Polish Man in New World

Last night it was my first real contact with Polish culture in Sydney. There is a big house in Ashfield called Polish Club. Most of the people there were of Australian citizenship and if you press them a bit they try to speak Polish : ). Nonetheless together with my partner we felt like being in Poland again. The beginning was awesome: The performance of folk dancers was full of uhhh energy, youth and very fancy dresses. I liked it. Then it started to repeat the scheme of avarage Polish wedding alike party I ve been so many times to(simple music, a lot of alcohol and food) and ..... I started to feel like trapped. Culture is deriving from the Latin cultura stemming from colere , meaning "to cultivate" - Wikipedia says. Cultivation makes me thing of growing the crops on the fields or weeding in the garden. You have to do it in order to survive but you can’t get stuck to that. You have to find way to free yourself, otherwise you start to smoke cigarettes, drink strong alcoh...

Rubisco is an enzyme present in plants, algae, bacteria. It is most abandon protein on Earth. Thanks to rubisco process called photosynthesis exists. Thanks to rubisco life resurrect on Earth again and again. It changes CO2- carbon dioxide into organic matter building up our cells. Like on every Tuesday we have a discussion around a scientific paper. Last time it was: " The role of Rubsico and cell walls in the interspecific variation in photosynthetic capacity" by K. Hikosaka. And for me it was very interesting topic but it seems that rubisco does not awake such interest in Australians. At the table there were 5 heads: 2 Polish, 1 Japanese, 1 Spanish and 1 NewZelander. Or maybe lack of supervisor among us was the reason for mental laziness : ) Wednesday till Friday I spend on bush regeneration and anywhere I go I see this enzyme. It unites all the green beings. It supports theory of evolution very strongly. I dont know anymore whether I see leaves or maybe the leaf alike fo...

Linden is a very nice guy from Canberra who lent me a book. That's the one: I enjoyed it very much. As I have to return it to the owner I want to save its picture in here. Blog is a perfect invention to me. As I have very short memory it helps me to remember and by the way I can share my thoughts with the rest of the world. James Michener put a lot of effort to understand Polish long history. He spent something around one year travelling across Poland and studying. Maybe that is why Linden had to read it twice - as he said, because besides it is very interesting story it is also loaded with a lot information which are hard to digest for someone from out of this country. As I live in Sydney i track the news connected to Poland which appear in local newspapers. And It looks like one label pinned to my country is most popular = Holocaust (look first page of last SMH 23-24.05.09). Thanks God no one is suggesting that concentration camps were managed by Poles as it happens in other news...

It seems I am becoming slowly a citizen of Sydney. Period of adaptation and looking for a job is behind me. Now I take part in cultural events. "Sex and the city" movie was played in the theatre at Macquarie Univeristy last Sunday. I went by myself to check what is this movie about which all the girls around world are crazy about. Christina likes it too very much. STILLETO . Movie was introduced by one lecturer from university. She invited us to take part in discussion on that movie on the special online platform. She created interesting blog on that movie: http://wpmu.innovation.cfl.mq.edu.au/jlattas/2009/05/15/hello-world/ She writes there: "Shoes. The high heel shoe is a recognised fetish object. It suggests qualities of both masculine and feminine, and sets up a tension between them. The stiletto (literally ‘thin bladed knife’) is a phallic form, and with its classic metal core, it is perceived as a weapon of some danger. Yet the shoe is clearly feminine, with its ...

Herald has awarded young novelists. I like one who made me think about my "polishness". His name is Nam Le. He was raised in Melbourne after fleeing Vietnam in a refugee boat. He writes: "We can't choose our parenting, ethnicity, where we are born or the circumstances of where we grow up, and yet when we are growing up it is often those things that we cling to most fiercely in trying to define who we are". BUT... There is some margin on which we can try to choose our identity. If to calculate what is my nationality according to time i spent on foreign territory so far I am in 1,7% American, 1,7% Swiss, 1,9% Australian, 3.4% Estonian and rest of me is Polish :) I try never to neglect none of my host-countries. They were/are my home. And I am full of gratitude they give me a shelter and job. I agree with James Michener what is he saying about Polish in "Poland" - we are born with sword in one hand and with brick in other hand. Straight after war we had...

Sydney is becoming a city of cyclists. I read about it almost in every daily newspaper. I love it and I give all my support to that. Herald writes: "number of trips in the city each day head toward 200000". Cycling is not only a great way of spending free time on weekend it is also a way thousands of people travel to work every day! Some tips to encourage bikers in Australia and turn down angry drivers (from: Sydney Morning Herald, April 28, 2009) : 1.We bikers we are entitled to use a whole lane on every road 2. We bikers we are allowed to overtake on the left of cars 3. We bikers we are allowed to ride abreast. Sydney is going my way : ) and on 5th of June I am going ot check out City of Sydney's World Environment Day cycling breakfast: http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/WhatsOn/html/custom/2234-event-details.asp?EventID=71150

Few days ago i got finally results from the first in my life exam in English. I believe that diligent and systematic blog writing has helped to me to reach my goal. I have panicked at reading part because it was tough, long scientific paper x3 and only one hour for it. But after all I got 7.0 out of 9.0. Next target is to make money on it : ) that is to find a good scholarship. Something tells me that this month I will dedicate to plants. I am working with many Australian ecologists and to find a common language with them I need to absorb some more knowledge on that field : )

Everyone heard about such fundamental organizations like Nazi in Germany before IIWW or Hezbollah in present Palestine. Sometime I think that invasive species have a lot of things in common with them. When you take a more careful look at the weeds you remove from protected area you will notice one striking feature. They do not sit well in the ground. It is much easier to pull them out than a native one. They concentrate on the surface of the soil. Like radicals they feed on very basic/simple ideas which are very popular. Look at the leaves of bitou bush. They are exceptionally wide and pale green. They organize their chloroplast in that manner which allows them to catch as much of sunlight in shady condition of local plants as possible. At the same time the natives stay conservative. They invest in small, hard leaves with high concentration of chlorophyll (it is a basic substrate of small factory called chloroplast). Badly organized societies with a high number of “feeling lost” indi...

How invasive species do it and is there any hope to fight them back? Graduates in environmental protection who are leaving their universities are fully convinced that biodiversity is the most valuable aspect of the nature. If we gain more plants we win higher plants diversity. Unfortunately not all alien species get adopted into local ecosystems. Some of them become invasive. Can we force those invaders to become an enriching part of local plant communities? Bitou bush ( Chrysanthemoides monilifera ) presents incredible skills in removing native individuals. At the moment around 80% of NSW coast is tightly covered with its yellow flowering twigs (Thomas 2002). First it out competes them; secondly it creates its own mono-community. Invasion is followed by changes in microclimate (Lindsay, 2004). The belowground conditions are altering as well. Lindsay (2004) writes that the nutrient cycling regime may shift to the one which is in favour of this “pain-in-the-ass” bush . There are many pa...