044 - Cafe Meeting

044 - Cafe Meeting, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

I watch people when they receive calls, even by landline, and I watch to see who remembers that they have chosen to be with someone physically and those who forget, those who can say no and those who don't, and those that are simply too involved in what they are doing to remember to think about why they are doing it.

What kind of person are you?

This combines two images, each one taken from the two largest malls in Poznan. I only took the overlay one because of the tiype of lights hanging from the ceiling, of a shape I and many other people really like although seemingly impossible to buy in Poland if you do not work for some large design company. We first saw them in Orsay in a delicate pink.

Here they almost form tattoos on Ania's arms.

043 - C is for Concrete for all Ages

043 - C is for Concrete for all Ages, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

This is Ania in Poznan, questioning why concrete should be the foil for the youth and very old in photographs, can't we all contrast with it?

The concrete in question is part of the base for a huge war memorial in Poznan, built by the communist authorities in that inhuman stylised way that they used to pretend concern that never touched them.

Ania was born in communist Poland and had to grow up with the propoganda, so another contrast of this picture is the ugly balanced by a mind that survived the propoganda.

Interestingly enough, the ever-lasting flame has gone out, but the ever-lasting youth has taken overt the monument as skateboard park.

Ania is also wearing a top she bought from Orsay, which after we had tried it on in the changing rooms there we run into a friend and former employer who had also been on the same diet as Ania. She seemed quite surprised to see us choosing this very bustier top, but I said I was quite happy with it, and why didn't she consider something similar. As we left the shop she was examining the rack in question, but I suspect that she will remain in cream blouses for, well for a long time.

042 - Band in the Hotel Polonez

042 - Band in the Hotel Polonez, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Continuing our fun pretense at being in a band, here we are giving an impromptu performance in the hall of a three star hotel in Poznan, Poland, a city which despite its pretensions within Poland as a city of international fairs, still achieves a mere 'where?' when we mention it to most people outside of Poland.

Still, he there we were, on a voluntary 5-day trip we had organised to the city in order to learn a bit more about the other side of Poland and do some shopping.

Of interest is perhaps the fact that most of what I am wearing was purchased from shops or departments dealing in women's clothes because men's clothes are BORING!!!!

The only question left in my mind is whether Lublin is ready for a balding, greying man to wear these trousers on its streets? Are our grand nieces ready?

089-picture me

089-picture me, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

As indicated by the number of the tltle, this one was done for the fuggers group of the day - recreating a painting. We chose Adam and Eve by Tamara Lempicka, a copy of which by a local artist hangs above our bed, the latter pushed out of the way for this shot.

Of course, our recreation has a few changes - my arthritus did not allow me to bend enough, and Ania is not ready to allow her students to see too much as most of them are from places east of Poland and often from cultures too steeped in sexless, human-less traditional Christian upbringings, the basis of the former Soviet states.

The apple is somethign that Ania eats every day, she has always loved them and is quite happy they are part of the diet she has been on for the past six months to lose weight. As part of this diet is an hour's exercise three times a week, something that has done wonders for her circulation, a great boon for a frequent flyer and train taker.

041 - Skin Deep Vision

041 - Skin Deep Vision, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Living in Poland it has been interesting listening to the reaction of Poles who have gone to work in my native England. Poland has managed to convince itself that it is one nation, so what happens when comfortable middle-class well-educated people we know arrive in multi-cultural England? Often good, sadly too often 'I am not racist, but black people should stay in Africa'. Sometimes I feel I have reversed into 1950's Britain, and now I must go through the pain once more of racism, sexism, and deep and pointless nationalism.

I used to live in Birmingham, a city with a high proportion of people who could trace their roots back to the Indian subcontinent, but to me just people. What is annoying is being told by Poles returning from there that it is alright for me, I was born in the UK. Sorry, I was born in a small village surrounded completely by 'white English' people, I never saw anyone of another race until the arrival in my class at school of a girl from Jamaica. Luckily, we had had no pictures of the queen, no national flag on the wall, and no national songs to learn, so she just slotted in just fine with me, just another girl.

Am I white, am I red, or am I some kind of red and white panda? Does it matter, because under the skin my basic value is human.

038 - C is for Complacent

038 - C is for Complacent, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

I see many problems with the managements of companies, and this is one of my least favourites - where managers rush around politicking with each other but ignoring basic issues of communication within and between departments. Guess who gets the blame when things don't go right? Guess who is called lazy?

It can be fun being a manager, getting tasks set by those above them, attending meetings, putting together reports - but what about the procedures that are already in place or none existent?

I have worked for companies that create new products as part of their basic existence and also service companies. The latter tend to apply product thinking to their own systems rather than solving issues in novel and applicable ways. I think this is the result of the education and experience of the management team. By product thinking I mean sending managers on management or product-related courses, or buying in ready-made computer solution or other systems. having spent a lot of time talking to people in management in service industries I can see that they believe they understand innovation, but assume that innovation really means 'new'. a new course, a new system - all pre-made by someone else.

The problem is that many in-house systems are very specific to the nature of the business and the geographical relationship of branches and clients, and the assignations of duties between departments. Innovation is finding a solution that fits by examining the problem, and accepting that you do not know what the answer is before you begin. Not what package you can buy to solve the problem, but understanding what the problem is. This is where it gets tricky, because understanding the problem means abandoning traditional thought, leaving yourself naked to the universe - and naked to your staff as you attempt to learn what it is that they actually do. Yep, you have to admit that you have no idea what the solution is. You don't know. And that is hard in a world of service company management politics.

Hence, rather than learn how to deal with the unknown, whole management teams play internal politics and waste vast resources on systems that mysteriously do not work as well as it said on the package.

Play, play, play, like me in the left hand image, having fun while unnoticed on the table in front of you your internals systems are a mess. that mess sets up friction, and eventually one of your cards catch fire. Run, run, run around with your ass/card on fire, look for someone to blame - and still not see that the processes are still a mess.

036 - E is for the End of Creation

036 - E is for the End of Creation, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

There are two ways of looking at life - from the small bits up or the big bit down. Imagine that you defined a car as being a three-box sedan - engine part, passenger part and trunk. If you made a car without a separate trunk, a fastback or hatchback say, then this would not be a true car but a derivative of a car, not a true car. This is the small-bits-up view of life - define a single element as the ideal and then anything that does not match must be some other element.

The big bits down would say that a car is something that is self-powered and primarily carries small numbers of people around - three-box, two-box, truck and the rest would all be 'car'.

Many people consider language to have an ideal model, and anything slightly different is dialect, emotional speaking, corruption and the rest, not true language. This is small-bit thinking. The problem with small-bit thinking is that it excludes original thought, although many would argue that excluding the attendant change is a good thing.

Polish linguistics is caught in a small-bit thinking trap, where many of the practitioners vehemently reject ideas from outside Poland under the very weak argument that "Polish is different'. Polish is not that different, but the result of this thinking is millions of wasted pupil-teaching hours every year in the teaching of language in Poland while at universities the lecturers and professors every day walk past opportunity of greater and deeper understanding, instead enmeshing the next generation in the same trap.

The same thinking traps millions of people around the world into narrow worlds where you cannot even be adventurous in the home you live in without heavy criticism - the question of whether your home is a good design or suits the environment is secondary as to the question of how well your home matches the three-box-sedan model of a house. You must have lots of tiny rooms to ensure that your family spends time apart, houses must be separate from the garden, and vast quantities of rarely used items must fill in the space. The rooms must be featureless boxes that you have to fill with decor and furniture merely to take away the mind-numbing boredom of it all - rather than designing spaces to fit us.

To me a car is a loose concept to describe a whole bucket full of personal transport concepts that has no hope of being filled completely. I am a big-bit thinker - I see humanity first and try to ensure that life and the world is a happy place by meeting our needs.