matching tracksuits

Last week we had a small party. It was typical in most every way – lots of chatting, laughing, eating, a bit of drinking, some dancing. Nothing crazy.

It was actually an unplanned birthday party for Johnny. We decided to have as a theme a multicultural culinary war: Johnny fixed kwaśnica; I cooked chili — the guests refused to pick a winner. It was confirmed once again, however, that due to the mildness of Polish cuisine, things which are not even remotely spicy for someone like me simply set the average Pole’s mouth ablaze.

Naturally there was a cake — Kinga’s contribution. Damn, can that woman bake!

The surprising hit of the party was a little Flash video that a friend in Warsaw showed me. It was an amateur video for a pop song that was a sensation this summer throughout Europe: “Dragostea Din Tei” (meaning “Love Among the Linden Trees” in Romanian).

Read the Wikipedia article about the song.

The song is by O-zone, a group of three Romanians who’d grown up in the Republic of Moldova, and it is perhaps the worst song I’ve ever heard. Plastic, false, and simplistic, it’s everything I hate in contemporary European pop music.

It was bad enough that this summer you could hear it everywhere. Perhaps the worst thing about it is how devilishly catchy the melody is. I’ve even caught myself humming the damn thing in the shower.

But the video — devastatingly funny.

Relatively high voter turn-out; deaths held to double digits; dancing Iraqis.

Do they read this blog?

I stand humbly corrected.

So the Iraqi people are going to be voting in their first election. Many have pointed out the absurdity of the elections in which:

• no one knows the candidates;
• no one knows what the parties stand for;
• insurgent violence will keep many away;
• voter safety is an issue, and cannot be assured;
• a significant portion of eligible voters has already declared, “We won’t vote”;
• many Iraqis are arguing shouldn’t even take place.

Bush is ramming this election down their throats in an attempt to legitimate his decision to invade Iraq.

No one in Baghdad is calling the shots in Iraq’s surreal experiment with electoral politics.

The marching orders are coming from Washington. And after all the tragedies that Iraq has so far experienced, this continued direction from a distance promises even more tragedy and farce in the days to come (The Capital Times)

The elections don’t seem to differ that much from Saddam’s elections. Then, Iraqis went to the polling station to avoid retaliation from Saddam; now, Iraqis avoid the polling stations to avoid execution by the insurgents. Sunday’s election will be only slightly more legitimate than those during Saddam’s reign only in so far as the candidates don’t all represent the same agenda. In theory. But since no one really knows who the candidates are or what the parties represent (except there’s probably not any who express the _slightest_ amount of anti-US sentiment), for all the Iraqis know, they could all be voting for the same agenda, no matter whom they vote for.

Well, those that do get out and vote.

Was Bush really so blinded by his own idiocy? Did none of his advisers say, “Hey, maybe it’s not such a straightforward thing as going into the country and receiving the warm thanks of the newly-liberated Iraqis.” Did he really expect the Iraqis to start jumping up and down, clapping their hands like little girls, all saying in a unified voice, “We want elections!! We want elections!!”?

If Iraq were a chess game (and oh, that it were), Bush would play in the following method:

1. Make an attack plan (He’d probably try the old worn out Scholar’s Mate), without giving thought to the opponent’s defense.
2. Execute the attack plan.
3. Ignore what the opponent is doing throughout the game and go ahead with the attack plan.
4. When clear mistakes are made, continue with the attack plan.

The Bush administration seems to be incapable of such analytical thinking required by chess, much less required by war. Unfortunately, the pieces Bush is shuffling around live and breathe, as in Vonnegut’s short story “All the King’s Horses.”

Bush doesn’t seem to know he’s gotten the US in a no-win situation:

• Postpone the election = cries of plans for on-going occupation
• Let the elections continue = the mess we currently see

And the post-election reality doesn’t seem so bright either:

• Withdraw troops = civil war in a matter of -weeks- days
• Postpone the election = cries of plans for on-going occupation and increased “resistance”

Of course, it’s not as if people weren’t foreseeing this before the invasion. But Bush already had his mind up about

• finding and destroying weapons of mass distruction;
• bringing freedom and liberty to the oppressed Iraqi people;
• shutting down Saddam’s terrorist support infastructure;
• avenging the assination attempt on Daddy;
• getting business for his buddies at Halliburton

and so no amount of reason could talk him out of it.

But you can’t reason with someone who has the mental ability of a turnip.

The original motivation behind this whole blog was the joke domain name, “matchingtracksuits.com.” The “matching” part implies not one author, but two.

That was the idea.

But my wife has been reticent to join me on this blogging adventure, and instead reads what I write behind my back.

The original motivation behind this post was to get readers to direct some encouraging words Kinga’s way. That was the idea.

I’ve been encouraging her to write a bit, if only to practice her written English. She seems hesitant to put her thoughts out for all to see (as if the Vast Hordes visit MTS).

Perhaps there’s a blogging gene and she’s missing it?

I have to admit — I do like this whole blogging thing. It’s a natural extension of my journal, which I’ve been keeping for years and years now. It just includes the added element of “audience.”

Yet, while I like it, it is getting a bit tiresome. The initial thrill must be wearing off. Unlike with various other addictions, I don’t foresee this resulting in heavier doses.

Perhaps some help would, well, help.

Perhaps that’s the real motivation behind nagging my wife about this. But maybe, perhaps, conceivably … there are those out there curious about the other tracksuit.

At the end of each semester, all teachers meet in order to “discuss” the students’ results. Grades, in other words. After opening business, each homeroom teacher reads a summary of his/her students’ results.

A model, using English names, would look something like this: “Number of students: 24. Number of students classified: 22. Two students, Jones Samuel and Nab Susan were not classified in mathematics due to [somewhat in-depth explanation]. Three students have been excused from participation in P.E., for medical reasons. %(insetR)All students names are read last name first. I get the feeling I’m in the military.%

“There were twenty students with no failing marks. There were three students with one failing mark. There was one student failing two subjets, and no students with three or more failing marks.

“The students with the best results were Baker Joshua, with an average of 4.87; Anderson Tabitha, with an average of 4.68; Jackson Samuel, with an average of 4.66; Cole Brenda and Jones David, both with 4.45. %(insetR)Grades in Polish are from 5 points, not 4.%

“Students with failing marks and/or the lowest average: Woolsey Katherine, 2.21, failing Polish and mathematics; Smith John, 2.33, failing mathematics; Kline Gregory, 2.35, failing mathematics; and Williams Derek, 2.44, failing German.

“The class average with all obligatory courses is 3.24, and without the optional courses, 3.31.

“Behavior grades are as follows: Three students received a grade of “model beahvior”: Baker Joshua, Anderson Tabitha, and Cole Brenda. There are five students with behavior graded “very good.” Fifteen students received a grade of “good.” One student received a mark of “correct,” Williams Derek.”

And there you have it. For each of the thirteen classes, all this information was rattled off. Of the thirteen classes, I teach seven of them, but I was required to sit and listen about the six that I don’t teach. Nonsense.

Most amazing is the behavior grade. Each student gets a mark between “model” and “rebuked” (literal translation). All the other possibilities are mentioned above, with the exception of the next-to-worst grade, “inappropriate.” This behavior grade is put on students transcripts, to what ends, who knows?

Johnny is only his latest alias. When I met him, he went by Abdul. For a while, our mutual friend insisted on calling him Albert. But Johnny is Janusz’s choice now.

My best friend in Poland, Johnny’s fate represents to me all that’s wrong with Poland today. Armed with a Master’s Degree in political science from Poland’s oldest and most respected university, he should have no problem getting a job in Poland’s EU-transitional reality.

He’s currently a concrete finisher in Liverpool. “The pay’s better than anything here,” he says with a smile, “And I sleep well at night.” With the opening of job market in Ireland and England (among a handful of other EU countries), Poles have been virtually stampeding out of the country. Ireland is an especially attrative country for Poles today, as an employment source and a model for how to integerate successfully into the EU. Literally whole families are picking up and moving to Ireland, running from 19+% unemployment and a political system so filled with corruption that it ranks first among EU countries in that regard.

Johnny’s returning toEngland in a few weeks. His plans are uncertain, other than squirreling a bit a way and working on his English.

It’s a shame, though, for Poland needs smart and honest young people now. During the small party after my and Kinga’s civil wedding, Kinga’s aunt was talking to Johnny and by the end of the evening was convinced that Johnny had to stay in Poland, get active in politics, and save the country.

Still, despite it all, Johnny’s optimistic about his country’s future. He recently bet a mutual friend a one-liter bottle of Jack Daniel’s that in four years, everything would have normalized noticably. “Normalized” was not really defined, but who cares — as I told Johnny, “If I happen to be in Poland then, I’ll be drinking with somebody!”

Quaker Instant Oatmeal, Apples and Cinnamon

Taste: artificially close to oatmeal.

Brings to mind:

• Snow days
• Picture day in junior high and worrying for the first time about your hair
• Grocery shopping with Mom
• Doing homework while eating breakfast
• Heating water in a microwave oven

When removed from the box, the individual packets are also good as padding for Christmas packages sent from home.

but I’m pretty sure that strange things as were happening around

here last night should not be happening.

I’d literally just finished complaining about the techno hell

I was scheduled to endure and had gone over to “C-Span”:http://c-span.org to watch some more of the Rice

confirmation hearings when suddenly the light on my desk went out and the icon indicating that my laptop had

switched to battery power. %(insetL)Frank made the comment that it could be due to the age of the building,

speculating that it could have been pre-WW2 and originally unwired, then wired and re-wired. I’m not quite

sure of the age of the original building itself, but it could very well have been pre-WW2. In 1999-2001,

though, it was completely rebuilt. I don’t mean renovated, I mean rebuilt — all that’s left of the original

building is the foundation and the outer walls. The floor Kinga and I live on was actually non-existent then,

so everything here is about four years old.%

Short-term power outages happen around here (super-rural

Poland) semi-regularly, so I thought nothing of it. In fact, for the first time in my life, I was _happy_ about

the apparent blackout. “Peace!” I thought.

But the thum-thum-thum-th-th-thum-thum-thum was still going

on downstairs.

And Senator Bidden (bless his compromising heart) was still making me smile via Real

Player and the LAN router across the hall.

Intrigued, I tried the kitchen light. Nothing. Still further

intrigued, I went out into the hall and tried the light switch there. “Ba-ba-ba-PING!” and the incandescent

lights were on.

Odd. %(insetR)As a side note, I will very irritatedly report that most of the students

were _not_ hooting and hollering but just sitting at the edge of the room — a typical dance. Why the music has

to be so loud for _that_, I’ll never know.%

I put on my coat and descended into Techno Hell. The

teachers’ room there was without electricity, but the adjacent areas had power. In fact, as I left, I noticed

that there were lights on almost throughout the school. Talking to the teachers there, I learned that they were

just as confused about it as I was. No one knew what was going on.

Returning home, I decided to start

cooking dinner by candlelight — a minor irritation, compounded by the bit of back luck that had given Techno

Hell a different electrical fate than me. “Why oh why didn’t _they_ lose power?” I muttered.

Then the

fridge switched on and I thought I was saved.

I reached over to turn on the light — nothing. Fridge

running, no light. I checked the lights in the living room. They worked. I went to the bedroom — nothing

going. So then I did the only logical thing: I systematically went through the apartment switching on all the

lights to see which power outlets were live and which were not.

The bizarre results:

* The

bedroom and bathroom were completely without power.
* The living room was fine, even though one of the

outlets was in the same wall as one of the dead outlets in the bedroom — directly opposite it, in fact. In

theory, on the same line.
* The main light in the kitchen didn’t work, but the small light above the sink

_did_.

Now, as I said, I don’t know much about electrical wiring, but this seems pretty damn odd to me.

And it seems to indicate some pretty weird construction practices. When the maintenance man came, I stood

talking to him for a moment with my neighbor, and I found out some even more bizarre info:

* Most of the

wiring for the upper floor where we live goes through a fuse box _on_ that floor — which makes since.
*

Some of the lines run through another fuse box _two floors below us_.
* My neighbor had power everywhere

except where his fridge was plugged in.

“Who the hell thought up such a wiring plan?!” I wanted to

scream/laugh, but I bit my tongue and thanked the maintenance man for his help.

An hour or so later, the

power all came back on, but I’m still scratching my head over it.

That’s not the only example of weird

wiring in Poland. The switches for most bathroom lights are _outside_ the bathroom. You flip it on as you

enter. In the first apartment I lived in, though, the lights were on the _hinge side_ of the door, so if you

forgot to turn on the light (which happened when I first arrived), it wasn’t just a matter of sticking your

hand out the door. You had to go back out into the hall, close the bathroom door, and turn the light on…

We have an apartment above an elementary school. That’s living hell when they have school dances. They usually last from two in the afternoon until eight at night: the first two hours for the younger kids and the last four hours for the older elementary school students.

I remember the after-school dance I chaperoned while student teaching in a junior high school. It was an hour and a half.

Four hours seems a bit of an exaggeration.

Our apartment is one floor above the area where they dance, though not _directly_ above it. The junior high kids who come in and serve as DJs turn the music up so loud that the floor of our apartment literally vibrates, and the you can hear the super-low-frequency bass tones reverberating throughout the _whole_ apartment — walls, glasses, ceiling, everything shaking. %(insetR)You never _truly_ notice how repetitive techno music is until you can only hear the bass and drums. Then, “variation on a theme” seems to be too generous a description.%

For an _elementary school dance_.

I asked one of the teachers if she didn’t think that was perhaps a bit too loud for such young ears.

“It could do serious, lasting damage,” I said.

“Yes, but if we didn’t play it so loud, they couldn’t hoot and holler as they like to do during dances,” was the response.

I’ll pause for a moment to let that one sink in.

All sorts of things were swirling in my mind, and the delicacy of the moment was highlighted by my lack of Polish fluency.

First reaction: “Hum, I always thought it was the teachers who ran a school.” Tactless no matter the level of fluency.

I settled for something along the lines of, “Well, why not simply tell the kids, ‘Look, it’s too loud. You’ll have to be quiet or you won’t hear the music,’ or, ‘This is as loud as we’ll play it. So if you don’t like it, you don’t have to come.’”

“We should,” she laughed.

But they won’t.

So here I sit, thirty-six minutes into a four-hour marathon of “thum-thum-thum-th-th-thum-thum-thum” techno hell.

I recently told of an “unexpected admission from students”:/?id=107. “What to do!?” I ruminated.

“Why do you have to do anything at all?” my wife asked.

Because a teacher can’t just give some assignment, take it up, reprimand the students on it, then let it float of into oblivion. In the end, I’ll probably take the easy way out for myself: say, “I understand it this time, and won’t make you redo it, nor will I give you failing grades for the work turned in.” After all, less work for me.

But the desire for blood did rise again, _the next lesson_.

It’s a tough class, in other words.

I’ve always had a strange relationship with “tough” classes. At some point, I usually storm back to the teachers’ room saying, “I _hate_ that class,” and then a few days later say, “That’s not just a bad class after all. I kind of like them, in fact.” By their final year, I often find myself liking those classes, usually because we’ve fought our way to a sort of equilibrium.

But it’s important to point out that the class does not represent the students. In a weird way that I never would have understood before being a teacher, a class is without a doubt much more than the sum of the students in it.

Some of the students in the class that so angered me are among my favorite students. (Yes, yes, teachers shouldn’t have favorites, but we’re only human.) Understand: they’re not my favorite students because they’re such hardworking angels. Indeed, often some of these favorites even _contribute_ to the problem.

Classes simply have their own dynamic, independent of any given student in it. It’s frustrating, precisely because it’s somewhat uncontrollable.

There are checks and balances, but it remains out of the control of any one teacher.

It’s not mob psychology, in other words.