a musing julius…

poland is less than 300 kilometers from where i’m sitting right now, and its the land of my ancestors, and my entire family outside of my parents. i haven’t been there in 15 years. so being in germany, this is the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the close proximity and visit for a short period of time. so i bit the bullet, bought a $500 ticket from munich to poznan, and will be flying there tomorrow morning.

i haven’t seen my grandfather in about 7 years. maybe longer. i haven’t seen grandma in nearly a year. i haven’t seen my aunt and uncle in 15 years, and i haven’t seen my cousins in nearly 18 years. its been forever. so tomorrow, i’ll wake up nice and early, drive 2 hours to munich, jump onto a prop plane that has 18 seats total, and land in my dad’s hometown at lunch time, when my grandmother (who drives a mean stick shift btw) will pick me up to take me to a home she built almost 10 years ago, but i have yet to see in person.

allegedly poland has changed immensely since i’ve been there last, and i’m interested in seeing some of the changes (though it has been so long, i probably won’t notice.) this time around, i’ll have a camera, so i can document my adventures.

aspiring radass and i agreed that 2008 was going to be a year of travel adventures. here’s another to add to my list.

americans are perhaps the most fascinating culture when it comes to their constant trivializing of the famous people. here’s a list of trivialized people.

• genghis khan, who he is: the man conquered the asian continent, from siberia to india, poland to saudi arabia and across to the eastern tip of china, his sphere of power was unmatched by all those who attempted to follow in his footsteps.
• genghis khan, what he’s become: “hi, welcome to mongolian barbeque. how many? 4? smoking or non?”
• casimir pulaski, who he is: a revolutionary war hero, who taught americans how to fight on horse (read: cavalry), and the a hero of the revolutionary war as recognized by george washington himself. he reported directly to the commander-in-cheif. general pulaski memorial day is celebrated on october 11th, but other states celebrate in march. he has numerous statues in the united states, notably in d.c., detroit and chicago.
• casimir pulaski, what he’s become: a street in some cities.

okay, so those are 2 examples. i don’t have any more. maybe you have an idea.

my friends that know my parents usually ask them, ”how did the two of you create him?” they usually answer by starting a sentence with, “well, when a man and a woman fall in love…” which causes a large uproar.

see, i’m fairly straight laced. my parents on the other hand, are much much much cooler than me. i’ll safely admit it. some of the things (they call them stupidities) that they’ve done in their life are activities or ideas that i would just never consider doing.

lets do some background.

ludwik is my father. he came to the united states in 1980. he had $500 to his name and bought a fiat spyder with a hole in the roof and the floor for $100. my dad had been to the united states each summer while he was in college, and his english was enough to get by, but not the greatest.

barbara is my mother. she came to the united states in 1981. she had $20 when she came to the united states. my father actually sent her $800 to buy a ticket to come to the united states, after buying the ticket, getting a visa, and buying presents for her family, she left poland 3 days before martial law was enacted in ’81. my mom boarded the plane, only praying that my dad would be at the airport. this was before cell phones for everyone, so they arranged their lives together using hand written letters that had took 3 weeks to get to and from the u.s.

my dad worked as a cook in the sears tower, cooking 400+ eggs a day for the hundreds of employees in the sears tower. he made $3.50 an hour.

my mom worked as an assembler on a factory line making automatic transmissions. she made $100 a week.

i don’t want to spoil their wonderful story, as my mom is writing a novel about our lives in the states. its intended for my future wife and my future children, so they can understand their in-laws and grandparents.

my first part of the series will be about my parents recreation when i was a child.

when i was 6, my dad bought a harley-davidson speedster 883 in candy red. he loved that bike, but my mom hated it. he always loved motorcycles, and his old home in poland still has two of his old motorcycles (one partially disassembled) from his childhood that he’s considered shipping to the u.s. eventually, my mother didn’t think it was safe for me to be around a father who rode motorcycles.

so my dad sold his bike, only to replace it with a bigger one a few years later, a fatboy, also candy red. 6 months later, my MOM bought her first motorcycle, a sportster 883 in candy red, just like my dad’s bike. she ended up customizing it to have drag pipes that ran nearly 110 db’s on wide open throttle. she had me and my dad disassemble the bike, get everything chromed, had a custom green paint job with a hummingbird and the words, “midlife crisis” on the fuel tank. a few years later, my dad upgraded to an ultraglide in candy red, which had more lights than a typical christmas tree. my mom, too, ended up buying a heritiage softtail classic, and between the two of them, before i left for college, they owned 5 harleys. i have leather jackets, vests, the works. my dad and mom have multiple pairs of custom-made chaps. they were featured in the newspaper and harley magazine (mainly because my mom would write stories for the magazine, and she’d always win)

my dad also took up skydiving when i was 15. his dream was always to fly. his proudest moment was during his training on his 13th jump, he failed to get control after executing a loop in the air, and fell 9,000 feet in 45 seconds. the instructor he jumped with, caught this all on film, and caught up with my dad, stabilized him, and got ludwik to open his chute at 2400 feet (a dangerously low opening, considering it takes nearly 1000-1500 feet to fully open your chute.) he was so proud of that video. i nearly puked thinking he could have died. my mom wanted him to stop jumping. he ended up jumping nearly 200 times. his worst injury was a sprained ankle.

as is customary, instead of my dad following my mom’s recommendation, she ended up ignoring her own advice and did 5 tandem jumps herself.

since going to college and entering the real world, my mom has tamed, resorting just to oil painting and writing her book.

my dad gave up skydiving, but instead became a weight-shift trike pilot.

he is a sport pilot instructor, a weight shift instructor, can fly using instrumentation-only conditions, and is a certified rotax 912 engine inspector. his call number for his trike is nine-twelve-lima-mike. (912LM)

on my last visit with him, we flew to 9,000 feet. made me remember the time he used to fall out of planes. i prefer him flying.

forgive me if i start to sound like andy rooney for a while (man is that guy unbearable unbearbly annoying) but parents these days are getting cah-razy. as i watched the movie Vitus yesterday (an incredible german film about a  12-year old wunderkind genius piano player who fakes a head injury to get a normal life) i decided it’s time to write my piece about helicopter parents.

helicopter parents are, as i define it, parents that focus and engage themselves constantly in their child’s life, in both an academic and social sense. they will usually rush to their child’s side, preventing their child from experiencing harm from failure, or allowing them to learn from mistakes. i’ve heard of parents “helping” with college essays, hiring college consultants, and doing children’s homework. my parent’s accountant was a helicopter parent. each time my parents went in to his office to do the magic they do, they discussed their kids. when college application time rolled around, my parents accountant told my parents how he hired a consultant to help his kid with essays, complete applications, and fine tune his son into an interview machine.

my parents did no such thing for me. their accountant made them feel stupid. they came home to me asking immediately if i needed anything. i told them they were being crazy and so was their accountant. 4 months later, when their accountant talked about the wonders of getting his son into the university of illinois, he proudly asked my parents where i had decided on going. when they told him northwestern, he was speechless, and didn’t talk to my parents for two years. he handed off their taxes to another one of his drones.

my parents weren’t around much when i was a kid, except in the evenings. they rarely helped me with my homework (but always asked) and missed some critical events that at the time was the premier event of my young life (like tennis matches and speech competitions)

my parents never made decisions for me, or really engaged much in my life when it came to decisions that affected me. when i tested out my regular elementary school in 4th grade, and was offered to go to a “special learning program” (kids called it SLP) my parents had me make the decision. i decided to stay, and i was the only student to decide to stay. the principal called my parents urging them to reconsider. they said it was not their choice, and told her that she’d have to convince me if i was to leave my school for the 5th and 6th grade. later my parents told me that the principal thought they were crazy.

anyway, from kindergarten to 10th grade, i walked to school. when i came home, i opened the house up on my own, took the dogs out, and took care of stuff. my parents would almost always come home after me. we’d always eat dinner together, but after dinner, dad would usually goto work at some building, and mom would go back to cold-calling people wanting to sell their home. sometimes i would help.

i call my parents twice a day, sometimes many more times like today (driving through the snow storm in my all-weather 3-season coupe) i talked to both parents at least 5 times before arriving in detroit. that said, i choose to keep my parents close to me. i don’t have any other family in this country. seeing my grandma was amazing. many of my friends have grandparents that lived with them, and aunts/uncles/cousins that live within driving distance. many of my friends have cousins that live close and see frequently, but i have no such luxury. before my 16-year old cousin paulina came to visit my parents this summer, the last time i saw a real blood cousin, paulina wasn’t alive.

so christmas eve went off without a hitch. my family (me, dad, mom plus grandma) opened the 52 presents we had under the tree. yes, 52. 4 people, 52 presents. 13 presents on average. in actuality, mom and i got the most. dad was ridiculous again, purchasing not only 10 articles of clothing for my mom from her favorite store, he went the ‘laptop’ route. now, grandma, mom, dad and i all have laptops. christmas morning was spent on our respective computers*

dinner was different this xmas eve. we opted for non-polish fare…no pierogis, herrings or potatoes. the only thing we had remotely polish was barszcz (yes, that’s 5 consonants in a row) instead, seafood stew, bruschetta and baked brie (not all together, and not all at once) made up dinner for the night.

polish people open gifts on xmas eve…and this year, santa was good to me, mostly in the area of running effects. santa thinks i can run a 1:45 half-marathon, and did everything in his and her power to keep me running. the signature gift, a suunto t4, not only tracks my heartrate, but knows exactly the distance i’ve run, the pace, how many calories i’ve burned, and then downloads all of that to my computer, so i can see just how well i’ve been regressing progressing in my running.

anyway, after dad and i plowed down a bottle of wine between the two of us while opening presents, we decided to polish off another one (this time we split with mom and grandma) before we had to walk across the yard to our friend’s place. there, we told stories of the old polish country.

this morning (christmas day) we ended up spending an hour at starbucks with polish friends, in the corner, having a blast, and making fun of more absolutely ridiculous holiday greetings from poland. i’d translate these, but they rhyme, and their in polish. sadly, the words “yank” and “testicles” don’t rhyme in the english language, so the poem about santa getting his ass kicked when he comes down your chimney rhymes in polish, but not in english.

i took the new running gear out (which is ungodly accurate when it comes to identifying how far i run: 4.18 miles today)

but mostly, this christmas was a great time to be with the family. we rarely spend this much physical time together, and usually, we seperate and do our things, like work, visit friends, etc. it’s been 4 solid days, and we’ve not left each other’s side. this time, love has been the word of the week. i’ve never felt this way about my family. despite the distance, i feel closer and closer to my parents each and everytime i come. i’m not sure if its maturity in general, or if i’m gaining emotional maturity when it comes to my parents. i love them lots (obviously, we talk constantly, but they’re all i’ve got) but this week continues to show that my relationship with them continues to evolve, and i learn more and more each day about them and my relationship with them. it’s neat.

also, everyone should watch the movie Vitus.

*in all actuality, i left my laptop in detroit, but it makes the story sound better if i actually imagine i brought the laptop with me and used it this morning.

everyday, somewhere in the news media, an article is written about the dangers of chinese toys and the fact they have lead in them. recently, i’ve heard that china is recalling one million pounds of lead because there are toys in them. americans quickly latch on to news like this, and discuss the possible dangers to “our children” (another post on parenting will come soon.) but the point of this post is to talk about manufacturing and china.

in this day in age, china has become the manufacturer of nearly anything and everything. but we rarely hear or care about the high quality products that the chinese manufacture, and we use everyday.

most of the clothes purchased in the u.s. are manufactured in china. the old navy, gap and banana republic companies all have a significant portion of their goods coming from china. many higher end suits from hugo boss or calvin klein come from china, not some european country.

nearly all of the apple juice consumed in the u.s. comes from china, and china holds a 63% market share of the global apple juice concentrate. (julius fun fact: poland is 2nd making up nearly another 25% of the market for apple juice concentrate)

china is also the biggest manufacturer of magnetic and optical card readers. that right, we cannot use our credit cards in this country without a reliable machine from china. it should also be noted that china manufactures exports more audio visual equipment and heavy machinery than any other country in the world (most of it to the united states)

we just love to latch onto bad news about a place like china, and particularly when our economy is performing at a level which can be considered “mediocre” we like to rally behind america and take a stand saying, “no chinese toys,” but go ahead and try to say, “no chinese tvs” and you’ll quickly realize that you need to cancel your cable service (and return the cable box, which was, oh that’s right…manufactured in china)