Impressions from River Thames Festival

Sometimes pictures tell more than words.

Folk music from Peru:


Boat racing:



Robert Miles concert at Tate modern:



Innovative sound systems:


Video projections on smoke:


and one more time

Growing oil prices in GB

When the oil prices in some tank stations almost hit 1 GBP per litre, it started strange things to happen. The growing oil prices started to have effect on stability of the country. Last week a group of people started to block oil refineries, which cause lack of oil in some parts of the country. Drivers started to accumulate gasoline, which caused long queues near tank stations. Some protests turned into fights between police and the protestors. If that continues in the same speed and manner, soon the situation can cause serious consequences. It reminds me oil-blockade in Lithuania in early 20thies, when Russian cut all oil supplies to threaten Lithuanian people, which at the end of the day didn't work out. But it was different time and different people.

I really cherish a hope that oil prices would grow even further. Oil corporations couldn't any longer suppress states in making an important step towards renewable energy sources. Governments could invest more money into development of innovative technologies for better usage of renewable energy, come up with better laws to support bio-diesel manufactoring, which is more eco-friendly, sustainable and gives farmers new way of income.

Bought tickets to Hamburg

On October the 28th I'm heading at NIT-Alumni meeting. That will be great .... of course it depends on how many ex-NITer come to the meeting. It would be cool if we could make another crazy party as we used to do while studding in NIT.

Day in pick-it-yourself farm

On Saturday Daiva, Kristina, Calum and myself decided to go to a farm, where you can pick berries and vegetables by yourself and in the same time to eat as much as you can on the field. It was cool to feel the same as in my parents' garden back in Lithuania. At the end I bought 2 kilos of strawberries, 1kg – raspberries, carrots, sweat corn and other stuff. That was fun, but now I am sick of the strawberries and raspberries. :)

“The Guardian” in new format

Today my favorite newspaper has changed its format. Now it comes in ‘Berliner’ format, which is much user-friendlier. However the format for long time was associated with tabloid newspapers such as “Sun”. People say that The Guardian, The Times and other serious papers will still be called broadsheet newspapers :)

I’ve checked E-bay and it’s full of items related to the final edition of The Guardian newspaper.

Two days in CRA meeting

Last week was a highlight of the project I worked for. During two-days meeting our team had 4 hours time to present our product and train people to use it. It was quite tough to convince some technophobes that our e-diaries are actually easy to use. There were many investigators and monitors from Spain, Sweden, Netherlands, and Norway. During a training session I’ve notice that some of the Spanish investigators actually don’t speak English (or speak it very bad). I tried my best using simple keywords to explain them how the diary works. Hopefully, they will read Spanish manuals at home :)

The meeting was quite interesting as it was a first such meeting for me. But however the best part of the meeting was dinners and outs for a drink. The pharmaceutical company was paying for everything: food in best restaurants and drinks in pubs. The project leader from the pharmaceutical company was keen to go out, so we had a good time. He was nice guy in mid 50ties with very good sense of humour. He told us that most remarkable his CRA meeting was in St. Petersburg with 250 gynecologists from Russia and Baltic states. Yeeh, 250 gynecologists - strange audience.

The experience of my colleges is that the smaller the company the nicer people. Big companies tend to be less personal and more ignorant. For them, you are just another subcontractor. I was lucky with my first project... we will see what's coming next.

Economists have to learn to subtract

Somewhere I've read that the hurricane Katrina is biggest horror for the wealth of USA. But if we talk in economical terms, GNP of USA at the end of the day will be just bigger … so why to worry :)

Conclusion: economists have to learn also to subtract.