Last weekend I went to dinner with my two elegance and sophistication coaches. As soon as I saw one of them on the other side of the road I wolf whistled turning the heads of all the people around. The coach came over blushing and scolding me for my inelegant and unsophisticated behaviour.

We arrived at the elegant Italian restaurant. After sitting down at the bar I noticed that one of the bar maids was cross eyed. Since I didn't know the English word for her condition (werca) I was gesturing at her eyes to explain what I meant. Inevitably she got a glimpse of my highly inelegant behaviour.

The rest of the dinner adhered to my coaches standards, apart from the constant slagging of my dress, which I still cannot understand.

Lessons Learnt

• Wolf Whistling is used by farmers to herd sheep dogs, not to greet people across the street
• When you're talking about a defect of somebody 1) try not to make it obvious 2) MORE IMPORTANTLY ... don't speak in a language that is understood by the other party

This week I'm so lethargic, I feel like doing nothing. Each time I start doing something I end up distracted into something else then freaking out. At least I finished Christmas shopping today. I though it was over on Saturday but yesterday I received a message that my good friend had a baby girl, so I had to hit the shops again. I got a really cute thing for her, probably one of the best presents of the year.

Yesterday I gave my first present (actually fourth, but first significant one). I hit the nail on the head after spending about 3 days looking for the thing. The present was a colourful hippy style spider which doubles as a pin holder. A funny present but just the thing I was looking for.

Tomorrow I'm working, and I bet they're going to be a very long 8 hours. I'll try and kill time with a game or two of backgammon, which is now the official game of the office.

On Friday we're going for Christmas lunch so that will be a fun day. After lunch I'm getting a lift to the airport to go back home. Can't wait to see cats, friends and family.

Today I got my first Christmas present ... Pussy!!! and to celebrate I'm sharing this with you:-

Talking Pussies

This one is so good it deserves a post by itself. At least it served as an antidote to the Christmas present not-buying depression. I spent the whole weekend slaloming between thousands of people for nothing. I've never seen Christmas shopping this mad.

Worst 100 ways to deliver bad news

Two of my pals decided that I need to become more sophisticated and elegant. Their joint venture is being co-ordinated through e-mail in preparation for the daily tutorials during break time. These are some things that I learned in my first lessons:-

• After eating a handful of M&M's as dessert, rather then sticking out your tongue and licking the smeared M&M's colouring from your hand, you might want to consider washing your hands.
• Eating cereal with your hand out of the box while simultaneously feeding the floor, chair and mouth doesn't is neither sophisticated nor elegant.
• Even in Ireland the word Fuck hasn't gained sophisticated status. This also applies to the word 'damn'.
• It's impolite to use the word shit, shite or any other word referring to feaces. The only acceptable alternative is to use 'merde' in a posh French accent.

Yesterday, I was handed my first assignment, due for next Monday: Read The Man's book.

As part of my Irish cultural enhancement program, and daily humour dose, I was also suggested to read The Best of Myles.

Finally in an effort to understand British humour I'm self-screening Blackadder goes forth on my PC at 1am every night.

I've returned back from Riga last Sunday but got bogged down in work and forgot to update the blog. The trip was one of the best short breaks I've ever been to. It's comparable to the trip to Romania culture-wise and that's quite a statement.

The best decision I made was staying at a B&B instead of a hostel. I wanted to go to Latvia to meet people and to learn about the recent history of the place and the Home Stay B&B was the ticket to long discussions about Latvia and everything else that happened to fall into the middle of the conversations with Ric and Diga the hosts of the place.

Autumn is probably the worst time to visit the place because it was grey, quite cold, got dark early and there wasn't any snow. Luckily it wasn't raining except on the last day which I spent indoors anyway. On the first two days I went visited all the main attractions of the city centre, on Saturday I went to Sigulda and I spent the whole Sunday enjoying a Latvian Family.

Thursday
St. Peter's Church - the view from the top was well worth the cold wind blowing in my face
Blackheads building - One of the nicest buildings I've ever seen
Dome Square - Dome square is dome square is dome square is I don't know
The Occupation Museum - I found this interesting even though I'm not usually a big fan of museums. The only pity was that there's so little about the independence events, the thing I was mostly interested in.
In the evening I spent the whole evening chatting and drinking Latvian beer with the family I was living with in the B&B. The beer wasn't bad but the chatting was better.

Friday
Alberta Street, Elizabeta street etc. to see the art nouveau area. Even though I know almost nothing about architecture it was very nice.
Freedom monument and the bridge with the padlocks. I saw the change of the guards.
Cat house and the three brothers - Some more buildings
I went for lunch at a garlic restaurant. All the items on the menu here are with garlic including the shots of vodka and the ice-cream. I pity the chefs who work there. In the evening there was a doom metal concert at the depo. Attending a Latvian doom metal concert wasn't in my plans but this was too good an opportunity to miss. The bands that played were Year Zero, Vic Anselmo, Frality, Aldevia, Ocularis Infernum.

Saturday
I went to Sigulda, a village 1hr by train away from Riga, to try the bobsleigh. The adrenalin rush was only second to the skydive. The 45 or so seconds going down the track were spent hoping that the driver knew what he was doing. It was fantastic. After the bobsleigh I went up the cable car and went for a walk in the forest on the other side of the cable car. In the evening I returned back to Riga and went to the Lido. It was difficult to get there because at first I thought I could walk there, but I soon realised that it wasn't that near and the Moscow district didn't look like the most inviting of places. The variety of Latvian food made the hassle to arrive worth it.

Sunday
I spent the whole day with Diga and Ric. In the morning I went out with Sara their Alsation dog to the lake, then in the afternoon the extended family joined for a Sunday lunch. This was a real opportunity to talk for hours about Latvia, mingle with the locals and taste the food. It kept going on from 2pm till 8pm until I had to leave.

All in all it was a very active weekend, so active that I didn't read a single page of the book I took with me A murder in the central committee and I had to write the whole diary after I came back – which is also part of the reason for the delay in the update.

I'm off to Riga on Wednesday. Naturally since I'm travelling there's some inconvenience going on in the country. This time it's the NATO conference.

On another travel note, I've decided I'm going to Venezuela on February. I'm planning to buy the ticket tomorrow when I decide which airline I'm travelling with. The choice is between Air France and Iberia. While Air France is cheaper they don't allow any changes the travel dates. On the other hand, Iberia allow changes (at a cost of 165 Euros) but the ticket costs more and there's an overnight stay involved. Last Saturday I went to a travel agent and she told me that Iberia will pay for the hotel for the overnight stay, however I'm not really convinced so I've got to check with the airline office first.

In the mean time all the cat lovers and anybody in need of a smile should must visit this site ... Funny cats collected

I managed to finish the Tip a Day project. This is a list of all the tips in the series:

• Tip 1: Synonymn and NOT web searches
• Tip 2: Use your homepage as a reminder
• Tip 3: Multiple home pages in Firefox
• Tip 4: Restoring pre 2.0 tab behaviour in Firefox
• Tip 5: Date Arithmetic in Excel
• Tip 6: Reclaim disk space disable hibernation
• Tip 7: Restore missing desktop icon
• Tip 8: Invoking oracle tools with sysdba role
• Tip 9: Middle mouse button click
• Tip 10: Time wasting
• Tip 11: Disable system restore for improved performance
• Tip 12: Icons in system tray
• Tip 13: Speed testing your internet
• Tip 14: Removing auto-startup programs
• Tip 15: Quick Searches in Firefox
• Tip 16: Note taking software
• Tip 17: Currency conversion with Google
• Tip 18: Selecting text with ALT
• Tip 19: Synchronising Firefox Bookmarks
• Tip 20: GTD TiddlyWiki - Productivity tool
• Tip 21: Why I use Winamp and not other media players
• Tip 22: Tracking down large files
• Tip 23: Google Game - GoogleWhack
• Tip 24: Back to the past
• Tip 25: Application Shortcuts
• Tip 26: Play Quicktime and Real Player files without installing the applications
• Tip 27: Automatic log file
• Tip 28: Converting a FAT filesystem to NTFS
• Tip 29: Pausing Applications in *nix
• Tip 30: Word Count in vi
• Tip 31: WinXP Funnies