ATAAHUA ORA

We landed in Poland on Friday - or actually Saturday. The flight was late by half an hour before we even got on the plane. That’s what you get when you fly out of Rome on a cheap airline. But we got to Katowice without any problems and were picked up by my family: uncles George and Adam and auntie Kate. In the morning we went for a walk to see my old apartment building and wander around the town. Nothing much changed but it all seemed smaller than I remembered - or, my legs got longer, as one of my friends said. We also had lunch at my other grandma’s and in the evening we went to see some of my friends and did some reminiscing.

The next day we went to church (which is pretty much compulsory here) and in the afternoon the rest of the family showed up to see us. It was great seeing my cousins all grown up and talking to my uncles and aunties. Lukas seemed to enjoy himself too, which is good.

Tim managed to miss his flight and so we picked him up today from Katowice, on our way back from Krakow. I drove my cousins’ Michael and Tom’s car, a Daewoo Matiz and enjoyed it a lot. Driving on the other side of the road is not all that much different! You just need to concentrate a bit more. In Krakow, Lukas, Tom and I met Nigel and took him on a trip to Wieliczka Salt Mines, which he seemed to enjoy. We also walked around the Old Town, the Market Square, the Wawel Castle and had lunch in a milk bar, an establishment serving typical Polish food like golabki and pierogi. Nigel was brave enough to try golabki but didn’t manage to finish his portion. It was too big, he claimed.

Singapore is hot. Wet and hot! It rained yesterday morning and it’s been raining today since about noon as well. On one hand it’s great because it refreshes the air and it is considerably cooler, but this gloomy weather does nothing for our spirits!

Talking about spirits, we made the mistake of buying some electronic equipment in the first shop we walked into (it seemed like an incredibly good deal at the time!) and now walking past electronics shops makes us squirm. We are going to report the guy though, in Singapore they have special procedures for dishonest sellers and we’re going to take advantage of it.

Lukas is still looking for a cellphone and I’m considering splurging on a new digital camera - if I can get a good deal. And this time I know what is a good deal and what isn’t!

When it comes to sightseeing, whoever told us that there is nothing to see here and we’ll be bored by the second day obviously never went to Singapore!!! There’s so much to see and do it’s incredible. Yesterday we had a half-day city tour, which took us to Little India, Chinatown and the Orchid Gardens and today we went on a cruise to Kusu island, where there is a temple where turtles live. Hundreds of them! The small ones with red cheeks.

Tomorrow we’re planning to go to Sentosa island - hopefully the weather improves a little bit! No pictures because I’m writing in an internet cafe and they don’t have any software for resizing pictures but as soon as I get to my cousin’s computer I will upload some photos and post them here.

Highlights so far: food is great and cheap, public transport is even cheaper and very convenient, the Orchid Garden, the wide-angle lens we bought and the exotic aspect of this city is incredible!
Lowlights: the rain, dishonest sellers, sellers hassling you when you walk past a store front, the impossibility of getting a straight answer to “how much”and the service charge and tax, which are always additional to the price (and compulsory!). Today we bought a cappucino for almost S$7. We usually eat lunch for about S$5 for the both of us.

Lukas is sick. Again. It all started with his on-call phone call at 3am 3 weeks ago. Since then he’s never really gotten well, only better and then sick again. He thinks it’s got to do with the fact that he’s not Superman (he suggested that yesterday, dying in the car coming back from dinner at my parents’ - Mother’s Day), I think it’s because he won’t listen to me when I tell him he should stay home one more day. Now that we have 6 days until Europe trip it’s given that he must stay home until he gets well or he’ll spend all the time in Singapore sitting on the beach or in the hotel while I’m having fun swimming and shopping. And that’s that!

After two days of intense research we bought a video camera! It was a choice between the Canon MV800i, Panasonic NV-Ds15 and JVC GR-D290. JVC won by a mile according to the (limited, all of these are pretty new releases) reviews on the net so today we became the proud owners. I already charged the battery and made the dragon optical illusion work. It’s pretty hard without the camera.

I also already have a queue of people wanting to use it: Greg is first for downloading the rest of his wedding video for editing, Dad next for inspection and I’m pretty sure Lukas would like to press the record button at least once, too.

It’s exactly two weeks until we leave on our holiday to Europe. Let the countdown begin!

Today we did a stocktake of the presents. Once we have those packed there won’t be that much room for clothes anymore. So here’s hoping that the weather gets warmer in Europe!

A few weeks ago I was finally convinced to install Gadu-Gadu, a Polish instant messenger, to keep in touch with my friend Daria in Poland. Now we talk to each other almost every evening and together with Kasia, another friend from school, they are organizing a class reunion. I wonder how many of my old classmates will want to come and meet, how many of them are still in the area? It will be 10 years since we graduated primary school together and went into different high schools.