When did I lose track of everything?

The recent business trip to Poznań (first one in over a year with any spare time to go out and sightsee) has made me realise I had ceased to keep up with current affairs. But these were not just the three days without access to computer and not watching TV (enjoying nightlife in the evenings), when ruling coalition was rowing over pensions and a wacky chap in France stage a massacre in a Jewish school, but a much longer period of time, starting in the autumn last year… Fancy a catch-up?

In October 2011 the parliamentary election was won, for the second time in a row, by Platforma Obywatelska, Donald Tusk was re-sworn in as prime minister, ruling coalition stayed in place in the same shape as it had wielded power before the election. Only make-up of the government was slightly reshuffled, with some controversial appointments (conservative non-lawyer Jarosław Gowin as justice minister, charming Joanna Mucha as sport minister and wet-behind-ears Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz and labour and welfare minister). And once the danger of relapsing IV RP was fended off and prospects of four years of mediocre rule consisting in doing excellent PR stunts and holding on to cushy stools emerged, someone has lost their common sense. Guys in power have grown complacent and began to think if the nation have elected them for the second time, they have a mandate to do anything and can go unpunished. Ordinary people have realised this has gone too far and next mistakes made by the government cannot be forgiven.

2012 brought three significant slip-ups of the PO-led government…

1. The medicine reimbursement law, prepared in the previous term by the health ministry run by Ewa Kopacz turned out to trigger backlash from angry patients. The reform, aimed at bringing some order into rules of subsidising purchase of medicines and cutting reimbursement expenses, led to an even bigger chaos, chiefly when doctors were obliged to check whether a patient was entitled to buy a subsidised medicine.

2. The ACTA dispute – this one has wound me up, although I have to admit until now I have not drilled down deep into the new regulations. Would I be personally affected by ACTA? Would I have to register my blog which I try to keep anonymous? Would I be convicted for downloading films of music (not to mention plenty for books that would set be back hundreds of zlotys)? Does ACTA really square with current Polish law? Well, I hold it dear I can run PES and withhold my identity (known for many, but not for the public), as my current employer and any potential employers do not know nothing about my activity and I can write whatever inconvenient stuff I want, including harsh criticism of misconduct of the industry I work for (the longer I work there and the deeper I dive into it, the bigger the scale of depravity I see is). And the rest? OK, from time to time I go to a cinema, but I watch most newly released films at home, all new music albums I want to listed to come from the Internet. And the books – in my life I’ve downloaded several excellent English-language books on economics and banking, for each I would have had to fork out between 50 and 100 US dollars… They all boosted by knowledge, but was it at somebody’s expense? Consider two cases: either somebody spends money to go to a cinema or to buy a book and is worse-off or they do not watch a film or read a book at all. In the former case an intellectual owner of a good is better-off, in the latter not. The issue of web piracy should be considered in two separate issues then. Firstly it is about economic rationality – if someone can have something which costs money for free, it is rational to take steps to get it for free. Secondly – when someone cannot afford to have access to culture and knowledge in any other way than by the Internet, crackdown on contents violating copyrights is a tragedy. Personally I perceive ACTA, not because the initiative has cropped up, but by dint of the back-door way of passing it, as a conspiracy of the rich against the poor and another attempt to preserve and deepen the gulf between those who have and those who are deprived… PS. By doing what I described I do not break the Polish law, which allows to copy or download goods marked as intellectual purposes for one’s private use. I do not distribute anything further, do not share it and do not draw any financial benefits from this. May it stay so…
The government, after numerous demonstrations staged in the middle of the cold snap, succumbed to the protesters and backed out of ACTA ratifications, thus spiting the lobbyists…

3. Raising retirement age to 67 for both women and men. Currently woman in Poland are allowed to retire at the age of 60, men when they knock 65. In practice on average a Pole pensions off at the age of 57, much earlier than other nations in the EU. Predictably, an attempt do adjust legislation to unremitting demographic trends triggered another hostile reaction from the PO’s coalitional partner and most oppositional parties, from the trade unions and ordinary citizens, scared with the prospect of having to work until the age of 67. Future of the reform is still not settled. Ruch Palikota is ready to back the reform, while PO is ready to strike a one-off deal with the liberal-leftist party. No one can foretell, whether the dispute over the pension deal would split the PO-PSL coalition and whether this will end up with early elections…

And me? I don’t care…
1. I’m indifferent to falling support for Platforma. I voted for it, not regret it, as there was no alternative, but at this time there is no one I could vote for. Rule of off-their-head people, whose leader is Jarosław Kaczyński do not scare me somehow, although this surely not what I want for Poland. My mindset reflects what happens in minds of many Poles for who politics is a game played somewhere beyond the small world or their problems and joys.
2. ACTA – well, comes this into effect, I will have to come to terms with it and comply. But odds that it happens, in the light of international resistance to the new law, are shrinking.
3. Well, I have long been mentally prepared to work until the age of 67 or longer, I am not one of the people attracted by the possibility of retiring early, so why should I care…

Besides, financial markets have gone bonkers, I totally do not understand what drives prices then, so I’m trying to stay out of the market and reiterate my prediction of a tsunami on the markets in the second quarter of 2012… Time will tell…

Winter timeline

From early September forecasters scared us with predictions of the harshest winter in the current millennium (second in a row). Their prophecies were allegedly backed by sudden shift from warm late summer, lasting until 6 October 2011, to chilly autumn, followed by first frost on 16 October. The first blow of arctic air brought temperatures atypical for October (-3.2C daytime low on 16 October, sub-zero temperatures over next two days), then another cold snap came on 22 October and 23 October. No such thing as warm Polish gold autumn was seen in October 2011. Average temperature of the month was +8.5C (vs. long-term /1981-2010/ average of +8.5), but if it had not been for the first six days of October when average temperatures were typical for August, the month would have been recorded as cold.

November 2011 had a quite balmy and sunny start, with month-time high of +14.7C recorded on 5 November 2011. Next two weeks brought below-average temperatures and continuation of dry weather (precipitation in many parts of Poland was record-low). Two coldest mornings were 12 November 2011 (low of -5.3C) and 23 November 2011 (low of –5.7C). Some parts of Warsaw were covered with a thin layer of snow grains in the morning on 17 November 2011, but this was not the first snow that marks the beginning of Student SGH’s winter timeline. In the last days of November North Atlantic Oscillation perked up for good (Atlantic had been dormant from September until the end of October) and brought above-average temperatures again. All in all, average temperature of November 2011 was +3.0 (vs. long-term average of +3.1C); average temperature was typical, yet deviations from mean were a bit unusual.

First decade of December 2011 was marked by weather typical for early November. Average daily temperatures hovered much above 0C. 12 December 2011 saw first hard frost since almost three weeks (in the morning temperature dropped to –4.0C), but then glorious warmth returned for a few days. Meteorologists got it right by predicting that first signs of winter would show up before Christmas.

20 December 2011
No such joke. In the morning temperature drops to –7.5C. Not unbearable, no wind chill, no snow disrupting traffic, but the winter has put its foot down. Around 8 p.m. it begins to snow. On my way from work I see snow ploughs pouring grit on ul. Puławska. This year road clearance services are planning to surprise the winter.

21 December 2011
A picturesque morning. Everything is swathed in a fog, limiting visibility to some 400 metres. Roads are slippery. Temperature of –2C and one-centimetre layer of snow means no assault, but gentle greeting by the coldest of all seasons of the year. I’m having a day off and after doing all household chores, I may lap up glorious weather (sunshine, -1C – the first day of winter 2011/2012 when temperature does not creep above zero).

22 December 2011
One more frosty morning, it’s –7C when astronomical winter begins. Over the whole day temperature stays much below zero, sky’s overcast and the day is generally dull.

23 December 2011
Frost is slowly retreating, even overnight temperature slowly rises and makes it above freezing in the afternoon, when some sunrays emerge from behind the clouds.

24 December 2011
Another Christmas thaw sets in. In the morning falling drizzles freezes on roads, pavements and my tiled stairs. Everything is slippery and drivers have to be very careful. The Christmas Eve is, just as almost every year, gloomy – fog and drizzle take over.

25 December 2011
An ordinary Christmas day. While on a walk, I spot first buds on several trees. This does not augur well; if proper winter comes, plants will suffer. Or are these the first intimations of spring? How come? Over the past week temperature was usually below freezing and today it’s mere +2C (with wind chill below zero).

26 December 2011
Balmy. +8C from 11:00 until late afternoon, sunbeams hidden behind the clouds. It’s much better than snow and/or frost, but I’m longing for a bit of sunshine. Darkness and gloom no longer lift my spirits.

27 December 2011
No, I haven’t had enough of the gloom. This is kind of weather I like – typical British winter – in the afternoon temperature tops +9C and watch out, day-time low is +8.2C! Drizzle, wind, clouds, may this weather not give way to winter!

28 December 2011
Getting colder. Skies unexpectedly (forecasters failed to predict it) cleared up at night and temperature fell to –1C before dawn. Car covered by frozen rain took me aback in the morning. I couldn’t open any, except for driver’s, door and layer of ice was so rough that I couldn’t scrape it. While waiting for over ten minutes until the car defrosts itself I took delight in beautiful sunrise. Over the day sky clouded over. Day-time high still well above long-term average: +8.2C.

29 December 2011
Could these days be lit up? Saw some sunrays in the afternoon and enjoyed the warmth again – temperature fluctuating around +5C.

30 December 2011
Wind chill – today movements of air reminded me how it feels. In the morning it was just 0C, but felt like –10C – unpleasant.

31 December 2011
Second light dusting of snow this winter lingers just for a few hours and is washed away by rain. In the afternoon skies clear up. In the evening temperature plummets and freezing fog hovers. Temperature of some –4C, just like last year.

December 2011 was very warm. Average temperature in Warsaw was +2.6C (vs. long-term average of –0.7C), it was the fourth warmest December after World War II (3rd rank goes to December 1960 (+2.8C), 2nd was December 1971 (+3.0C), the warmest (+4.0C) December was in 2006). Stats:
- month-time high: +10.0C on 2 December 2011
- month-time low: -7.5C on 20 December 2011
- the warmest day: 27 December 2011 (daily average of +8.5C)
- the coldest day: 22 December 2011 (daily average of –4.3C)

1 January 2012
Oh, late morning relieves the pain of many by greeting with beautiful sunshine and temperature jumping above zero. Great portent of the new year in weather. Weather stats say it was –5C overnight.

2 January 2012
Cloudy, rainy, depressing, but very warm, as for January, day – in the afternoon day-time and quite probably month-time high of +9.1C. From now it will be only colder and all forecasts warn of light winter next week.

3 January 2012 – 4 January 2012
Slightly colder, with occasional wind chill. The world stays dim, although distance between Earth and Sun is the lowest over the year.

5 January 2012
To put it briefly, blustery & sleet. Temperatures more typical for early January (between 0C and +3C). This year again the early-January cold snap doesn’t hit Warsaw.

6 January 2012 – 7 January 2012
Morning light snow showers don’t disrupt anything, as temperature is most of the time slightly above zero. Yet outside it’s anything, but pleasant – chilly wind makes the real feel below –5C.

8 January 2012
25 years ago, on 8 January 1987 temperature in Warsaw dropped to –30.7C, post-WW2 low. Today it doesn’t even bother to fall below freezing. Morning – gloomy, before midday – sunny intervals, afternoon – summer-like downpour. Soil needs rain after autumn drought.

9 January 2012 – 10 January 2012
Winter slowly creeps in. Temperatures most of the day are slightly above zero, but this won’t last long. In less than a week proper winter (not sleet and –1C in the morning) should be here.

11 January 2012 – 13 January 2012
Last days when staying in Warsaw one can take delight in very late autumnal warmth. On 12 January temperatures tops +7C, while the next day in the evening it hovers near zero. Proper winter comes along, but it doesn’t appear to be very harsh…

14 January 2012
Light winter – light dusting of snow, light frost in the morning that melts over the day, not that light snow shower in the late afternoon.

15 January 2012
Long live the beauty of (light) winter. –3C in the morning. Howling wind has ceased, some 3 centimetres of snow linger, sky is partly cloudy, there’s no need to drive anywhere. Over the day wind speeds up, day-time high is –2C, with wind chill of –8C. Upside – over an hour of glorious sunshine in the afternoon. Forecasters’ models have changed their mind – thaw is due around 20 January and over one wintry week it should be no colder than –10C.

16 January 2012
I’ve had enough of winter. In the morning temperature hits –7C, but really bothersome is the snow falling from early morning until late afternoon. I’d rather opt for clear skies and below –10C at dawn. At least shovels and snowploughs don’t have to be used.

17 January 2012
Great stuff. Snow showers ceased yesterday in the afternoon, air is dry and clear, temperature in the morning falls to mere –6C, day brings glorious sunshine, little snow on the ground doesn’t melt…

18 January 2012
In the morning –8C, accompanied by still air. Day-time, however, was not hit just before sunrise, but soon after midnight. Records from weather station on Warsaw airport read minimum temperature of –10.1C – first double-digit frost this winter! Before midday Warsaw is paralysed by a three-hour-long snow shower. Most of it melts, as later on temperature rises above zero.

19 January 2012
Only morning brings wet flurry and very light frost. This follow by moderate thaw which melts much of the snow. In the evening wet snow comes over again…

20 January 2012
Thaw and Warsaw’s overcome by it. Nobody bothers to get to grips with slush, so pedestrians have waddle ankle-deep in a blend of snow, mud, grit and water. Evening brings some snow showers, temperature around 0C

21 January 2012
Thaw continues – temperature between 0C and +1C linger for the whole day. Not a big melt anyway. Forecasters’ models clearly indicate high pressure system over Russia is building up…

22 January 2012
I wake up to behold the biggest snow precipitation this winter – some 5 centimetres of wet, heavy snow. Clearing this takes me over an hour but weather helps do the job – temperature doesn’t drop below zero from dawn to dusk, daytime high of +3C.

23 January 2012
The last day with positive temperature in the morning and gloom in the air… In the evening it begins to snow.

24 January 2012
Thin layer of snow fallen overnight plays havoc with everything. It takes me around a quarter to defrost the car (or rather wait until it defrosts itself, as scraping and using de-icer goes in vain), then I find the padlock of the gate frozen…

25 January 2012
Yesterday was the last day with at least little thaw. Today the frost is light, no worse than –4C, but it chills me when I see the high pressure system over North-Western Russia…

26 January 2012
Not very cold, just –4C in the morning, flurry from 6:30 to 11:30 paralyses Warsaw during morning rush hours. I slowly make it to P&R before it gets really nasty. In the evening car thermometer reads –8C, easterly wind is gusty – wind chill according to Okęcie weather station is –22C! And the cold snap has not perked up for good… Weather forecasts say the frost won’t ease until 12 February (with hindsight – what a perfect prediction!). The worst is said to come between 3 February and 8 February – down to ghastly –18C overnight…

27 January 2012
Chilly morning, below –11C at dusk and clear skies. Easterly winds keep blowing in frosty air from over Russia. Daytime high hits –8C, if you take shelter from the wind, it’s even warm…

28 January 2012
One step closer to the chill –13C in the morning, no more than –7C over the day. Gorgeous sunlight from dawn to dusk.

29 January 2012
Getting colder day by day, temperature is one degree lower than yesterday, so –14C in the morning, then with time surface of earth is heated by ever-higher-rising sun and temperature in early afternoon reaches –6C, just to retreat thereafter.
Weather forecast chop and change, now the frost is to reach its nadir on Thursday and hit some –22C in Warsaw. Then meteorologist project a veritable hell – temperatures below –10C accompanied by intense snow – I hope it doesn’t happen, as it would paralyse the whole country. Mere snow when it’s above –10C is OK, harsh frost without snow also, but the two combined is a recipe for a disaster.

30 January 2012
Just another day of big freeze. This is the time when each day a previous day’s cold record is broken. In the morning it’s –15C and so many people gripe about the cold. Rails crack, buses don’t run, water pipes burst, cars go into flames. Daytime high of –8C.

31 January 2012
Normally when the Russian high comes over, the air is still. Not this time! Chilly wind is still gusty. –16C in the morning and wind chill of –25C. Ghastly, but shining sun is beautiful. Days are visibly longer…

January 2012 was normal. Average temperature in Warsaw was -0.9C (vs. long-term average of –1.9C). This is the power of statistics – we had very warm first half of the months and anomalously cold five last days – and the average shows it was a typical January. Stats:
- month-time high: +9.1C on 2 January 2012
- month-time low: -16.3C on 31 January 2012
- the warmest day: 4 January 2012 (daily average of +6.5C)
- the coldest day: 31 January 2012 (daily average of –12.7C)

1 February 2012
The last month of calendar winter kicks off and generously bestows us with frost. In the morning –18C, over the day wind is not as obtrusive as it used to be. Over the day no warmer than –12C. Big freeze is approaching its climax…

2 February 2012
Well, -19.7C according to official records from the weather station in Okęcie is no fun any more. The coldest afternoon during the cold wave – no warmer than –14.6C officially. Sunshine, pink sky at sunset. Feels like Siberia. We’ll ride it out…

3 February 2012
Ooops… -23.1C is an official reading from W-wa Okęcie weather station, my car thermometer shows –24C, on the eastern suburbs of Warsaw temperature drops to –26C. As cold as in late January 2010. It’s not that bad in Warsaw, in Białystok temperature drops to –30C, somewhere beyond it in the sticks it must be well below –30C… Again sunshine and little chance for much warmer weather in the coming days. Just realised I’d never been exposed to such cold before! In 2006 I didn’t go out in the morning when it was below –25C…

4 February 2012
One degree warmer than yesterday and no major changes in the weather. It should get warmer day by day, but… Forecasters whisper something about snow showers… At least, unlike in many parts of Europe, there has been no snowfall in Warsaw for several days, while blizzards have wreaked havoc to many other European capitals and their inhabitants, not accustomed by harsh winter conditions.

5 February 2012
In terms of weather… We’re watching history of climatologic in Poland (and Europe) in the making, but I’ve had enough of the frost. –19C at dawn, -14C in the afternoon. When I look outside the window, spring creeps up – how misleading! And another frosty night ahead!

6 February 2012
There always must be that first time. Till today I’d never seen snow falling in the temperature of –20C. Over the day it’s no warmer than –13C, but the worst (in terms of temperature) is over, while the snows are coming over.

7 February 2012
Morning: -13C, how balmy, even snow flurry doesn’t look like pain in the arse. Evening: -9C, how balmy, only single-digit frost!

8 February 2012
With day-time low and high respectively –12C and –5C it seems pleasantly warm, although only relatively… The worst seems gone, but temperatures nearing –20C at dawn are set to return around the weekend.

9 February 2012
Getting colder, again. –14C in the morning and –7C in early afternoon and the trend is downward. Warsaw, unlike many parts of Poland, has not been affected by snow showers. After a cold weekend, some snow precipitation is expected on 13 February.

10 February 2012
Well, the second, shorter and less severe wave of cold comes to Poland. –16C in the morning, clear skies. This will last for two days, then sunny and chilly winter will give way to light frost and snow flurries.

11 February 2012
Into the second cold wave: -19C in the morning and double-digit frost over the whole day. In the morning residents of many parts of Poland can observe diamond dust. Can’t wait to see temperature statistics for February 2012… Quite probably this will be the coldest month in this century and the coldest since infamous January 1987 (monthly average of –13.0C).

12 February 2012
The last morning (hopefully) that brings –20C. Then temperature shoots up: 7:00 –18.8C, 8:00 –15.3C, 9:00 –12.4C, 10:00 –10.0C, 11:00 –8.0C, but over the beautiful sunny day it’s no warmer than –6C. Coming days are said to bring much higher temperature and abound in snow showers.

13 February 2012
-10C in the morning and –5C in the afternoon let me officially declare the cold snap over. It lasted 17 days and was probably the longest since January 1987. Little harmless flurry.

14 February 2012
Single-digit frost – balmy (-2C in the afternoon). Forecasters scare with oncoming blizzards. Actually this winter snow hasn’t played havoc with traffic, so maybe mid-February is a good time to make up…

15 February 2012
This happens virtually every winter. There comes a day when a few centimetres of snow precipitation bring the city to a standstill. This winter it happened quite late, but morning saw horror on not cleared roads. I left the car at home not to exacerbate situation on the roads. I saved on petrol, but couldn’t say the day was anything but nice.
On my way home, when I was totally fucked-up by weather and goings-on at work, it occurred to me the snow has brought in beautiful landscapes. But –23C was not such nuisance as –3C and falling snow. At least when it was 20C colder I could move around easily… Snow ceases to fall around 8 p.m. Hoping for a better tomorrow…

16 February 2012
No snow overnight, -7C in the morning. Warsaw has somehow managed to cope with slush lingering on roads, main streets are (rather) clear, many pavements aren’t. Yesterday’s precipitation was 13 centimetres, so it could have been much worse. A cold night ahead (already –10C at 9 p.m.), and then waiting for the thaw, due over the weekend.

17 February 2012
-15C in the dead of night, -10C at the crack of down, flurry since sunrise, freezing drizzle at dusk and +1C in the evening. Thaw! Thaw! Thaw! After 22 days with sub-zero temperatures!

18 February 2012 – 19 February 2012
Gentle thaw – overcast sky and temperatures between 0C and +2C, on Sunday also rain showers. The winter’s come late and looks like it’s going to depart early. Freezing rain creates ice rinks on Sunday evening

20 February 2012
Mere –1C but everything’s slippery. Over the day – beautiful sunshine.

21 February 2012
Ever-earlier-beginning morning heralds a beautiful day – gold sky and –5C. Then skies cloud over and pre-spring semi-gloom lingers…

22 February 2012
First morning without frost since 23 January. Over the day gloomy and warm (+3C), in the evening, weather ideal for the ball at the Devil’s.

23 February 2012 – 25 February 2012
Temperatures above zero even at night, over the day up to balmy +10C. All the snows melt, spring can be felt in the air… Gusty wind signifies western oscillation has returned.

26 February 2012
Woken up by a howling wind at 7:30 a.m. I pull up the blind roller to behold a snow blizzard that lasts 30 minutes and brings two centimetres of white powder. The precipitation is followed by some three hours of beautiful sunshine, which in turn gives way to ugly late winter weather (0C, wind chill of –7C).

27 February 2012
Another morning heavy, yet short snow, this time it starts at 6:35, so during the morning rush hour. –2C in the morning, over the day I can see sun shining outside the window, but it’s not the greeting of spring – outside it’s +1C. I leave the office at time (for the first time since many days) and it’s still light (sunset at 17:12 in Warsaw today).

28 February 2012
Glorious morning: -7C, pink, then yellow sky, frost everywhere. Then it gets warmer, but not much above 0C and around midday it begins to snow and in the evening flurry turns into drizzle. Ghastly on pavements and roads…

29 February 2012 – 2 March 2012
The spring is in the air. The last day of February brings a whiff of true spring: +8C and sunshine, only March greets Warsaw with autumnal gloom, temperatures above zero all the time.

February 2012 was frosty. Average temperature in Warsaw was –6.2C (vs. long-term average of –1.0C), the coldest February in my lifetime. Again, mean temperature is blend of very frosty first 12 days, cold subsequent week and warm third decade. Stats:
- month-time high: +11.1C on 24 February 2012
- month-time low: -23.1C on 3 February 2012
- the warmest day: 24 February 2012 (daily average of +6.9C)
- the coldest day: 3 February 2012 (daily average of –18.5C)

3 March 2012 – 8 March 2012
High pressure system draws in chilly air from over Scandinavia. Sky is clear from dawn to dusk, but temperatures are typical for mild winter – a few degrees below zero at nights, with month-time low of –8C and from 0C to 5C over the day. No snow, sunbeams give spring-like warmth.

9 March 2012
Thick, thick, freezing fog lingers and limits visibility even to less than 200 metres. This looks rather like gloomy November, but spring equinox nears and weather like this will be rather infrequent in the coming months.

10 March 2012 – 11 March 2012
A weekend without frost (single-digit above zeros all the time), Saturday rainy, Sunday sunny, but windy. Long-term forecasts do not indicate winter can return at all. Sunny, dry and moderately warm days ahead.

12 March 2012
The last morning with frost (-2C). Well, time to declare the winter’s over…

The frost returned twice, once on 15 March and for the last time yesterday. Funnily enough, yesterday before dawn it was –1C and then temperature shot up to +20C in the afternoon to retreat to +6C at 9 p.m. Today it topped +18C, but the heat record for Warsaw (+23.0C on 21 March 1974) has not been beaten – hope the weather will catch up by the end of the month. This weekend beautifully farewells a late-coming, short, harsh, but not snowy winter.

For a good onset of spring – off w Polskę in business tomorrow!

A foray to a forest

Early March, sun is shining high and the worst of the winter’s gone (expect another winter timeline next week). When this kind of weather comes in, the nature beckons and first intimations of winter bring on getting out and breathing in the pre-spring air.

Last Saturday (8 days ago), I had luck to find two spare hours (free time is and will be scarce commodity for me) to pop over to the fringes of the nearest reserve of intact wildlife.

I set off from home at half past two p.m., marched one kilometre to catch a 709 bus, rode three stops and got off at the corner of ul. Puławska and ul. Jagielska. The very wait for the bus stop dragged on for over a quarter – public transport in the suburbs is often unreliable, but after all I didn’t feel like going there by a fume-emitting vehicle and it was still too cold to have a bike shake-down day. Having alighted the bus, I headed east, passed by a prestigious Laguna estate and having walked some 500 metres, I had the forest to my left.

I sauntered on, with a view to find a monument commemo- rating fatalities of terrible plane crash which happened here in May 1987. Having forgotten to take a map, I didn’t find it, but located the property from which the news of the crashed airplane came to the fire brigade. It’s Jagielska 2, in 1987 there was a rural dwelling here, in 2012 you can find here an international private school. A fine location, I must say. I wonder how children can get here, if none of their parents, nor any other childminder can give them a lift…

I strolled some 200 metres further east, to spot the official entrance to the forest. As I later learnt at home, I could turn there left, walk less than half a kilometre north and spot the monument I was searching for. Tough luck, I’ll be there before and after the 25th anniversary of the disaster anyway to commemorate the victims of the most tragic (in terms of death toll) Polish plane accident after World War II.

I was curious to see what kind of development can be found near the south-western peripheries of Las Kabacki. One can spot there well-looking detached house built over the last twenty years, with well-groomed gardens. A blot on the landscape are old, often derelict, dilapidated houses, some looking like summerhouses.

Many on big plots of land occupied by wrecked or almost falling-apart greenhouses. One day these areas will be rearranged; at the present there is nothing but a disorder here.

Between ul. Jagielska and the forest lie empty plots of land, waiting for a wealthy buyer, eager to purchase land for their own residence or to built a row of terraced houses for sale. The upsides of the location are vicinity of the forest, clean air and silence. It gets worse when it comes to commuting. A bus stop is two kilometres away, road is full of potholes, in the winter it has a low priority in snow-clearing. Unless the weather is good, you have no choice, but to use a car and spend money on petrol… Prices of properties in the suburbs must reflect time and money wasted on long commuting…

And the last element of the suburban landscape are spacious, detached, or semi-detached mansions, usually built in clusters. Most of those I noticed were uninhabited, many unfinished inside, and put up for sale. Until last Saturday I hadn’t seen a single sign of crisis on the Polish property market similar to those in countries affected by property market bubbles and here strikes a surprise. Enormous, yet spirit-lacking and anything, but cosy, houses no one wants to buy. It’s all a matter of price. These days in Poland supply and demand hardly ever meet.

As I was approaching ul. Puławska on my way to the bus stop, I spotted a plane. Blinded by the sun, I couldn’t discern what airline it was run by. And now a question to you – an Ukrainian as colours suggest? I’ve never heard of Aerosvit…

The bus stops near ul Jagielska have been temporarily (temporary solutions last long) moved in the summer of 2010 for the period when a footbridge over ul. Puławska is rebuilt. The old footbridge, eaten up by rust was torn down in mid-2010, almost two years have gone by and construction of the new one is not yet completed. I noticed stairs are not ready – they don’t reach the ground, lifts are still not fit to run and no one bothers to finish this hapless venture off.

A big board next to the footbridge informs me the modernisation of this and many other footpaths in Warsaw was co-financed by the EU… And what’s the benefit. Completed footbridges are closed off for months as urzędasy in the town hall are hanging back on issuing a use permit and soon after the facilities are opened some buttheads vandalise it. For a while local residents won’t be able to use the footbridge and drivers’ life will be made harder by one more set of traffic lights. Oddly enough, the light for cars turns red not only when someone presses a button and wants to cross the road, but light alternate in regular intervals – another absurdity…

The Iron Lady - film review

An elderly, senile, yet elegant lady does the shopping and then returns home to reminisce the past events with her (dead) husband. Dejecting and magnificent is the recent biography of Margaret Thatcher, masterfully starred as by Meryl Streep (this year’s Oscar for best actress prize winner).

The film’s plot runs as a series of retrospections, bringing back the most important moments of Mrs Thatcher’s (nee Roberts) life, interspersed throughout the daily struggle with dementia and beginnings of Alzheimer.

I cannot tell how reliable the depiction of Ms Roberts’ early life is, but from the film you can learn that upbringing and influence of her father, who ran a grocery, shaped her economic views, instilled extraordinary strength in her and familiarised her with the taste of deprivation. Margaret Roberts looms as a clever, prudent and determined young girl, with good grasp of basic laws of microeconomics. Adolescent Margaret’s way is uphill. She grows up when women are still seen as inferior and many realms of life and social activity are still no-go for the weaker sex. This does not change with years and is best illustrated in the scene when she enter the parliament for the first time. Men’s room is fit for entertainments typical for males, in the bathroom you can see urinals, behind the door with “women” board you would not notice anything else, but a chair and ironing board.

The strength of Mrs Thatcher has its dark sides. Her deeds are marked by obstinacy (refusal to change course). Her belief in the power of entrepreneurship, faith in perfection of the free market, one-sided disapproval of trade unions are slightly naïve, slightly cruel and suggest her perception of economics is over-simplified. If everything was as simple, as in her mind, she would not have become such a controversial figure. The shock therapy she applied to the ailing British economy was painful, but justified. With hindsight we see shock of the first years of her rule when unemployment soared and industrial output plummeted and we the subsequent turnaround. The choices she had to make were difficult and as a prime minister, she would always remain stalwart and unrelenting. She pursued the retrenchment programme despite backlash, put down protesting workers from unprofitable mines. Having slashed expenses for social care, she did not hesitate to spend millions of pounds on the Falklands war, winning which was a matter of honour. Her self-pride and conviction of her own infallibility, combined with not caring about the image, have ousted her from the seat of Tory leader. In her last months of serving as prime minister, Mrs Thatcher is depicted as full-of-herself, cold-hearted manager trying force her own ideas upon others, such as in the case of the community charge, seen by many as unfair and as another move into redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich.

The film is worth seeing not only as a whole work, but also for a few absolutely outstanding scenes.
1. The proposal scene – and Margaret’s speech in which she warns Dennis she would not be a silent wife standing by her husband’s side and would never like to end up washing up a teacup (watch out for the last scene then!).
2. The moment when she pulls out from outside her house to leave for parliament in 1959, and her children scream to ask her to stay, but she, with stone-cold face, sets her car in motion, does not look back and trespasses into the world of politics.
3. The scene when she announces her family she is going to run for a leadership of the Conservative party. Her children, who have always held it against their mother, that her commitment into public life was at the expense of family life, simply leave the kitchen, while her husband, usually supportive, this time does not try to hide his disapproval. Left alone in the kitchen, Mrs Thatcher asks: “When did I lose track of everyone?”. The scene is an unbeatable illustration of traps one can fall into when making a career without taking heed of their near and dear ones.
4. The scene when old Mrs Thatcher visits a doctor and complains that “people do not think anymore, people feel” and sees the shift from thinking to feeling the major cause or how the world looks like. And here I could stop and muse about “think vs. feel”, as it would be a great topic for a separate post.
I try to think and feel as much as I can, mix the two, but at the end of the day thinking takes over…

The film reminded me about my old longing for a politician who would step in to rule Poland, carry out necessary but unpopular reforms, and after four years would step down in disgrace, with support in polls below 5%, but leaving the country healed of its economic woes. With politicians focused on popularity with voters, this will not work…

From psychological perspective, Mrs Thatcher is depicted as tough outside, but it is hard to determine, whether she is equally tough inside. When she writes a letter to mothers of soldiers killed in the Falklands war, the surely shows she remains a sensitive woman, but is she all the time?

And people we meet on our way – are they tough or fragile, do they show their real psyche, or do they pretend. With four combinations:
1. fragile outside, fragile inside,
2. tough outside, tough inside,
3. fragile outside, tough inside,
4. fragile inside, tough outside,
first and second are sincere, third is improbable, but could be typical for mercenary ones who play on other people’s emotions to reach their goals, the fourth is, maybe sadly, more and more often seen. The world we live in makes us act as strong, while inside we may still be weak. It might be only a matter of time when this picture falls apart…

So in life, it is best to strike a healthy balance between toughness and fragility… Did the Iron Lady learn that lesson?

Affordability

I can't afford to... - so what the hell does it mean? As an economist I should understand and clearly define the meaning of such predication, yet I could struggle and all attempts to do it could go in vain. Affordability is probably one of the most ambiguous concepts in economics, containing enough imprecision to leave its users much room for (mis)interpretations.

Personally, I would distniguish three main concepts of it. If you can afford to buy something, you:
1) have enough money not only to purchase the item you want to have but also don't need to cut back on other expenditures - a very conservative approach, I'm kind of attracted by,
2) have enough money to spend it on a specific item - conservative approach, the one I'm guided by while managing my personal finances,
3) expect to have enough money to service the debt you run up to buy what you want and in the meantime don't have to tighten the belt while repaying the loan - a contemporary approach, not really what I embrace, yet not what I reject,
4) expect to have money to pay back the loan you take out to finance you dreams, but struggle to make ends meet - a subprime approach, what I consider a regular folly and signifcant threat to financial stability on micro- and macroeconomic levels.

While approaches no. 2 and 3 prevail, the difference between the two can be illustrated by the language of accounting. If you have cash at hand to buy something, I would call it a balance-sheet approach, whereas calculating what share of your monthly income can be spent on debt service can be called a cash-flow approach. Banks, when they analyse their customers' creditworthiness, check, whether the current cash flows are high enough to cover the debt service expenses. This method is a huge simplification, as it assumes that:
1) a borrower doesn't lose their source of income (downcase scenario) or
2) a borrower doesn't receive an additional income (upcase scenario).

Most people around lean towards the cash-flow approach. It's not uncommon that a human being is impatient and would like to have its needs met immediately*, without waiting and putting money aside and often without initial sacrifices. Such approach squares also with life-time income theory, yet as every model is based on several assumptions, including no misfortune is going to crop up. The model works properly as long as your career develops in a natural course (i.e. at startpoint you earn little and then your earnings rise until you retire), no illness, accident or death hits you. Well, there is no perfect model in economics, each model has its limitations, and inputs will always determine outputs.

My personal preference of the balance-sheet approach stems from the insecurity. I hope what future holds for me is only bright and do my best to ensure it, but since I've seen fellow good workers laid off out of the blue in an inhuman way, I don't want to take a risk of having a debt burden and being jobless at the same time.

* Example I heard at work in April 2011, one of my colleagues saying about her friends: They have a flat, but would like to swap it for a bigger one, but unfortunately their outstanding mortgage debt in CHF is higher than the market value of their current flat - my jaw dropped open, how about yours???

Another example - recently I changed my commuting routes and leave the car at a P&R car park closer to home, this lets me save some 3 PLN each day. But I did it not because I can't afford to buy petrol - I could even easily drive directly to the office every day and spend on it some 200 PLN more a month. I clamped down on driving because I consider it a waste of money which could be put it aside and utilised in a better way in the future.

Next week: The Iron Lady - film review (watched it, but had too little time to put all my thought into the correct order)

Hedonism - a reason to be proud?

I hatched the idea of writing this in late 2009, after seeing on my two friends' respectively: facebook profile and website their "about me" descriptions. One described her interests as "pure hedonism" (hedonizm w czystej postaci, the other introduced herself as "consummate hedonist" (wytrawna hedonistka. I read it with a bit of disdain, pulled a silly face and decided that the next day I would ask my closest schoolmates how they would react to it.

My pristine reaction was "there's nothing to boast about". Pursuit of pleasure is not evil itself, but setting it as an overriding goal in life smacked of being totally out of place. Then I read the entry in wikipedia to learn more about this so-called "school of thoughts", the read dispelled some of my doubts, but the bad aftertaste remained - maybe I was biased. But then it turned out my friends' opinions generally squared with mine. Actually they didn't find it as repulsive as I did, but were all far cry from embracing the pleasure-oriented stance.

As open-minded and tolerant people, we are aware and accept that people have different definitions of happiness and different hierarchies of values and they have a right to arrange their lives in a way they choose. Different people mean different objectives in life. For some the most important things are: family, friends, work, career, money, material goods, travels, education, sport, hobby, entertainment, fun, sacrifice to other people, etc., so why not pleasure? The take on how one assesses hedonism probably hinges upon the definition of the term. What occured to me, at first glance, was that pursuit of pleasure, the most important goal in life for a hedonist, must be subordinated to other values, including feelings of fellow people. The "at all cost" pursuit of pleasure probably whipped up my reject of the concept. My first association was that seeking happiness must be done at the expense of other people. I see two reasons for such reaction: blissful ignorance (mother of prejudices, misunderstandings and egregious errors) and my perception of the two women who’d declared themselves hedonists and whose behaviour usually involved caring little about others.

The wikipedia article says: a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure (pleasure minus pain). Well, I'd had it in mind before and this probably will always prevent me from embracing hedonism. The pain, not physical, but primarily emotional, is an indispensable element of a human life. If you've never experienced a pain tearing you apart, you can't call yourself a human. You simply can't always avoid pain. Suffering adds you experience, toughens you up, makes you wiser, allows you to sympathise with the worse-off. This puts me further away from the embrace and brings me closer to reject.

So is the hedonism about self-centredness then? Maybe if it's rational to take care of one's own interests firstly, the answer is 'yes'? Is there one good answer? Are there still more questions than answers? I don't wish to condemn the dissenters, but it seems the key question is whether somebody is able to strike a trade-off between egoism and altruism, with more emphasis on the latter.

The whole post is apparently one huge ramble, may it charm consist in the confusing disorder of thoughts...

Politics, Economy, Society three years on

Just a few sentences not to let pass the third anniversary of my blogging pass unnoticed. Few people manage to run the blog for so long, but knowing I hardly ever post more often than once a week, I can't consider this a success. Of course I'll keep it up, but the inspiration and passion I used to have in 2009 or 2010 are long gone. It's rather a call of duty that prompts to update the blog (usually) each Sunday, not the desire to write I had prior to the start of my professional career in summer 2010. The blog has seen a shift from subject matters mentioned in its title to more personal observations and I have serious doubts whether this is the right direction...

My big thanks for the faithful readers who keep visiting the site, despite declining quality of its content. Please don't run out of patience and if you still like PES, gee me up from time to time.

And I'll try to refrain from sharing the state of my mind here. Will do it better

I tied myself with wire
to let the horses roam free
Playing with the fire
till the fire played with me

(...)

Two souls to smart to be
in the realm of certainty

(...)

Every eye looking every other way
Counting down till the pain would stop

(U2: Moment of surrender)

Big-freeze drive

A sudden attack of winter is probably the best incentive for some people to tidy up their garages and find there enough room to park their vehicles. The rest, who don’t have garages, use their garages as lumber-rooms or have too small garages to keep their cars, have their vehicles put to the test by the cold weather. Below is a coverage of how my car, almost nine-year-old Renault Megane (runs on petrol), kept for the first winter outside a garage, has borne up the recent big freeze.

Friday, 27 January 2012
06:50 / -13C
Engine starts obediently, something near the clutch squeaks when I pull out or change gears. The unpleasant noise ceases when engine warms up.
17:50 / -11C
Fires up like a dream, oil in the gearbox is a bit thick.

Saturday, 28 January 2012
Night-time low: -13C
08:20 / -12C
Engine starts without enthusiasm, but also without hesitation, then it warms up and defrosts windscreen and rear screen while I scrape the hard rime off side windows. Clutch again is a bit frozen up.
08:50 / -12C
Fires up like a dream, off for a 12 kilometres journey, everything warms up and runs very smoothly.
10:45 / -10C
At the car park outside my grandparents’ block I spot a guy starting his Skoda Octavia with diesel engine. The owner has a rough ride, the third attempt is successful. My engine hasn’t run cold during an hour-long sitting.
14:10 / -8C
While on my walk I hear two other cars wheezing… Note temperature hasn’t dropped below –15C and problems have begun for many carefree drivers.
17:15 / -10C
No sign of six hours of sitting, cranks up like in summer…
21:15 / -12C
Again exemplary start, later the car left for a cold night and morning…

Sunday, 29 January 2012
Night-time low: -14C
09:50 / -13C
Just like yesterday, everything works properly. No sign of winter on car’s bodywork, so after a minute of heating the engine up I set off to Media Markt Okęcie. I cover altogether 40 kilometres, therein first 7 before the engine reaches its working temperature. A longer run at the steady speed with radio and heating turned off does good to the battery.
11:30 / -10C
And now the vehicle left for 19 hours of sitting, including twelve hours in double-digit frost, expected to hit even –18C.

Monday, 30 January 2012
Night-time low: -16C
06:35 / -16C
Okay, this might be boring, the car cranks up obediently. My colleagues say there’s nothing to be excited about, each well-maintained, petrol-fuelled car, with properly charged battery, will start without problems in temperature above –30C. I somehow don’t feel like checking it, but nothing indicates it could pack up…
18:20 / -12C
Fires up as if it was summer, unfortunately the bottom part of windscreen froze over inside and the car defrost itself very slowly. OK, as long as it doesn’t impede driving…

Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Night-time low: -17C
06:40 / -17C
No changes since yesterday. It should keep running well as long as it’s driven every day, albeit it has to be said exposure to frost is not what vehicles like the most. Natural selection on the roads – I put down lighter traffic to the fact some cars failed the cold weather test
17:45 / -13C
Engine warms up quite quickly – wondering why…

Wednesday, 1 February 2012
Night-time low: -20C
06:35 / -20C
It has to be said for over 8 years in my family Megane had never been used in temperature lower than –19C.
Another good start and another rough ride with frosty windows. Hard rime is very hard to scrape, plus fingers, even in gloves are freezing. The traffic is sparse and 90% of cars on the road have driven out of garages (no sign of sitting in the cold), so I go by car to the office…
17:50 / -15C
The car sat for 10 hours in the sun and an unpleasant surprise inside – the windscreen has frozen over… inside. It’s not totally frozen, so I pull out and begin the crawl in a traffic jam towards Plac Zawiszy (less than one kilometre out of my 18 kilometre journey and covering it takes 15 minutes (vs. 45 minutes for remaining 17 kilometres), by the time I reach it, the car defrosts itself. I was a bit stressed out by goings-on at work and frozen screen and didn’t make out whether the engine was hesitant to start…

Thursday, 2 February 2012
Night-time low: -22C
06:40 / -22C
Oil in the gearbox is very thick, but the battery is doing a great job. Kicks in immediately despite harsh frost. Number of cars on the roads that have stayed the night in the harsh frost is lower than yesterday. Warsaw is full of cars left where they packed up.
17:05 / -18C
I leave the office at time and again find the windscreen frozen inside, but the layer of frost is not as thick as yesterday. After warming the engine up for half a minute I pull out, all frozen elements creak, windscreen is being defrosted while moving in a snarled-up traffic. A very frosty night ahead!

Friday, 3 February 2012
Night-time low: -24C
06:35 / -24C
Minus twenty four – no such word as “fun”. I barely can turn the gear from rear to neutral, then press the start button, hear a short wheezing and the engine cranks up!

Then ensues a long scrape during which my fingers are in a state near frostbite. Than it all looks pretty surreal. Radiation fog lingers, roads are swathed in clouds of fumes from engines of sparse cars. This looks like an icy hell, but Megane bravely carries me to work. Traffic is holiday-time-like – very light. Most cars sitting outside have refused to start… Mine works, but LCD displays go bonkers, when I try to check if the radio works, I learn it doesn’t, the computer indicates current consumption of petrol on cold engine is 40 litres per 100 kilometres…
17:15 / -17C
Well, not a surprise that it starts, but I wonder where’s the boundary of the machinery (battery, starter, engine, oil…). Would it start at –30C?

Saturday, 4 February 2012
Night-time low: -22C
08:40 / -21C
Oil is thicker than yesterday, or maybe it just seems to be just because the car has been sitting for two hours longer. Sun melts some of the frost, so scraping takes shorter and I manage to pull out faster. Two first kilometres are disastrous… I’ve had enough of grappling with barely movable gear lever…
09:30 / -20C
Ok, now it starts briskly… At my father’s insistence I turn the radio on; it seems to work when it’s above –20C outside… When I arrive at my grandparents I see another comedy titled “Using wires to start a car”.
10:40 / -19C
Off to home, engine within an hour of sitting has not run cold, then the car is left for some 22 hours of sitting in the cold.

Sunday, 5 February 2012
Night-time low: -19C
11:00 / -15C
The car sat for 24 hours in temperature below –15C and kicks in without hesitation. There’s no frost on windows and I can easily set it in motion without warming the engine up. Oil in the gearbox is not very thick. To the petrol station and then for a 10-kilometre ride to charge up the battery. If the worst is over and the car withstood the nadir of cold snap, it doesn’t mean precautions don’t have to be taken.

Monday, 6 February 2012
Night-time low: -20C
06:40 / -20C
Another brisk start after 20 hours of sitting in the frost. The car’s got used to the frost, but it only puts up with low temperatures. I’m sick of thick oil in the gearbox and several noises it gives off before it warms up.
17:45 / -15C
Traffic on ul. Puławska is oddly sparse. Longing for single-digit frost…

Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Night-time low: -14C
06:45 / -13C
Dammit, oil in the gearbox is not really thick, only falling snow slightly impedes driving
17:55 / -10C
Hey, I haven’t seen such a brisk cold start for a week. We’re returning to normal driving!

Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Night-time low: -12C
Is there any point in writing???

Until today, each morning was colder, with –19C hitting today. The engine has always cranked up impeccably. But today I again saw some cars whose owners made the most of the weekend to start them with wires and electric current borrowed from another vehicle.

So why some cars don’t cause their owners any troubles, while other pack up. My take on the issue is that not the car, but its owner (or user) is to blame… Maybe the content below is belated, but I prepared some advice for carefree drivers…

1. If your car runs on petrol, you’re some 10 degrees ahead. Diesel engines need more energy from the battery to be started, but beware – this doesn’t exempt you from taking care of your vehicle.

2. Good battery is a crucial when temperatures drop really low – check it before winter comes, if necessary charge it up or buy a new one. Prudent drivers do it in the autumn (I changed the battery in November), carefree wrangle with a dead one while standing in double-digit frost.

3. Other devices must work properly – nothing’s going to help your good battery, if alternator doesn’t charge it properly, motor starter is worn-down, ignition and injection systems are faulty, or fuel is tainted with water. When it’s below minus twenty any weaker link in the chain might immobilise your car…

4. Avoid short runs and starting the engine many times a day – during short trips shortage of energy used to start the engine is not replenished by alternator. Also crawling in traffic jams doesn’t do good as engine revolutions are low and little energy is produced and goes to battery.

5. Drive every day even if you don’t have to – the big freeze set me back some extra 30 zlotys spent on petrol – on account of driving longer distance directly to work (which in fact is a waste of money, but to my surprise not time!) and driving on one Sunday when I didn’t need to, but it spared me potential troubles. A well-maintained car will sit overnight in –25C and start, but adding to it one more day and a second night might be a risky step.

6. Hold back from using energy-consuming devices – radio and CD are off, heating is not turned up, windscreen and rear-screen heating are in use only when necessary. Energy produced by the alternator should charge the battery (and it’s the last receiver of energy, so it receives only the surplus of the produced electricity), whose capacity in –20C is by some 50% lower and which needs to give more energy to crank up an iced engine…

The frosty period is coming to an end – this means denser traffic…

A year after the transition

There are moments when it never hurts to look back on one’s old thoughts and review their accuracy with hindsight. A year ago I, a half-baked graduate, just in the eve of starting my first permanent job, set out to summarise ups and downs of leaving university and stepping into the corporate world. Time to quote my thoughts from February 2011 and confront them with my views today.

I WILL MISS:

1. Day-to-day contact with peers. Truth be told my colleagues will be a bit or much older than me. From my past experience I know I can get along with older colleagues very well, but they are a sort of a different breed, they have different problems, pastime activities, interests, priorities in life, usually they have a different point of view because they have their own families and obligations it entails.

I somehow miss it less than I expected. I’ve always found it easy to get along with older people and so I do at work, but there’s a noticeable gap between us – most of them have spouses and children, hence have different duties and problems. I haven’t experienced their daily bread, they long for carefree period of youth in which I, in their opinion, still am.

2. Clever, awe-inspiring lecturers, just to name a few:
dr Bogusław Czarny, who taught me basic micro- and macroeconomics, inspired to think independently, form my own opinions and who stressed the importance of the overriding rule in economics, that an assertion is true when it cannot be disproved, not when it can be proved,
prof. Marek Garbicz, for his breathtaking lectures, sense of humour and open mind,
prof. Maria Podgórska, for her patience, consistency and the fact she did not confine just to teach econometrics and mathematics in finance and insurance, but also wanted to instil in us integrity and made us aware how important in life it was,
mgr Sławomira Rajkowska, my best German teacher ever, unfortunately she stood in for our lecturer just for one term, but the progress I made (without much effort) was unbelievable. Had my Deutsch been that good today...
mgr Aneta Piwko, my best English teacher ever. If all teachers had such excellent command of English, passion and drive to teach, Germans would not stack up against Poles in terms of English skills.
prof. Sławiński... Here words are very unnecessary. Who experienced the pleasure of attending his lectures knows what I mean. The rest may only regret.
dr Piotr Mielus, the supervisor of my MA thesis and an outstanding practitioner.

True, but on the other hand, I met several awe-inspiring people where I work, and, like at SGH, many mediocre individuals (who are in a minority). I should kick myself for not attending open lectures at my school, or not visiting some of my favourite scholars during their office hours. Yet still there time to make up…

3. Casual clothes. From next week will fit for weekends, holidays and cult dress-down Fridays. I actually like formal outfits so this one should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Well, I’m still at the age, when I don’t mind wearing a suit and tie (business casual dress code Mon – Thu), but dress code policy is much more flexible than I expected – if I don’t have any important meeting there’s no reason why I couldn’t wear jeans, casual shirt, or a jumper if I feel like.

4. Commuting in non-peak hours. Lovely it was to get from or to Warsaw within fifty minutes in the middle of the day or in the evening when streets were already unclogged. My new recipe for avoiding traffic jams will be trains, so the journey between home and the office should take around an hour.

In July I swapped trains for a car, since then I’ve used public transport within the boundaries of Warsaw only (P&R to work and back + getting about town). I depart for work in early rush hours when traffic is snarled-up, but not stationary. I return to P&R in late rush-hours or after it. Carrying one’s arse in a vehicle is convenient, but expensive…

5. Job fairs, event, meeting famous people who visited SGH and other events. First two and a half years abounded in such events. Later the crisis came, companies cut their promotion budgets and I ran out of disposable pens.

At work there are different events during which I can pick up other gadgets. And I slightly miss these small talks with representatives of employers on potential internships. These days internships are beyond the scope of my career interests and provided no big wipe-out (i.e. lay-offs) strikes out of the blue, I should hold down the job.

6. Privileges. Not that soon. I will pick up my diploma some three months after the final MA exam, so I until then will I make the most of my ticket concession and other measurable benefits of being a student. The new world will compensate me for this by giving perks.

I lost my privileges on the last day of June 2011. From then I’ve had to pay the full fare for my travelcard, but on the other hard I have a health-care package, swimming pool entry card and reimbursement of glasses expenses.

7. Unfettered speculation on stock exchange. From now I will not be able to do a real-time trading plus I will have several trading restrictions. This does not mean I will pull back from the stock market at all; the speculator will become a mid-term investor.

I have to keep away from some stocks and I’m obliged to submit weekly report on my trading activity. These days all those limitations don’t hurt me at all, I don’t understand where and why markets are heading, so I trade very cautiously, or not trade at all.

I WILL NOT MISS:

1. The overwhelming mess, bad communication between authorities and students and general disinformation.

Replace “authorities” with “superiors” and “students” with “subordinates”, and the sentence stays true!

2. Ignorance and laziness of lecturers. I do not even wish to comment. The list of admired lecturers was short. The list of big let-downs from the whole course of my studies would be much longer...

The problem of ignorance is far less appalling, actually people there are well-educated and reservations concerning their expertise are rather sparse. Plus they are ready to lend a helping hand and share their experience, if I’m in need.

3. Workings of the student office (dziekanat), its surly personnel, quaint decisions (deleting completed courses from track record of studies, informing me about my Bachelor's exam the day before in the evening)...

Thank God I’ve finished school! But a private corporation with head office in the fatherland of capitalism has its own set of absurdities, equally enervating.

4. To boot bad organisation, doing everything at eleventh hour...

This has not sunk into oblivion, just manifests itself in a different way. Closing deal at eleventh hour is not infrequent, being assigned tasks with tight deadlines is not uncommon, but it’s typical for the corporate world and at least if the job is done correctly, it’s appreciated.

5. Appalling use of English, which was ridiculed on this blog repeatedly.

At the bank virtually everyone uses English and everyone does it as good as they can, still too often with putting too little emphasis on quality. People from London or from the US have got accustomed to us mangling English. I’ve been reproved a few times for using too difficult (for native speakers) vocabulary, but no one’s ever told me off for polishing up a piece written in not-up-to-the-standard English.

6. Broken down central heating when outside it was -15C or unopenable windows and lack of curtains or blinds when outside temperature hit +30C

It’s been kind of dreadfully cold over the last week and temperature in my office was around +19C, barely above the threshold of +18C, allowing employees to refuse to work. But aircon was doing well in summer.

7. Lectures at 19:00 for day-time students (prevalent, alas).

There were a few incidences of working later than until 7 p.m. over that year, with record-late knock-off at quarter to nine in the evening, but if you think anyone at the top cares that it’s after 5 p.m. and it should be your private time, you’re wrong.

Immersing in the corporate world will not only mean I will be self-supporting, but also will bring new challenges and real learning opportunities. In the coming months I expect to work harder and learn more than within four and a half years of my studies.

Here I wasn’t wrong.

Hitherto I have not observed any symptoms of depresja magisterska, (graduates afflicted with this malady are down in the dumps because the carefree period of studies is drawing to a close and they are in for forty years of work), but the worst might be still to come.

There have been ups and downs over that year, but all in all I don’t miss school. Somewhere deep down I feel the clock is ticking, years are passing by (about to turn 25 in ten months) and self-fulfilment should lie above all outside work, if for somebody it also lies within it, they must be very happy.

Earnings

On Wednesday my manager, while doing a research in the Internet (managers don’t surf the web at work, they are always focused on their duties) ran across an article from Warsaw pages of Gazeta Wyborcza about wages of SGH graduates… An interesting piece, particularly if you bear in mind how opaque the Polish labour market is...

The very title, literally “Graduates of Warsaw School of Economics, [earn] even eight thousand zlotys after tax, just upon graduation” would suit better a tabloid, as it includes more than a tinge of manipulation. The piece is a summary of a survey conducted among recent graduates of my university, participation to it was voluntary and answers were given totally anonymously. The sample numbered, if my memory serves me right, 837 graduates who were divided into three groups, according to period of time elapsed since their graduation, i.e. those who had graduated less than six months ago, those who had finished their studies more than a half, but less than three years ago, and those with longer post-graduation career.

The reactions the title provoked in my team, categorise it to gullet-press style. “How come?”, “How bold”, “Insolence” – my manager and head of my department, both graduates of SGH remember how much they earned as freshmen and know how high my salary is and wondered who would be eager to pay some 12,000 PLN before tax to a grown-out student. While cries of outrage died down, I induced everyone to read the article over and than return to the discussion. As it turns out, only 7.6 percent of the surveyed declared they earned more than 8,500 PLN net per month, but around 25% of the respondents asserted their monthly salary was between 2,500 and 3,500 PLN and another one-fourth said they earned from 3,500 to 4,500 PLN. No other figures were cited, so one can’t infer how numerous was the low-paid group (monthly wages below 2,500 PLN) and how many were paid between 4,500 and 7,500 PLN.

I’m leaning towards fault-finding in my attitude towards the article. The sample was rather small, bearing in mind that around 2,000 students graduate from SGH each year (I have to admit I also didn’t take the trouble to accept the invitation to fill in the questionnaire), so there were only over 60 graduates with relatively high earnings, in the group of 0.5 – 3 years after graduation (headcount of ca. 6,000). Hang on, if the survey was anonymous, everyone could write whatever they wanted and inflate their earnings, this affects reliability of such research. The puzzling thing is also that I’m a registered user of SGH career centre and I didn’t find any report on their pages. If I’m not authorised to view it, how have journalists of GW come into it? Doesn’t it cast any doubts on reliability?

There are some outstanding graduates of my school, I know some who’ve managed to climb many steps on the ladders of their careers very fast. In each population there is a fraction of very gifted people, if they are interested in economics, business, finance, etc., many of them are destined to get in to SGH, so the very group of SGH graduates does not reflect an overall situation of graduates of all universities on the Polish labour market. If we assume we agree that free market properly estimates the price that a young, outstanding employee deserves to be paid, or how much they have to be paid to fend off job offers from the competition, we shouldn’t find those earnings outrageous. Compare this to bonuses of CEOs of British banks (there’s a lot of hue and cry about this in the UK these days) and 8,500 zeds per month sound like little peanuts. And last but not least, many of those well-paid rat-racers spend more than 12 hours a day in their offices over the working week, work over weekends and grow rich quickly at the expense of their personal lives. Be aware there’s always a price to pay…

Much more uplifting is the news that some 50% of SGH graduates earn between 2,500 and 4,500 PLN and this is where I fall as well. Deep down I feel the bracket sets floor and cap for a decent salary for a graduate with considerably short experience… A proper career and earnings path should start at a rather low level and have a strong upside potential left for an employee, if they prove they deserve to move up, they should be given a pay rise.

This is what seems proper to me, but in practise appetite comes with eating. As I was about to start my current job a year ago, I thought my salary was very competitive; today I find it only very decent, but from what I discerned, where I work commitment is appreciated – so I stay patient… Plus I have to add I’m in a different situation than my peers who’ve come to Warsaw to study and settled down here for good. I don’t have to pay rent for a flat, actually my expenses are still quite low and having the luxury of owning and using a car, I can still put aside 50% - 60% of my salary. No room for discontent for sure, but well, appetite comes with eating, and the more you eat, the more bloated your belly gets…