Teh Baltic Correspondent

While writing this entry, the decisions have been taken: Soon the administrative fines for not having the national flag on pole on national holidays will go up. They will be from 100 to 600 LTL and sound like a new way from the conservative government to squeeze incomes from the already oppressed people.
As ridiculous as it sounds, one really must possess a flag and a flagpole (or a holder for a flag fixed on the wall), and yes, one has to hoist the flag on every event that has some significance to the nation. There are no exceptions - if you are not home or even in the country, you have to arrange a friend or a neighbor to do the job, or risk the fines.
As you perhaps have already guessed, the state will not aid the puchase of the flag nor the pole - if one can afford a house, it seems one must as well have the finances for the necessary equipment (a bit like a car owner should afford a fire extinquisher). No matter how nice view it might be to see every house flagging the death of a president or speculative coronation day of long dead king (and I am sure some mp is jerking off for the sight), I find it hard to support forcing people to such a worship of the state. Reminds me kind of the good ol' times.

That was the title of the runners-up song of Inculto at Lithuanian national Eurovision final in 2005. Partly I can agree with the message, but there are some issues in it, that is, sex tourism.

There's something wrong with the country's marketing: First, they cannot decide whether they want to market Lithuania as a country of honey, beer or as a crossroad to Russia, and then when everyone is having their own campaigns, what lives on is the sign near Vilnius airport, where a Lithuanian naked girl lying down on a hotel bed hopes you come back soon.

This ad did not really disturb me, before the I went to look for opening hours for Kaunas restaurants (I am pretty much behind the Finnish version of wikitravel guide for Kaunas - the English is most likely made by local tourism information centre). There are three sources for collective info: meniu.lt, restoranai.lt and einam.lt. The second presents only member restaurants that give a price reduction with their card, the first one is rather good, and the last one, decided somehow that all I need is to see naked Lithuanian girls. Sure I needed, on my work computer. Lithuania is not acountry of feminists, and a Scandinavian male can feel easily extremely progressive here.

Then there is this Olialia -thing going on in the country: suddenly it is cool and great to be blonde, stupid and having kilos of plastic as an airbag. They have a credit card from SEB (Wallenbergs' found a Sex Endowment Bank?), they run Pizzeria, sell cola (which got a bigger bottle after two of the olialia models got silicones), computers (as female nerds need the fastest there is with Swarovski - I always thought the longer the better, but these IT people just cannot wait)... and now even music. Please surf the web for Olialia Pupytes to find these wonderful ballades on hard knock life... ... that is playing with boys and spreading the legs.


A bit on an anti-prostitution campaign: http://www.lygus.lt/ITC/news.php?id=773

The new Commissioner for Taxation and Customs Union, Audit and Anti-Fraud may be Algirdas Šemeta! Why should you care?

First, there are a few issues with the title and the country of origin. Lithuania is for sure fighting hard(ly?) towards fraud, but nevertheless, this is a country of some good ol' corruption. I have heard stories of medical passes being bought by people who were first deemed to have too bad eyes for computer work, then bribing of police is not perhaps an everyday issue, but something that even foreigners have met in the country. And then the officials and politicians? Quite a few are involved in a more or less shady affairs. I think you get the picture: Lithuania is not a country of customs, audit nor anti-fraud. Still this does not mean that the customs would not reveal all the time record high illegal imports from Russia, nor that there would not be any people that would be experts on this area. Just, not Semeta.


The man who mostly looks like the Finnish C-class celebrity Matti-Esko Hytönen, has some issues of his own. He was taken as a commissioner to fill in the current president Dalia Grybauskaite, and as the trend seems to be, once you are in, you are in. Thus, Semeta is now offered for second term, and this may be the biggest mistake EU can make.



You can all go to visit the EC web page and read through the impressive CV of the man, but you will perhaps also notice the huge hole in it: the education is not given. Mr. Semeta says he has finished the studies of cybernetics and economics in Vilnius University in 1985. Thus, this Soviet time economist has the formal education of 5 years of university. The man of statistics (which by all means must be just good for the post, unless he is expected to understand the always so overvalued "why?" of the events) holds just the first level university education that was offered those times, but it is not written anywhere that a commissioner should be a phd or even a master, or is it?

Still, Semeta may be just the perfect man for the post. Bad language skills, looks of an evil genius and charisma that is left second only by Silvio Berlusconi. I surely hope that he has a strong team if he gets through, as the post may be too much for his rather narrow shoulders. It just is not a good move to put a man from country that has bad relations to our largest neighbor to rule the customs...

What you should expect: bad English, lots of statistics, long truck lines on Russian borders, great performances of Mr. Charisma 2009.
What you should not expect: solutions