‘why are polish people so strong’ search

My answer is – we are not.
Some guys obviously are.
The old recipes from the First Republic and the Kingdom times include:
eat parsley
take łaźnia baths – with hot steam on rocks, birch twigs and well water
eat cooked food
ride a horse a lot
don’t stay at home too much (leave to a war before the good lady wife gets tired and starts nagging – Romania is the perfect destination, not too far and not too cold)

I hate my Polish builders: presentation of Poland

I really could not afford anyone else than S. with his two friends. I’m grateful for the crisis prices, too. Essentially I got the deal half off, and I’m receiving a proper legal receipt for it.
But personally this guy is a nightmare – he’s such a drama queen, that even I and my preoccupation with misery pale down. He calls me and texts me several times a day to say that everything is wrong. I call the boiler man to the gas leak – there is no leak. I e-mail the electrician with a complaint that he connected everything to one weak fuse – but he actually thinks the fuses are enough. I call the landlord. This, that – a never ending story.
This is the first refurbishment that I do without the help of my Parents, so really the first adult project; which means that I really have no clue. I do what the refurb guys tell me. But it looks as though they are just a bit off their heads.
Not to mention that the two friends started to look down at me with hatred when I paid someone else to fit the boiler in. Maybe I should have given them the money? Not sure.

What this has to do with presentation of Poland?

There is a part of our culture that is not really giving us credit. The split between the ‘poor’ and ‘rich’ is outrageous. Not in real money terms, since in Poland it’s not possible to starve. It’s in ‘feeling rich’ terms. Poor people hate the rich people with a passion.

Being assigned to the rich or poor categories is not based on much. I have a suit and get qualified as rich, even though I earn about 60% per month of what I’m paying the builders. They get to be on the poor side, so I have obligations towards them.

It’s easy to know who is poor – they have those eyes that are both hungry and wrathful. They dress to match their poverty.

This was a problem to me even in school and college. My Mother always says that ‘even when you’re begging, beg in your best clothes’. So when after the Uni I worked in an office job for 1200 and then 1700PLN per month net, I was classed as the fucking rich. My friends who were making 2-3000 PLN, were classing themselves as poor, on the basis that ‘it’s not enough’, and ‘inni majom‘ (others got).

This is an obvious relic after the early 20th century Marxist, Leninist, Communist and later Socialist Great Lies. The effects are insufferable till the present day. Personally it’s the worst for me when I’m expected to meet the bill for all my acquaintances, who earned double what I had. I had met those bills. But I only let people do that to me once. It’s more complicated when ‘friends’ are organizing a common budget party, and all contributors except me get their shared refunds – I am the rich one. I do my hair in a salon.

To an extent I am rich. I earn my national median salary, and with that money I’m able to buy designer suits, pay the mortgage for a new house and invest. But, it’s only because I really KNOW how to afford things. We waited to buy a house at the very lowest moment. I buy four suits per year – really expensive ones. I don’t buy other clothes. I don’t waste money in a pub, I only go once per month. I cook from scratch. If the ‘poors’ had that much discipline! With their money, I could run a charity and a Lexus, too.

I realize that there is a lot of bitterness in what I say. But watch out for that. if you spot the Hungry Eyes, pretend you are poor. Start complaining about mortgage repayments. Bow your neck. Don’t get involved.

Snow is back, corned beef rules

This low pressure is really exhausting.
I’ll tell you a culinary hint – corned beef is an English invention. It was used as food on the ships. There is always a braised beef sandwich or two available in our mean little canteen, and usually it beats anything else. Value of money is excellent, which matters to the petty accountant that I am. An it’s filling. And it’s salty. Yum.

‘why are polish people so cold?’ serach

Because it’s damp here, so the effective temperature is lower.

We are not cold, but we have a bubble of privacy around us. It’s my own personal world and a force-shield. To open it – introduce yourself. Other contact means include staring straight in the eyes and greeting.

Coincidently – Brits seem cold to us, too. it’s a different manner of contact altogether. Yours contact interface is always on, but not too interested. Our is mostly shut off, and rarely interested.

Enlightment of the Polka

actually – today I’ve spent half of the day seeing to my matters in town. It had dawned on me after speaking to delightful people in the Town Council, Police, Hospital and two Post Offices, that for a rare moment I’ve been outside of a hen cage. Outside of a corporation. That may be the main problem. Normally I only go to work in an air conditioned office or to the bank.
People outside of those two monstrous institutions – are a totally different sort.
I liked that.

English people – politeness issues

Ok, we all know how the legend of English politeness, mostly alive in old people, former WWII soldiers, clashes with the legend of English rowdiness, mostly alive in young city males and females. This is all very colourful, but it does not give the right picture of what can one expect in encountering a Brit.

First of all, this is a rant, so: Ron, skip that.

I’ve addressed this already, but that was when I was angry. I am no longer angry, because I gained some understanding of how the networking system functions. But, after weighing this in, I can’t say that networking excuses Anglophones from being polite.

The things that most of them seem to refer to as ‘politeness’ or ‘manners’, are simple customs. One can replace the ‘all right’ with the Japanese bow, Polish nod, old Polish one hand bow – and the result will be the same.But to change customs into manners and politeness, one needs the internal respect. The British culture still counts itself among the Christendom peoples (though largely just to piss off the Muslims), and since they sign up to it, they should know this: respect comes from recognizing the Creator that made us all. NOT the differences, class standing, race, financial status, looks and clothes. We are all the creatures of our benevolent God. If you dig deep enough, you will fins that this in not merely my religious ramblings, but the precise foundation of our European culture, with the free will, freedom to worship, marrying without royal consent and the like.

The respect is precisely what they lack. No amount of leaving the door open for me will ever convince me that people who refuse to do their jobs, bad-mouth, steal on every occasion are polite. No amount of naming one’s self a gentleman, will make you a gentleman, unless you possess that delicacy of feeling. Which their red faces just do not have, never had, and have slim to none chance of ever having.

For a fine example – the queries that I post to the relevant person at work remain unresolved, because he think that his time is too precious to waste for questions of some Polish temp. I received a two page e-mail about for it’s not his job, but there you go, and you can do it all yourself, really. That fit’s nicely in with other comments from other people – I wouldn’t be the person who does that, is a prime example. They can’t even be asked to provide the address of the person who DOES It can just remain undone.

They will instead defend one another, like my dear boss defends the guy with precious time. She told me the last time when Adam refused to work, that I’ve sent the e-mail 5 minutes too late. Unbelievable, but true.

It’s extremely amusing to work in a place where there are probably a couple of Aristos, since all the middle classers stand on their eyelids to appear arrogant. Only one fact is missing – one cannot be really arrogant if one is a wage slave, or am I mistaken?

Bowing their noses in public, eating at their desks and chomping on their chips must also serve to increase their standing in the world. I think. Else – why such diligence?

Since Adam copied my boss and all his employees in his e-mail to tell me off for addressing him, then the matter no longer concerns me. I will do no more to solve queries on this account. I’ll let them solve this among themselves.

Food for the ill – Polish foods to make you better

I miss Poland especially when I’m ill. England has an array of ready meals, fusion meals, pies and pastries – but nothing to increase the energy, warm up, and stimulate regeneration.

I’ve been eating quiche in hope of warming myself up, because I’m too feverish to cook. What I long for, is to go to the city centre to one of the Hortex bars and order a warming soup, a plate of cabbage cooked with flour and lardons, wheat groats and meat goulash.

Or, better yet, I want my Mom to cook me some royal broth, with 5 kinds of gelatinous meats, carrot, parsnips, celeriac, leek, parsley, and with pimento, pepper, laurel, juniper and salt. (remove blood by dumping in hot water, put in a vat of hot water for cooking, add spices, later add veg, take everything out when soft and drain. takes 4-6 hours)

Such as I am now, I won’t make it to the shops to go through the shelves of overly lean meats and finally settle for a braising steak and organic chicken. I’ll starve a bit, eat a croissant in the morning because it doesn’t require me to cook, eat some gruelling attempt at curry in the office canteen and starve at home at night.

I need a Polish take-away. Desperately.

Cecilia Woloch’s Carpathia

Another reprint from HERE.

CARPATHIA

Having rinsed off the soot and stink
of the Polish train,
having sung with the child.

Having eaten and laughed and wept,
had my vodka with apple juice,
my bread.

Having walked through the fields
at dusk, and into the forest
and back again–

meadows of buttercups,
thistles with bristling heads,
the first blue cornflowers of June.

Having opened my arms to the sky
falling back on itself
in my dizziness.

Having taken the small purple berries
that dropped from the wild bush
into my palm

–Siberian berries, like tiny plums–
put their sweet bitter inkiness
onto my tongue.

Having failed and failed at love.
Having gone anyway,
breath after breath.

Having trusted the world to be kind
and stood in the doorway
and listened for wolves

and heard my own dead in the high
grass whispering,
beloved, beloved, beloved.

Raf Uzar: Lost Polish tribe in Haiti

Hey, Raf, your post is so interesting to me that I’m linking it with a separate post. HERE

Raf writes about Polish Napoleonic soldiers sent to quell a rebellion, who turned sides and stayed in Haiti.
I am most grateful, Raf. I have honestly thought that we had a sin of a mass murder against a weaker nation on our collective hands.

Goodbye to anger – England, I’ve figured you out!

It dawned on me today.
It’s not that ‘they’re different’, it’s not that ‘they’re rude’, it’s not a plane. It’s simply that they are Islanders. Their world is constructed in such a way that demands networking, but does not demand going outside their network – rather attaching and adapting somebody else’s network. They even call this ‘networking’. How accurate.

So when they appear pushy to me, they are trying to fit me into the limitations of their nets. Nets are life. That’s why all the girls have to dress in clothes of the hour, everyone says the choral greetings, that’s why they have the communal Public Houses. That’s why offices are all open-plan. Phew.

And I thought that us being all European, Caucasian, Christian, we would think similarly! NOT AT ALL!!!

OK, this is a great thing for me, because even if I’m wrong – this is a useful template of behaviour that I can interact with them with.

Definitely – more chocolates to the office.

My frustration is over.

I now sit and think that all the racial and immigration issue, ‘they don’t live by our rules’, is not the same as I understood it to be. Not that they want to make people abandon their worse cultures for the better English. No. They just are frustrated with the lack of connections for their spiritual tentacles.

OK, I can have a tentacle. White Eagle one, but I hope it will be accepted.

Bring me lamb in mint sauce.