Woke up at about 5:30am in a dark cellar. Quite cold, but the blankets kept me warm. When I got up, it was barely the break of dawn, good streatch, a foot out of the door, and a bubbling stream is running before my eyes. The sounds… There are only sounds of birds and the water. Bubling water, and birds. As I took a couple of steps up the stairway, I knew, that a spectacular sight was awaiting me. But I was not ready to be this blown away. The forest in the distance was so majestic in its dark green posture. It seemed, that the trees were breathing, because the fog that covered the field in front of the forest looked like the breath of an animal that took a deep exhale in the cold of the winter.

The fog however looked nothing like it used to. It shimmered in thousand different shades of orange, pink and red, as the first rays of the dawning sun licked the bright blue sky up above my head. No clouds, no wind, just deep…calming…peaceful serenity.

This sight amazed me, and I stood there, watching it for a long time. Or so it seemed, because I didnt have a watch on me. And I didnt need one. It became clear, that time had no meaning in this beautiful and colorful morning.

While I deeply regret not having a camera on me at that time, I do understand now, that I didnt need one. Nobody needs to take pictures of these kind of sights. Everyone needs to experience miraculous moments like this one themselves.

Later on, while I sat at the fire I had just made, it came back to me. The urge or rather yet, the call of nature. The being that dwells deep inside of everyone of us, and is awakened by mother natures creation so amazing, it mesmerizes. I felt the primeval call of the wild, of the first men that ever roamed this earth, living on the things they hunted, fished of foraged. And I liked this feeling. Despite being a city-lad myself, I understood, that his summer I would spend a large part of my time by the nature. That is going to be MY thing this summer. If there is anyone out there who wants to join me in the adventures to come, do leave a comment. Or better yet, email me at janis.peisenieks@gmail.com.

But there is one thing I have hidden from everyone until now. I meditate. And the session I did this morning was amazing. 2 hours of nothing but relaxation and deep, concentrated nothingness in state of mind does miracles to a mans heart. What was once broken is now mended and stronger than ever. I really do suggest everyone try meditating regularly. I do.

Latvia is beautiful.

Just to give you a taste of this beauty:

Tranquility

Learn of use every bit of life to its fullest, as I definitely did this morning.

Love.

As some of might or might not know, I’m home for the next week at least. Sprained my ankle pretty badly, gave a cast and all that. Not as bad as I imagined, but bad enough.

The thing is, that not beeing able to move around very much or contact other people has given me a lot of time to think. And thinking has in turn raised a lot of questions. Most of them a rhetorical, some are not. This is going to be a long post, be warned

Love or affection?

How do you tell them apart? Ok, I will be honest with all of you, I’ve never been truly in love. But then again, I don’t know how to define it. How does love come to one? How do you define loving someone? I know, this is a trully rhetorical question on our hands right here, but the answer should be looked for.

So, when do you love someone? When you can’t sleep but think of them? When you dream about them? When you can imagine your whole life with them? Or rather, how you act upon any such feeling? If I, for one, were truly in love, and never showed it, should it still be counted as love? I for one think, that love can only be defined as a profound affection between two people. No selfishness, keeping your feelings to oneself, no beeing afraid. There is but one way to find love and happiness: to have the sleepless nights, dreamy moments of exhaustion and dumb thoughts while beeing beside the person and still by acting upon those feelings and dreams. Yes, I do think I feel a certain affection for a certain person, and I have for quite some time. I could actually count back the time, to about christmas the year before. That was when I saw you. And.. Well… If you are reading this, do know, that there will be a message awaiting you…

How do I live my life?

Someone may say, that this is the most pathetic question to sak to anyone but yourself. And I do understand that. But the act of asking a question like this speaks louder than any answer that could be given. I believe, that when a person first asks himself this question, he is at the beginning of a path. A path that has to be taken by anyone in order to find true happiness, harmony and balance in life, for I believe, that they are the most important things that can be had. By having such beliefs, I have allready answered the question: to what end I want to live, not how I’m about to achieve it. And means to achieve this end are the important ones. For having no end in mind means going nowhere.

What I’m trying to say is, that I am currently quite messed up emotionally. Im going through something that I can nor explain, nor describe, and that is what worries me. I’m in middle of nowhere and that is the thing that bothers me.

Sleepless nights and funny thought filled days. The story of my days.

So,

Dell Studio XPS 1340

Dell Studio XPS 1340

For me, the rest of the parameters are not as important, or I will go into detail about them later. Ok, here we go, my 1st review:

• Battery time – Dell Studio XPS 1340 has a 9 cell battery, because of which I was promised a nine hour work time. But there is a catch. With Windows 7, which was the OS that came with the laptop, I have seen a maximum of 5 hours, 48 minutes. Thats the max. With Vista ( I tried it for a bit, when this thing was brand spanking new), I got up to 8h. That is of course with just the basic video enabled and screen lighting to minimum. I do not know the cause for the phenomenon. Maybe its just because it was one of the first launches for the laptop, so it gave it’s all to Vista, or maybe Win 7 is very inconsiderate of my laptops battery. Don’t know.
• Graphics – This is a bittersweet subject. The laptop has two graphics cards, run through Nvidia’s SLI. I’ll admit, that that is one of the things that made me want this laptop so much. And it really is great. Even with only the basic graphics card running I can still watch 1080p videos, play a lot of the games that I play, and even use Photoshop with decent response times. But this is where the fun ends. When turned on, the second graphics card is a major battery killer. It cuts the battery time by roughly 60% when turned on. But that is not the worst. I don’t know that the mechanics at Dell were thinking, when they did their heat testing. During serious game playing the laptop heats up to 75C and eventually shuts down. Because of that, I rarely use the second graphics card.
• Screen – couldn’t be happier. With the lighting options available for this model I can easily choose the brightness that fits best to the circumstances. I must admit, that because its a glare type of screen, it does have some problem’s with displaying when in direct sunlight, but it is still great.
• Weight – Perfect. I have never weight the thing, and I am not about to. It is so light, that I carry it around in my backpack always, and it doesnt bother me one bit.
• Remote control – useless. Not only does it not fit into the computer, it is actually made to work only for Vista, which isn’t the standard in my case.
• Keyboard and rest of the buttons – Excellent! Quite responsive and the layout is great.
• Dustyness – Massive. You can’t get the laptop to be clean. No way, no how. I have tried it all, it is constantly dusty. But for me, that is not a downside, as I really do not care.

As far as the design of the thing, It’s quite cool, and thought through, and the knowledge that your laptop is the only one with leather on the cover by default is a great one.

Markings

Quite a tough choice. But for the price I was given, I cant complain about it. As far as the laptop itself, its functionality, it’s design: 8/10. So, quite good, but with space for improvement.

So, this is what I think of one of the most powerful laptops I have ever had the privilege of owning.

But as always, there is a point deeper than it looks on the first glance. I don’t know of such a thing in English, but in Latvian there is such as a thing as a “deminutīvs”, which loosely translated means a word with a diminished, or softened meaning. For an example, “our little disabled person”, is a name my grandfather called me today. I know for a fact, that he didn’t mean it as an offense of any any kind, but the fact that he did still remains. And I blew up. I told him to shut it! The thing is, that I cant stand this sort of thing. You just can not use a word like this in a way you hope will change or soften it’s context, or what you wanted to say. Forget it!

The way you pronounce something or in what language you say it is usually not important. What is important, is what you are trying, or succeeding at saying. But there are words that do not follow this rule. And one of them is cripple,disabled person, whichever one you use is not important. I do not think of myself as a cripple and I do not want to be called this way by anyone. Why?

A constant use of a word or a phrase towards a person settles into his sub-consciousness and often remains there, causing the person to accept it, to embrace it the truth, and when someone believes something to be true, it has a tendency of becoming true.

So, be careful what you say of and to others!

Peace, Love, Happiness and nothing less, to all of you,

Jānis.

While I was dancing, I took a hard look on myself. Ok, I partied a lot yesterday, was quite tired today, couldn’t perform as well as I’d like to.

And then I remembered a saying I heard somewhere ( possibly 7 habits by Covery, as I mentioned before). The saying goes something like this:

If you don’t give 100% in something you’re doing, why do it at all?

Because of this single sentence, I can’t sleep. I am constantly thinking about the things I do with my life right now, and the thing is, it doesn’t feel I’m giving my 100% to everything I do. Not in studies, not in my hobbies, not in anything I do. But it has to change. Working as hard as I can in anything I do must become a way of life. That is the only way to live the life to its fullest, and  I believe know that it is what I want, and will always want.

Things must change. My perception of and attitude towards life must change. I must change. Change in order to become better. Not because of someone or something else, but because of me. I must change.

I believe that Sakura symbols change. May there be change!

But that is not the point. I got an offer today to host my blog at an another provider. It would provide an advertisement for us both. Ok, but that it as far as I can go tonight. Talk to all of you tomorrow. When I am less of what I am right now.

I actually enjoyed the whole experience because it made me think of some things.

First of all, its the people that are checking our tickets. Some time ago, the people that checked the tickets used to be ladies in their mid fifties, and sometimes a man, that was usually homeless looking. But the people who have been checking the tickets lately are different. Usually it is a raiding party of about 3 people, with 2 large men, and a woman. Sometimes, they have a police car waiting nearby. And that is brilliant. At last I see hem doing something right. These kind of people should have been hired quite a while ago. And there are lots of them. I actually had my ticket checked for 2 more times on a different type of public transport today. Good for them, good for us, good for me!

Why good for me? Because its the way things should be!

We here in Latvia are usually thinking in the Soviet frame of mind: How to cheat someone, how to get rid of responsibility, how not to do something your country needs you to do. And that is SO wrong! Maybe it worked back then, but it surely doesn’t work now. Ok, for some time, maybe. But not for long.

The thing is, that this type of thinking is what got us into this mess (economical crisis). Everyone thought that they are the only ones smart enough to bribe a policeman to escape fine for speeding. Everyone thought that they were the smart ones working illegally, paying the minimal taxes available. If You ask me, the ones that should be criticized for our current predicament are the Regular Joes and Jonettes, not the government. Every bit of money you save by cheating your country causes a lot more harm in long term, than the short term gain, because everything you expect from your country is paid for by your taxes. Do not forget it!

If, on the other hand you think that one should continue working illegally, pay no taxes and call for a change of government, because the one currently in charge is not giving what one thinks he should receive – then get out of here. Leave, for , in my opinion, you are not welcome here. Rough? Yes, so it is. But it is the truth, and sometimes truth hurts!

Goodnight!

EDIT: Somethin went wrong. Here is the video:

P.S. You have got to love the name a commenter gave to this video: “Eargasm”

P.P.S.  The book I was talking about:  7 Habits of Highly Successfull people

Aspirations are the things that make us do something with our lives, that drive us forward. They are the things that make us feel right, the things that assure us, that we are good at something.

Well for me that thing is Eureka! This moment, maybe a split second, when i get something. Usually something big, which allows me to understand more. More of life, more of the world. It can be as insignificant, as understanding how a particular type of atom decays in a nuclear reaction, up to the most enormous things in the world – how was the universe created. This Eureka! moment is what drives me. Thats why I chose physics and exact subjects in highscool over literacy or economics. I hope, that you now know me a little better. But before I leave for my supper, a question:

What is YOUR aspiration? What drives you? Do leave a comment!

A classmate of mine is standing at the blackboard at the moment, trying to do the task, the teacher gave him. And he has been there for an hour now. And the sad thing is, that it is SOOO easy, anyone could do it. But not he.

When asked, why it should bother anyone, that he cant do the simple math involved, is that it is SIMPLE MATH! One should be able to do in his sleep.This means, that the guy standing there will be unable to do a lot of the simple math involved in our everyday lives.  Ok, I’ll admit, im not at all brilliant myself, but i can manage that.

The thing Im going to give you today, is an advice.

1. You should go back to the basics. Try doing some earlyer grade excercises. I have gone through grades 7-8 myself this month, so that i could be more profficient at math. I suggest anyone not confident in their math skills to go back to the basics. No need to go grade 1, just grade 7 to 8. It should help your basic math.
2. Use Wolfram Alpha. It is a new tool from the creators of Mathematica, that works online. I have found it to be a VERY good helper in everyday learning.

So, good luck in doing your math, and remeber: “The thing that matters, is understanding. You can teach a computer to do the calculus, but you MUST understand what you are doing!”