20 east

Just a few snippets that caught my eye.

Polish health service kills poor & homeless people with bird-flu vaccine trials. According to the Telegraph. I always thought Grudziądz was a bit of a strange place! Coming only a few years after the story of Polish medics killing patients to sell their bodies to undertakers, this has to be bad news for the image of the Polish health service, not to mention the people they are apparently killing off.

The birth of a new dialect, Ponglish, already practised in this household!

Why do I get the feeling there’s a lot more behind the issues of CIA prisons in Poland and the missile shield than we’re being told? I don’t like the way the relationship between Poland the USA is shaping up, to be honest. Why are things like prisons and missile shields landing on our doorstep and why are they being kept secret from the people who will surely be the subject of attacks on such installations or attacks because we harbour such installations? I mean, everyone knows about Guano Bay (noticeably very far from any significant US populations) so what’s different about the Polish ones, if they exist at all. If they don’t exist, why can’t someone make it categorically clear that they don’t and never have?

According to this Telegraph article, both Lech and Donald have called for Polish wartime hero Władysław Sikorksi to be exhumed from his resting place in Wawel to be examined properly for signs that he was done-in by bad guys, possibly even British double-agent bad guys like Kim Philby.

Sikorski was a Polish hero. He didn’t invent any helicopters though, that was Igor, a Russian, but not involved in this affair as by the time of WWII he’d already been in the USA for 20 years. No, our Sikorski was the Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief of Poland and was in exile in London during WWII. He fell out with Stalin (not a hard thing to do by all accounts) over the question of the Katyń massacre, which he wanted to be investigated.

Falling out with Stalin was dangerous enough on its own but unfortunately for him he fell out with Stalin at a time when everyone else was kissing his ugly backside to try and bring an end to the war (Yalta and all that). The fact that his plane crashed on leaving Gibraltar in July 1943 was therefore treated with some considerable suspicion and has given rise to many conspiracy theories. More or less everyone and everything has been blamed for the crash, apart from simple mechanical failure. Winston Churchill, the Czech pilot, Kim Philby, a member of Soviet ambassador Maisky’s party (also on Gibraltar at the time) and even the possibility of the involvement of some bad Poles have been put forward as the culprits.

Suspicion of the Brits is fuelled by the fact that papers relevant to the case are still classified as secret and will not be released for 50 years or more. Those papers that have been released are not conclusive. Suspicion of Polish guilt is fuelled by the arrest and subsequent death of Stefan Rowecki and Ignacy Oziewicz, two of Poland’s top commanders who were betrayed to the Gestapo (by bad Poles!) in June 1943, only one month before Sikorski also died. In the space of two months, Poland had lost three very significant figures. Coincidence?

So, what are we expecting to discover from a 65 year old corpse that will shed light on all this? A bullet hole in the skull seems to be where most of the money is being put. I imagine that might have been noticed at some point prior to entombment, but maybe not. If there is one, I suppose that means he was shot by the Czech pilot who then donned his life-jacket (for the first time ever, apparently) before crashing the plane and becoming the only survivor of the crash. If that’s the case then the whole circus will rumble on about who the pilot was working for and we won’t really be much further ahead in identifying the real villain. If there is no bullet hole, then it seems to me that we’ll have disturbed a hero for no good reason.

That’s assuming the exhumation goes ahead at all.

There I was standing in the newsagents, some guy comes in and asks if they sell plasters, the kind you put on a cut finger. The sales assistant says that yes, they do sell them and points to a small box of plasters, perhaps 10 inside. They guy asks if they sell them individually. They assistant says they don’t, they only sell these small boxes. The guy walks out, dripping blood.

The same thing happens with batteries. I walked into a camera shop once to buy some regular AA batteries. I picked up a carton of 4 and handed it to the guy behind the counter. He asked me how many I wanted and I looked confused. He then asked me if I wanted the whole packet and I said that I did. I bought the whole packet of batteries and left.

There are other things that fall into my category of “sold in packets” that are often sold individually here but for the life of me I can’t remember what the others are right now. I find the whole thing very strange.

I was standing outside the office. Some guy drives up in a brand new Audi R8 (bastard!). He gets out. He looks like a reformed mafia-boy who’s addicted to pumping iron and fashion accessories. His girlfriend gets out. She looks like a Thai prostitute. They go in to the Holiday Inn. The only surprising thing about this is that the R8 is parked on the street. Even that’s not so surprising these days, there is almost always a swanky car parked on that street. It only becomes surprising when you remember back to how it was when you arrived in Poland all those years ago. In those days nobody would dream of having such a car in the country, let alone parking it on the street. I remember fondly one of my first bosses in Poland, fresh off the plane from the good old US of A, insisting that he needed a big Volvo to drive around in. Everyone told him it was a stupid idea but he wasn’t shifting his position. He got the big Volvo, it was stolen within a week of arriving. They stopped him in the street, forced him out of the car and drove off in it! He got another smaller Volvo, that was broken into within a week and then stolen within a month. He decided to use taxis.

While I’m on a nostalgia trip.

Anyone remember cash? Good old gotówka? When I arrived here I was loaded with cards, the stupid bankers had been showering me with them in the UK. It got to the point where most of my junk mail was someone sending me another credit card, usually with a picture of a dog on it or with a funky name like “The BONGO card”. So I brought all this rubbish to Poland with me and promptly discovered that it was utterly useless. In those days there was only one way to pay for things and that was cash. Give someone a credit card and they looked at you like you were mad or something so the only card that got exercised was the cash-card in ATMs and in banks to withdraw cash. Look at where we are now, the complete opposite.

Restaurants. We used to eat out a lot before the fruit of our loins arrived so we knew pretty much every restaurant in town and let me tell you, that was hard work back then. In the good old days the life expectancy of a new restaurant was about a month. They would pop up and then disappear like those gophers in the bash-the-gopher game. Always with some new “theme” and surprisingly well decorated (for something that was destined for closure). It is still a little like that but it’s calmed down considerably.

I was cross-checking the cost of flights later this year back to the UK and comparing BmiBaby to East Midlands with BA to Heathrow. Comparison, by the way, for 2 adults and a child return in September is BmiBaby around 1,200 (including allocated seats and baggage) and BA around 2,000 (PLN).

Anyway. As I wound my way through the BA pages I found they are now kindly offering me the option of offsetting the carbon footprint of our flight!! This is one of those “firsts” moments in life, when something completely weird slaps you round the chops and makes you say “What the f***?”, or something less unsavoury depending on your vocabulary.

Yes, offsetting your footprint is now an option and something you can, no doubt, brag about while in the BA lounge or during the flight:

“Jolly good, this idea of offsetting one’s footprint, don’t you think?”

“Snort, snort! Jeremy! You are so awfully funny!”

So, if you were contemplating offsetting your footprint, as I’m sure you were, below are some details from the BA site. For the three of us, the cost of offsetting is 73.50 PLN. This will be given to the kind gentlemen at Morgan Stanley who will invest it in “green” things, like dollar bills in their account, one assumes.

Offset the carbon emissions for these flights

You can help minimise the impact of your flying by offsetting your carbon emissions. The total carbon emissions from your itinerary are 1.14 tonnes and the cost of offsetting your emissions is PLN73.50.

Your money will go towards UN certified emission reduction projects.

* Please be aware that once your carbon offset contribution is paid, it cannot be refunded.

There are two key elements to our calculation of the suggested carbon offset contribution for your flights:

* The amount of CO2 produced from your flying
* The cost of certified emission reduction

Calculation of the CO2 produced from your flying

We calculate the CO2 of your flying using UK Government data for the carbon emissions for air travel. This tells us how much CO2 is produced for each kilometre travelled. This amount reduces the further you travel, as flying longer distances is more fuel-efficient.
From To Distance in km Kg of CO2 per km Number of passengers Tonnes
Warsaw Gatwick (London) 1458 x 0.13 x 3 = 0.57
Gatwick (London) Warsaw 1458 x 0.13 x 3 = 0.57
The carbon footprint for your journey is 1.14
Cost of certified emission reduction

The cost of the certified emission reduction price of the offset is based on the market price, which may change from time to time due to supply and demand and also currency exchange rates.

Morgan Stanley, who are experts in sourcing certified emission reductions, will use your payment to fund a portfolio of projects selected for our customers to support. The cost of these projects is PLN64.46 per tonne. The cost of offsetting your carbon emissions is 1.14 tonnes x PLN 64.46 = PLN 73.50.

Spain deservedly won the final of Euro 2008, beating Germany 0-1, and have been crowned the European Champions. It is their first major trophy for 44 years so they’re all very happy about it.

They played the better football on the night, Germany looked all out of ideas. I’m very happy it wasn’t decided on penalties. Spain are quite a young team so it might be worth a bet on them as well as Russia for the next world cup in 2 years time.

Of my three Fantasy League teams, one would have finished 3rd, another would have finished bottom but the one I entered to the Super League actually finished 6th out of 11. Mid-table mediocrity, something I’m used to as a West Ham fan.

Now the championships are over, I have to come up with other ideas for posts in here! Mind you, the Olympics aren’t far away! He he.

EURO FINAL TRIVIA

Spain have won the European Championship for the second time. In 1964, they also lifted the trophy after beating the Soviet Union 2-1 in the final. In 1984, they also reached the final but lost 2-0 against France.

Just as Greece four years ago, Spain have kept clean sheets in all three knock-out rounds after the group phase.

As well as winning the European Championship three times (1972, 1980, 1996), Germany have now also lost three European Championship finals (1976, 1992, 2008).

With four goals, David Villa has become top scorer at Euro 2008 without having played in the final. That is the fewest goals for a European Championship top scorer since 1992, when Dennis Bergkamp, Tomas Brolin, Henrik Larsen and Karl-Heinz Riedle all scored three goals.

At the age of 38 years and 232 days, Germany goalkeeper Jens Lehmann became the oldest player ever to appear in the European Championship final, breaking the record set by Arnold Muhren (37 years, 23 days) in 1988.

At the age of 69 years and 337 days, winning coach Luis Aragones has become the oldest coach ever to appear in the final of a European Championship. Aragones is more than four years older than Otto Rehhagel (65 years, 327 days) was four years ago when Greece beat Portugal in the Euro 2004 final.

I’ve just ordered a new sat-nav toy, a Garmin Nuvi 255 WT. I found this same model in Poland at GPS24 site. Amazing price difference between ordering from amazon.co.uk and buying here in Warsaw. In the UK the 255WT model will cost you 753 PLN and here in Warsaw it will cost 1,024 PLN. That’s a 36% increase in price! Whether you buy here or UK doesn’t affect the usability, or the mapping so it’s just one of those things that makes life in Poland not as cheap as some might imagine.

The whole electronics market in Warsaw pisses me off big time. All we have is a (limited) choice of old models at inflated prices. Why can’t Poland have the same choices and prices as the UK?

We’ll be testing the Garmin out on our forthcoming sightseeing trip to the UK. This is planned to take in North Wales, the Lake District and a whole bunch of other places I’ve forgotten how to get to. After that, Marta will have a run with it around Warsaw and then in August we’ll try out its Spanish capabilities. Should be fun!

If anyone is interested in a review after use, let me know.

Note: Amazon will only ship to a UK address, which is not an issue for me (parents), but then again, it’s probably not an issue for most Poles these days either. You can use a Polish credit card to pay and a Polish invoice address, but the ship-to address must be in the UK.

I bookmarked this article a while back, about how “scientists” have decided (calculated, determined, whatever) that children born of men over the age of 45 die at twice the rate of those born of younger fathers.

As a man who fathered his first, and currently only, child at 44 and as someone who (now aged 49) would not object to hearing the patter of tiny feet once again, I must say that this shock revelation is rather disturbing.

Fortunately, as I’ve mentioned in here before, I am a man with a throbbingly healthy disregard for most of what modern “scientists” have to say about how I should live my life. I therefore don’t believe a word of it and await the day when I read about how older fathers raise spectacularly healthy and insanely intelligent children. But me aside, this kind of news, especially when the paper decides to use headlines such as

Children are almost twice as likely to die before adulthood if they have a father over 45, research has shown.

must potentially be very frightening for many couples.

They then go on to explain that

A total of 100,000 children born between 1980 and 1996 were examined, of whom 830 have so far died before they reached 18, the majority when they were less than a year old.

The way I read it, that’s 0.83% of children died before age 18 and most of them before they were a year old. One has to assume that a fair proportion of those deaths were from causes other than having an old git for a dad? They don’t bother explaining. So, if a dinosaur like me has managed to father a child who is now five years old, what does that mean? I should be worried that she might not reach 18 or I should assume she’s one of the 99.17% of kids that live a normal life despite the geriatric father?

Just to confuse matters even more they add that

The research also found higher death rates among children of the youngest fathers, especially those below the age of 19.

Aha! So now you can’t be old, but you can’t be young either! I see, now it all makes sense. They did attempt to explain the young deaths though with

However, the study said these differences were explained by the risks of teenage motherhood and poorer diet and lifestyle.

Okay. So old dads kill (less than 1% of) kids by being old and having crappy sperm, maybe. That’s a bad thing. Young people kill their (no idea how many) kids by being young and stupid. That’s “howeverable”, not worth making a fuss about.

Tell you what I think, “Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent”, (almost certainly younger than 45), your article SUCKS and perhaps you might like to think about the impact such tripe could possibly have on people as old as, but not as thick-skinned and cynical as, me.

Down’s syndrome we know about, everybody knows about that so don’t use it to try and beef up your pathetic copy. The rest you can shove where the sun doesn’t shine!

Where do they they find these reporters? And those “scientists”?

The Polish language is delightful although at times I do wonder which particular hallucinogenic root was being chewed on when certain ‘rules’ were decided.

I’m recently intrigued by two matters;

1. Why are there different endings for one, two/three or four and then five or more? I can relate to their being something different for singular versus plural, but what’s so special about two/three and four that they require an ending all of their own?
2. Why is there, in some cases, a different ending when you don’t have something versus when you do have something? Why does the negativity have to be emphasized in these cases? Of course, we all know the Poles love being negative, phrases like “nic nie mam” (nothing, I don’t have) are common and I’ve got used to them by now but when it comes to the difference between I have a car or I don’t have a car, why have a different ending.

I should add that after the amount of time I’ve been here some of the strange things, like some of the double negatives, do not ‘jar’ with me any more. I’m just accepting that that’s the way it is. The examples above though, do still bug me. I wonder what it is that makes my brain dislike some rules but accept others, even when they are equally strange?

I should also add that most of my interest, certainly in the case of 2-4, is in the matter of what was it about 2-4 that made someone think they needed to be treated differently from 5 or more? Was there some historical reason like, I don’t know, if you killed between 2-4 people in battle you got more land from the King than if you killed one but less than if you killed five or more? What other possible reason could there be for it, aside from mind altering drugs?

ENGLISH

One beer
Three beers
Five beers
One hundred beers

One car
Three cars
Five cars
One hundred cars

POLISH

Jedno piwo
Trzy piwa
Pięć piw
Sto piw

Jeden samochód
Trzy samochody
Pięć samochodów
Sto samochodów

You’ll notice that for good measure they also change the word for “one”!!!

ENGLISH

I have a car
I don’t have a car

POLISH

Mam samochód
Nie mam samochodu

One last linguistic issue that is driving me nuts is the difference between “ciapka” (spot / dot) and “czapka” (cap / hat).This is all about the difference between pronunciation of “ci” and “cz”. Of course, I didn’t know I had a problem for a very long time, until my family decided to let me in on the secret that for years now I’ve been telling my daughter to “put on your spot/dot”, or ask her “where is your spot/dot”. Must have been very amusing - HA bloody HA. I genuinely cannot hear any difference between the two AT ALL unless the speaker emphasises the difference to a stupid extent. I am also completely unable to pronounce the two words any differently. Yet. Give me another 10 years and I’ll have it down!

I had similar trouble for a very long time, and still do if I’m not concentrating, with “miś” and “mysz”. They at least look very different but I can assure all you non-Poles that you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them if you heard them. They both closely resemble “meesh” but the first one really is close to “meesh” while the second is more of a “mysh”. Impossible to explain because of the funky way they say the “y”.

Well, gosh, that’s the end of those wizzo Russian boys then!

“Game of two halves” springs to mind, as it often does with football. I came in about 20 minutes into the second half and saw a Russia that were better contained by Spain than they had been previously but were still showing the touches and determination that should have led to a goal. Arshavin was either having a bad day or being very well marked but Pavlyuchenko was making the most of it.

Then came half-time and with it, the end of Russia’s tournament. Somebody switched the electricity off and Russia just ceased to exist, particularly after they went a goal down. It really did look like another football cliché “boys vs men” from that point on. Did they not like the rain perhaps, I would have thought that would be more of an issue for Spain though? Given that “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain”, I would venture to suggest that this Spanish team were raised on the plains of Spain, as opposed to any other geographical area that country might have. The Russian’s must have spent all their energy getting this far, they were worn out, certainly looked like it and a wet pitch isn’t going to help. Either that or Russia is trying to clinch a deal with Spain to supply gas or something. Wouldn’t surprise me. The only good thing I can say about Russia in the second half is that they managed not to lose 0-6.

So, top marks to the Spanish coach, Luis Aragones, top tactics apart from not playing Fabregas from the start. If he doesn’t start the final I’ll be amazed. Well done the Spanish players.

What to expect in the final then? Hard to say. Spain played a much duller game against the bigger and more experienced Italians than they did tonight. Will they get boring again against ze Germans, or will they go for it? Should be a good game anyway.

Just watched Germany do what I thought they might do to Turkey. A good game and all credit to the Turks, they had ze Germans rattled for most of the game but, underestimate ze Germans at your peril. I think they’ll face Russia in the final and, well, who knows, but I think the Russians have the same energy as the Turks but more skill, especially in defence.

Anyway, I came here to say the problem with Euro 2008 is knowing what to focus on:

THE GOALS?

THE BEER? (this one is very good by the way, best I’ve found in Poland. Tasty, good strength and not much gas. Thanks to “Graham the English teacher” for putting me onto it.)

or THE GIRLS?