Polish Man in New World

The same is happening in Poland. An unmarried and childless politician has a great chance to become a president. I talk of course about Jarosław Kaczyński. It might be shocking for conservative part of human society but it is a very popular strategy among social animals. Ants and bees for instance produce thousands of sterile individuals. They turn out to be more productive and more efficient since they do not have to care about their own offspring. (refer to lectures of Elliott Sober). Some time ago I was standing there in a White Rabbit gallery in front of enormous photo and wondering what does it mean: It means that Julias all over the world become more visible and more powerful. I fancy that. I wish that next soccer world cup will present only national female teams : )

Is a spirit of such countries Argentina, Brazil and Poland shifting from Catholicism to Soccerism? It may be so, especially after last news on different abuses among the priests. Every Wednesday evening we collect guys from Uni and play it. Last game was exceptionally spiritual. First of all one of our best player Andres is leaving to his home country and that was his last game with us. We may never see him again: Second of all we experienced such team spirit like never before. Communion. We were challenged by a group of self-confident and smiling Spanish looking guys. It was a tough and exciting game and we won : ) The Spanish looking guys lost their good mood : ) Although the fact it all happend in Sydney there was not a one Australian guy playing with us. They seem to be too lazy and too girlie for such an intensive game like soccer. They enjoy more cricket - All what you do there is staying in the field and watching a flying ball. And it seems that the most importan...

The experience of entering the Polish House in Sydney does not differ from entering the Estonian one (Eesti Maja). It smells the same, like someone decided to collect all rusty antiquates from the past exactly here. There were paintings of Estonian landmarks displayed on the walls around. I recognized the national hero Kalevipoeg, Jaani church and other buildings from Tartu and Tallinn too. I could not remember the real explanation for Vastla Day. Before that day I was boasting around that I go for a party to celebrate some kind of less-known Estonian hero called Vastel. Me and Christina were treated with bear, with pea soup, sausages and of course Vastla sweet bread rolls. It was very yummy. In between the meals we were taught that this day is nothing but equivalent of English Ruby Tuesday and therefore strongly connected to Christian tradition. It was introduced into pagan Estonian society during the Swedish occupation. (something like “vastlamen” means in Swedish to fast). But this ...

But I believe that Mark O’Connor is right. That truth is very inconvenient. There is too much of us in this world and politicians still push on population growth. More people, bigger demand – higher prices of goods. Business is business. Who cares about limited resources of our small planet? I recommend this book for everyone who does not want to be fooled anymore: A third century Christian author understands that already: “As our number and demands grow greater, our complaints against nature’s inadequacy are heard by all. The scourges of pestilence, famine, wars, and earthquakes have come to be regarded as blessing to overcrowded nations, since they serve to prune away the luxuriant growth of the human race” (page58)

I read books. Christina recognizes a good book much quicker than I do : ) It is absorbing me so much that I leave a little of attention to her. I take a bath with the book, I go for shopping with the book and I eat with the book: This time it was about “The Capitalism Delusion” by Bob Ellis. He brings up so many interesting arguments against free market fundamentalism that you feel like you want to throw a shoe at Bush again : ). I love the books which make me more and more awaken. Suddenly you understand more about the mechanisms turning the globe. Inspiring.

I breathe slowly, very slowly when I read the last book by Tim Winton. It has passed few months already since I grabbed that from the top shelf in a local bookstore. It is a light story. It is that light that it may happen I will never finish it. It is too long way someone describes young boys playing. This time the game name is ‘ surfing ’

As long as I am alive I write. I do not know how many days ahead of me is left. I was inspired by review on the book of Brigid Delaney “This restless life” (SMH Spectrum 29-20.08.2009, p.26). She has a pessimistic approach to the life full of actions. I understand she might be tired – “in her 34 years she held 144 jobs, lived in 15 cities and searches for love through all the modern mechanism”. But she seems to forget about billions of people living on the country side who desperately want to get away from those places where time stands still like water in their ponds. A Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz managed to leave Europe just before II WW started. And he didn’t come back to take part in it. He stayed in Argentina. A war was for him only a means to deal with boredom. Pre-war Europe was sleeping, all her citizens were trapped in routine of predictable life. German philosophers have found out that you can divide people into two classes: lords and sub-people. Since then everyone in Eu...

I don't write anymore as many posts as I used to. My life got fully routinized. Monday and Tuesaday I take train to Macquarie University, Wednesday till Friday I take train to the one of the Nature Reserve I am assigned to by my second employer - Sydney Bush Regeneration Company. Even the book I read during my rides seems to be the same one since I started to work: It is about one older, fully routinzed guy from Bern in Switzerland who out of all sudden decides to change his everyday (rail)way. I am close to finish this book finally : ) - only around 200 pages to go. What makes us run like robots according to detailed daily schedule? Are we hypnotized so much by rising numbers on our account? Or it is a trade-off of so called secure life? Thanks God we have weekends. Thanks God we have death and art which shake us up : ) Thrill me, Kill me: U2:

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...

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...

I must say that bush regeneration career I started much before I came to Australia : ) This photo was taken in Summer 2008: On my right Sulo from Finland holds trimming machine and on my left I hold Toomas from Estonia. Great Guys! It was project called "Summer Academy" organized together with Matsalu National Park. Let me explain you what it was all about: Puisniit it is an Estonian word for "Wooded Meadow". Human is able not only to destroy but also to enrich local environment. Wooded meadows started to appear probably before mowing was invented in the Baltic area. Multifunctional use of the land around settlements, where selective cutting of trees, collecting of twigs for leafy fodder, and grazing were used, in combination resulted in a quite stable wooded meadow like ecosystem already since 4000 years ago. Mowing by scythe from about 2000 years ago gave them their typical form. The old-fashioned meadow management changed local meadow into one of the world's ...

We just came from the eastern visit at home of very nice people from Canberra. Thanks Carla! After great eastern hunting, visiting Parliament house and national museum plus long talks with Canberrian I am all loaded with fresh informations on this region. Australian have build up their capital by themselves relatively recently. The spot was chosen as a result of the fight between two big cities Sydney and Melbourne (in the half distance between them). They both wanted to bear a name of capitol. And maybe that is why it is still very confusing issue. Since we Europeans hear more often about Sydney we can't remember what is the capitol of Australia : ) In Estonia it is clear. Tallinn is the biggest city and at the same time it is a center of political and cultural life in this small country. It gained its present name and status after IWW on 24.02.1918 -only 5 years after Canberra was given officially its name on 12.03.1913. In Europe the meaning of the place names is usually very sp...

It is downpouring for the last two days. I haven't seen so much rain in Sydney since I am living here. It makes me think of the country I used to live before I reached Red Land. Let me cut-and -paste an oficial line about it from my CV : ) From November 2007 until September 2008 I was employed by Grüne Fee Eesti Company located in Tartu region, southern Estonia – the largest greenhouse in this part of Europe. I was responsible for all works connected with growing the plants (sowing, planting, packing). I ve been biking to-and-from GF regardless the weather conditons, so I think I have a right to make kind of generalization : ) about Estonians. It seems that the rain is locking them up in their houses. They kind of worship their own solitude and silence. That is why it is a big event if I get some news from my ex-Estonian friends. 'Gerli on Eestlane' means Gerli is Estonian - Estonian who wrote to me after long long break, exactly at the time of heavy rains in Sydney : ) Som...

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.

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...

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...

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.