Forecasting Eurovision 2009 winner

This thursday we spent evening at our place with several Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Slovakian, Irish, Italian & Japanese friends (mostly girls) watching Eurovision semi-final. We had a really great relaxed time all together, however I had to notice that quality standard for european songs decreases year after year. To my eyes it was much more of a colorful showoff event, than a song contest.
While it was declared among us that this kind of contests are not popular and nobody cares about the outcome… I have still noticed some of our guests voting & expecting their country make it up to the final, when the the finalist were announced. And that is natural! It is obvious, not the particular song, but our own country we care about and how it will be positioned among others in Europe. That is an obvious conclusion, but quite interesting when you come to it through social observation in multicultural environment.

It will be a challenging battle today & its hard if not impossible to forecast the winner. Due to some analysis I made using Google Trends, I think that Norway (Alexander – Rybak) will not be among the winners, as it is only supported by Baltic countries and Scandinavia. The most interaction among inquiries in the search engines comes to Turkey, Greece & Russia, while Lithuania is only in 15th place. Search requests for different songs is probably not the best indicator as public votes counts only for 50% of official country votes, the rest is the opinion of professional commission.

What is your guess?

Sustainability II. Canvas bags

Inspired by yesterdays blog post, I’m desperately trying to drop my lazy habits and “do” something for the environment like all those “doers” around me. Well, I certainly use less gasoline these days as my bike tires are correctly inflated. I spend much less time in traffic as Odense is less intense city than Vilnius. I have planted around 1200 trees this year alone, not kidding! I think that should be enough to regenerate oxygen out of all my deflated CO2 during the lifetime. There should be something more I can do! Something small but worthwhile.. Here it’s what comes to my mind next! (Watch the great Tim Minchin music video below)

Sustainability. Do we really care?

It is not my intent to go in depth with such a explicit and even philosophical question… however I am going to leave it open for everybody to think through and will further continue on more entertaining car manufacturer branding issues. By a coincidence or a faith, yesterday I have stumbled upon several car manufacturer advertising campaigns, focused on environmental issues, namely, Toyota, Honda & Fiat. 

I want to share the links of mentioned campaigns and discuss weather such approach appeals to you. How can all of the mentioned brands suddenly become such “eco”-logical thinker’s & “doers”… Isn’t this transition sort of too fast? Don’t you have that ambiguity feeling inside – “Well what the hell they were doing before?” Moreover, I would like to hear your personal professional opinion on the following campaigns & maybe you can even “pick” your favorite…  

Toyota Why Not -http://www.toyotawhynot.com/

Fiat Ecodrive software – http://www.fiat.co.uk/ecodrive/

Honda’s Doers -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpAlFnc1ldk (video below)

Pasaulio pabaigos vizija. [Apocalypse model]

To kick start an active blog’ing site, I would like to share my imagination based contemporary view on apocalypse. The original vision & written piece came out in early 2004, with only slight corrections it is up for your judgement now. Unfortunately only in original language as it looses value when translated. You don’t need to open your mind too much, to get a grip over ideas mediated, otherwise you brain might fall out.

Pasaulio pabaigos vizija 

Mėnulis tą kart buvo smailus, it dalgis. Akimis begioju no vieno aštrigalio iki kito, kai pagaliau jis pasrūva krauju, o jo geležtė žvilga. Tai sukelia aštrumo pojutį, virpuliukai bėga kūnu. Vilniuje dega durpynai, miestas skendi smoge. Gaisrininkai jau bene antrą mėnesį nesekmingai su tuo kovoja. Vingio parke vyksta didelis “jungle is massive” renginys, “wicked”. Miljonai žmonių, fanų zonoje tiesiog tiršta. Didelis skyliner’is rėžiasi į Vingio parko estradą. Didelis sprogimas ir didelė panika… Viskas tikrai didėlis, ir masė žmonių. Fanai klykia (sunku perteikti tokias baimės persmelktas emocijas žodžiais)…  Nuo grūsties dalis žmonių patenka į gaisro zoną. Jie dega gyvi. Begioja kaip skruzdelės, tad nejučia uždega vieni kitus. Dalis žmonių bėgdami is vingio parko, sąmišyje net pasiekia liepsnojančius durpynus. Ugnies apsupti jie visi užsidega. Nereali panika, kuri plinta lyg virusas, degantys žmonės begioja po miestą. Tai karštų degnčių žmonių miestas. Tai užkrečiama, tai lyg pandemijos protrūkis… Ilgainiui viskas sudega, lieka tik pelenų krūvos ir tuščia, palikta vienui viena, žemė, vaiduokliai pastatai. Nė gyvos dvasios…

  “Didžiausioji išmintis lyg kvailumas”. (Laotse, citata)

We are up and running on word-press!

Today, 11th of May 2009, my blog reached the day-light.

I’m going to post here some of my writings, poetry, day-to-day info, future plans/schedules, trip photos, whatever else interesting might come out of my mind

I will use multiple languages, mainly english and lithuanian, so to address my main target groups among my friends, colleagues and relatives.

Looking forward into your involvement commenting & discussing

Wicked – http://klimantavicius.wordpress.com