Andy's Mind

OK, so I got back from my day and a half at the seaside. I was on a friend’s boat, helping with repairs which meant this time helping in scrapping the rust spots on the deck and covering them with protective paint. Complete re-painting of the deck is planned next week.

It was a very interesting time. The boat itself is a 40 feet steel sloop, built somewhere in the seventies. It has a very well designed hull, which behaves very well in bad weather as my friends who sailed her told me. It was used as an expedition yacht many times, just a month before she returned from a cruise up North, near Spitsbergen. For such a boat it is in surprisingly bad state. Everything looks makeshift. The engine, for example, is not a marine engine – it’s an old Mercedes diesel pulled out of a car years ago. Its air intake is made of a beer can, with a large plastic water bottle acting as the filter. The engine broke down on her last voyage, luckily on the return leg from Norway to Poland so they had to return under sails with no power. Interior is worn down and in overall bad state. There is no shower and no heating. A hard to describe, nauseating smell permeates the interior. It is a mixture of moist dirt, oily smells coming from barely covered engine and bilge water.

My friends who were there (the boat owner was not present, BTW) are fine sailors with many hard expeditions under their belts, mainly to the Arctic which is now trendy amongst top tier sailors in Poland. Cruises to the Arctic seas repeatedly win “Cruise of the year” award and are generally seen as “true sailing” for “real men” – as opposed to easy sailing in warmer and calmer seas like Mediterranean. People who go on those cruises look down somewhat on those who prefer to navigate in modern, comfortable boats in better conditions. They shun fancy equipment, with the exception of GPS receivers and chart plotters. They are the same kind of men as those who do base jumping, they just operate on the water. They would do anything provided it is dangerous and difficult enough.

They are very good people, overall relaxed and friendly. And they drink. A lot.

On Friday evening some beers were consumed, then everybody turned to a bottle of home brewed strong alcohol (made by mixing vodka with some sweets and then allowing them to dissolve in alcohol, result is quite good). I took two rounds and decided it’s enough, but three of them proceeded to empty the bottle which contained about half a gallon of this stuff. Next morning everybody around seemed to run on beer – also people from other boats. I met one guy at 6 AM with a large can of beer in his hand, within half an hour he emptied two more. When people on my boat woke up they too started their day by a trip to a shop and beer. Then, beer to accompany breakfast and then beer all day long, steadily, as we worked on the boat. I think that by the evening the dose would be around 10 cans per head, spread evenly over the day. I was shocked, frankly I still am! I can hardly believe I now know personally people who would start their day with beer.

So, overall, despite being welcome there I felt a bit strange. The night was hard, I hardly slept because of the voices etc. from the party going on around the table and later on from the cold. Despite sleeping in clothes, including a thick jacket and sweatshirt, it was so cold I actually woke up around 5:30 AM and proceeded to walk around. It was bearable that way and as the sun rose it was much warmer in the sunshine on a bench on the quay than on my berth. My body is not designed to be in the cold, I’m afraid – I love the temperatures most of my Polish friends describe as sweltering heat and hide from in air conditioned cars and offices.

I was about to stay for another day but I had to go back to take care of this project of mine. Quite frankly, it wasn’t all that bad to leave as I told my friends, but the bright side of this is that I slept tonight in a normal bed, took a long shower and feel human again. I’m not the rough explorer type, I’m afraid. It may sound very bourgeois, but I prefer clean comfy boats with all amenities, including heating and shower.

But, anyway I’m here because tomorrow would be stormy. Just as I was leaving on Friday the client’s IT director called and said they want to have our complete report Monday morning or the heavens would fall apart. She casually mentioned they might consider canceling the deal. I don’t think they themselves can really afford to do this, but I can’t be sure. And if they would do that, well, I would be in deep trouble because I’m doing this project on fixed-price, not a hourly rate – mistake I wouldn’t repeat even for a short project with the client I don’t know. I have to finish off the report before the morning, the problem is I have a kind of writer’s block. I just can’t produce more of this consulting babble. It has something to do with the fact that since the client didn’t want to consider any point of view other than their own (IMHO chaotic and illogical) current report’s shape and conclusions are very far from what I really believe and think about this case.

Well, enough of this, back to my report now…

Yesterday I was visiting people almost whole day. I visited my parents to smoothen the relations some. Then I visited some friends for barbecue, nice eating, some beers, light chat. Then on to another friends, Peter & Martha – I couldn’t eat anymore but we talked well into the night over tea. We ended up discussing quite seriously the nature of our reality. In the end I felt very well, it’s nice to meet people in different contexts and situations, it enriches mind.

Today I’m in a pensive, thoughtful mood. All this discussion about what Peter called “Apparatus” and I would call “Individual Instance of Mind” or “Mind Stream” and then reading “Limes Inferior” before sleep left me somehow mentally unsatisfied. I’ll have to go buy some food for me & the cats and do some thinking while walking.

As all men I hate household chores. There are of course variations in the intensity of this emotion, I can withstand dishwashing (although I swear I would buy a dishwasher some day) and washing is supportable (after all, I have a washing machine and the only task remaining is hanging the things to dry) but I positively hate cleaning and ironing. As most men I know (except those who were in the military) I not only don’t like ironing, I also can’t do it properly especially with shirts. It’s somehow too complex for me (I can hear you laughing there, lady, cut that!) so I just don’t do it. Vacuuming of course is not complex but I hate it too since childhood (it was one of my parent’s bright ideas to make me responsible for vacuum cleaning our home on Saturdays) – and so do my cats, who hide under the bed as soon as they see the vacuum cleaner being taken out of the closet.

Is there a point in all this whining, you ask? Yep! While doing one of those things, which are laborious but necessary it occurred to me that with the social change we underwent in 20th century we lost something without gaining anything in return. I’m referring to household staff.

Somewhere between 1901 and 2001 the household staff – maids, butlers, cooks etc. – disappeared from all but the most rich households. Somehow the idea of working as one is now seen as derogatory, below dignity of modern people. Conversely, having household staff is seen as funny, not modern, somehow snobbish etc. However, when I think of all the hours spent cleaning, washing, cooking and shopping for food and other basic items that even a simple, bachelor household requires I come to conclusion that having household staff was a good idea. All those hours each day I could devote to work, meditation or simply thinking if someone would take care of all those mundane tasks….

All great men from history books, especially my favorite chapters on history of science, didn’t waste their lives on cleaning their rooms. Do you think Pasteur did shop for his groceries? Did Liebig iron his shirts? Did Kierkegaard wash? Or maybe Newton cooked his breakfasts? No! All of them had household staff who ensured that they could have more productive hours each day (and, while we are at it – none of them commuted anywhere either).

However, they had the luck of living in times when household staff was a norm amongst what would be now called “middle class”. Granted, most people who also benefited from that by having more time each day wasted it, but that’s not the point.

OK, so by now any leftist who was able to read that much of this heresy would scream on top of his lungs “And what about those poor people who had to be servants or maids”! Well, in human society there is a considerable number of people who are not bright enough to do anything complex and are best at performing simple tasks. I know it’s not politically correct to say that openly, but that’s a fact. And this doesn’t mean those people are less human because of it. That’s just the way they were born, they are quite happy working in jobs that don’t require subtlety or intellect. What has changed is the location – they now work at numerous restaurants, bars and retail shops. Do you think work of a waiter or a cook at McDonalds or an attendant at a supermarket is that better a job than being a butler or a maid? It’s nature didn’t change, what changed is shortness of relation with the ones being served.

And, of course, in this area the promise of the 20th century was: “OK, so we won’t have household staff but it wouldn’t be necessary since we would have machines that would take the burden off our backs”. But it turns not to be true so far, because even the most complex machines we have can’t do what stupidest of housemaids could. We have dishwashers, but none of them is able to collect the dishes from the table. We have vacuum cleaners, but only recently it’s possible to buy one who would act on its own – and still in a very limited way… We have electric irons, but none of them is able to take the things out of the washing machine, iron them and then put them on the shelves. Same applies to all kinds of fancy kitchen tools, ironically called “robots” in some languages. And there is still nothing that would be able to arrange the things in a room, cook breakfast or clean windows.

So, unless the robotics would get to the point of creating androids that would indeed be capable of performing all those tasks I would go on missing household staff.

It was another Spanish class today and I was enjoying it even more than usual. I’m learning Spanish close to two years now, I’m now on C1 which means intermediate level in Cervantes Institute’s terminology. It means that I can now easily enjoy radio or TV understanding 80% of what is being said. Since my local cable operator removed the last Spanish TV channel two weeks ago I’m now left only with radio over the Internet when it comes to spoken Spanish. But there are some of them to choose from and some are quite interesting.

One that I like is Radio Klara from Valencia. Yesterday around this time they talked about the risks of genetically modified crops, today they have some HR (“recursos humanos”) consultants as guest and are discussing the orientation protocol or procedure for newly employed, how important it is for companies etc. Not very exciting in itself, but I’m excited because I can follow the discussion while at the same time typing this blog entry in English.

Yesterday I got myself into a discussion about Pinochet and the military coup in Chile in 1973 on a political site. I was able to quickly find some documents from the time that supported my arguments and even translate key parts easily for use in my posts. Oh, boy, was I happy.

I really feel that this new window on the world is opening for me thanks to getting my Spanish to the level when passive understanding is easy. Now, I’ve only to get my speaking and – most of all – writing up to that level. But now I’m pretty sure this will come with time too.