Monday, August 10th, 2020
After a long trip from Costa Rica (with 4 layovers, two needed a hotel stay) I arrived 4 weeks ago to Warsaw Poland with the light heart and tired body. My daughter and son-in-law accommodated me in their unoccupied apartment in the heart of Warsaw, with the same address as City President's office, on the picture below; lots of confusion when I am giving my address to Gov. clerks: "...no, it cannot be there, it’s a government building!". Well, it's not the same building, but the same address, you cannot debate facts, but people do.
Not living in Poland for 28 years, and take away 5 years, when I came here to study, it is really 40 years; this country is as foreign to me as Singapore, take away the language.
The additional difficulty is that I speak and look local. People in the offices, where I need to visit to take care of my transition business, throw at me acronyms, abbreviations and jargons, that I am sure are familiar to every Polish speaking person, living here and to me is “huh?”. Polish culture carries unusual awareness, which has huge horizontal limits, and appears to have no limits in depth. Which means perception of the world is limited to own position, but that position can be deeply rooted, established, and well chewed on.
Needless to say it is a huge adjustment and lots of learning for me, and that’s good!
To keep your mind sharp, when aging, one should change their location every five years. After you figure out how to live in one place, you will start running your life on programs, rarely using own intelligence to learn to live better, differently, new way. You need to look for the light switches, instead of tapping on the wall expecting to find one where it was in the last house.