For lunch today my parents took me to Lido. Lido is a restaurant and a small amusement center located 10 minutes away from the center of Riga. Not only does it look like a building from the countryside of Latvia, but the food there is also traditional and specific to the more rural regions of Latvia. And of course it is extremely delicious!
ラトビアと言えばやっぱりユールマラだな〜 Ja tu gribi kaut kur atpūsties tad brauc uz jūru, uz Jūrmalu! Солнце, пляж – отдыхай, плавай, загорай.
Jūrmala is a small city on the coast line 20km away from the capital Rīga. Its like Goal Coast in a way, nice beaches, lots of people and a lot of attractions. I went there with my family and our family friends just for a stroll and to spend the nice day outside at the beach.
Here are some pics on my
2013 summer season of anime has officially started today with a marvelous new show by Kyoto Animation: Free!
Here is a list of what I am looking forward to and picking up, not guaranteeing that I wont drop some though:
When I arrived back home and set foot in my house again after 3 years of being abroad, I could not help but notice the 12 year old TV in our living room. It was a Sony Trinitron and looked something like this, I dont have a picture of ours and we already gave it away. とにかく、it was old and outdated, a serious upgrade was required. Thankfully my dad was on my side on this one and so we set out to buy a new TV, yay!
This afternoon (night in Sydney) my friends were complaining about another change in their daily life. This time it was the CityRail website. According to Wikipedia: “CityRail ceased trading on 30 June 2013 and was replaced by Sydney Trains and NSW TrainLink.” Which of course means that the website had to be redesigned as well with the new company logo and new colors. I personally don’t mid the new orange color scheme , they only changed the color itself but not the gradient. I wish they would get rid of that 3Dish look of the buttons and headers of the timetables and trip planer. But oh well I can’t really complain.
After my crazy flight yesterday I am home, finally, after 3 years, I am home. Riga has barely changed in these past 3 year that I have been away. Some improvements here and there, we got new trams! (pics on Flickr, and link at the end of the post). There are so many things I have missed, like our beautiful and quiet parks, our gorgeous Art Nouveau style architecture, our clean fresh sea air, our delicious european food (+ potatoes) and of course our blazingly fast and reliable internet.
My main purpose was to get a new passport as this one is about to expire in November, and of course to see my parents. But just after one day of being back I feel like I have never left. There are so many things that are dear to me here, so many memories, so many feels. I will be back in Riga for another month, I will keep posting some stuff out what is happening here and what I am up to and of course continue my regular posts about tech and anime (especially with the new season starting next week).
link to photo album:
(That is not my plane)
It was a good plan, a simple plan, nothing crazy… But it turned into soooo much more because of one small mistake, one small slip up… I am talking about my trip back to Latvia. The original plan was to fly from Sydney to Singapore, spend 1 night and most of the day there with my good friend Wilmer then catch a flight from Singapore to Helsinki the next day, lastly connecting to a flight from Helsinki to Riga. Well the Quantas check in people at Sydney International Airport had a different plan for me…
Hey, have you heard? There is a new movie out by Pixar called Monsters University! Yea that right its a prequel to Monsters Inc. Why am I telling you this? Well today is the day it got screened in Australia and I went to watch it with Saya.
When my lovely Saya and I went to Canberra last wednesday (13th June), on the bus there she let me listen to some of the music on her iPhone. One of the songs was Bus romance by Chatmonchy. Well this whole week I could not get this song out of my head, especially because Saya would humm or sing it at times. I found the music video (MV) for it on vimeo, lets hope it doesnt get taken down.
I have heard of Chatmonchy before, but only because she sang the song Thermae Roman which is the ending theme for the anime Thermae Romae. I instantly liked her voice and style of singing, but didn’t actually bother to download any of her other songs. And then here we are almost a year after I watched Thermae Romae, I hear Chatmonchy again!
There was this one manga which wasn’t really that popular in good old Japan, but then everything changed when the gaijin attached! The guys from 4chans /a/ just fell in love with this manga. People started buying multiple copies and thus dramatically improving its sales. It got so popular that they even started printing that its a huge hit on the western 2chan on the cover of it (as can be seen on the picture below). And this manga is of course Watashi ga Motenai no wa dou Kangaetemo Omaera ga Warui! or Wata Mote for short.
