Week 4 (04-10.05.2015) Solidarity and the Cruel Exploitation of Social Groups / Nationality Groups – Out of Their Natural Environment

I would like to ask you for an opinion about the sources of cruelty and ​ solidarity in national and social groups out of their natural environment. I mean emigration and any other kind of being out of your regular environment. I realize that ​the topic that I am raising is very complicated, but I’ll try to make it more simple :). For the past few months I have been in New York and in smaller than London cities in UK and please forgive me, but most of my sources are my own experience.

I love to visit national districts in large cities and talk with people, how, when and why they moved ​there and about their experiences ( of course I do the same thing with immigrants in Poland).

Story nr. One: Poles in USA

​Location is Greenpoint, NYC

The entire neighborhood is full of Polish bakeries, kiosks, bookstores, grocery stores, bars. It looks like taken out of the 80s in Poland. Everywhere hanging posters of Polish​ lawyers offering assistance in the field of labor law, employment fraud and problems arising from the  lack of insurance.

My first interlocutor is Włodek from Piła, he is tall, fiftyish, he has lived there for 20 years now. This morning someone has broken his nose. After a few minutes we know that it wasn't someone but his young cousin who has come  recently and lived on the street so he took take of her.

The nose was broken with a chair because she got mad after he had said something (unspecified).  He needed a drink cause he still doesn’t have medical insurance. He doesn’t don't speak English as well.

Krysia,  the owner of the bar who came here in the early '70s, told us that half of Polish immigrants, even those who have been there for 20 years, still don't speak English and don't have a green card or even visa with a work permit.

It seemed to me that nothing has changed since the 80s – “Szczęśliwego Nowego Jorku” ​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSPqHVKwzvM

Story nr. two: Poles in UK

​Location is Leicester.

My friend has been living there for two years now, running his mysterious (to me) business building some machines​. One month ago when he was picking me from the airport, we saw police officers checking his vehicle’s data. It turned out that the insurance is invalid. The car was insured by the taxi driver who is his friend also Polish. He said that he​ has a lot of cars so he​ can pay lower rates. ​Of course, the lower rate paid my friend. After the first phone call the taxi driver never picked up the phone again. The car was taken to a police parking lot. Getting insurance after such an offense is actually impossible because it costs £ 5,000 and without insurance getting your car back is impossible. Fun, right?

Story nr. Three: Ukrainians in PL

​Location is Warsaw.

My interlocutor is Ludmiła. Back in Ukraine she studied ethnography and then ran her own business. After whole war mess in the east she escaped to Poland with her two daughters. Here she is a cleaning lady and she is struggling with cancer.

" The first year was terrible until I met the Poles who helped me. I lived in Łomianki in a big house belonging to  rich Ukrainian women, renting a room in the basement with mold on the walls. It cost 1200zł. The rich Ukrainian woman also offered me a job which pays for the rent.“

After one year the Ukrainian woman said that actually she never got any money and asked Ludmiła to move out at night with small children. She handed her papers indicating that if she didn’t pay the rent she would be sued.

Story nr. Four: Jews in UK

​Location is London

My interlocutor, named Uri ,came here from Jerusalem, he is a Hasidic orthodox who decided to leave Israel because he didn’t  agree with the policy of the government.

He is a designer and shoemaker. He decided to stay at first in the  Jewish district of Stamford Hill. He came alone and also he doesn’t have any family there.

He was welcomed very well, for the first few days he could stay at the community center, met many people and after one week he got his first job at a shoemaker’s, a simple job, not a dream job, but good enough to pay for a room. He said that he had such a warm welcome, so many people wanted to help him immediately at finding a job, finding home, applying for the legalization of his residence, etc. He is wondering if it's the influence of the kibbutz’s policy ( shared parenting or joint budget and work) or hundreds of years of diaspora and its problems in finding their place in a foreign country. Who knows...

http://dalstonist.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/5544206457_c4415b5775_z-528x396.jpg

​Epilogue

I am far from generalization, I realize that these are individual stories.

Unfortunately, such stories I usually listen to. Also there are many others, about ​support among the LGBT community in each bigger city in Poland, Europe and USA or in broadly defined environment of Punk leftists.

I would like to listen to your thoughts, opinions and experiences in this field.

Also I would like to recommend watching a miniseries "Run" about immigrants in GB.

"Four gritty no-holds-barred human stories of the streets, all linked together in some respect."

http://iitv.info/run/

Week 4 (04-10.05.2015) Rubik's cube

Rubik’s cube

I’m a real Rubik’s Cube fan. I was playing a lot with this amazing toy when I was little. But I came back to it a year ago and now I’m trying to solve different types of cubes as fast as possible. I cannot say that I’m a speedcuber or speedsolver because my personal best solving time is only 31 seconds and the official world record for solving 3x3 cube using two hands and open eyes is 5,55 seconds (believe me that this annotation about hands and eyes is very important because people also solve cubes using one hand or feet and there are also magicians who solve dozens of cubes in a row without looking at them).

In this article I would like to show you how easy it is to solve a 3x3 cube. Also I would like to present to you other types of cubes. Maybe someday you will start practicing like me, to solve it faster and faster every day. Have fun!

The official world record:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCrTrtxAUbA

How to solve 3x3 cube

First of all, you have to know that there are many techniques of solving cubes such as: Fridrich, Roux, Petrus and many others. But in my opinion the best one is Fridrich aka CFOP and this method I’m using in this presentation.

Step one

The Fridrich method has 4 phases. In the first one you have to build a cross like the one in the picture below.

(source: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metoda_Fridrich)

It doesn’t matter what colour you choose. I prefer white. It’s very important to match the cross with side center pieces. In the picture above you see only red and blue but you have to match also two other: green and orange.

Step two

The second phase is called F2L (First Two Layers). All you have to do is to arrange all pieces of two layers just like in the picture below.

(source: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metoda_Fridrich)

To achieve that you have to utilize a few algorithms. Yes! You have to remember them. But believe me that after first fifty attempts your hands will work automatically. Mostly because there are many common moves.

First of all turn your cube to have the cross at the bottom (in our example white cross). All you have to do is to fill the missing corners. You have four of them. 

(source: http://www.kostkarubika.org/kursy/333/techniki-zaawansowane/fridrich/1/sajgon/3/f2l)

Of course there are many combinations. But you have to focus to solve missing corners one by one and don’t care about other pieces. Let’s consider one case like the one in the picture below. At the same time I will also explain to you what the Rubik’s Cube Notation is.

(source: https://www.speedsolving.com/wiki/index.php/F2L)

In this case we would like to arrange the Red-Green-White corner. Two pieces you need are located on the upper face, they are grouped together but the triple piece is turned. To solve this case you have to do:

U' (R U' R' U) (R U R')

I know! You say: what does it mean? Basically this is the solution written in the Rubik’s Cube Notation. Here is the description:

U =   U’=

R =R’ =

(source: http://ruwix.com/the-rubiks-cube/notation/)

I hope you’ve done it. It’s easy, isn’t it? Of course the notations have many more key letters. A good explanation you can find here:

http://www.rubiksplace.com/move-notations/

And all F2L algorithms you can find here: 

https://www.speedsolving.com/wiki/index.php/F2L.

Step three 

Once you have finished the second phase called F2L all you have to do is to arrange the last layer. This part is divided into two phases. First you have to turn all your yellow pieces to have a nice solved face. And don’t care about the border. For sure the colours will not match with the green, red, blue and orange faces. We will fix it later. Just focus on the yellow face like in the picture below:

(source: http://www.kostkarubika.org/kursy/333/techniki-zaawansowane/fridrich/1/sajgon/4/oll)

This time we will also have to use some algorithms. This phase (called OLL - Orientation of the Last Layer) has many of them but for now you need only a few listed below:

Of course the full list of algorithms is available online. You can find it here: https://www.speedsolving.com/wiki/index.php/OLL

Step four

This is the last part called PLL (Permutation of the Last Layer). All you have to do is to turn the border pieces to have your cube completely solved.

(source: http://www.kostkarubika.org/kursy/333/techniki-zaawansowane/fridrich/1/sajgon/5/pll)

As always you have to use algorithms which you can find here: https://www.speedsolving.com/wiki/index.php/PLL. Find your case and that’s it. Finish.

One more thing…

There is one more thing. The original 3x3 cube is only the beginning. You can try to solve also 2x2, 4x4, 5x5 and… 11x11

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCUx-7bXfqc

Personally I have cubes from 2x2 to 5x5. And trust me it’s really enough. But if you are ambitious you can try to solve larger ones. To be honest – 80% of 3x3 algorithms you can utilize on larger cubes so it’s not as complicated as it looks like. There are some tips and tricks but it’s mostly the same as the basic 3x3.