Why I prefer not to fly with Aeroflot

This story really happened and it happened to a good friend of my father. I don't know the details, but here is the story as I heard it:

It was in the 90's and the friend of my father was flying with Aeroflot, which is a Russian airline, to a destination somewhere in Russia. In the middle of the flight they had to land unexpectedly whereupon the pilot announced through the loudspeakers: "Ladies and Gentlemen, we are very sorry, but we run out of fuel and thus cannot fly any further".
The passengers decided to chip in to pay for the fuel; the tank was refilled and the plane could take off again.

I wonder, however, were the passengers really paying for fuel or for the pilots summer house on the Bahamas?

Christmas Spirit

Dear Readers (wherever you are, if you are),

For Christmas a Calvin and Hobbes strip:

With love,
Tash

Winter flights

Since I'm in the UK I might as well talk about the weather.
As you all probably know - it snowed. It snowed a lot, and then it snowed some more. The sight of London covered under a white blanket is absolutely delightful, but that of airports is rather dreadful.
I really don't like flying in winter. Whenever I go back home for Christmas there is always the possibility that I will have an airport Christmas. Last year was pretty close: during my stopover in Amsterdam, on my way from Seoul to Warsaw, so much snow started falling, that it looked as if the god's were having a pillow fight up in the skies and all their bed-clothing was just being torn apart.
While I was waiting for my connection volunteers and airport staff were arranging rows of army beds. A woman sitting next to me was repeating like a mantra: "I tell you, I tell you, we won't take off." I was so tired after the previous 11-hours flight that everything seemed very far away, unreal, like someone else's dream. Nevertheless, after a long wait, we finally boarded, got de-iced, and took off.
Once I got home, where everything smelled like cookies and bigos [a traditional polish cabbage dish, which my father does every Christmas], and I sat with my parents in our winter-garden, I could finally marvel at the beauty of this white, silent cover that spread over the world.

British humor

A conversation I had today with a British gentleman:

British Gentleman: Where are you from?

Me: Poland

BG: Is anybody left there?



* A short note for those, who are not familiar with some of European prejudices: after joining the EU many Poles migrated to England (and other EU member countries) in search for work, and many Europeans were worried that cheap Polish labor would steal their jobs.

London state of mind

So here is a confession I have to make: I think I have a little crush on London. It's not this crazy passionate love that I have for Seoul, but I feel that London and I have many more good moments ahead and, who knows, maybe one day we will become something more? It's just so full of beautiful people and buildings and art galleries and good house music and red buses and beautiful accents and and and... and it's time to visit again!
After a short stopover in Cambridge I'll arrive in London on Friday afternoon and I am soooo looking forward to that. That city is full of surprises. The last time I was visiting I bumped into two Korean friends - and I didn't even know they were in Europe! I went to St. Pauls for some sight-seeing and I saw them there, standing and absorbing that mystic atmosphere of old churches. I couldn't believe my eyes, so I kept staring for a few minutes before I decided to go over and say hi.

Tomorrow 7pm (GMT+1) I'm taking off! London, surprise me!!

The beauty ideal

One summer day in Korea I bumped into a friend that I haven't seen for several months. She was wearing black shorts and a black tang-top. I was so stunned by how good she looked, that I couldn't turn my eyes away. I remember making a mental note to buy such black shorts asap.
She must have noticed my staring, because she said: " Don't look at me like that, I know, I need to go on a diet... I was in the US for the past two months, and I got this damn tan and gained weight..."*  And then I realized! It was not the black shorts! That girl had finally some legs, and breasts, and a bottom! And the color of her skin, my goodness, what a pretty brown it was! She looked so unlike most Korean girls with their sickly pale complexions and bodies without any curves.
Of course my friend went on a diet, and she started using some whitening creme (yes, they sell whitening facial cremes in Asia). I haven's seen her since that one day in summer, yet I believe that by now she looks again just like any other Korean girl - thin, flat, shape- and colorless. But that's just my subjective view on beauty, as far as I know most Koreans are very much in love with the anorectic type.


* most Koreans talk openly about looks and weight

Snowfall in Korea

Since it snowed today for the first time this year, i thought it might be a good idea to tell you about the snow in Korea.
Last year, an unfortunate coincidence resulted in me coming back from Europe to Seoul on the very same day that the whole city got paralyzed by a heavy snowfall. There were no people in the streets, and absolutely no traffic, everything was swamped under piles of snow. The bus from the airport, the only moving object out there, was slowly elbowing its way through the empty streets. It wasn't the end of the world, but it seemed damn close.
To me, the snowfall wasn't worse than any other snowfall one experiences each winter in the northern parts of Germany or Poland, but in Korea it seemed like the end of the world. Admittedly, if an equal amount of snow fell on Rome, the reaction would be probably similar to the Korean one. In fact, the really bizarre part comes now:
In the days after the snowfall no snowploughs cleared the streets, no floods of saltwater poisoned the ground, nothing. People used brooms and shovels to sweep some parts of the sidewalks, but not all, so that bruises and broken bones became a part of everyday life. Cars crawled through the white streets pushing the snow to the sides. In result, brown snow was piling along the sidewalks, and when the sun came out people started to throw the snow back on the streets, so that cars would crush it and the warm sunlight melt it. This process lasted for days: people would shovel the snow on the streets, cars would crush it, and the sun would melt it. There was water everywhere, water that in the night turned to ice...
I was once told by a Korean, that Koreans make the best shoes in the whole world; I would add to that, that they also make the very finest ice-skating-rings for cars I have ever seen.

Memories of a boy

When I was eight years old my family moved for a few years to Germany. At that time I couldn't speak any German, but I was to enter right away into a regular German primary school. Before my first day of school I memorized just one sentence: “Entschuldigung, wo ist die Toilette?”, which means: “sorry, where is the toilet?”.
I do not remember much from that time, but I remember distinctly one incident: one day after school, when I was on my way home, a little boy from another class followed me, and when nobody could see us he pushed me so that I fell. I turned to face him and for a brief second I looked in his eyes, and then he run away.
I told my parents about what happened, my parents told the teacher, and the teacher scolded the little boy. The boy approached me never again, but during breake-time he would always glare at me.
My parents explained to me that the little boy was in love with me, and that all little boys are a bit awkward about expressing their affections and so he pushed me - you know, something like pulling a girl's hair. Of course I didn't believe them - I was eight, but not dumb. There has never been any love in his eyes. I was sure that the boy pushed me because I was different, because whenever I tried to speak German strange sounds would come out of my mouth.
We were too young to understand what racism means, however, isn't racism exactly this – hating somebody because he or she is different and we cannot completely understand them?

So, what language do you speak?

When I am abroad one of the first questions people usually ask is: “where are you from?”. The follow up question is often: “so what language do you speak in Poland?”. Many people are surprised to learn that we do not speak English in Poland and instead have our own language – Polish. I used to be a little annoyed by that, but now I don't mind.
Today I met a girl from Equator and one of the first questions I asked her was: “so what language do you speak in Equator?”.

'Everybody's a Little Racist'

To round up the previous post, a little video from the superb musical "Avenue Q":



Now that's what I call a healthy approach to racism :)

Funny thing: in the British version of the musical they do not mention Polish people, instead they joke about French. I guess there are too many Poles in the UK now and they would become very very upset about such a comment.

White Robinson and black Friday

Today in microeconomics we were talking about a two-men economy, with Friday and Robinson Crusoe as examples. On the wall was a picture of a white Robinson and a black Friday. Some of the examples given by the lecturer were a bit drastic, for example starving a person, which started a wave of semi-racial jokes. When the lecturer asked: "so, who in our economy should get no food", a voice from the crowd answered: "of course the black". This caused an interesting division: we were no longer students, we were white and black students.
You rarely hear Germans speaking about color, race (oops, pardon me using such a naughty word), or similar topics - a stigma from the WWII. The lecturer broke an unspoken taboo and it was interesting to watch the reactions. Some people were embarrassed, some laughed nervously, of course there were also those, who didn't react in any way (but only few of them were sitting in my corner of the lecture hall). I was wondering, how it was possible, that mature twenty-something students would make such a fuss after seeing a picture of a white and a black man.
I come to the conclusion that in Germany race (oops, I did it again) is still a very heated topic and despite the efforts of the '68-movement the past was not cut off completely. It is socially inappropriate to vent on race-issues (eg. through comedy, satire, jokes etc...) and many people seem not to know how to react when a race-related topic is brought up. A lot of fuss is made when somebody says something "inappropriate" and I am not sure if that's the best reaction.
From what I have noticed, in America race seems also a big issue. One of my black-American friends was often saying that there are only two races in America: blacks and whites, and all the rest is siding either with one or the other. I think it a bit of an exaggeration, but he made it quite clear, that America is not as color-blind as it would like to be.
In Poland we hate other Poles, or gypsies, or Jews, but there are probably too few blacks to collectively hate them.
Interesting enough, when you travel through Chinese villages, people do not care whether you are white, or black, or brown, or purple, or green, or silver - sure, they will be curious, but they will welcome you no matter what color you are. I guess they have seen to few green people to hate them.

On men and women

I have been once asked by a man if I liked to be a woman. It was the middle of the night, and I couldn't sleep tossing from side to side, and he woke up and asked me: Tash, tell me, do you like to be a woman? He took me by surprise, after all it is not a question you expect at 4am in the morning.

Yes, I like to be a woman. I said.

Really? He asked.

Really, I answered. So he turned and went back to sleep, but I kept awake till the morning.

I think it is a great privilege to be a woman. Anti-conception gave us the liberty to live the lives we want, yet we kept the right to be weak and protected, at least in the societies that I know.

PC Bang

One time after dinner my Korean friends were debating where to go next. After short deliberation they decided to go to a PC Bang, which means internet cafe in Korean. Since I didn't feel like checking my emails, I said I would go home. My friends tried to convince me to stay, but a stiff dark room full with computers wasn't exactly my idea of a nice evening and so I left.
They seemed really surprised that I would not go, and I was really surprised that they came up with something like PC Bang. Yet back then we all lived in dorms, which we shared with room-mates, thus I explained to myself, that they wanted to chat on skype or enjoy a few minutes of semi-privacy while surfing the web. How wrong I was I learned only much much later.
Time and again my Korean friends, all together, would go to a PC Bang - to them going to a PC Bang was just another form of group activity, just like playing pool, or drinking, or coffee.
Despite having lived in Asia for two years I have never been to a PC Bang, I just cannot understand what is so fun about collective web-surfing. Whenever my friends tried to tag me along, I would just say, that it's a cultural difference, that I just cannot overcome.

On people and culture

When you meet somebody from a different, unknown culture you are bound to ask yourself at some point: where does the person end and the culture begin?

Maybe from beginning to end, from head to toe, from the capital letter to the dot at the end of the sentence it is not the person that is speaking, but a new and fascinating culture?

Maybe it is not the other person that becomes your world, but the other persons world that becomes your own?

Tiger in a cage

For some time I dated a guy from a rich influential Korean family. As you would expect from a son of rich parents he was an excellent golfer and rather popular with girls. He treated everybody with great respect, especially his mother. Yet he lived in a shadow.

He did not know his father well, he feared his father, even hated. He seemed overwhelmed by this grey eminency, never able to rise to the expectations. He told me, that when he was a child the weekends were the worst - with his father home the hours would drag endlessly. Yet at the same time he lived in awe of his father and he knew that he would become the same father figure some day.

Of course not all families in Korea are alike, but from my observations a lot of pressure is put on Korean sons. At an early age Korean boys become aware of their obligation: enter a good university, go to military, graduate, find work, marry. I have met few that had the courage, or means, to stand up to that model. They have obligations to their parents, grandparents, the society, which are not easily broken. In no other nation I know, young men have a greater sense of responsibility. That is one of the reasons why Korea was able to rise from utter poverty within of few decades. But when you look at all those broken dreams and backs crooked under social pressure, you ask yourself: was it worth becoming a Tiger, if you have to live in captivity?

Cultural indigestion

It happened a long time ago, when I was a novice in Korean culture. A bunch of Korean friends took me out to a good korean restaurant, famous for it's spicy potato soup with chicken. I was as happy as a little child with a bar of chocolate, munching on the white mushrooms and sweet potatoes, that I fished out of the big pot of boiling red stew.

During dinner a friend asked: “you don't like the food, do you?”. The question surprised me - I could not imagine why he would think that. I answered, that the food was delicious and to prove my point I put a new portion of chicken on the plate. With chopsticks I divided the chicken in smaller peaces, put a bite into my mouth and chewed slowly enjoying the taste. “You really don't seem to like the food...” my friend sighted disappointed.

Still surprised I looked around. Next to me a tiny girl, half my size, was shoveling rice with a spoon so eagerly, that her cheeks looked like little red balloons at the point of bursting. Suddenly I became aware of all the slurping, and chomping, and gulping that filled the air.

I asked my friend, why he thought, that I did not like the food.

“Well, you eat small bites, and chew on them endlessly, as if you had no appetite... maybe you have a bad stomach?”

But it was not a bad stomach, I just had cultural indigestion.

Anecdotes of a flight attendant

A while ago I flew AirFrance from Seoul to Paris. AirFrance is by far my least favorite aviation company, thus I was dreading that flight very much. In the end it was half as bad, since my steward was not French but German.
The nice steward, of the plump cheery German sort, was very chatty and amused my neighbor (who also turned out to be German) with little steward-anecdotes. You might have noticed, for example, that shortly before take-off, flight attendants are spraying something in the cabin: it is a bug-spray that kills all the bugs instantly (I wonder what effects it might have on humans...). According to WHO requirements this bug-spray has to be used on all long-distance flights since recently. The only aviation company that is exempted from this rule is Lufthansa since, as my cheery steward noted, “you might imagine how people would react, if they saw a German dispersing gas in the cabin”.

Are there polar-bears in Poland?

I had a friend, he was American. I once mentioned to him, that when I was in Canada, I was asked if there were polar-bears in Poland (since it is called PoleLand - it must be on the North Pole, and since it is on the North Pole - there must be polar-bears). He teased me ever since: “So in Poland you have polar-bears instead of puppies”, or “So when I come to visit, you will pick me up from the airport riding a big white sledge pulled by polar-bears?”.
All was meant as a joke, of course, but I really believe that the way he pictured Poland was not very far from the polar-bears-version: lot's of snow, cold, no heating, no electricity, rrrrred cheeked girls and sturrrdy boys all speaking wiz fani akcent, and - of course – lot's of vodka... But, seriously, there is nothing like that in Poland - we are no Russia ;)