Halal of a week

It has been a strange sort of a week - what with the visitation of "Ossie" ( English with Pakistan blood and a love of fish & chips - as well as being a fanatical computer games player) from the UK, who must have the worlds worst musical taste, but then again as he is just a smidgeon younger than me , by about 30 years, it is hardly surprising that we might differ as what constitutes music.

O ..... was here to train a number of local technicians in the workings of a communications product from GSEC1, (www.gsec1.com) - which he did superbly. He rounded his week off by visiting two of Riga's music clubs, needless to say not in my company.

With temperatures averaging around -8 degrees, he found the Riga scene brought tears to his eyes.

Prior to his visit I had improved my technical skills by having to set up a number of local computer networks, during which time I discovered that whoever had written the software for the GSEC1 device has no concept of time, very similar to Microsoft.

You know the feeling - the magic message comes on the screen " Please Wait - this may take a few minutes" - when what they really mean is that this going to take forever, so why do not go and have a coffee. And like everything else which is electronic, when there is real problem, what is the technical solution - Switch it off, wait two minutes (Why ?) and then switch it back on again - seriously technical stuff.

The week has also seen the first of the February Births - on Sunday evening a bouncing baby boy was born to J...... (Latvian - with a singing voice), so one down two to go - P...... ( English with dog problems) and partner Z.... and of course my daughter C........ and her husband A......

And then there was the Wales v Scotland game on Sunday - A l....d. o.. b.......... s - other than the fact that we watched it in perfect peace - Not a clue where the cretins were - arrested on Saturday night ? ( wishful thinking I know).

However for S....... (Welsh with attitude) - I suppose it made up for the previous inept display against England. However makes for an interesting last few six nation games.

Not this weekend though - Saturday will see us of to Zvannieki, to deliver the toys and computers as well as checking out reception on the Tele2 network. For those wishing to join please let me know.

One thing missing from the Riga scene, at least so far, is the long (2 - 3 metres) icicles dangling from the roofs, which come later in the year when the Spring approaches suffer from the gravitational forces from which we all suffer. Usually to impale at least one poor person each year. But so far not a sign !

Speaking of the cold this weekend also the hole in the ice fisherman back on the Daugava trying to catch their lunch. And swooping in amongst them was a skater with a kite attached to him, effortlessly skating all over the place - never seen this before, or at least not in Riga.

For those of you wondering about the blogs title, I spent all week trying to find a Halal restaurant in Riga as O..... is a Muslim, but loves meat ! anybody know of one please let me know - he is back in March !