2015-02-18: Well That Was A Day Of Excitement!

Cultural Observation: Teevee

Poles love Jackie Chan. Australians do too and SBS regularly has weeks of "Jackie Chan movie a night" things. Unlike the SBS version there have been no advertisements for the special theme. I don't watch much tele but he is on every night. I assume they just have him on every night.

However Jackie Chan is nowhere near as important as Home Alone.

Every Christmas "Home Alone" is on  tele. In the 90's it was played at christmas for the first time and it was the first family movie which showed the west with pretty houses and holidays and it was the dream the Poles were being offered after communism. Everyone in America lived like these people was the claim this movie made.

Before Christmas this year there was a news article which was about whether it should be shown and scrolling along the bottom was something breaking news something ukraine something something after the clip the news hosts didn't even mention the Ukraine thing, straight into the "Home Alone" scandal.

It gets played every year because the stations have already paid for it and there were only 3 stations at Christmas and you are in a food coma and you don't have a remote control (they were not here at the time).

A few years back a station decided not to play it and a petition got started to play it every year on the first day of christmas. Ewa claims Poles have much better movies (I like Sexmission, that was Benny Hill silly and out first ever date movie).

And now people are making all sorts of Art student type stretches relating morality and Good vs Evil and so on. The comparison of Home Alone to how Poland managed to get rid of its most recent tyrannical yoke is not something I had ever considered.

Mind you my cousin got a place at Oxford university for a sociology paper on the killing of Kenny in South Park a whiles back. So I guess we westerners are not so different after all

And isn't that the real message of Christmas? Even art students are tolerated at that glorious time.

Rating: 8/10 (Jackie Chan is great, and we didn't watch Home Alone)

Translation Humour: Internet Access

Not even a good looking version of the scary internet bear.

Talking and SMS'es, Without Limits, Plushy Internet! Without Consequences.

Rating: 9/10 (I thought the plushies had left the internet)

Linguistic Skills: ę

At the shops I heard the ę (pronounced "aeon") at the end of Dziękuję (thank you) instead of just hearing it as an "e" sound. This made me happy.

Rating: 8/10 (probably it is the lack of loud music making my ears work again)

My life is too exciting. We went to a sports shop and bought some comfy pants for the Ewa/Crutches combo. I need to do something about this.

Plans:

• I will apply for a long term visa here.

Expected Success Rates:

• Obtaining Visa: 60%
• Reducing Excitement: 100% 

(actually getting a visa is an immanently sensible thing to do in case Ewa can't fly or I get stuck here or any of a bunch of.... my lord I am boring myself already. This plan is great. I will go toe to toe with ex commie paperwork masters and we will have a complexity based bore off)