Winter Timeline 2023/24

Predictions for the passing winter varied greatly since late summer of 2023, due to unknown impact of El Nino, bringing both negative and positive anomalies in Europe. The consensus above forecasters was probably that Poland would experience both spells of warmth and cold snaps, but all in all the winter will be normal both in terms of temperature and snowfall.

The winter was preceded by a record-warm autumn, actually the warmest since records began.

First ground frosts were observed in Warsaw on 9 October 2023 and 10 October 2023 (temperature 2 metres above ground declined only to +0.5C). In most places in Poland first frosts were reported, while hilly southern regions were covered by a thin and quickly-melting blanket of snow. The first frost was measured on 18 October 2023, exactly in line with 1991-2020 average and its incidence was the earliest since 2016.

17 November 2023
The winter timeline is initiated exactly on the same day as in 2018 and 2022.
Flurry begins in the afternoon, by late evening some of the snow lingers, despite temperature just above 0C.

18 November 2023 – 19 November 2023
Intense snow showers on and off. The white powder is heavy and melts slower than it falls. Temperature gently above freezing most of the time.

20 November 2023
It thaws out; snows melt. Drizzle and fog make the day abhorrently dark.

21 November 2023
The day starts with a freezing drizzle, which later turns into snow. No warmer than –1C. Slippery as hell.

22 November 2023

The morning is the coldest since many months, with a low of –6C at dawn. Clear, blue skies, chilly wind and day-time high of 0C.

23 November 2023
From –3C and freezing rain in the morning, to +8C, gusty wind and rain pouring sideways in the evening. Autumn is back, but not for long.

24 November 2023
From +3C in the morning to light frost in the evening. Gusty wind does not ease off.

25 November 2023 – 26 November 2023
Light winter with temperature between –2C and +1C, intermittent snow showers and some spells of sunshine.

27 November 2023 – 29 November 2023
Below freezing all the time, with very little supplies of fresh snow. Horribly chilly, but with some sunny moments.

30 November 2023
Out of the blue comes the morning snow and a short thaw in the afternoon. The air is wet. Wind chill close to –10C.

November 2023 was normal. Average temperature in Warsaw was +3.9C (vs. long-term average of +3.8C). Stats:
- month-time high: +14.3C on 2 November 2023,
- month-time low: –6.8C on 30 November 2023,
- the warmest day: 3 November 2023 (daily average of +12.0C):
- the coldest day: 29 November 2023 (daily average of –3.8C)
- number of days with snow cover: 11 (the highest since 1998),
- the highest snow depth: 3 centimetres on 18 November 2023.

 

1 December 2023 – 2 December 2023
Gloomy, freezing fog, chilly. Looks like autumn, feels like winter.

3 December 2023 – 4 December 2023
A little bit brighter and some snow has fallen, the cover is too thin to cause any disruptions, but thick enough to change the landscapes in the capital to white.

5 December 2023
One sunny, bright day, but still below freezing.

6 December 2023 – 10 December 2023
Below zero, not much, but all the time, cloudy, with occasional, yet at times intense flurry.

11 December 2023
The rain washes away three inches of snow within less than 24 hours. Gone is the winter scenery.

12 December 2023 – 14 December 2023
The ugliest type of Polish late autumn / pre-winter returns – barely above 0C, damp air, occasional drizzle or rain, fogs and not a spell of sunshine.

15 December 2023
A tiny spell of winter – just barely above freezing, snow showers, with white powder melting nearly instantly. I appreciate a few moments of sunshine.

16 December 2023 – 21 December 2023
All in all, late autumn continues, with no incidence of frost (temperatures ranging from +2C to +8C), overcast skies, frequent drizzle and intensifying wind.

22 December 2023
Zoltan winter storm brings howling chilly winds, some sunshine and a blizzard which hits Warsaw shortly before noon, brings a sudden temperature drop below freezing and some 3 centimetres of fresh, wet snow, which begins to melt soon. Temperature mostly barely above zero, but feels like –10C.

23 December 2023 – 24 December 2023
Chilly, windy, close to zero, some sunshine, some snow showers, but with a white layer not lingering for long.

25 December 2023 – 26 December 2023
Much warmer – day-time highs above +10C, windy, with frequent intense (rain) showers.

27 December 2023 – 31 December 2023
Late autumn continues. Days are brighter, precipitation rare, temperature, with exception of one night-time incidence of frost, remains single-digit positive.

December 2023 was very warm. Average temperature in Warsaw was +2.1C (vs. long-term average of –0.1C). Stats:.
- month-time high: +10.4C on 25 December 2023 (just like nearly every second year, on Christmas rather than at the beginning of the month),
- month-time low: –8.7C on 5 December 2023,
- the warmest day 25 December 2023 (daily average of +8.3C),
- the coldest day: 5 December 2023 (daily average of – 5.6C),
- number of days with snow cover: 11,
- the highest snow depth: 8 centimetres on 10 December 2023.

 

1 January 2024 – 4 January 2024
The last days of late autumn. Temperature between +2C and +8C, lots of rain showers or drizzle, not a spell of sunshine.

5 January 2024
Still dark and ugly, but the temperature turns negative.

6 January 2024
Some snow fell overnight, then some snow showers topped up the layer of white duvet during the day. At least the ground gets some cover before hard frosts.

7 January 2024
Getting lousily colder, temperature close to double-digit frost.

8 January 2024 – 10 January 2024
Bitterly cold, the coldest since January 2021 actually. Well below –10C most of the time, wind chill approaching –20C, but skies are clear blue. Long longed-for sunshine in abundance.

11 January 2024 – 13 January 2024
Mild winter, with some snow showers, grey skies most of the time and temperature fluctuating between –8C and +1C.

14 January 2024
Now a mild thaw with some snow showers.

15 January 2024
Close to the point of freezing. In the evening Warsaw is it by a snow storm. Roads and pavements are icy afterwards.

16 January 2024 – 17 January 2024
Glorious sunshine is back, with double-digit frost at night in between the two days being the price to pay. A major thaw is on the horizon.

18 January 2024 – 21 January 2024
The last (for a while) gasps of mild winter. Frosty most of the time, but with day-time highs barely above 0C, with intermittent intense deliveries of fresh snow.

22 January 2024 – 25 January 2024
The thaw is on, right away in overdrive, with sunshine and then abundant rainfall accelerating the pace at which snow disappears.

26 January 2024 – 28 January 2024
Cooler (closer to 0C), with no sunshine, but intermittent sleet or snow.

29 January 2024 – 31 January 2024
The first intimation of pre-spring, with lots of sunshine, day-time highs in excess of +7C, but also morning frosts.

January 2024 was warm. Average temperature in Warsaw was –0.2C (vs. long-term average of –1.5C). Stats:
- month-time high: +8.9C on 3 January 2024,
- month-time low: –15.1C on 9 January 2024,
- the warmest day: 4 January 2024 (daily average of +6.0C),
- the coldest day: 8 January 2024 (daily average of – 11.4C),
- number of days with snow cover: 19,
- the highest snow depth: 12 centimetres on 21 January 2024.

 

1 February 2024 – 6 February 2024
The weather resembles late March and is anything, but winter-like. Temperature between +3C and +10C, windy as hell and more rainy than sunny.

7 February 2024 – 9 February 2024
A short near-winter episode, with temperatures barely above zero and light snow (which disappears quickly).

10 February 2024 – 15 February 2024
Spring is in the air. Again, much warmer, up to low double digits, much less rain, the wind eases off.

16 February 2024 – 17 February 2024
The first proper assault of spring weather, with full sunshine on the former day and some bits of rain on the latter. Day-time highs well above +10C.

18 February 2024 – 21 February 2024
Somewhat colder, with single-digit temperature. Only the first day of the period brings clement weather, then rain prevails.

22 February 2024 – 24 February 2024
A veritable spring nears. Currently temperatures top gently above +10C, skies are overcast, rain showers come and go.

25 February 2024 – 27 February 2024
Spring explodes in full sunshine, with early afternoons bringing temperatures close to +15C (yet not record-setting).

28 February 2024 – 29 February 2024
Spring retracts a little, not as warm as in recent days, yet a whole lot warmer than it should be at this time of year, rainy.

February 2024 was the warmest since records began. Average temperature in Warsaw was +6.2C (vs. long-term average of –0.4C and the warmest until now February 1990 when temperature averaged out +4.7C). Stats:
- month-time high: +16.5C on 27 February 2024 (1.8 Celsius degrees cooler than on 25 February 2021),
- month-time low: –1.4C on 14 February 2024 (beating the previous record of the highest minimum temperature of –3.9C in February set in February 2020),
- the warmest day: 27 February 2024 (daily average of +11.1C, typical for last decade of April),
- the coldest day: 8 February 2024 (daily average of +0.4C, beating the previous record of the highest minimum average of –0.4C set on 7 February 2020, in other words this was the first February in Warsaw with no day with negative average temperature),
- number of days with snow cover: 0,
- the highest snow depth: not applicable, although we had a few snowflakes on the ground for an hour or two on 9 February 2024.

 

1 March 2024 – 3 March 2024
Was supposed to be sunny and warm, but clouds refused to roll away and temperature has barely exceeded +10C (vs. forecasts of +15C or more).

4 March 2024 – 6 March 2024
No longer with double digits, with inadequate supply of sunshine and spells of rain. The weather slowly drifts to how it should be at this time of year.

7 March 2024 – 10 March 2024
Sunshine is back. High daily temperature fluctuations, from the coldest mornings since the third decade of January to upper single digits or low double-digits in the afternoons.

11 March 2024 – 13 March 2024
Somewhat colder, yet above zero all the time, with abundant rainfall.

14 March 2024 – 16 March 2024
More sunshine, day-time highs above +10C, but the short spell of spring weather is chased away by a cold front, preceded by first spring thunderstorm.

17 March 2024
Colder, cloudier, feels like autumn for a while.

18 March 2024
Wake up to behold a light dusting of snow on cars and lawns. In snows on and off until evening, at times intensely. In the morning the snow cover lingers for two of three hours, then it melts.

19 March 2024 – 20 March 2024
The weather returns to pre-spring mode, with single-digit temperatures, ground frosts in the morning and overcast skies most of the time.

21 March 2024 – 26 March 2024
Very changeable weather, with temperature swings from –1C to +17C, frequent rain showers, one thunderstorm, bits of sunshine and some light morning frost. Conceivably, the record-early last frost could have been reported in Warsaw on 26 March (beating the previous record set on 2 April 2016).

27 March 2024 – 29 March 2024
Warmer, day-time highs of more than +15C. Had my tyres (in the old Megane) changed on 28 March 2024, which was the earliest tyre change I ever had, after 3 years of getting this done in the second decade of April.

30 March 2024
Early summer rather than early spring. Heat record for March is broken, namely +22.9C measured on 21 March 1974 is beaten with +24.4C.

31 March 2024
The record set yesterday does not last long, for the first time in history temperature in March in Warsaw exceeded +25C.

March 2024 was extremely warm. Average temperature in Warsaw was +7.0C (vs. long-term average of +3.2C, at the par with March 2014, but colder than in March 2007, when temperature averaged out +7.2C). Stats:
- month-time high: +25.3C on 31 March 2024,
- month-time low: –4.1C on 8 March 2024,
- the warmest day: 31 March 2024 (daily average of +18.6C, the warmest March day ever),
- the coldest day: 18 March 2024 (daily average of +1.0C),
- number of days with snow cover: 1,
- the highest snow depth: less than 1 centimetre on 18 March 2024.

Off to Kraków next weekend, so the next post in two weeks.

Warming, warning!

Gone is the second decade of the twenty-first century. Time for summaries for weather / climate freaks. Climatologists use a 30-year window as a reference period, therefore with the advent of 2021, the 1981-2010 benchmark period gives way to 1991-2020 window. I hence take the opportunity to run some comparisons of average temperatures in Warsaw measured across decades.

I rely on official, publicly available weather data for Warsaw for years 1951-2020 and for earlier period, on a spreadsheet which I downloaded back in 2010 from a NASA website, but could not restore the link. The database I had come by then traces back to 1881, however lacks measurements from years between 1938 and 1950, hence the analysis is a bit patchy.

The first chart shows how average temperatures in specific months rose in last three 30-year reference periods. The trend of rising temperatures is clearly visible, with the average temperature going up by around 1 Celsius degree, comparing 1991-2020 to 1971-2020 average.

The second chart illustrates average yearly temperatures in 30-year periods. One clearly sees the 1961-1990 period was not warmer than 1881-1910, but the heating-up process actually began in 1990s and accelerated in the current century.

The third graph shows even more vividly the growth of average yearly temperatures decade by decade. I firstly took 30 years for temperatures to grow by 1 Celsius degree, but then the pace accelerated to alarming 10 years per 1 Celsius degree.

On the fourth graph you can clearly see the mean monthly temperatures have not risen markedly between the 1881-1910 and 1951-1980 reference periods, which means temperature growth was observable, yet its pace was not upsetting.

But the fifth graph compares two reference periods which are only 40 years apart (vs. 70 years apart on the fourth graph) and here the difference is clearly visible and reaches 2 Celsius degrees in some winter and summer months.

The last, sixth graph shows the change of mean monthly temperatures in Warsaw in 30-year periods which are a century apart. Oddly enough, the difference is in some months lesser than on the fifth graph (1960s and 1970s are said to be a temporarily colder period on Poland with frosty winters and inclement summers), but I draw your attention to how the gap is spread. Average temperatures rose markedly (nearly 2 Celsius degrees) in winter and summer months, while in late spring and early autumn months, the scale of warming is visibly smaller (less than 1 Celsius degree). I wonder what the factors behind such tendencies are.

In this note, I have attempted to provide you with some raw data, with scant purely statistical commentary. Conclusions should you draw yourselves!

All the money in the world – film review, but not only

There is no uniform definition of being rich. Two-third of Poles, earning less than national average salary of somewhat more than four thousand zloty before tax, can consider me rich. While ordinary people bridle at politicians’ five-digit bonuses, for me such handshake, leaving out my dislike for PiS, is imaginable and justified for officials who take on substantial responsibility for the state. KPMG report on luxury goods in Poland defines as “rich” a person who earns PLN 20,000 before-tax monthly. For most people unthinkably much, yet after-tax and after getting into the second tax bracket this converts into PLN 11,000 and if such “rich man” is the only breadwinner of a family with two children, their salary is high enough for comfortable life, but not to accumulate substantial savings.

People come into wealth in several ways. Some inherit it, some set up businesses and work tirelessly to grow it, some quickly climb corporate ladders and after several promotions their base salary grows to several times national average and they become eligible for generous bonuses and other perquisites. The pace of growing rich depends not only on the income, but on your… spending habits and if we talk about wealthy, yet not rich people, spending habits matter the most. Thrifty people whose lifestyle is far from luxurious are, needless to say, more likely to accumulate wealth. But while being prudent with money is considered a merit, it is easy to overstep a boundary beyond which one becomes a skinflint.

All the money in the world, nominated to several awards, including, sadly, only one Oscar nomination, tells the true story of once the richest man in the world, who also was the biggest skinflint in the world (how parsimonious a human being can be, if, being the richest person in the world, he skimps money on hospital treatment of his terminally ill son?). I will write little about the plot and simply recommend you go to a cinema before it disappears from the silver screen (unless it already has disappeared, since it premiered in late January and I watched it in mid-February). I will only share my general thought that the picture is well-shot and advise you look up in a search engine shots with Kevin Spacey whose character, after the outbreak of sexual harassment scandal, was replaced by Christopher Plummer.

The film has made me ponder even more upon the role of money in interhuman relationships. On Friday in the office I had to listen to a conversation about advantages of pre-nuptial agreement and heard several pieces of advice how to move into separate property regime after you forgot to sign the pre-nuptial agreement in the right moment.

But each day brings talks about money:

- A guy who organises a wedding gave his girlfriend a ring some time ago given to his previous girlfriend (why pay twice, everybody knows how resourceful he is, except for his girlfriend) and then worked out how much money they should collect in envelopes so that the wedding reception pays for itself.

- Another guy has told a story of his girlfriend giving him money (he had an employee account with higher interest) which he invested on the stock market (but returned to her with 3% interest, the rest kept for himself.

- Yet another guy has an arrangement with FX dealer who exchanges him currencies at most favourable rates, this guy offers exchange service to other people. The effect is that they split the difference between the favourable exchange office rate and the rate from the dealer and split the profit between the two. The funny thing is that the profit to be split is some PLN 0.30 per EUR 100.

- Talks about tax refunds, discount offers, how to save money in honest or dishonest way, etc are the order of the day in the office.

I am also thrifty and watch every zloty before I spend it, I admit, but life is not a profit and loss account; money, though at times I believe the world revolves around it, is not major (albeit essential) part of life. But the saying “gentlemen do not talk about the money” is something more people could put into practice. Actually I am not in favour of avoiding money as a subject of conversations at any price, yet I am calling for more reasonable proportions.

The rear view mirror

Some nasty men claim women use it to tweak with their make-up and apart from this the mirror attached to the windscreen is of no use for them. In fact drivers who do not use all three mirrors to control situation on the road almost constantly are more likely to cause an accident than those who use it as prescribed. Apart from keeping track of traffic when the car is in motion, it is worthwhile to look in the mirror inside the vehicle to look at other car users while, for example, waiting for the traffic light to turn green.

Until some time ago, I could enjoy typical sights – women enhancing their make-up, men shaving their facial hair, humans of both sexes talking on their mobile phones, smoking or having their fingers exploring the contents of their noses. The times of ordinary views in the mirror are gone. It’s getting worse…

I can distinguish two types of drivers: most travel on their own, minority take passengers. The former appear either impatient or jaded. Those for who every second is precious would be the happiest if they could push other vehicles away, faces of the more bored drivers show less and less interest in what is going on around – they drive because they have to, it can be judged by their faces they do a routine activity. I usually commute on my own and usually lean towards the “jaded” type… Aggression behind the wheel is not a good advisor…

More interesting are interactions between people travelling in the same vehicle, and here my observations are more disturbing. The first instance is no communication at all – a car is moving behind me for a longer period of time and its passengers show no sign of conversation. I assume they are not strangers for each other / one another, so I suppose it would be natural to talk. It does not happen. I also quite often notice whole families (parents and children) occupying one car and each member of family is doing something else – a driver focuses on traffic, one of the passengers looks outside a window, another reads a book or fiddles with a mobile phone. In times when people spend most of the time outside home, commuting together seems a good opportunity to talk, but for many silence seems to be a preferable option. Or am I the only one to find this strange?

The second instance are arguing people – more and more often I can see in my rear view mirror couples falling out – yelling, waving their hands, their faces getting red. The same applies to parents driving their children to school. For smaller children the case is usually that the unruly offspring wind up their parents. Teenagers in turn behave seemingly properly but fall out over more serious issues. Shouts and gesticulation also in abundance.

Even leaving out the fact quarrelling distracts drivers and may contribute to dangerous situations on the road, my conclusions are unsettling – a malaise overwhelms the society…

I used to commute by public transport only, I still cover more kilometres in public service vehicles than by car each working day and I find populations of car commuters and public transport users entirely different. Generally speaking, those who get around by car are wealthier than those using the public transport. It does not apply to people who live in areas with excellent transport links into centre of Warsaw who use underground as a faster and more convenient for getting into town, but the regularity remains. Judging by what faces of people sitting in other cars and faces of fellow bus / tram / underground passengers express, I infer those who take the public transport are happier than car users.

Some explanations could be found right away – if you travel in a public space with your family, you are generally less eager to wash your dirty linen than in the private space of your depreciating tin. Going further, money does not have to bring happiness; in many cases wealth, if not accompanied by what really matters in life (bonds with family and friends, self-fulfilment, etc.) can bring discontent. The more you have, the more you want to have and the less you are satisfied with what you have achieved, the less you appreciate what you possess, while you should.

For an upbeat ending – I do not consider what I spot among fellow road users significantly upsetting. The sample I observe is not representative for the whole Polish society, although indeed people’s moods have seen better days. It seems the second wave of financial distress (debt crisis in the euro zone) will hit Poland more severely than the aftermaths of banking crisis in 2008. Poland’s GDP is not going to shrink, again, unemployment is unlikely to soar, but is poised to go up, but consumer confidence that kept the Polish economy afloat in early 2009 gives signs of dwindling. More people are afraid of losing their jobs, households are less eager to finance their consumption with debts, purchasing power is on decline due to cost-push inflation (higher prices of food, utilities and fuel, partly owing to excessive volume of speculation on commodity markets and “thanks” to weak PLN, which now, when corporate sector is not throttled by over-hedging, boosts our competitiveness), as growth of salaries has ceased to catch up with the pace in which prices of basic goods mount. Insecurity can be felt in the air (brutal lay-offs are under way in my company), so gloom is likely to prevail and because in economics agents’ actions bring forth a mechanism of self-fulfilling prophecy, I expect harder times than in 2008-2009, not in figures issued by the Stats office, but among ordinary people.

Next week – a short guide to being fired in a corporation – onlooker’s impressions.

In two weeks – road construction programme review at the onset of football championship – will Warsaw be linked to European network of motorways by then?

Out of sheer envy

In the United States being well-off is a reason to be proud, in Poland if you’re well-off, you’re dodgy. In the United States to be a successful politician one has to get ahead in personal life and be resourceful (in a positive way), in Poland you can become a prime minister without having a bank account, which incidentally guarantees transparency (in developed countries). “If you succeed in running your own business and pursuing your own goals you are likely to be able to run a country effectively” – this rule doesn’t necessarily have many advocates in Poland, but let’s brush aside politics (I’ll go on at that topic later on) and get down to earth, where ordinary Poles live.

I know I’m an immature observer, but I’ve been looking at Poles’ attitude towards money and wealth for some time and came to a conclusion this attitude is probably the biggest collective oddity in my country. The Polish nation had to live through forty five years of socialist economy, in which people theoretically were meant to be equal. It goes without saying that that system had two major pathologies: blue collar workers earned as much or more as university graduates and the people were divided into equal and more equal. The system fell apart mostly for economic reasons and the shift to free-market economy was quite abrupt. Masses slid into poverty, individuals could strike it rich within weeks. Under the new system, one’s material status depended much more on achievements (which were to a considerable extent conditioned on one’s parentage, family’s material and social status and genes that determined drive, intelligence, readiness for sacrifices and hard work). Today when I see myself at the bottom of the ladder of my professional career I strongly feel my own success hinges in 80% upon my own commitment, other factors seem less important. My life is in my hands, but still many people prefer to shift responsibility for their lives into someone else’s hands. It’s generally an easy option, because you can blame someone else for your failures. I can’t blame PRL for providing its citizens with social security on a satisfactory level (actually I’m even kind of grateful to the lame Polish state of that time, because it enabled my parents who came from very poor families to study for free and break away from poverty), but I blame the socialist system for teaching people to be passive and instilling in them the “I deserve” stance towards life. But generations pass and things are slowly changing…

Ask an American how they are and they’ll tell you “great”. A Pole would treat such question as an invitation to start a big whinge, including “I earn too little” as a main grudge borne against the world. Poles are a nation of grumblers (alright, this is partly a stereotype).

When six years ago my parents decided to buy a house it was a bigger problem for them how to explain to family and friends they had managed to set aside a considerable amount of money than to how to actually finance the house. To many people, setting aside as much as an equivalent of four middle-class cars at that time was out of reach. Coming into such amount of money, not really big, must have involved moonlighting, bribery, etc.

According to a popular belief being in possession of a significant amount of money means you must have come into it an not fully legal and honest way. Maybe this stems partly from the early 1990’s when some businessmen would earn fortunes quickly and to many people it seemed if they had worked hard for years didn’t reach as much as someone else within a few months, there must have been an element of crime in it. In fact some of the fortunes were not amassed legally, some were raised legally but immorally, this has surely taken its toll on Polish society, leaving many who couldn’t benefit from capitalism disgruntled.

A simple way to have a lot of money is to (not necessarily scrimp and) save, not spend what you earn foolishly, seeking out wise and profitable investments. Some investments, such as land in good location, start-up companies can be profitable with a bit of luck and often with a considerable dose of risk. But hey, nothing ventured – nothing gained.

In Poland if you succeed people are more likely to envy you than to be happy that you’re getting ahead. Often they pretend to be happy that you’re doing well but deep down they’re green from envy. “Don’t stand out, keep a low profile” is a catch-phrase in Poland, though its importance in social life is on the wane. The worst thing in it all is that quite often seeing someone else pulling off doesn’t motivate to strive to reach a higher lever, but rather prompt to think how to pull a successful one down.

Envy holds strong in Poland. Polish tax office receive thousands of denunciations from “affable” neighbours, friends, colleagues, all pleased to inform fellow taxpayers live beyond their means. Around 50% of the denunciations are legitimate and help Polish state raise money from dishonest taxpayers, but remaining round about 50% are groundless accusations arising from envy that someone else prospers, not the senders.

In politics there also two fringes which rose from the same anti-communist movement. But some had more accomplishment before 1989 and fared better in independent Poland, some didn’t have so many merits, didn’t go down in history and feel envy. Now it’s time to make up for it and rewrite the history, if necessary, also out of sheer envy.

Times are changing, people are changing. My generation is no longer ashamed of having money, I have money, given my age surprisingly much, some put aside by my parents, some inherited after my grandfather, some earned, all not spent foolishly, but wisely invested. I’m proud I managed to amass it and make it work effectively. I heard accusations that I came to some of these money in an obscure way, since those are profits from playing the stock market. But stock market is for people, one has to know how to handle it to reap profits. Besides, my capital gains tax on stock market transactions for 2010 will probably hit four digits so I’ll be pleased to share my wealth with fellow taxpayers. May other Poles fare even better than me, their happiness will be my happiness.