Re: [lace-chat] Re: This is for Real - humour

2004-06-05 Thread Weronika Patena
> Weronika,
> The culture confuses ME, and I was born and raised here by very 
> non-international parents! 

I'm not sure whether I should be happy that my problem isn't abnormal,
or unhappy because that means it'll probably never go away... 

> Except for The Lord of the Rings and Harry 
> Potter, "Master and Commander" (because we liked the books) and 
> "Minority Report", I don't think we've seen any movies in the last 
> five years. 

I find myself watching lots of movies now, because for some reason my
friends want to see them.  Like Spiderman and such.  In Poland I used to
only go see movies I knew were going to be really good, but here people 
seem to do it much more often, college students at least.  
Well, I can tell you you're not missing anything 

Weronika

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Re: [lace-chat] Re: This is for Real - humour

2004-06-04 Thread Martha Krieg
 > Weronika, the problem of "getting lost" in conversation doesn't 
only occur when
 moving to a country with a different language!  
I'm sure it doesn't.  I'm fine with most of the language, it's just the
culture that confuses me.  Especially when people my age start talking
about music and movies and such...
Weronika
Weronika,
The culture confuses ME, and I was born and raised here by very 
non-international parents! Except for The Lord of the Rings and Harry 
Potter, "Master and Commander" (because we liked the books) and 
"Minority Report", I don't think we've seen any movies in the last 
five years. As for modern music well, I know more medieval pieces 
by heart than pop songs! The number of references in meetings at work 
that sail right over my head, to my all-too-obvious complete 
non-comprehension is probably legendary by now!
--
--
Martha Krieg   [EMAIL PROTECTED]  in Michigan

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Re: [lace-chat] Re: This is for Real - humour

2004-06-01 Thread Weronika Patena
> Weronika, the problem of "getting lost" in conversation doesn't only occur when
> moving to a country with a different language!   

I'm sure it doesn't.  I'm fine with most of the language, it's just the
culture that confuses me.  Especially when people my age start talking
about music and movies and such...

Weronika

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Re: [lace-chat] Re: This is for Real - humour

2004-06-01 Thread Weronika Patena
Hi everyone!
I'm back from visiting my boyfriend for the long weekend, and I think
I'll sit down and answer all of my accumulated Arachne email now.
It's a great thing to do while waiting for my Matlab program to finish
running and tell me what silly programming error I've made this time...

> >True, there doesn't seem to be, although I always thought that was just
> >because I've never dealt with sex in Polish.
> 
> Possibly a vicious circle: there's no "ordinary" language to talk about 
> it, because nobody talks about it?

I was assuming Polish people having sex with other Polish people (which
I never ended up doing) do talk about it, although I might be wrong . 

> >(of course the idea of using condoms wasn't even mentioned, since the
> >Caltholic Church doesn't allow them, for no reason that I ever managed
> >to understand).
> 
> The first and foremost reason for having sex is procreation, not 
> pleasure; pleasure is icing on the cake, and not strictly necessary. By 
> using a condom, you turn that principle upside down. 

But then why is "contraception" by charting your cycle and only having
sex during non-fertile days acceptable?  

> Then, too, the 
> Catholic Church is ruled by men, and it's men who object the most to 
> using condoms, so, who knows what the real reason is :)

I think the assumption is that the men who rule the Catholic Church
don't have sex, with or without condoms... 

> >I don't know anything about Ann Landers either.
> 
> Too late now; she'd dead and burried. But she used to have a syndicated 
> advice column, which used to be published in half the newspapers in the 
> US. The other half of the newspapers published the advice column 
> wrtitten by her twin sister (Amy van Buren? The Washington Post had Ann 
> Landers, so her name is more familiar to me). I used to love Ann 
> Landers when I first came here; her replies to all sorts of questions 
> (some totally bizarre) was so no-nonsense and straightforward... 
> Reading the column gave me many a chuckle (as well as some insight into 
> what "American society at large" was like).

Sounds interesting...  I need insight into American society.  Especially
since Caltech has very little in common with the rest of it, it seems. 

> >In the US I get in lots of conversations I'm completely lost in...  
> >Tamara, does this ever go away?
> 
> No, not really. 

Ouch.  

> Plus, my asking a question about things 
> which are "natural" to every born-and-bread American but "obscure and 
> esoteric" to me, is likely to make someone's day, providing the 
> explanation, so, why not? 

Yep, that works well.

Weronika
(In Caltech, Pasadena, USA, once again unbearably hot from my Polish
point of view)

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Re: [lace-chat] Re: This is for Real - humour

2004-05-27 Thread Ruth Budge
Weronika, the problem of "getting lost" in conversation doesn't only occur when
moving to a country with a different language!   I come from England, have
lived in Australia most of my life - and after all, both countries are supposed
to speak the same language!  However, after all these years, I still find that
the occasional Australian phrase comes up which I don't understand, I still use
expressions which turn out to be particularly English.  Then when I go  back
home to England, although I automatically drop the Australian accent and start
speaking with an English one again, I confuse people by using terms and
expressions they don't understand there either - so in both countries I spent a
bit of time "translating" or explaining what I mean!!!

Regards, Ruth Budge (Sydney, Australia)
Weronika Patena wrote:

In the US I get in lots of conversations I'm completely lost in... 
Tamara, does this ever go away?


Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies.
http://au.movies.yahoo.com

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Re: [lace-chat] Re: This is for Real - humour

2004-05-27 Thread Weronika Patena
> >!
> >This is really horrible!  I always thought this sort of thing was over
> >earlier than the 60's...  Tamara, was it like this in Poland too?
> 
> Nope, and I doubt it had been like this in Poland even in 1860's... :)

I thought so.  Good...

> And the post WWII communist rule only strengthened the trend: 
> women had to work, same as men did (the salaries were calulated on the 
> basis of *two* people supporting one family), so were less likely to 
> go, willingly, through the pretense of "you are more important than I 
> am". 

Yep.  Even though I think communism is completely wrong as a political
system, after coming to the US I realized that it did do a couple of
good things for Poland.

> I'd estimate that 98% of all the sex 
> education I received (school, friends, books, parents) was couched 
> either in strictly biology textbook terms, or those from the gutter; 
> the first were too boring, the second too embarassing. But there was 
> nothing in between, no "every day" language to bridge the gap, until I 
> learnt enough English...

True, there doesn't seem to be, although I always thought that was just
because I've never dealt with sex in Polish. 
As for sexual education, there was an additional element in my
childhood: in I think 6th or 7th grade we had one hour of class with a 
Catholic "sexual educator".  It started and ended with a prayer, and
mostly consisted of giving reasons for never having sex outside of
marriage - including great ideas like "if you have sex with different
men, you will become allergic to sperm and won't be able to have sex"
(of course the idea of using condoms wasn't even mentioned, since the
Caltholic Church doesn't allow them, for no reason that I ever managed
to understand). 

> I also have some doubts about the text having been written by a woman; 
> sounds to me more like something concocted by a man in a wet dream. 

I don't know.   If no women believed in this sort of thing enough to
write it, they wouldn't do it either, and it seems that at least a
decent percentage of them did, or else the social order wouldn't work
the way it did...  I doubt you could force half the human population to
act inferior if they didn't believe it was right. 

> As early as The Forsyth Saga, when Soames "insisted" on his 
> marital rights, the book manipulated one's sympathies towards his wife, 
> who resisted...

I don't know what the Forsyth Saga is... When was it out?

> I'd love to be able to lay my hands on a big book of early Ann Landers 
> responses; by the time I got here ('73) she was very level-headed and, 
> while she preached compromise, she preached it to *both* sexes 
> (something I entirely agree with)

I don't know anything about Ann Landers either.  In the US I get in lots
of conversations I'm completely lost in...  Tamara, does this ever go
away?

Weronika

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Re: [lace-chat] Re: This is for Real - humour

2004-05-26 Thread Steph Peters
On Tue, 25 May 2004 22:48:58 -0400, Tamara wrote:
>I also have some doubts about the text having been written by a woman; 
>sounds to me more like something concocted by a man in a wet dream. 

I don't know who wrote this particular text, but its style certainly does
not rule out a female author.  Because it's a book it is a little more in
depth than would be published in a magazine, but in style it is typical of
the type of advice that women's magazines used to give at the time.  The
authors of articles for such magazines were almost all women; writing
articles for women to read was rather too frivolous an occupation for a man.
So I'd say it was highly likely to have been written by a woman.  Besides,
what man of the time would know about face and hair care products ;-)
--
I have opinions of my own - strong opinions - but I don't always agree 
with them. George W. Bush
Steph Peters, Manchester, England
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