Easter break musings

A peculiar jumble of random thoughts that have haunted me over the last days… (and my 300th post)

Good Friday. One of those days in the office when everyone is counting down minutes till the shop closes. An unwritten rule states everyone is free to knock off at two p.m. The head of my department is the first to give a cue to go home at ten past two. He’s been puzzlingly laid-back over the past weeks, coming to work late, leaving home early. His light-heartedness gets more and more disturbing, chiefly in the light of my ex-manager’s promotion to a position in the international structures of our corporation. His devil-may-care attitude has two-fold implications: the pressure under which I am is not formally strong (I have to keep self-supervising myself), but one day this will lead to serious business failure and guess who’ll be to blame for it…

I decided to sit longer than others to catch up with some overdue work. Being one of few workers in the open plan gives the opportunity to overhear what can’t be loudly said when everyone’s around. And so I learn this year’s bonus and pay rise funds will be kind of meagre. Well, it’s best to save on human capital that keeps this boat afloat, but if the remuneration policy is carried on like this, best employees will seek better paid positions outside (provided the market doesn’t slump, which is conceivable) and the boat will sink. This would be a well-deserved end… Additionally after over a year I clearly notice those who spend the most time in the office to don’t work the hardest, or the most efficiently. Often when I observe some people I conclude they could easily do the job which takes them eleven hours a day within eight hours, if only they could better organise their duties. Sometimes I think sitting from dawn to dusk in the office is a sort of lifestyle or a way of filling in emptiness. But hang on, some of those people have families, but quite probably their wives and children prefer when they’re away from home. Stop, it’s getting too bitter. I strive to perform my tasks possibly efficiently and not keep late hours in the office to be appreciated by superiors. Wise managers mind the outcome, not the effort.

Who was the dim-witted one to hatch the idea that public transport should run according to weekend timetable? The journey from work to P&R Stokłosy, normally lasting 35 minutes has taken me a quarter longer. Fortunately enough, the worst traffic on ul. Puławska are over (I deliberately waited it out the office), but traffic remains dense. Just like before each Christmas, Easter, long weekend, many migrants living in Warsaw “go home”. There is a even a term coined to describe people who’ve come from provincial Poland to Warsaw in search for a better life. These are słoiki, literally ‘jars’. This offensive term derives from the fact that every time they travel to their relatives somewhere in Poland, they put empty jars into the boots of their cars and when returning to Warsaw, they bring supplies of food in jars. I’m not sure whether the term applies to rickety cars on provincial number plates, or to their drivers with poor driving skills, for whom traffic in Warsaw is too difficult to handle… Słoiki appear as scapegoats on TVN Warszawa forum, whenever a car on LLU, BHA, LHR, TST or other in-the-sticks plates causes an accident in the capital or, as in the linked article, when such clapped-out vehicle disintegrates on the road...

Saturday, chilly and drizzly, reminds me of weather on Saturday 10 April 2010. That day was also gloomy and ugly. The second anniversary of Smolensk disaster is nearing. Today Mr Kaczynski is about to speak to its followers. I don’t really care, I let things drift…

Sunday. There was no snow for Christmas, so may it be for Easter. 8 a.m., temperature +1C and little snow falling on the ground. Not a pleasant weather to go outside, but it’s time to set off to pick up my grandparents from Konstancin and then to visit the family in Ursus, Warsaw. The streets are almost empty, one can spot only cars on Warsaw number plates, so with my WPI plate I feel like a countryman. Family gathering runs its course as usual. For a good start again disputes whether Russians had planted a bomb in Polish TU-154 that crashed near Smolensk, whether anyone could survive an impact at the speed of 260 kmph, or how come engines were gradually reducing revolutions after the explosion. Not to mention claims who is an expert in physics and aviation. Neither impresses me my cousin, bringing his father on accelerating his car to 180 kmph, touching a birch with a wing mirror to see what happens. Hearing for the tenth time if Mr Tusk was a man of honour he would have shot himself in a head doesn’t make lose my patience. But the mere thought that one day I will have to take my girlfriend for a family round-up fills me with dread. But actually from what I’ve seen in many families such gatherings are not a bed of roses… Just recalled one day Toyah was taken aback when he found out most of my relatives, both on my mother’s and father’s side vote for PiS…

Then my parents and I go for a walk to ul. Piastowska and ul. Regulska to see the progress on S2 construction. Not much has changed here since the previous Easter. The level of pessimism in me has risen since writing last week’s summary on road building programme. We’ll visit the site next year to see the progress of works. I don’t expect it to be finished in April 2013…

Woken up by beautiful sunlight today to see –4C on thermometer. This also happens on Easter Monday. I logged on facebook to get the invitation for my high school friend’s wedding, held on Saturday, yes on 14 April 2012. Great to have the advance notice – I wonder how many of the invited will drop everything, abandon their plans to show up? I will pop over anyway, it’d be a pleasure to participate in such event. Wedding season 2012 kicks off a week earlier. Coming back to the form, have social media impacted etiquette so considerably? Would facebook be the way of informing people of weddings? Would traditional invitation cards become the thing of the past? And if somebody doesn’t sign up, would they be omitted or assigned the status of socially dead? Till now, I haven’t accepted, nor declined the invitation, just watching others’ reactions…