer, the minister of transport Ainars Šlesers – an apparent candidate for the mayoral seat in Rīga – yesterday proposed a three-year moratorium on allowing banks to go after defaulted borrowers. That means that banks will not be able to use all legal means necessary to get back the money they lend to consumers.
“There has come a time to call to answer the irresponsible behavior which banks have behaved in the recent years,” Šlesers told LNT.
It is an ironic statement coming from a man who appears to be above taking responsibility for his actions. Blaming banks for irresponsible borrowers is as foolish as blaming the sale of alcohol for the rampant alcoholism. The one and only Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev fought alcoholism exactly the same way Šlesers proposes to fight the severe indebtedness: absolving people from their responsibility for their decisions. When will we learn to make the right choices?
The problem is people who have not been used to credit were exposed to vast possibilities. They took out loans to go on holidays. I heard stories of people taking a cruise to the Mediterranean on credit, buying the latest and greatest in clothes, automobiles, houses on credit. People have been living beyond their means and clearly have to learn the tough lessons of the crisis. It’s something that people teach their kids in the West.
That is not to say that the government should stand idle as voters struggle to make ends meet in an economy where unemployment is projected to reach 11 percent in 2010. Changes in bank regulation certainly are needed and will be coming our way this year. And it seems to me requiring people to take a class on financial management paid for by the bank before they’re granted a loan would educate the public how to manage their finances, and how to live a peaceful life no matter what might come your way. Even if it’s another economic turmoil.
Comments Off
Taxi into the Past
2008
11.06
11.06
RIGA – On my way to a work-related activity yesterday, I hopped into a taxi. Opening that taxi door felt like opening the door into 1984 Soviet Union.
“So if Americans can elect a monkey as their president, why can’t we elect a president who is an ethnic Russian,” asked my Russian taxi driver, Evgeny. “Never mind that his tail fell off only yesterday,” he added before I could muster a response.
It turned out a response wasn’t needed. On my short journey, Evgeny opined on everything from the financial crisis to the war in Iraq. “You know what they say,” he said, “George W.Bush came in as the president and will leave as the Secretary General of the Socialist Party.”
He reminded me of some of my die-hard Republican friends who fear socialism is upon them.
The 20-minute journey between my house and the foreign ministry building in Riga turned out to be a journey into a warped outlook of the taxi driver who unfortunately is a representative of many people who live in Latvia – particularly those who are the Russian-speakers of the older generation.
I couldn’t argue because I saw no point. Their worldview revolves around a clique of people that control everything – an Old New World Order, if you must. That clique, according to Evgeny, elected George W. Bush as the president in 2000 because “they wanted to go to war.” Now that same clique who was “enormously rich” remembered that America is a democracy and that’s why they elected Barack Obama, he said.
Crisis? What Crisis?
2008
10.23
10.23
RIGA – It turns out this is a crisis.
To quote a comedic genius of Rowan Atkinson, “A large crisis. In fact, if you’ve got a moment, it’s a twelve-storey crisis with a magnificent entrance hall, carpeting throughout, 24-hour porterage and an enormous sign on the roof, saying ‘This Is a Large Crisis’. A large crisis requires a large plan. Get me two pencils and a pair of underpants!”
Global markets are falling. The crisis of liquidity has arrived as the economy is entering a recession. Many will lose their jobs. And the three Baltic states find themselves but specks on the surface of the twelve-storey crisis. Each with its unique story to tell about it.
As it could be expected, politicians here in Latvia blame the world economic slowdown for such a poor performance of the Latvian economy. After years of double-digit growth fueled by cheap Scandinavian credits, the economic growth here plummeted in the last quarter to almost zero. Tax revenues dwindled. The government has been forced to cut jobs, freeze wages, eliminate ministries, and build libraries. Businesses warn they’ll be cutting jobs, sending the unemployment rate into the territory of double digits.
Not a pretty picture.
But blame to a greater extent lays with those same politicians. During the fat three years of the stout ex-prime minister the government spent as much as it raked in. No one wanted to save, no one needed to save. On the first taxi ride from the airport home when I first returned in the summer of 2007, the taxi driver had it all figured out. The inflation was a good thing, he told me. It meant the economy was growing. The former prime minister Aigars Kalvitis and his transport blabbermouth minister Ainars Slesers aimed to catch up with western Europe in the matter of a decade. Now, the pot-smoking haze of the last three years is beginning to recede and we’re recovering to brutal reality. Have to grow the economy the hard way.
Here, everyone knows why Latvian economy is in a slump. Granted, the world economic downturn amplifies the crisis, but it’s not what has caused the slowdown. Alas, for reporters like Peter O’Hanrahanrahan the Baltics are bound to be next to go down after that peculiar place called Iceland. And even though the headline reads “Baltic states could follow Iceland’s lead, warns IMF” it is actually The Independent that is warning us.
Spare me.
If Mr. Hanrahanraha had been familiar with the Baltics, he would have known that Scandinavian banks that lend money here, not local ones. The second largest bank Parex has yet to say anything about having difficulties and needing of a bailout. Lending came from Sweden as today’s earning reports of those banks show.
The world crisis have had its impact on lending certainly, but not to the extent that The Independent would have us believe.
Sometimes, I think I would feel better to put my underpants on my head and stick two pencils in my nose than reading news about the perpetual crisis.
Happy new year
2008
09.01
09.01
RIGA – It is perhaps one of the very few remaining Soviet holidays in Latvia. September 1 marks the Knowledge Day, the beginning of the Europe’s shortest academic year for more than 200,000 students in Latvia. Instituted in 1984 by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, the Knowledge Day withstood the wind of change, Latvia’s drive for independence and its desire to shed Soviet heritage.
Students do little studying on September 1. Celebrations of the start of the academic year – official and otherwise – fill the cold Monday in the Latvian capital. Spiffed up students carry flowers to their teachers. Police and ambulances are out in full force. As a Diena commentator Laila Pakalniņa put it this morning, drunken students compete with the British boozers in the Old Town.
Statistically, 20 per cent of 13- and 14-year-olds use alcohol at least once a week. By the time they reach 17-18, almost half of students use alcohol, according to Pakalniņa comments. Alcohol industry seems to be the least impacted by the economic downturn.
But back to the drunk orgy, or Knowledge Day. In the Soviet days when I went to school, teachers were obligated to present the so-called the lesson of peace. A propaganda material that tells children that the Soviet Union was the bulwark of peace, in spite of the fact that its troops occupied Afghanistan at the time.
Nowadays, September 1 appears to be free of the Soviet propaganda. The concerns for peaceful coexistence gave way to concerns for Baltic brain drain. And worry about low salaries for teachers replaced fight for victory of the communist theory in the world.
And yet, times may change, but some things remain the same. Principals and teachers still get to know their students. Moms and dads still stand proud as their 6- or 7-year-old starts the first grade for the first time. And that is no doubt worth to celebrate. Even with a tad bit of alcohol for grownups.
Photo above taken from diena.lv
Pro-Georgian Rally in Riga
2008
08.11
08.11
RIGA – Some of my photos that I took this afternoon during the peaceful march in Riga in support of Georgia. All photos © 2008 All About Latvia. If you need to use them, go ahead, but don’t forget to let your readers know where you got them.
The Flash Player and a browser with Javascript support are needed..
The Weakest Link
2008
08.11
08.11
RIGA – “How horrible,” my grandmother told her friend over the phone. “How horrible is this war! What are the Georgians fighting about?”
Perhaps, no other place offers a greater example of a division of points of view than my own household. My grandmother, who gets her news from the Kremlin-sponsored Russian TV channels that would have made Goebells proud, condemns Georgians who are fighting “our boys.” On the other hand, I am of a different opinion.
No better place to watch geopolitics unfold that in the Baltic States. The great divide between the local Russians and other groups in a small country like Latvia became even more acute when I picked up Russian newspapers published in Riga.
“Latvia sides with Georgia,” says the Telegraf.
“Zatlers against Russia,” whines Vesti Segodnya, referring to the joint statement signed by the Poland’s and Baltics presidents over the weekend.
Russian Society in Latvia that allegedly represents the Russian community in Latvia along with quasi-fascist Latvian national democratic party condemned Georgia and called on Russians here to boycott Georgian products, such as mineral water and wine.
“Every purchased bottle of mineral water from Georgia is a shot into an Ossetian child, woman, older man, or a Russian solder,” said the party’s leader Evgeny Osipov.
Taking a page out of the Russia’s media, the condemnation invoked images of genocide of the South Ossetian people and of the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War.
It is also sad to conclude that those same people would welcome the Russian army with an open arms, if it were to decide to invade the Baltics.