In All Fairness

In all fairness to the idea of culture squashing, last weekend I decided to do my best to partake of other cultures besides mine.

First, we went to a City festival entitled “Europe on a Fork” where chefs were preparing dishes from different countries of Europe. I think that many of the chefs (if not all) were foreign. The whole shindig was too late for us though, starting after we had already been in the Market Square with the kids a few hours, so we went home without trying anything. Anyhow, there was a long, long line at the ticket cashier to buy tickets, but when we left the booth was still closed and the line was growing.

I also gave a fair shake to the other news outlets (I’m usually a slave to CNN International and TVN24). I checked out BBC World, the French news channel (where all the female newscasters look, well, with their messed up hair and sly grins, kind of, well, post-coital), the German news channel, AlJazeera, and the Russian news channel. I didn’t learn anything that I didn’t already know, but the change of pace was nice.

I couldn’t forget about the soaps, so I checked out the Korean international channel. People on Korean soaps look surprisingly European and like most soaps, the actors and actresses are super polished. The main plot line of the soap I was watching was that a young man’s girlfriend was thought inappropriate by his parents. The girlfriend apparently had not even graduated from high school and her parents were thought to be low class – an international problem with a Korean twist. However, I think soaps (Korean or otherwise) have to be taken with a grain of salt. I mean, how realistically does Klan portray real Polish life? And unfortunately, we are broadcasting (via satellite) all over the world our idea of sexy, the embodiment of which is…Rysiu ;)

I also checked out some foreign channels not in English. I paid most attention to the commercials just as I did when I started watching Polish TV before I knew Polish. I especially like Egyptian commercials for laundry detergent. Apparently, Egyptian women have the same problem as women the world over…how to clean their sloppy-eating husband’s shirts…or in this case -  robes.

As far as music goes, I checked out the UK rock chart on MTV Rocks. I am pleased to say that I didn’t know even one song. So much for the culturally squashed music industry. Unfortunately, I am now addicted to MTV Rocks and have started to notice the similarities in the songs. The more I watch, the more the facade of cutting edge rock music crumbles.

My next plan is to watch the Russian travel channel in English if I can find it on my satellite of a thousand channels.

PS1 In my attempt to make my blog more accessible for the Polish- speaking audience, I (and when I say I, I mean Misiu) am in the process of translating the old posts. My goal is for all posts to exist in the original form in English followed by the Polish translation under the same post heading. It will take some time, so current posts will be few and far between for awhile. My apologies in advance.

PS2 Greetings to Monika and Design Patrol, two new followers of Kielbasa Stories. Welcome to you both. Thanks for joining us and thanks for reading.

PS3 Last but not least, greetings for Big Apple Ewa. It was so nice to see you today as it always is. I hope that some day we can meet in New York :)