When I came back here from Japan about 2 years ago, I missed a lot of things. While usually I don’t fuss over food, I really miss Japanese healthy meals, products and lunchboxes (bento).

It didn’t took me long to find Asian market in George Street (there are few Asian shops around too), Asian supermarket on the other side of Jervis shopping center and place where to buy sushi rice not so far away from my house at Roy Fox in Donnybrook. I’m getting another 10kg rice pack today. I will use it over few months.

After half year of me being in Dublin, my daughter started school. She needed lunchbox everyday and it made me in real pain. First thing – I couldn’t find any good lunchboxes and second thing Irish don’t eat much hot food during lunch, but mostly sandwiches. I don’t think it’s healthy in any way. It’s hard to understand why main meal is in the evening at 6pm? It’s hard to sleep afterward!

So in search of perfect lunchbox I came across J-List site. I can spend hours on that site just looking at items. We ordered lunchbox with Hello Kitty. It was first late 3 weeks, but after a call they send it in next day. So I would say they don’t have too bad service. I gonna order from this site soon again, so if you want to order something as well, let me know.

Lunchbox is only start of my healthy lunches mission. I found yet another site Just Bento – which is completely great! All those recipes just wait for me to make them and I made few already.

But I still struggle with Irish healthy food policy. If everybody in school takes sandwitches, my kid feels left out as she has something different. So my next order from J-List will be with decorating things. For example, my daughter loves rice balls (onigiri), but I need some decorative set to make it cute. Cutness will win over the non-sandwich food. At least I hope so. Wish me luck with this!

Today I decided to start using Technorati more serious. While I have created account like few months ago I wasn’t using it at all. So I decided to go through all the people I’m following on twitter (and most of them are IT persons based in Ireland) and add their blogs to the favorites in technorati. And believe me or not, it didn’t took me a lot of time. However I was surprised that less than half people on twitter has blogs. I rember survey going around about month ago on twitter for all non-bloggers using twitter. And I thought it was nonsense to put it on twitter as everybody probably have blogs…

So why twitter but no blogs?

1) Person don’t use twitter much and don’t care about social media. There is a lot of twitter accounts that haven’t been used for months. I wander – is twitter gonna delete them at some point? Because even if it is only few rows of text, a lot of users like that might take space on their server.

2) Person twitter profile link leads to their company website. I do have problem with that – unless it is companies twitter account, I can’t get more info on person twittering.

3) The blog is hidden somewhere on their website and can’t be found right away. What the point writting blogs if nobody can find them?

After I added all those blogs on the technorati, another problem came up – there is too much of them now! And I still haven’t found button “remove from favorites”.

Reason I started all this is because I’m still newbie to blogging. I love to write. I have always written diaries, short stories and some ideas. But blogging is something more challenging. What would people find interesting? What would make people write comments? Why would they blog about me or put link to me? And how do I get more popularity and traffic to my blog? Kinda challenging, but fun.

First things first – Happy New Year to everyone who haven’t received greetings from me yet.

While going through a lot of other blogs, I decided that I should write small post about my 2008 year.

I fell in love… with my company. It was very neutral at first. I didn’t thought the company will need me that much. I left my job in AIB on April and started our relationship.

It has it’s bad sides – pile of papers when you want to free your desk or a lot of reports, when you just want to rest. I should tell big thanks to people who helped me through and showed me the way to be what I am.

It has some good sides too and money is not the biggest of it. I got passion to go forward and to achieve things I always wanted to. People I meet is so interesting and doing business with them is fun. I’m boss to myself now. It gives freedom and constraints. I can do what I want and there is a lot of things I can do. And then there is so much thing that should have been done, but I don’t know about them. Learning about them is the most important thing I have achieved.

I should say that I was too optimistic at start. I never thought about how hard it is just to tell people, what I’m doing. And how it is to rewrite business plan again and again. An introvert person like me going and talking to other people I don’t know? How to get over “I hate calling people”?

I believe that next year will be better because there is less things I don’t know. And thought there is economic crisis, try and stop our company from growing! \(^^)/

This holiday season is making me so, soooo tired that I just can’t wait when the normal days will be back. However, I enjoy all the sweet things I can eat. So I found a perfect wallpaper just for me:

Today is my birthday, but I’m thinking only about Christmas. I already spent one day shopping for presents, one evening writing cards and the Christmas tree is up and decorated. I also already received presents from my family. It’s true that it is my favorite season of a year.

Few people hates Christmas, because it’s busy, there is not enough money and you have to actually think about what to buy for everyone. But this year it was really easy for me to buy presents. I made a call to my sister-in-law. I haven’t met her much last year (because we are living in different countries) and we started to discuss what everyone likes. So I came to conclusion – you can find present if you know one word that would describe, what person likes. E.g. my-sister-in law likes cute things, my sister loves fashionable things, my brother likes something that is fun and my mother is very practical. After this information it was really easy to find presents. I spent only 3 hours shopping.

And what I found practical also was to buy a box full with different Christmas cards. Last year I actually bought them one buy one and it took a lot of money and time. I also save all addresses in one file so each year I just go through it and I don’t have to ask people for addresses again and again. I actually enjoyed writing letters to my Japanese friends in kanji and katakana. Haven’t been writting in Japanese for a while

Now that I’m happy again, I have to write something about work. Will use different post about it (cause would be confusing to put everything in one).

When we get distracted from work – what do we usually do? We start searching over the Internet different things that cames into the mind.

Today I searched my own name and it brought over 3 pages of Google Results. From one point it seems quite impressive, but from other point – I haven’t been active enough in the net.

I have heard a lot of people that blogging is a good way to get publicity. Well, I’m writing a blog now – but there is not much publicity. Why? Because my blog isn’t mentioned anywhere except twitter and irish web awards.

How do I make my blog presence bigger into the web? I should post comments in other blogs! So simple and so time consuming. I’m really amazed for those people who do it daily.

And I don’t search for publicity.. I’m casual blogger.

I went to doctor today for health check and I’m really sick of the health system in Ireland. I had to wait for 1h 40min though appointment itself took only 5 min And I don’t like doctors in Ireland. If they can they prescribe you antibiotics (for kids also Calpol or Neurofen). When sickness doesn’t allow any of those (e.g. stomach problems), doctors send you home and tell you get better yourself. I don’t even want to know what would happen if I get serious illness.

In Latvia it was complete opposite. Doctors used to write so much drugs that you can get bankrupt buying all of them. At least some helped

I’m sometimes wander what books other people read. I do love novels and it’s hard for me to find new books to read. There is just too much in bookstores and most of them are crap. Anyone knows any good recommendations? In book stores I can wander for hours and don’t find anything. Lately I’m looking over amazon.com and then look up books in stores.

Last year I went to few book meetups, however people talk more about general things than books. So I got discouraged.

The day before yesterday I finished Terry Pratchett’s “Hogfather” (it took about 6h flying there and back to Latvia). Nice book, but it didn’t become one of my favorites. Not enough love in book, huh? But I do enjoy fantasy books as well. “The Mind Parasites” from Colin Wilson are one of my favorites in this genre.

When I read it doesn’t matter if it’s English or Latvian because when you start, you just can’t stop…

So here is my top list (they are all love stories):

- The Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin

- The Ladies’ Paradise by Emil Zola

- Chalikushu by Reshat Nuri Guntekin

- The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery

- Ralph’s Party by Lisa Jewell

I’m actually a bit unhappy that I don’t have much books in Ireland. My mother has a big library of books and I read them every time I visit her. She never ever throws books out so some of them are unique with ideas of Soviet Union and communism. Those can’t be found in libraries any more.

Ok, I’m off – searching for new book to read again…

I went to Latvia last week. Though it was only 3 days it took a lot of time to prepare for it. I enjoy going back to Latvia twice a year. Lately I’m going alone without family. I get some of my own time and relax without worrying about things.

My reason for visit was my best friends baby 1 year celebration. He is quite adorable.. Also I get handle of situation in Latvia when I talk with friends and family.

Everyone knows that there is economic crisis all over globe. Latvia is no exception. And I think it even worse because there is a lot of really poor people in Latvia. There is a big depression everywhere. People are loosing jobs, don’t have enough money and it is very hard to find new job.

When Latvia stepped in EU 2,5 years ago, prices started to raise. Now groceries prices are the same as in Ireland. However salaries never grown as fast. The minimal wage is still around 170 EUR. The salaries are going down again because of crisis and unemployment. I don’t like companies using people with small salaries just because they know that those people can’t find job elsewhere.

Government institutions are letting go people as well. And I completely disagree with it. There still will be work for government and there will be more work for employees.

People still believe that government should fix everything. I think that is quite old thinking. Especially if government is quite corrupt and there is bureaucracy everywhere. I would expect people to start doing something themselves.

However nobody can take loans, mortgages or credits in Latvia. Banks just don’t give any. Nobody is building houses any more and the prices are still falling. Rent prices are just unbelievable low. A lot of people with big mortgages try to rent apartment at low prices to get at least some money back.

I’m happy to be home again but I’m worried about my family in Latvia. I hope my description about things here isn’t too bad (it’s really hard to explain something in not native language). Though there is a big problems in Latvia now, it is still very beautiful:

So it is this time of year again Halloween is in the air and all kids get even more excited then for Christmas presents.

My daughter got a Halloween Parade in her school. Everyone dressed up and went to Stillorgan shopping centre today, sang some songs and gave donations to India immersion fund. I wish somebody would celebrate Halloween when I was small (^^)… So much fun and chocolate (did I told you I am chocoholic?)

Here is some photos