Polish National Sport

Layman would say that Polish National Sport is football. But it's wrong on so many levels. The most important is that you should be good at your national sport. And it should be popularly practiced.

But there is a sport which complies with these criteria. It's practiced cheerfully and willingly by crushing majority of population and we'd definitely win any championship if it was available.

This sport is complaining.

Poles love to complain. Ask any Pole about anything. Read this blog. Read any Polish paper or web portal. Nearly all of it is negative. Poles also love to use the word "should". Each and every one of us is an expert of how things "should" be organized, but it's a microscopic minority that is doing anything to actually achieve that.

I'm going to Warsaw

Tram line on the main street, that connects my place to downtown is closed for maintenance. They're repairing the track and elevating the platforms, so it would fit to low-floor tram. Either way, the line is down, so I have to figure out the route of the substitute bus. Wroclaw Glowny (main train station) is being revitalized, so it's closed. There's a Temporary Train Station, pretty nice, clean and modern but also small and inconveniently located.

Finally I find myself in the train, so old that archeologists might want to hold it. Its top speed is 160 km/h, rarely achieved in practice. I have to wait somewhere in the woods, that some other train will pass. They're repairing the tracks.

Warszawa Centralna, capital's central station is also revitalized.

Sluzewiec is my final destination. I can witness the construction of expressway interchange, tram terminus station, and train stop. It will be a neat intermodal hub, when they'll finish. Mud is all over the place, the construction site spills with it, trucks brings it out on the tires, so it's difficult to pass this place clean foot.

All these obstacles are really tiresome. But on the other hand, it shows how fast this country is developing.

Loose Thoughts: Everything Has Been Already Invented Or Why I Hate Google

A long, long time ago, in the voivodeship[1] far away, where I used to be a young eager ambitious student, I decided to write really unique thesis for my Master's Degree. Theoretically it shouldn't be my decision, but a formal, carefully verified requirement. In practice, it a formal requirement and a dead law either.

Anyway, I've found a magnificent subject that seemed novel, practical and interesting. My thesis supervisor was very enthusiastic, so was I. So I started digging for sources. And I've found lots of them. One was particularly interesting. It was a PhD thesis which solved all the problems I planned to solve plus some others. Just my luck.

Similar situation has happened like three times before I've finally found my final subject -- little less interesting, but probably unique. Yet, it has spoiled my fun. My great bliss -- ignorance -- has been shattered.

Invention of Internet blessed us with lots of outcomes -- from rapid porn access, through twenty-year-old billionaires, to search engines. Web search shows how unique true uniqueness really is.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voivodeship

Polish Sexual Techniques: Sensitive Punk

Origin: "Happy New York", the movie.

Polish former sexbomb Katarzyna Figura[1] is playing a role of Teriza, hot, yet illegal immigrant. She's trying to seduce a dude called "Punk" (because of haircut, not political or subcultural affiliation). Unfortunately he's a sesitive romantic, so boob flash performed by Teriza is not enough. Nothing is. He must be in love. Darwin laughs his ass off, along with entire male population.

More about the movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120261/

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katarzyna_Figura

The Incentive To Learn English #1: Amateur Transplants

Proper incentive is the most important thing. That's why I'm occasionally going to show you some interesting things, that has never been translated, or it's very difficult to translate it good.

Here's the first one. Enjoy. 

Playboy's Wager

Catholic Pact Of Lousy Sex states as follows:

1. No sex before marriage.
2. No masturbation.
3. No cheating.
4. No divorce.
5. No birth control.

In practice it means that you can have only one sex partner in your whole life. Unless, of course, your wife/husband will die young, then you can have two[1]. So you have one sparring-partner, but you can't spar often. Unless, of course, you want to have like 20 children and live with them in poverty[2]. Either way, with these rules, you can't be good at sex.

You all know Pascal's Wager[3]. I propose Playboy's Wager instead. Have as much fun as you can. If you do it wisely, you won't lose anything, including parking space in Heaven in case God exists[4]. But if you will comply to the Catholic Pact Of Lousy Sex, then you'll have lousy sex and nothing else.

Any objections? Didn't think so. Now I want a programming language named after me too.

[1] You can have even more, if you'd choose only terminally ill or old partners. But quality will be inversely proportional to quantity in this case.
[2] Another hole in this system is a case of a natural infertility.
[3] If not, read that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager
[4] Condoms for STDs and unwanted pregnancy, vodka for moral hangover[5], confession for Karma cleanup, and perhaps even religious conversion when you're too old and your stuff won't work anyway.
[5] If any.

Why Do Poles Drink So Much?

1. Polish language demand a lot of tongue flexibility[1].
2. Sober society would never elect convicted felon to be a Deputy Prime Minister, nor any of his coalition buddies. After the elections sober part either went AWOL[2] or stopped being sober.
3. You need to occupy your mind while you're not currently busy shooting enemies with diamonds[3].
4. You would drink too, if it happened to you (I mean the privilege to live in this country in these unfortunately interesting times).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrz%C4%85szcz
[2] AWOL = Awaiting Work Only in London
[3] That's an insider joke, to be explained later. Victims of Polish Educational System know what I mean.

Parental Hurt Locker

The baby sleeps again. Finally! So I'm preparing the bed for myself, since it's late, and I have to get up early tomorrow. 

Unfortunately my bed has happened to be a playground just a moment before, so it's riddled with toys. You know how are toys nowadays. It's not like when I was a child. We used to literally throw dirt (dry mud, to be exact) at each other. Tree branches were swords, and so on. 

Today's toys are playing sounds, every last one of them. It's supposed to be educational, but in reality it's just another way of justifying these absurd prices. I'm pretty sure neither Einstein nor Newton had any of these.  Contemporary toy designers seems to think that if it goes "beep", it can't be cheap. 

So how to dismantle a playground full of potentially very loud toys? Carefully, I'd say. Slowly. Patiently. Practice in Minesweeper is not enough, as well as watching some unrealistic Oscar-winning movies.

A Challange

So you thought Sisyphus had it tough? Try living in Poland. I heard that Bear Gryll was planning to survive a month on a typical retirement pension at Warsaw, but decided to do some easier and safer things first, so he settled for wrestling alligators[1]. If you need a challenge, try to get things done when you're dependent on Polish public administration. Or live in the Wroclaw estate of Lesnica.

Lesnica is a part of Wroclaw[3], that has been constantly humiliated, belittled and ignored by the city officials. At least in the means of public transportation. Private too, but that's another issue.

Problem is that Lesnica is one of farthest estates from the city center, and there is a lot of free space on the way. So naturally, there's a lot of investments, and some of them are seriously disrupting the poorly developed transportation network in the west part of the city. Lesnica and its surroundings usually suffers the most.

This time municipalities have organized traffic so brilliantly, that people from Lesnica must change their means of transportation FOUR TIMES EACH WAY, only to get to the city centre. So each day, one would have to change tram or bus EIGHT TIMES to get to work and return home. Or even more in the worst case scenario, when someone in living in Lesnica, but working on the other side of the city in some poorly connected place.

Gee. Godot would be faster.

Of course it's easy to deduce, that none of the city officials lives there. And even if one does, he's definitely not using public transportation.

[1] Actually we have some crocodiles in Poland as well. In Polish slang "a crocodile" is a Road Traffic Inspection officer, since they're wearing green uniforms. Police officer hunting for speeding tickets is called a "teddy bear"[2].

[2] At least as long as the hunting is unsuccessful. Vocabulary for the other situation is being constantly increased by esteemed researchers all over the country.

[3] Seriously! Since 1928.