Creative Space - updated

I have good news!
The rest of my order from the Book Depository arrived yesterday.  Only two weeks later than expected (probably due to the inclement weather and Poczta Polska)

Now I have all the tools I need to start editing my NaNo novel in January and a nice little novel to keep me going until then :)
Jola (my wife) is looking forward to using the Christmas Ideas at PreSchool, just as long as no-one else steals her ideas...

The Mysterious Red Fruit

In my fruit bowl I have a red fruit.  Well at least I think it is a fruit.

The Ugly Duckling in my fruit bowl

I'm really not even sure how it got there.  Did I buy it by accident?  Was it a gift from one of my wife's students?  Maybe it is an advanced listening device installed by our landlords?

In any event it has been sitting on our fruit bowl now for a couple of weeks.  When it first arrived we thought it was some sort of tomato because it was green, like a tomato that isn't ripe.  Now it is red.  Does that mean we can eat it now?  Whatever it is?

I suspect that it is one of those Chinese fruits that are so popular at the moment.  Some poor Chinese peasant probably picked it and put it in a train.  The train travelled a thousand kilometres to the port.  From the port the ship took our little fruit across oceans before arriving somewhere in Europe.  Then some truck driver drove another thousand kilometres to deliver it to our shop.
Now, somehow it is sitting in my fruit bowl.

I must eat it.  To do anything less would be insulting to the Chinese peasant who picked it from his (or her) tree, the train driver, the captain of the ship, the truck driver and the shop assistants who made it possible for this fruit to sit in my fruit bowl.  Even though I still have no idea what it is.

Does anybody know what it is and what I should do with it?

Here is another view (if it helps)

Polish Customer Service. Fact or Fiction?

I really don't like to complain. Most Poles are very helpful and courteous – that is until they are given a position of authority. Every now and then I come across exceptionally poor customer service. It saddens me to think how much more efficient everything would be if people actually did what they say they are going to do…

On Thursday night our modem stopped working, so on Friday I went to the local office of our internet company and told them that our modem was broken, and asked if I could buy a replacement. They had a look on their computer and said that it probably wasn't my modem, but the signal. So I was told to wait for a call for the service people sometime before 5 and they would fix everything. I thought 'fine' and went home waiting for a call.

At five to five we still hadn't received a call, so my dutiful wife called them up and was told that the service people were probably busy, and so we would get a call sometime the next morning (how hard would it have been for the office people to say within the next 24 hours instead of by 5?).

The next morning we received the call. My wife explained the problem and the service people said that it was obviously a modem problem and that we should take the modem back to the office for a replacement. At this point I wasn't very happy, because I had done this the previous day.

So we took the modem back to the office where we were told that before we could get a replacement we had to supply not only the modem, but also all of the cables with the original box and CD! I did well not to lose my temper. Why couldn't we have been told this the before?

(If you are reading this, it means that we have somehow sorted the problem out and have internet again)

Today I bought some bread from our local store. The bread has always cost 2.19, it even says so on the shelf. But when I got to the checkout the lady said it was 2.30. My response was: no, it's 2.19 (I said it a few times in Polish). However she must have realised that I'm not Polish and simply smiled and pointed to the price on the checkout. Because I wanted the bread and didn't want to waste any more time over 11 groszy (5 cents Australian, or 2pence), I paid her and left. Obviously someone changed the price in the computers, but couldn't be bothered changing the price on the shelf. This is not only bad customer service, but in Australia it is illegal.

I think the problem is that Poles don't complain to the right people. They love complaining/gossiping amongst themselves and their friends, but they very rarely make official complaints. Maybe they are embarrassed, or they think that nothing will change, or they don't to cause any problems. This is most likely due to the years of repressive government that they endured. However the time has come to move on. Poland has been a free country for quite a few years now. It's time to take the next step and for the people to start demanding that other people/organisations/government do what they say they will do. The days of accepting the mediocre and inefficient is over.