2015-01-19: Oh pretty.

I worked all night for various reasons. During the night I noticed my phone said it was really foggy. I went outside to check (I don't trust google) and it was. However the temperature dropped a lot and the fog froze really nicely.

My Tree For Smoking Beside. When I blow smoke out I never know if the cigarette is lit or not.

This photo always looks sideways to me at first

Vista!

Tim Burton Would Probably Cry

We are Great Uncle and Aunt material! We walked the niece to school. I was invited to say hello to a Lady at the school and I said sure.

Turns out the Lady was the Guy at the door we waved at vaguely as we walked in. We did not chat and I was not presented formally. Probably a good thing as I would have had a weird expression on my face when presented with the "Lady". Maybe something along the lines of "She must be Russian".

I take comfort in this because the niece is 7 and she can't speak Polish well enough to know the difference between a dude and a chick. I am only 2 in Polish and at 2hrs per week outside of holidays even that only adds up to being like a couple of days old. Totally going to beat the crap out of these kids by the time I am 7 I figure.

Iza (the niece) and I now read together, we are trying to make it a regular thing. This morning we read about Seahorses which can apparently have 120 babies. Together we are an awesome reading team as I am an awesome reader but can't pronounce and she is awesome at pronouncing once she knows what the written word is.

Linguistic Skills: Polish Reading

Polish is actually a language which is pretty simple to read aloud if you don't care about knowing what you are saying. They have the secret letters and they have stupid internet advice but once you learn the 8 (?) secret letters (and get over the annoyance of ł and w in the same word) you can actually read it out loud slowly and people will know roughly what you mean.

Compared to English it is pretty damn cool. A tourist with google translate matched with a Pole with Patience would probably do okayish.

Rating: 7/10 (but the long words still scare me when I see them coming up in the sentence and that blows my confidence for the easy ones I am up to)

When I correct her she does get a little strident and speaks quickly. Probably just saying she is impressed at how cool I am and how all her other uncles are just cake making freaks in comparison.

This evening we played Kendo.

Traveling Advice: Making Friends

The Singapore Government put out a video on how to make friends

The 17 second mark I love!

It is, as Ewa says "kind of funny and sad". Plus Holy Crap are Australians believed to be that snotty / racist / work focussed?
I have a better way. Go to a random city, find locals that want to beat you up or vice versa, voilà, friends.
This probably works best with rather obscure martial arts that are low risk of damage.

Kendo is in pretty much every city in the world nowadays but is still usually small enough that a year or two worth of training is plenty to have you welcomed and even a month or two is enough for you to be accepted.

And usually there will be a policeman type and several IT types. The IT guys know where to drink and the Policeman type knows where not to.

Rating: 9/10 (I am biased but I did downgrade it for the 15kg of equipment you must now carry)

Plans:

• Friday Night: Go drinking with new kendo friends
• Next Wed: Go to Warsaw and do a demo of naginata for their kendo club

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WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

(actually screw that, so much cooler in Polish)

UWAGA! UWAGA! UWAGA!

(hehehe to me it sounds like  one of those squeezy horns on old timey cars)

Terror Alert: Australia - HIGH

Terror Alert: Poland - ZERO

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Actually Australia's Terrrrrrrrrror alert is so damn high that the terrrrrrrralert page won't even load (http://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/Securityandyourcommunity/Pages/NationalTerrorismPublicAlertSystem.aspx) meanwhile a days drive from those guys that shot down the Malaysian airlines plane we are all totally chilling out (http://www.antyterroryzm.gov.pl/eng/terrorism-threat-level/859,Terrorist-threat-level-in-Poland.html)

When you have had the purges by the Nazis and the Russians I guess you look at ISIS with a bit of disdain.

I do notice that neither government seems to have decided on a level which is "ahhh fuck it, nothing is likely to happen"; everyone's lowest level is "IT COULD HAPPEN! WE DON'T KNOW WHERE! BEHIND YOU! BEHIND YOU!"