I love birds – as a child, I used to spend hours and hours studying bird encyclopedias and trying to recognize them as I see them. Birds used to be my favorite subjects for drawing, especially orioles, nightingales and pigeons. So a two-day stay in Ayutthaya, the ancient capital of Thailand, made me really regret I did not have a …
Egypt diaries: Alexandria
Why am I writing about my old trip (2011) to Egypt? I explain . [Diary] “This used to be a marvelous city,” everyone tells me, and it seems that locals here are more adequate to their environment, more natural. Signboards still remember what it used to be like, some streets have their names still written in French, and the place …
Reporting on minorities in Thailand as EU13 journalist
@daiva_hadiva With the aim to balance out very unequal distribution of articles about development cooperation between EU15 and EU13, Minority Rights Group took our group of ten to get first-hand experience reporting in Southeast Asia. What we learned, however, had to do more with our journalistic methods than with EU development aid and cooperation. February marked the tenth year since …
Hanami in Kaunas
Feeling very nostalgic about my proper hanami in Tokyo in 2009, I attended a Japanese Embassy / Sugihara Museum event in Kaunas, where a Japanese performance artist Kirie Oda cooperated with Lithuanian violinist and singer to create a performance around Sugihara House, which used to be the Japanese consulate before WWII and now hosts a Sugihara museum, foundation, and VMU …
Egypt diaries: Cairo
I went to Egypt in April 2011, but I was so busy that I hardly wrote anything about it. One exception is this article for Cafe Babel. I spent hours showing photos and telling stories to family and friends, but all of them were still waiting to be ′immortalized′ in the blog. I found an old notebook that I used …
Writing about press freedom in Thailand
The Equal Times published my article on press freedom in Thailand (also available in French and Spanish). “I tell other colleagues, ‘Hey, you are a journalist. You should be brave!’” says Chutima Sidasathian, whom I had a chance to meet thanks to Minority Rights Group, the organizers of a training I attended in Bangkok and Kaeng Krachan national park. There …
My Easter around the world
Sharing nice memories from Easter with friends in various countries. 2008 – Budapest: no photos (and not many memories unfortunately) 2009 – Tokyo. A pleasant picnic in Ichigaya, I believe. I was telling my Japanese friends that I couldn’t stand mayonnaise until I tasted the Japanese one.
Stories of stuff: Thailand
Some of my friends are posting and discussing this article about living light and decluttering. It’s an interesting mental exercise to do. I have moved apartments so many times that I can certainly see the benefits of living light. Gradually getting rid of my books is on my agenda. At the same time, there are certain limitations for traveling/ living …
Latvian Presidency conference on EU Cohesion Policy
I had the pleasure to present at the conference “Challenges for the new Cohesion Policy 2014-2010” in Riga, February 4-6, organized by the Regional Studies Association, Latvian EU Presidency and the University of Latvia. The conference was very inspiring and outstandingly well-organized. It started with a visit to OlainFarm, a successful Latvian pharmaceutical company, which has benefited from EU structural …
Following the Beaten Path: Part 6 – deciphering native English accents in Karmiel instead of Safed
My friend, Israeli writer and public intellectual Yuval Ben-Ami set off to see what it is like to re-examine his country′s main tourist attractions with a critical native eye (all posts here), and I decided to virtually follow his path (). In my blog posts I share my memories on what it was like visiting those places as an expat …