Thoughts, ramblings and other stuff

I recently saw another discussion about the Fahrenheit vs. Celsius. It was of course on American site (since no one else even thinks about Fahrenheit) and was all about the superiority of Fahrenheit over Celsius. The whole discussion was as always inane and went back to the only argument that really matters - I grew up with it so it's more intuitive to use. It's the only one that can reasonably let us "determine comfort when we go outside", you know. It however helped me understand a fundamental difference in thinking that eluded me so far (it's been 5 years already - don't even know how that happened).

Look at pictures below. First is used by people defending Fahrenheit as superior. The hundred degree scale contains the temperatures that most people would encounter in their daily life with very cold and very hot outside of it so you'll know you are in special circumstance level. The liveable temperatures are inside it. Celsius - uselessly goes between mildly cold to dead (not really weather on Earth type of temperature). Logical, isn't it?


The thing is - no one thinks of weather or any everyday temperatures this way in Celsius. This closed between 0-100 system doesn't make any sense to anyone raised in Celsius. Sure we care about boiling water but not in weather sense. Instead Celsius is centred around 0^oC - the temperature of freezing water. This has a lot of everyday repercussions as that is a difference between rain and snow and between ice and clear roads (but of course humidity, wind and air vs. ground temperature also plays a role) so you want to know if the temperatures will be in the plus or minus.


This is why most of us think of thermometers like this. I picked the one perfectly symmetrical and ending at 50^oC but it can be -40 - +40 or -30 - +60 or -100 - +30 depending where you live on Earth. The point is the 0 is our switch point and then the scale is opened on both plus and minus side to go as far as you need in your corner of the world (despite humans having bias towards plus temp the record low is -94 and record high only 56). It is in a way symmetrical which is why I, raised in it, like to say to people that when I was living Poland to come to US it was -18C and when I arrived it was +18. Big temperature shock! Or that near Chicago you can have both -40 and +40 temperatures in one year because continental climate (cold winters, hot summers) while Europe has milder ones because ocean (warmer winter and colder summers).

Fahrenheit is closed of by 0^oF and 100^oF so, as I mentioned, it relates to unusual by going outside it's borders (or even how close to them you are). I went from 0^oF to upper 60s - that's over half the scale. It was way below 0^oF - that's how horribly cold it was! And then we went into triple digits and were dying from heatwave!

It's a completely different way of thinking that's not easily translatable no matter how well you learn the corresponding temperatures.

And, of course, very cold and very hot is often a personal thing. I know people who think +30^oC is when it starts being nice while I find it very hot. And +20^oC is nice but in Hong Kong that's cold weather while people in Siberia treat -20^oC as a nice warm winter day.

I have similar thought about other measurements but maybe some other time - it's getting late.

In other news it's just been two years since I moved to US. It's hard to believe it's already been two years. I remember how at first time moved so slowly and I kept feeling like I was here longer but it was just few days, week, months. And then, somehow, it become two years almost instantly. I think time started to move faster since I come back from my first trip back home and realised some of the things that helped me to adjust. It's also our lab getting more people and more interesting projects and me getting some friends so I'm more involved in the life here. It's funny how much faster life is passing by when you are really busy and how much easier it is to live somewhere when you bond to people not just place. I know these are both kind of obvious but I only moved once before in my life and that was to a place close enough that I kept all my friend and family ties intact so I've never before realised how true it was.

Also in this move the 6 hour difference is really making keeping in touch with everyone a challenge. I keep saying I don't know how people did this before skype because I can't (don't want to) imagine that. It helps me stay sane when my parents bug me before I they go to sleep with some trivial information (the first real snow in Poland this winter) and unrequited advice. Or when I remind my cousin that he needs to sleep when he sends me links at what's for him 2 or 4 a.m. Or when I can talk with my 86 year old grandmother and she can see me and I see her. However, the truth is that when everyone in Poland would like and can talk to me I'm either asleep or at work ad vice versa. I talk to my parents only if I manage to come home before 6 p.m. as that's midnight in Poland and they go to bed late. No one else is out there (except that cousin). It's not much better on weekends as in my morning they are busy with dinners or out for shopping, walking or other stuff you do in the middle of the day and then when it's early evening for them and they'd like to talk I want to be out doing all that stuff. And when it's my evening and I want to talk they are asleep. Completely out of sync.

So, it helped when I found people to talk to in my own time zone. It was also nice to see people I knew back in Poland and who are here again and share the experience. I did that in October and I have few more invitation (in fact I just got another one yesterday) so my resolution for my third year is to take them up on this.

The only thing that's still bugs me is that I miss having a cat so much. It's just I don't know if I stay long enough to get another two year mobile contract so how can I get a pet?

Today is first anniversary of my move across the ocean. A year ago I was sitting on the plane, still couple of ours away from landing, wondering how strange my new life is going to be. Now I'm almost used to to all the weird American ways (although I still have to think carefully before writing dates. I sometimes think Americans did it on purpose to make sure that every single type of measurement is incompatible with the rest of the world). I learned how to operate washing machines. I'm resigned to the lack of proper lightning in the apartments. I love the free public transport in my town.

I managed to find all my favourite foods. Even the ones I was afraid will be hard to find. I have tea (Earl Gray, hot), white cheese (farmer's cheese) and sour cucumbers (cucumbers in dill/brine). There is enough places to get proper chocolate that I can find the kind I feel like eating most of the time. And lately I even managed to find edible bread in LionFoods.

I enjoy the fact that there is winter but not the kind of snow and cold one that's there back home (or anywhere north from here) this year. I just wish that the heating system here was better prepared for cold. The outside temperatures are fine but the inside ones make me long for radiators. I hope that when heat comes back it will be easier for me this time. And I think the fact that the building is made of wood just makes it worse.

There are still a lot of things I'm missing from home but it's because they remind me of home and all the people I miss. There are still things that annoy me here but it's in the way that there is always something that irritates one about how things work no matter where one lives.

I've gotten used to my post-doc being mostly computer work and I got used to how most of the things work around here. The rest of the lab is finally moving and in couple of weeks I will no longer be alone in my building so information exchange will get easier. And I think at least one project is close to being finished so it should be ready to be published soon. Of course I still have to write it and what's even worse I'll have to give talks (multiple! ARRGH) about it.

I'm still not sure if I'm going to stay (it depends on how I'll feel this spring - I hope it'll be better this time) but I found new friends here that I will miss if I leave.

I think it's starting to feel like home...


Here are some anniversary gifts for you:

Flying Cats - I think that they do better then humans (they are after all surprised as they didn't know what will happen). Just like any human they try to grab the first thing they come in contact with and they didn't puke:



I think that blackberry doesn't work because it's red. (To non-Europeans - Orange is one of Europe's biggest mobile network operator and Internet service provider and it's French)


All this fruit talk made me hungry. Luckily I have apples. And eggs' box.

Europe has been freezing and been covered in snow in past few days. It's the coldest November on record in England and temperature is suppose to drop dow to -20C in Poland tomorrow. There have been some airports closed and generally everyone is a little unprepared as it's not suppose to be so wintery so soon. However, looking at pictures of snow covered landscapes I finally started to feel that Christmas are just around the corner. It's good as people here are already bringing Christmas trees and putting lights on. It surprised me at first as in Poland it's just for the malls. We put ornaments on Christmas just before the holiday. My family usually does it on the weekend before but some do it on Christmas Eve but then we keep the tree for weeks after, sometimes even till the beginning of Carnival (and sometimes that's February). Here in US it's the opposite. They put it on now and then throw the tree out right after Christmas, sometimes, I'm told, even before New Year. My Polish friends who live here for a while said they just combine it. They have to buy the tree early because later there are non and then keep it for at least two weeks of January.

Here weather got worse on Thanksgiving (last Thursday). First it rained and then it got cold during weekend (it was still +10C but the air was chilly and it felt colder) so almost all the leaves are down and trees are bare. It finally looks like November ( which in Polish is called listopad - leavesfall). Just in time for the last day.

Americans have been voting today (I know, in the middle of the week, how strange) and this is how the intersection near where I live looks like:

Those funny signs are everywhere and not just about voting.

Enough democracy; now something where judges decide:

The World Fantasy Awards winners for works published in 2009 were announced on Sunday and it's another one for China. Good he wrote a book that can't be easily classified so he gets all the awards both fantasy and science fiction. Here are all the winners.

Novel: "The City & The City" China Miéville

Novella: "Sea-Hearts"  Margo Lanagan

Short Story: "The Pelican Bar”, Karen Joy Fowler (Eclipse Three)

Anthology: "American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny: From Poe to the Pulps/From the 1940s to Now" Peter Straub, ed. (Library of America)

Collection (tie): "There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales" Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (Penguin)
                            "The Very Best of Gene Wolfe/The Best of Gene Wolfe" Gene Wolfe (PS /Tor)

Artist: Charles Vess

Special Award – Professional: Jonathan Strahan for editing anthologies

Special Award – Non-Professional: Susan Marie Groppi for Strange Horizons

I've been to the NC State Fair. It lasts 10 days and this was the first weekend so there were a lot of people. I went with friends because I was curious how it looks like. It was basically like Święto Kwiatów - expositions of different varieties of fruit, vegetables, flowers and animals and also farm machinery - just with much more visitors. There was less people selling stuff, almost no plants for example but there was more fairground rides.

( Photo evidence )

The food was much worse then the one sold in Poland on such occasions and it means it actually made fast foods seem appealing.
( And then there was this )
Although I really liked the ice-cream made the old fashioned way. And I managed to get cotton candy. I don't think it's a proper fair without cotton candy.

PS. I have a bug in my screen. Real, live, very small thing walking under the screen of my laptop. Very bizarre.

I just came back from the coast. This was the first time I swam in Atlantic. I wanted to write saw but, of course, I saw Atlantic a lot of times as i flew over it. I just never got close enough to touch it. Until now. It was awesome.

I'm used to thinking about Atlantic as cold because that's how it is at Europe's coasts. That's why everyone goes to the Mediterranean. Here however the ocean was warm. And the waves were so big. Yesterday  I spent 3 hours straight in the water. I got sunburn. I should get out of the water to put the new layer of sunscreen on but it seemed as such a waste of time. I used to spent whole days in water as a kid. This was so much fun.

Here is something fun for you too:

I've just realised it has been half a year since I've moved to US. Time flies. Seasons change. The unusually cold winter turned into unusually hot and humid summer.

I slowly get used to living here. I still think that the Polish towns are prettier (all those who complain about bauma bricks in on Polish pavements should see the ones here) but I love the public transport here. All the neurotic habits I had from using Polish public transport are almost gone. Here the driver will wait for you even if you are not at the stop. He will wait for you to disembark. Sometimes even let you in if you manage to catch it at the traffic lights (OK, that's illegal in Warsaw but still).

I got used to the things that kept on surprising me at the beginning. I got into the routine of going to work and then wondering about.  And taking pictures. Just like at home.

This calls for picspam:

( Plants )

( Animals I've mentioned before )

And Larry was right squirrels are evil:


And I'm watching Batman Begins for the first time. I've never seen it before. I however saw Dark Knight and unfortunately that was much better movie. I just couldn't help noticing how most of the cast of this very American story is not American. Just came to work in US. Like me.

There is always something new for me to discover. The little differences that are sometimes funny, sometimes weird and sometimes startling. For example I recently went to buy myself a notebook. Simple thing but it turned out to be quite a challenge. I'm used to using sheet with squares which I learned is called quad-ruled paper. This is quite hard to find as almost all notebooks are in lines. The most popular format is called college ruled which I suppose explains it's popularity. This looks like Polish single-line notebooks. And I haven't used them since I finished high school. And that was very long ago. I was done with Polish and the lined books. Even then I used the quad ruled for everything else. And I prefer them as one can write much more densely on the page and making tables and graphs is easier. Anyway I managed to finally find some squared paper but the squares were wrong. It's a weird feeling when something looks so familiar but at the same time you know it's wrong. This is were local measurement system stroked again. It turns out here there are two types of quad ruled notebooks here. Normal - 5x5 - and  4x4 which is in English system and the squares are just a little bit bigger. You can guess which one I chose (it's for the lab - we work in metric anyway and 5 squares = 1 cm). It surprised me that I could see they were the wrong size.

Another funny thing is finding familiar food on the shelves or even shops with foreign, specialty food. Especially when it's something like Hit cookies. For you American it's like for you would be finding Oreos in such section which I suppose happens somewhere. I also found here Maltesers, Wawel Dark Chocolate and Leibnitz cookies.  Luckily for me I also found sour cucumbers - also called cucumbers in brine - from Poland. This is good as they are one of my favourite foods since kindergarden.

This is however nothing compared to finding familiar stuff that just doesn't taste right. American chocolate - Hershey - is not very good. It tastes more like the chocolate-like stuff from the 80s during the bad cocoa deficiency after Martial Law. It's like there is less cocoa and more sugar (but I'm not sure as they don't state the % of cocoa on the bars - suspicious in it's own way). Unfortunately local versions of Nestle and Milka chocolates seem to have the same problem. They just don't taste right. And the chips and other salty snacks are more salty and and ice creams are sweeter. I'm not able to swallow the non-carbonated drinks. They are so sweet they make me feel sick, they could be used for glucose tolerance test. At least carbon gives drink a slight bitter taste to offset the sweetness. This means that when I'm not able to make myself tea I drink Coca-Cola (Zero - I'm with John Scalzi - it tastes best). I never thought I'd say this but I'm starting to have enough of Cola.This led me to conclusion that the unhealthy food is even more unhealthy in US.

BTW KFC way, way superior in Poland. This was one fastfood I kind of liked in Poland. I decided to try it here - awful. Dry and tasteless. My Polish friends here blame the chickens.

I've been here for almost 2 months now and I get why Americans are so attached to their cars. I'm in a town that has public transport and the bikes are very popular (first thing I was warned about was that there are two things that get stolen here - laptops and bikes) but still when you want to go somewhere on weekends, go shopping or come  back home late having a car is very, very helpful. I will get a car eventually (i have a bike already). Still what I just saw flabbergasted me. I thought I was getting used to all the local customs and was done with shock/surprise feeling but a drive-thru bank? Is getting off the car is really such a horrible work? Wikipeadia tells me about all the other things that can be drive-thru like marriages and funerals. OK, now banks seem kind of normal.

On the other news the switch to Summer Time (called Daylight Saving Time) has already happened here in USA. And, since the Europe resets clocks on the last Sunday of March, for the next two weeks there is only five hours time difference between here and Poland. It will make calling home much easier :)