Travel / Crossing to Russia: Planning a Motorcycle Trip from Poland to Kalinigrad [26]


Well. Looks like I missed some good thing. ;) Need to check how it works. I hope it does not require to obtain some sort of "digital signature" first...

Travel / Crossing to Russia: Planning a Motorcycle Trip from Poland to Kalinigrad [26]


It would be waste of time these days. Internet makes communications instant, now maybe only Mossad agents in poor arab villages needs a batery SW radio to receive orders from center. ;)

BTW, never has need to make invitation to Russia for someone (to assist in getting visa), but friend of mine who did it once said that it was not so pleasant experience. Too much time to stay in line in a few places. There is rumors that whole procedure (of issuing official invitation) will be electronic soon (like new mexican visa that will be issued as printable file almost instantly after filling a form on embassy website), but now it is time consuming thing.

Travel / One night hour in Warsaw (with a car) - is there any "must see" places? [6]

Well... Returned from that trip. Got less time in Warsaw than expected, but at least nobody can say now that I never been there. ;)

Same with Paris and Berlin. ;)

Way back was crazy, 2700 km in about 35 hours with 2 short stops. Never again... ;)

News / POLISH GAS RESERVES [40]


Possibilities are endless. Just plant more beans. ;)

In reality, there is many questions that should be answered first. Is there enough reserves to make drilling economically reasonable? How many "ballast" gases it contain in addition to methane? What sort of preparation will be necessary to be able to transport it (is it enough to dry it, or it is necessary to remove sulfur compounds to make it less corrosive)?

History / Give back Lwow to Poland and Kaliningrad to Germany - is it possible? [198]

Sure...

But, for complete understanding, here is a text of letter what was answered... ;)

As the Sultan; son of Muhammad; brother of the Sun and Moon; grandson and viceroy of God; ruler of the kingdoms of Macedonia, Babylon, Jerusalem, Upper and Lower Egypt; emperor of emperors; sovereign of sovereigns; extraordinary knight, never defeated; steadfast guardian of the tomb of Jesus Christ; trustee chosen by God himself; the hope and comfort of Muslims; confounder and great defender of Christians—I command you, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, to submit to me voluntarily and without any resistance, and to desist from troubling me with your attacks.

History / Give back Lwow to Poland and Kaliningrad to Germany - is it possible? [198]

Translation sounds much much "flatter" than original... But here it is...

Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan!

Thou art a turkish imp, the damned devil's brother and friend, and a secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight art thou that cannot slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil shits, and your army eats. Thou a son of a b*tch wilt not ever make subjects of Christian sons; we have no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, f*ck thy mother.

Thou art the Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, brewer of Jerusalem, goat-f*cker of Alexandria, swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, Armenian pig, Podolian villain, catamite of Tartary, hangman of Kamyanets, and fool of all the world and underworld, a fool before our God, a grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our dick. Pig's snout, mare's arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow, screw thine own mother!

So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife. Thou wilt not even be herding Christian pigs. Now we shall conclude, for we don't know the date and don't have a calendar; the moon's in the sky, the year in the book, the day's the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!

Koshovyi Otaman Ivan Sirko, with the whole Zaporozhian Host

History / Give back Lwow to Poland and Kaliningrad to Germany - is it possible? [198]


Well... Cossacks writes some historical document on this painting... By the way, does anyone readed exact text of that document? ;)

By the way it is not so bad... ;)

Отвiт запорожцiв Магомету IV.
Ти, султан, чорт турецкий, i проклятого чорта брат i товарищ, самого Люцеперя секретарь. Якiй ты в черта лыцарь, коли голою сракою ежака не вбъешь. Чорт высирае, а твое вiйско пожирае. Не будешь ты, сукiн ты сыну, сынiв христiянських пiд собой маты, твойого вiйска мы не боiмось, землею i водою будем биться з тобою, распроеб твою мать. Вавилоньский ты кухарь, Макидоньский колесник, Iерусалимський бравирник, Александрiйський козолуп, Великого и Малого Египта свинарь, Армянська злодиюка, Татарський сагайдак, Каменецкий кат, у всего свiту i пiдсвiту блазень, самого гаспида внук и нашего хуя крюк. Свиняча ты морда, кобыляча срака, рiзницька собака, нехрещений лоб, мать твою еб. От так тобi запорожцi виcказали, плюгавче. Не будешь ти i свиней христiанских пасти. Теперь кончаемо, бо числа не знаемо i календаря не маемо, мiсяц у небi, год у книзя, а день такий у нас, якиi i у Вас, за це поцелуй в сраку нас! Пiдписали: кошевой атаман Иван Сирко зо всiм кошем Запорожськiм.

History / POLISH MEMORIES OF CHERNOBYL...April 26th 1986 [32]


LOL...

"The China Syndrome" is a name of movie (depicting an accident at a nuclear reactor) that was released just days before Three Mile Island reactor accident in United States.

History / POLISH MEMORIES OF CHERNOBYL...April 26th 1986 [32]


Can't remember families now, but suspect that there was both. And I would not name them "scientists", more likely engineers of various disciplines, that was need to run a test to improve security procedures during planned reactor shutdown.

One of worst things was that the person who lead this test was electrician, not very familiar with nuclear physics. And another bad thing that lead to this disaster is interruption of experiment (dispatcher of energetic system disabled further lowering of power due to accident on other electric plant so they was forced to keep just lowered partial power level for a while to prevent blackouts during peak hours). In fact, when they was given green light to continue, reactor was in state that was not planned by ones who checked and sanctioned experiment plan.

Domino effect due to multiple small mistakes - from design flaw in regulating rods construction to intervention of persons that follows their own instructions (like dispatcher that was in charge for keeping whole grid working) but not understand consequences of their perfectly legal commands. Step by step, they put reactor to state that was never planned by designers, when emergency shutdown button on a control panel acted as a self-destruction button.


I'm not communism fan, but I can easily remember at least ten things that can happen to the world and that is much worse than communism. ;)

Language / Are the languages of Russian and Polish similar at all? [94]


Unfortunately, these guys in HK was not so high... ;) They just tried to make at least some use of something they learned in school in a cold war times. ;)


Alphabet is not so big problem. I have a friend that learned thai language - alphabet was easiest part, as they said later. And Cyrillic is much closer to Latin than Thai to any of them.

You'll have real troubles learning Chinese...

Travel / Can I enter first to Poland having a Czech visa? [13]


There WAS such thing as C+D visas (Schengen short stay + national long stay). AFAIK it was issued before Apr 5, so there is a lot of such visas still valid.


For me, it looks like that holders of modern equivalent of former D type visa now granted same rights as holders of former C+D.

Travel / Can I enter first to Poland having a Czech visa? [13]


Some useful reading...

ec.europa.eu/justice_home/fsj/freetravel/visa/docs/c_2010_1620_en.pdf

There _is_ such thing as national long stay visa.

From the document above:

Example: a Ukrainian national is staying in Spain on the basis of national long stay visa. He
wishes to return to Ukraine by car via France, Germany and Poland.
The Ukrainian national should apply for a visa at a French consulate in Spain (cf. point
2.3.2).23

News / Russia, Poland ready agreement on visa-free travel [71]

Hm... One more prophet... ;)

Well, see what happened in a republics that managed to break out from USSR in the past. I cannot say that everything is just perfect there.

The one of brightest examples is Georgia. Their nationalistic government break all ties with Russia... Just to find that there is not so much markets where their traditional products (overpriced friuts, parody to tea, second-grade vines, etc) is welcome. They was one of most prosperous republics in USSR, now they have little more than 1/4 of russian GDP (per capita).

News / Russia, Poland ready agreement on visa-free travel [71]

By the way, there was two Kaliningrads in Russia. One was near Moscow, and most people was pleased when it was renamed to Korolev (in a memory of legendary space program leader and general constructor).

So name swap story looks funny now. Koenigsberg/Królewiec now Kaliningrad, and Kaliningrad (former Podlipki) now Korolev. ;)

News / Russia, Poland ready agreement on visa-free travel [71]

If someone will come to invest substantial amount to new enterprise - I think he/she will not have problems with hiring russian-speaking Pole as a executive director. ;) Otherwise, obviously, he/she must be fluent in Polish and live in Poland enough to know local people and be able to avoid stupid misunderstandings that may cause serious problems with personnel from nothing.

I seen a lot of really stupid things that was done by "just from US" managers in Russia in a similar situation. ;)

News / Russia, Poland ready agreement on visa-free travel [71]


Is it great problem? ;)

News / Russia, Poland ready agreement on visa-free travel [71]


Some older trucks, motorcycles, older emergency generators or water pumps. Some small agricultural machinery. Not so much demand for this fuel as I can see on a local gas stations, but many have at least one distribution column with A-80.

Some of emergency machinery is intentionally made to operate on almost anything with octane nubmer starting from approx 65, by the way.

News / Russia, Poland ready agreement on visa-free travel [71]


Here WAS some problems with this, of course, especially in southern regions, but crooks usually gets what they deserve quite fast. Main thing was adding some octane number increasing additives to fuel with octane number 80 and selling it as 92 (as you can imagine it is nearly impossible to do at a gas station, so usually this was the "business" of small wholesale dealers, they then sold the mix to independent gas stations, with a counterfeit certificates or certificates issued for another lot of fuel). As I can remember there was no such problems with a "branded" gas stations like Lukoil, Sibneft.

Another thing (also at the south) was "chechen petrol" that was made in Chechnya from oil stolen from pipelines using some "homemade" distilling equipment - usually was sold as 80 but real octane number may be anywhere from 60 to 90, unpredictable. Now this is non-existent anymore, as current chechen administration declared total war to such "businesses", often linked to and used to fund operations of local islam terrorists.

News / Russia, Poland ready agreement on visa-free travel [71]

Already over 120000 on odometer of my Ford Taurus, purchased one imported from UAE with 40000 there. Since then - no any problems with engine, no any fuel additives ever used. Location - 20 km northwest from Moscow. ;)

News / Russia, Poland ready agreement on visa-free travel [71]


I suspect that gas stations along the Russian side of the border will be flooded with Poles from neighbour towns instead. ;)

News / Minsk threatens to take gas destined for Poland and EU [16]

All those buzz is not about gas itself, it is more about oil export customs duties (or what it is named in English). In the past, Belarus got all their oil duty-free, and then reexported a lion share of it after processing, making a huge profits (I heard about $2 bn/yr or so). Starting from Jan 1, Russia offered to supply 6.3 million tons of oil per year to Belarus duty free (it is approximately equal to complete internal consumption of Belarus) and everything extra - with regular Russian duties, as for export. Lukashenko goes crazy about this, just processing of oil does not make superprofits by itself... Not so easy to lose such amount of free money...

Law / "FART" shop in Poland - WHAT DOES THIS SHOP SELL? [55]



Imagine the field "Place of birth" in Russian passport with such a toponym... ;)

News / Unbelievable but, its truth. Poland is finally happy to share border with Russia [57]

Hm... Not original, of course...

Pushkin written many, many years ago...

Не верю чести игрока,
Любви к России поляка,
Не верю я французской дружбе
И бескорыстью немцев в службе.

Will not even try to translate. ;)

Off-Topic / Slavic languages - oldest European languages. [12]

Something in my memory tell me that modern Lithuanian is a live language that is closest to sanskrit... Maybe I'm wrong?

News / Jarosław Kaczyński sharing his words with Russians! [57]

I do not judge overall pilots skills by landings, of course, but it is only thing that I can feel - glideslope is not drawn in the air and I do not see speed indications on a display in front of me during landing. ;) But there is another reason why I don't like harsh landings - there was special course in my university about non-destructive structural defects diagnostics, materials fatigue, etc, etc. And I believe that if some extreme loads can be avoided safely - they should be avoided. (BTW: more than half of gamma-ray and ultrasonic images with various types of hidden cracks and other internal defects that professor displayed to students was related to space vehicles and aircrafts - probably because there is a lot of such checks done on that stuff).

Maybe really asian pilots trained to treat any runway as short field, cannot say anything about this. But I just feel the difference..

News / 1945-2010 Poles will march on Red square [66]


Sure?


LJ, article comments on news resources like gazeta.ru, russian-speaking forums with not so tight moderation (and even in offtopic lounges on quite good moderated tech forums like ixbt.com there is a lot of such persons or bots - they stick to gas and ukraine related threads mostly but periodically throw some sh*t everywhere).

Just seen how fun for such guys was the news about explosion in a coal mine...

News / Jarosław Kaczyński sharing his words with Russians! [57]


I already posted some stats - yes, there is a bit larger ratio of crashes to a number of planes manufactured if compared with, say, B-737, but if you thoroughly look - there is just a few accidents where aircraft failure was blamed - mostly stupid human errors. And quite a lot of them - small airlines in Asia.

BTW, I recently flown from Moscow to Beijing, then to Hong Kong, then to Taipei and back - and wish to note that two landings on which I doesn't noted touchdown at all was Aeroflot flights - chinese pilots from Cathay Pacific/Dragonair dropped plane to runway much more agressive way. Also remembered my previous experience with Air Asia and Singapore airlines - also quite harsh landings, compared to Finnair, Aeroflot or Lufthansa flights. Yes, it is just my own observations, but someone else may share their own experience.

News / 1945-2010 Poles will march on Red square [66]


Things not so bad there, of course. If you'll analyze who is writing sad comments about Poland, you'll find that many of them do almost the same about Russia in another threads. There is some (in)famous people that must throw some **** to the fan in any thread. Ukrainian nazis is most active...

News / WHY DOES POLAND BUY GAS FROM RUSSIA? [105]


Hm... They say nothing... They just cut the pair of most valuable and conveniently located slices from Mexico in the past and now trying to build wall to avoid new mexican illegal migrants. ;)