Mission completed

After for more than a month looking around in shoe shops and sports shops, I have got an impression that women in Estonia never go hiking, or if they do, they still wear high heals. Supply of women's hiking footwear is almost non-existent. In best case, there is one stand of Ecco shoes where is exactly one pair of smth like free-time shoes which is not particularly big choice and usually not with a price I would like to pay.
Rest of offer is any kind of high heel, colourful city shoes, boots etc - anything for city.
I tried sports shops also, and they have vast choice of women jogging footwear, aerobics having a second best choice, and this is where it usually ends.
Miserable and sad.
Finally, after what turned out to be a good advice, I went to more distant shopping centre and found smth. I find it funny that purchase of just a pair of footwear made me happy and feel like having accomplished a mission.

Netosport was the shop for anybody interested; they have deserved a small advertising for making me happy today.

...

Two mornings

This morning I did not put on hat - deliberately and not because I forgot. I just decided that spring has come and no more winter hat for this season!
Yesterday morning I found a way how it can be detected whether a person is still sleeping despite of being in standing position and with open eyes: if one is putting hair gel instead of toothpaste on a toothbrush, then it indicates that person is not very awake yet.

A Riddle

I have blue spots on both of my knees and on one of hands, but they are not very serious. However sitting is quite painful since my coccyx is not very happy with what happened to it several times (coccyx is a small bone where tail was supposed to be; the tail idea was abandonded at some point of time, but the bone remained).
I am deadly tired, but very satisfied and happy with the day.
So, guess what I was doing today or rather yesterday already?

Post which is dedicated to Latvian State Revenue Service improvement

I will share my experience of declaring income for years 2003 and 2004 where in both years I was eligible for tax refund due to my cross-border operations.

2003
I declared my income in Latvia.
I prepared paper (hard-copy) declaration. The declaration was accompanied by (1) hard copy certificates with all signatures of accountants and managers from my working places about my income and (2) an application on separate sheet that I kindly ask them to transfer my refund to bank account with such and such number. I would like to note that getting certificates took me some time since manager was hard to catch to get his signature.
Somewhere in March I sent all the stuff via mail to Cesis (town with ~22 thousand inhabitants in district of which I happen to be registered). The other option was to show up personally during working hours. No other options. And hard copy only.
I called them up in mid June to inquiry about my refund. The lady asked when did I submit my declaration, and I answered that somewhere in March. She said that in such case my declaration has not been inserted in the system yet and that I should call in July, but better in early August due to vacations and stuff. However, luckily enough on 1st of July my refund arrived.

2004
I declared my income in Estonia.
During one evening I logged on to e-Tax Board on internet via internet bank.
The form of declaration already provided my income from the data base of Tax Board (since this data is anyway being provided to Tax Board every time taxes on my salary are paid). I just had to check the data and adjust it a bit.
There was a place to indicate my account number as well via internet, which I also did indicate.
My tax refund arrived on the NEXT day.

Any conclusions?
It seems quite dumb to me to prepare declaration (which I anyway make on computer), to print it out, to send via post, then other person is inserting it in the computer again, and this inserting takes 3 months - not very efficient and very time consuming including post traveling time with registered letters.
Of course, I have no deeper insight what Latvian State Revenue Service is doing and what issues they have on day to day basis, but my impression is that it would be a good idea to make an investment in sound electronic system, which would be capital expenditure now, but would reduce costs (labour costs, cost of manual errors, rent of rooms etc.), increase efficiency and improve control in future. Drawbacks: reduced employment rate as well as state cannot use cheep money (since they do not pay interest for keeping my money for 3 additional months).

Emakeele päev - Day of Mother Tongue

In Estonia there was the day of mother tongue, emakeele päev, today.
However, after what I noticed in information and news on events associated with this day, I found that they have named it a bit wrongly because everything was related to popularising Estonian and only Estonian language. Even for young people in Narva there were games in Estonian and information about Estonian literature, writers and poets. I don't say that there is anything wrong with that, I only claim that name of day is wrong. For majority of Narva people Estonian is not a mother tongue. Their mother tongue is Russian, and the Day of Mother Tongue should not then forget minorities in the country. So, currently it looks to me like Estonian Language Day.
In general, I have noticed that living in other country has made me to notice more things about nationalities and perhaps to become more tolerant.
I guess if I was in Latvia and there was day of mother tongue where only Latvian language would be promoted, I would not notice anything wrong with that because it is my mother tongue. Sometimes it's difficult to remember that there is also other point of view.

Blue Evenings

This is why I love March - because of blue evenings. Blue not in a sense of being sad, but direct sense - blue colour. March evening light is so peculiar and beautiful. Then I always know that spring is coming, even if it's -15ºC outside.

About Bath

During dinner with friends the topic somehow turned to bathes: size, type, any bath at all and so on. I guess it's part of general flat-house-or-whatever-other-real-estate-buying mass psychosis currently ruling in Estonia, but that does not matter. What matters is that there were two beautiful cognitions about bath:
1. Bath is meant for two people, otherwise why to have it at all.
2. If two people have decided to go to bath, then size of bath does not matter because they will fit in anyway.

...

Brushing teeth - it's easy, right? Try to do it with other hand than usually, and it turns out to be quite complicated exercise, especially for the first time. But practice makes perfect, so I decided to make further practice with left hand to be able to brush teeth with both hands equally well. Why do I need it? For no particular reason, just so.

Latvian on ETV

Tonight I was quite delighted to see a TV program in pure Latvian on ETV (Estonian National Television). Moreover, it was political program, which does not occur so often at all, there have been only couple of movies what I have noticed.
This time they showed discussion with Latvian president and couple of other politicians and commentators on subject whether Latvia and other Baltic States should attend 60 years anniversary of WWII end in Russian interpretation on 9 May. It was quite funny, since parts of discussion where in English which had been synchronically translated in Latvian, and this Latvian was now translated into Estonian (via subtitles). Interesting how many nuances were lost for Estonians in this double translation since it was impossible to hear original due to loud Latvian. Lost in translation, so to say... (but in different way from the Sofia Copolla movie with this title, good one, by the way).
I also find it funny how Estonians like and honour Latvian president - much more than their own one, at least majority of those Estonians whom I happen to know.
But I like ETV more than LTV because:
- when translating something, they use subtitles and not direct dubbing (also Korean movie one can watch in Korean)
- no commercials
- really cool programs similar to which I did not find in Latvian program; I somehow never was attracted by LTV, but in ETV I have noticed some programs which I don't want to miss