In 2006 when I came to the Island nobody so much as heard about this, even when I mentioned that Americans have it.  After five years, the shrewd business-people that you are, you have the sour cream and thick milk in tubes and grain coffee and even carrot juice. I wish I were that shrewd…

So I tried to cook the pink cold soup – and failed. Your soured cream needs some work, people. I poured some in the mug, added some soup, mixed well to even the temperature out, and poured this mixture in the pot of boiling beet juice soup. The cream separated which means that I’m off to the Polish shop to get the real stuff.

Very good, as Master Chen is prone to saying. One more time.

I was putting the new book cases in the hallway the other week, and I took this opportunity to review the books I’ve got. There’s the Genji, Narnia, War of the Rings, Robert Bly, Norman Davies and Ian Banks and there’s a lot of cheap paperback fantasy I buy on the way back from Poland. What I found is that I don’t want to keep any of those books. I just put them in the recycling.

It’s not only due to the mediocre writing, because you get that a lot in the genre anywhere. It’s also due to the topics: vampires, devils, ghost dogs, blood and magic. Nothing that would cheer me up.

I remember that twenty years ago the genre was a little more entertaining, and a little less poignant and accursed. So I went online to find something more modest – and I haven’t found any.

The Wrath of the Midday, The Russet Pack, Lord of the Ice Garden, Nighter – all very dark, cruel.

I didn’t want them. What’s wrong with all the young writers anyway?

How to be hot? Very easy – understatement and quark.

When we, Poles look at you, English, we see confidence, gift of speech, diplomacy, self-realization. And we envy those traits in you. We get jealous, and then we try to do something about it – for example by beating into your heads how we are betterrrrr…

From talking to English people I now realize that you have the same feeling. I’ve been told that we look like we have more fun in life, while the English feel like wall-flowers.

Is that the reason why you are so cocky towards us sometimes?

If yes then I can lift your mood up a little – we have always thought that you are awesome.

And it hit me: it’s a real emotion that I’m feeling. It’s nothing external: It’s too late to be culture shock because I’ve been here for 4.5 years already. It’s not personal because I don’t know most people with whom I have small talk. It’s not me because I’m an outgoing person with lots of friends and a go-getter.

What then??

So today in the last three hours I’ve spoken to a Polish business owner, a hugely successful guy and and English woman currently buying a flat.

The first conversation was:
‘Oh, dobry! (Good day).
Dobry!
What’s going on?
Need this and that.
Ok. It’s found there and there.
Ok, dzięki (thanks). And you can get that cheaper from those guys.
Ok, that’s useful. Which city are you from?
Lodz, you?
Warsaw village.
Nice
Nice
Come again. Bye.’

The conversation with the English woman:
‘oh it’s all lovely, lovely, and I love everything and my boyfriend is Portuguese and my niece has a Polish boyfriend and wow fantastic and I love your Polish dishes and all about everything and yeah I was just looking for a job… am i talking too much, sorry, he’s looking for a job, can do anything.’

All this loving everything was just smoke and mirrors, because that’s the way people are used to taking. They don’t speak straight for fear of losing something or other, some chance. This kind of speech does not carry any useful information, other than how stressed out, frightened, timid they are.

And since your poor Polka is an empath, that is trouble.

I get your mood on me. It stays with me. Anytime I’m in England, I take over your being frightened all the time, not feeling secure, wasting chances. And I proceed as you do – I took some accounting qualification training, even though I hold a degree. I took Assistant jobs. I live in a small town.

It’s good that I finally realized this. I can now do something about it. Avoiding English people on an Island full of English people is not a viable option, but maybe I can learn to disregard them.

Then my small talk will be truly English, because I now think that small talk is a shield English people raise against other people’s worries. That’s why you don’t tolerate negative comments about anything at all, that’s why to you it’s ‘whining’ and needs to be shouted at.

That’s also why people eat so much comfort food and drink wine and get out to Barcelona if they can only afford it.

But don’t worry too much – in Iceland they have it so much worse that they commit suicides.

The plan is now to buy a full spectrum lamp to get some UV, ignore people at all cost, and spend more time with foreigners.

Sorry, English. I’ll get back to you if you promise to stop worrying inside.

1. You are paying less for workforce
2. You get rents from Poles, because we have to live somewhere
3. We pay for food
4. We pay for media (electricity, mobile, Internet)
5. We buy consumer goods, eg. TV sets
6. We pay income tax, VAT on everything we buy, excise on alcohol and petrol, etc.

All that money contributes to your economy. That means 0.5 – 2 mln people extra spending money in your shops.
2 000 000 employees at 15 000 per annum (because most jobs Poles take are very basic) equals
30 000 000 000 pounds per year in Polish hands. Most people are able to save/send home maybe £200 per month.
12*200*2mln=4 800 000 000.

That means that for the last 7 years customers living in the UK (Poles) have been spending
25 200 000 000 pounds per year here.

There are two sides to this story. One thing that happens when we appear disrespectful is similar to what the Scottish people do – it’s an attempt to be straightforward, truthful, unbiased by Political Correctness. That may be coarse or hurtful in the end, but at least the effort to be truthful is something positive.

The other side is locked in the language structure of Polish. We have not only the casual speech vs. the ceremonial speech, we also have the black speak. We have 3 levels: not a black-white world as you do, but high-neutral-low world.

The low language is developed mostly for day to day life. There is no scientific research conducted using this speech pattern. But you can use this in daily conversations.

Why do we use the low language? It’s juicy, energetic, and fun. It’s entertaining to use it by contrast when you are for example an Art student. The contrast of the exalted with the defiled is often what constitutes a joke.

The words are usually nouns and verbs related to the body, people, animals, food etc. And yes there are nouns describing nations and yes they are meant to be rude.

Why are Polish people abroad particularity keen to use the low speech? I think it’s because ‘being abroad’ already constitutes a ‘being outside of’ experience exactly like those journeys in fables. We set out, leave the known world, and behave rough.

I believe that setting out for a journey using the exalted pattern would be much more stimulating. But when we come to England we don’t find an exalted world.

Mentally it’s a great exercise for me, because I’ve lodged myself between Polish and Anglophone memetic spheres. I can sometimes manage to switch my point of view from one to the other. For example, I can see the ‘Sex and the City’ as glamorous, stunning, entertaining – or as pointless, fashionable and simply ugly while un-reachably American.

Thanks to the Monkey I can break out of the two schematic, one as rigid as the other, and have a breath of the Chinese idea of what the world is and how it’s arranged.

Linguistically, it’s a joy. The translation uses words like ‘commode’ and ‘collation’. Haha, gotcha! You have those words! Bliss!

I enjoyed the visual side of this film, very well made indeed. I didn’t like the music at all, it was pompous and outdated. I enjoyed Tron soundtrack much more.

About the plot – I’m amazed that yet another SF film is really about the Absolute. In this one, there were actual references to God. It even was straightforward about our direct relationship with God. Wow. (This is exactly what I’m being taught in my Catholic studies BTW. No excuses – talk to Jesus directly.)

The amusing part was how the RC can look in a Manga. Very funny. Bleak like the most cruel Scottish Protestant communities. I guess it’s fashionable after the Dan Brown books. Or some of what the American Baptists think about the Catholics got through to the Manga writers (at least the American Baptists I’ve lived with in Alabama)? Who knows.

And Paul Bettany was playing very well, especially with his facial expressions.

Fill a large pot with water
Add 3 cubes of stock
Chop 10 new potatoes and put in the water
Chop a small bunch of string beans and add
Chop a small cauliflower piece and add
Chop a few broccoli florets and add

Cook until cooked thoroughly, serves 8.