Polish Man in New World

All the flowering plants (Angiosperms) have evolved a very dense network of veins. It makes them leaders in between 'water suckers'. Veins are like small pipes - the more of them you have the better you pump up. Today during the discussion on that topic I felt like language push me out of the group. I still can not transforms quick series of sounds produced by English tongue into meaningful words in my head. I do believe I could join the discussion only if I could follow it. Here I ask myself: why not to introduce Esperanto (or Latin) - an artificial (or extinct) language into science? Then all of us would have to take more time to produce a correct sentence. It would make communication slower but more efficient. Native language in performance of native speaker sounds like shooting from machine gun. I must say that Australians have in general a lot of understanding for foreigners. It is nice. I do appreciate it. But what happens if USA/UK/AU lose their world leadership and Chi...

Vice-Chancellor, Professor Steven Schwartz - I do not know why he is called "vice" because the truth is that he is the Head of my University. Where is a "chancellor" from I have also no idea but the fact is that Steven writes his blog almost everyday and announce it on the main webpage of Macquarie University. Since 2002 the blog tracker website Technorati has recorded 133 million blogs worldwide. at the beginning of August last year, it tracked 7.4 million blogs posted in the last 120 days, 1.5 million blogs posted in the last 7 days, and 900,000 posts in the last 24 hours. It is already well-known fact that Barack Obama won his election thanks to such media. The power of internet out-competed the power of money. Isn't it amazing ? I just hope that internet will still stay a relatively cheap thing and no one will start to earn money on its power. Source: http://www.vc.mq.edu.au/blog/2009/03/27/lessons-from-that-viral-video/

Last three days were filled up with brain-overheating intensive course on R. R is a name for software available online for free and used for most of the academics all over the world. It consists of thousands of functions one has to remember by heart in order to make a full use of it. R software provides very powerful computing environment for: - statistical analyses, - database management, -programming, -graphics creation... and much more... Today I had a dream which brought me to 'Matrix'. I was so much into programming in R that i managed to create a real world full of fantasy monsters. One of them were chasing me. I knew that if I fail to write a right script on time it will catch and kill me. Running and stumbling with my comp on my hands I tried to programme as quickly as possible a commend protecting me from his weapon : ) Then I woke up. Let me present You my first script I have created myself (very easy, no monsters): #load package called 'maps' map(...

Snowy bus is a rare thing in my ex-city, most of them are actually red : ). This one here is staying at the bus stop in the city center. In the back You can see a yellow building with black tower - Lublin Town Hall: Polish people complain a lot at this time. It is dark and cold, it is windy and slippery - no way to reach workplace on time: ul. Gleboka means a Deep Street - deep in snow in this case : ). I really do not feel like going back to Winter Land : P brrrrrr I think that weather is one of the main reasons why White People decided to start a colonization of the tropic countries : ) source: http://www.kurierlubelski.pl/module-dzial-viewpub-tid-9-pid-69464-comments_startnum-21.html

Few days ago my friend Bartek sent to me this picture: It is a view from his window. Transport/communication in Lublin at the time of this white precipitation was paralysed. Bartek asked me to stop uploading pictures of sunny Australia : ) if I want to save him from depression.

Only one day after I read story on difficulties of Australian in Zurich I had a clash with Sydney public transport. It all started from my foot injury. Every week at 17.00 soccer guys from University gather together on the green fields out of campus to play. Because one player lost his sport shoes and the grass was very soft we decided to go bare-foot. Every now and then someone kicked the ball from the wrong angle resulting in twisted toe. I ve slid into greenless field patch with all speed and power. Heavy friction, skin off, blood on, player off. I went home. I missed the train of course. I had to wait 23 minutes for the next one. And the story from "Matrix" happened at Macquarie University station. Part of indicators went blur, with flowing vertical rows of numbers on them and the laudspeakers talked my head off with contradicting informations. Luckily I stepped on the right train. It happened first time to me. Train driver forgot to stop on my station. It seems that he ...

Today we had a good-bye lunch with one German professor. She chose our office as a place to spend her sabbatical break and soon she flies back to Stuttgart. Two other older Germans joined us and it was all nice but the looks. It is kind of visible mark imprinted in European people. At least i felt this tension. It is something we don't talk about but it is somewhere there at the back of our minds. And I just finished to read a news from last Saturday Herald which says that: „A Nazi concentration camp guard has been deported from the USA to Austria“. Josias Kumpf used to work at Trawniki labour camp in Poland. This is a small town just few kilometres from the country-side i was brought up. My grandma who passed away last year used to tell stories about running-aways, about the smell of burnt bodies, about brave people who risk their life to save Jews and about the ones who took advantage of war to rob them. Poles knew they were next in line. The camp organization was deadly precise....

I heard the gossips before his trip to Cameroon that he is ready to legalize them in between the people suffering from HIV but he is German. Clear rules are much easier to obey even if all the politicians and health organizations around do not support him. If to believe what yesterday Sydney Morning Herald writes this was the first time pope used a word C_ _ _ _ _ _ in public. He stressed also that dancing is forbidden during the liturgy in Africa. It reminds me a captain Phillip introducing English uniforms to naked Aborigines : ) I don’t know what the best solution to HIV issue in Africa is. Last year there was a very loud case of Cameroon guy in Poland who infected around 11 Polish women with this deadly virus. His name was Simon Mol and he passed away in age 35 very recently. He died of AIDS of course. People in his country believe that you can transfer the virus back to woman. Therefore, the higher number of sexual intercourses with different girls the higher chance to recover :/ ...

Chapter on "Plant water relation" which is part of my adaptation to English vocabulary is finished. And to my surprise it is finished with description of one peculiar plant one can consider as an esoteric one. It grows on the deserts of Zimbabwe. It dries out totally when no rain: And it regains its fresh greenness 24 hours after rewetting: It is an extreme case of desiccation-tolerant plant. Reading on such amazing facts is very pleasant for a young scientist like me but it means also a hard way to remember all the Latin names. This one here is called Myrothamnus flabellifolius :) I had classes on Latin language in highschool and it goes a bit easier in. But as a Polish young scientist in NSW I have to go through another hard way - learning how English People pronounce it. It is barbarian way! I hope that one day Latin will resurrect : ) Source: "Plant physiological ecology", Hans Lambers et al. (2008). and photo: http://www.zimbabweflora.co.zw/speciesdata/species...

I think it is all together: nice people around very interesting job at University salty ocean I visit regularly twice a week strong sun with active UVB tasty and healthy food gluten free diet still loving me girl : ) It all does good to me. I am happy in this country. I am happy that spots of psoriasis started to disappear so well. Skin disability called this way remains still a mystery to all doctors. Let me share with you some of my moments from Sydney beach :) It is a regular thing that i fall asleep on the sand. Rustle of waves and warmth of sun is that relaxing to me : ) And suddenly I am awaken by awkward noise just behind my head. It was so strange that within a second I lifted up my back, ready to protect myself : ) Look at those two dangerous "bastards" - they decided to fight for MacDonald bag. I think they rather smell what is inside, I don't believe that they can read what is printed on it: And today i finally discovered the meaning behind the colours on the f...

The bloody creatures fly not only all over Estonia, they reach also our room on the seventh floor in Sydney. It is a very hard compromise. We don't have a windows - we have one big sliding door instead which leads straight to our balcony. If we shut it down before going to sleep we are free of mosquitoes but after few hours we are lack of oxygen : ). Today I left the door open. We had a very nice dream until 3 am. It was cruising around my head making this awful buzz noise. I let it bite me hoping it will fly away after getting filled up with my blood but it didnt . It was very irritating one. I had to stand up, locate it and kill it. And all day i feel this buzz in my head. Good that tomorrow we have a weekend already and i can sleep as much as i want to : ) In Estonia we had the same problem. We used to live in a old wooden house and they were active even in the winter when - 18 outside. It was kind of specific species of mosquitoes which may crawl through wooden walls. Do...

It is very easy to count the age of trees growing in the countries of higher latitude (In Poland for instance :) where winter is snowy and summer is warm and sunny. After you cut a pine you are left with the low trunk with beautiful light and dark rings on it. If You count either light or dark ones you will get the very close-to-truth age of that tree. I always like to do it as a child. As a small boy I used to live on the country side next to the big big forest and my grandpa was a carpenter. I am still addicted to the smell of freshly cut tree : ) And today i am working with them again. In a scientific way. I study the microscopic anatomy of growth ring boundaries: Laurus nobilis (Bay Laurel) is one of the best example. It is a spice used in the kitchen, a simbol of Apollo and a very valueable wood piece for scientist like me : ) - it shows very well the microscopic structure of rings (look in horizonthally manner at the cross section below): During live-bringing spring plants produ...

This book does not seem to disappear from market even 2009 years after His death. And I must say that I ve never met so many bible people in Poland as I met already in Australia. It started already in a deep interior between fields of winegrapes and olives : ) during my Rosnay time, then in Epping I shared a room with Chinese guy who during every breakfast held in one hand a sandwich and in second hand a thick bible (In China Christianity still has a status of underground religion) and today.... I had a nice talk with young crusader Gareth about religion, church history and spirituality : ) I was studying at the outdoor table the anatomy of wood and he just came up and started a talk with me. And he was a very good listener and suddenly i had much to say : ) So he asked and I answered: What is spirit? Hmmmmm I think it is about happiness. And the most amazing fact is that the source of happiness is located inside of everyone of us....... Do You go to church? I used to go to church ever...

But one day I took up a chance to get out of the city of Gold Coast. I went for fieldworks in Karawatha State Forest. Together with Naomi, Subhashni and Christina we ve been collecting data on DBH - diameter at breast hight of about 300 trees around there: It was the part of the programme of data collecting called shortly "ppbio" = The Program for Planned Biodiversity Studies in Australasia is an ecological initiative to facilitate long-term regional biodiversity monitoring and condition assessment. It is a program designed for ecological research and data collection. It provides a new model for biodiversity research, monitoring and assessment that can be replicated throughout Australasia, providing an innovative foundation for enhancing environmental management and monitoring the impacts climate change in the future (http://www.griffith.edu.au/environment-planning/centre-innovative-conservation-strategies/projects/program-for-planned-biodiversity-studies-australasia). Thank...

I have arrived to Gold Coast in the night. First thing i had to do was to get to my motel and... who gives such long names to them? When driver of shuttle bus asked where I am heading to I informed him that I go to Earl Grey Inn. Good that he knew that city very well and he brought me to the right spot: "Earls Court Motor Inn" : ). I think that during that 40 minutes long way I became a local Sydney patriot - it is the best city to live in : ). Along all my way from airport to inn I could see only those tall, made of concrete sky scrapers. So many of them! It felt that they will never stop to pop up. Here You can see the Gold Coast bridge which led me to my motel: In Sydney they are at least concentrated in one center place and this is it. Center is center. You should have opportunity to escape it quickly if you do not like. But it all shows how coastal sand may turn to be a coastal gold : ) I enjoyed those sunny beaches and wavy ocean very much - every day.

I found one piece of Australian newspaper at the Domestic Airport. One article absorbed me fully. It is an amazing fact that at some point so many whales decide to gather together and start mass beaching. There is a big picture on the page number 3 presenting this spectacular “show”. You can’t miss it. The photo was taken on King Island, northwest of another bigger island under Australia =Tasmania. It happened on last Sunday on the beach called Naracoopa. It is hard to believe it for me that all those old whales didn’t know what low-tide is about. It looks nothing else but well-planned group suicide. At the time of captain Phillip all Aborigines would be very happy. They all were of very skinny posture, on the constant starving mode. Suddenly a big piece of meat has just landed on their coast : ). Only White People push them back to the sea. I wonder what kind of sacrifice is that. Maybe they try to come back to the land. The decision of their old ancestor to evolve from land mammals i...

Every week we are given a paper to read and every Tuesday at 11.30 we meet all together and have a discussion around the topic. It is so far the only constant event during my working hours. Tomorrow we are going to reveal our comments on "Big ecological questions in Australia". Climate change is the most serious issue. Almost every part of nature is influenced by that. It acts in synergy with other factors to produce numerous direct and indirect effects. For example: - Ocean acidification - Coastal inundation - Weed invasion - Decrease of biodiversity and so on and so on. I' ve been hearing about it since I started my first year at the University of Life Science in Lublin. Today I surfed the net in search of explanation for word Religion. And I am close to state that Ecology is a new religion in XXI century : ) Religion as a word derives from Latin relegere which means " to read over again". Isn't like this that we see those ecological informations across al...