Gemini

 Gemini -  yesterday Google notified me they can support me even better - new Assistant - Gemini - CLICK.

I am open to interesting suggestions, so I tried.
- Who won this year's Nobel Prize in Literature?
- Han Kang, South Korea.
- How many women have won the Nobel Prize in Literature?
- 18, in recent years they have won more often than men.

That's right.
On the sidelines I will mention that the Prize has been awarded 116 times, so it will take a long time for the gender balance to even out.

Then I asked if any books by this author are available in public libraries in Melbourne.
They are, I was given the appropriate links.

Seeing that my Twins know something I tried something that really interests me...
- Do you know anything about Joice Nankivell-Loch?
- I don't know, it may be private information that I don't have access to.

Transcript of the further conversation below...

I admit that my answer was brusque, but I think it was justified.

I was interested in the matter because an Australian woman with that name was decorated with the Polish highest distinction - Order of the White Eagle in 1923. The decoration was probably made by the Chief of State - Józef Piłsudski.

I know quite a bit about this lady, I bet that more than 99.9% of Australians.

Unfortunately, I did not do better on Polish soil.
Last year, on May 3, the 100th anniversary of this decoration struck, so I sent an email with this information to:
- President of Poland - A. Duda,
- The Polish consulate in Australia, 
- The Australian consulate in Poland.

In the email I suggested that it could be a nice element during diplomatic meetings.
The Polish Consulate in Australia responded nicely.
The other two recipients - not a word.

I don't have any major complaints - Joice Nankivell-Loch definitely didn't feel good in Australia, she chose to do charity work in other countries - Poland, Greece, Romania, British Mandate of Palestine. I'm not surprised that Australians don't know about her.
As for the President of the Republic of Poland, I got a warning that the Chancellery is not able to respond to all emails, so I they don't guarantee a response.

But Artificial Intelligence?

Just be aware!

Barefoot on the grass

 One day, I left home, walked to the park and... took off my shoes...

I felt Mother Earth under my feet.

Because it all started with Mother.
Even at preschool age, she encouraged me to walk barefoot in the grass behind the house in the mornings, in the dew.
I was not very eager to do it, anyway for the first 11 years of my life I never put on rubber shoes, only leather.

It was 1952, the Olympic year, and on that occasion I watched newsreels of sports competitions in the cinema. I paid special attention to the US athletes - in the newspapers and radio news (Communist Poland) I read/heard about their decadent lifestyle and here - athletes, not worse than the Soviet ones.
Especially basketball players - all in stylish sneakers.
And then domestically produced sneakers appeared in stores.
When I mentioned to Mother that I would like to have some, she grabbed her head in despair - it's murder - rubber, the foot doesn't breathe.
And so, without breathing - for 72 years.

Last Sunday I overheard on youtube a health program that my wife regularly listens to, and there - the electrostatics of the human body.
I didn't need more - I hurried to a nearby park.

Of course, I moved away from the paths sprinkled with sharp gravel and looked around.
Firstly under my feet...

Eventually I walked mostly on medium height grass on the oval, 
Then I looked up...
Trees intertwined in an embrace...

There is no aggression, so it is not wrestling.
 Perhaps it illustrates the history of a relationship... love, rivalry for influence in the family, and in the end - staying in the hug just for survival. 

 Anyway - I felt hungry. I glanced at the trees one last time...

Looks like we will have broccoli as a vegetable this night.

P.S. Here is a randomly found article about benefits of barefoot walking - CLICK.

The Paris Housekeeper

The Paris Housekeeper by Renee Ryan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Started reading this book with a very positive attitude - the issue was serious and important, the stage presented in a convincing way.
And then scratches appeared, most disturbing was a very authoritative, someway pretentious style of writing.
This was followed by many inconsistencies and omissions in the plot.
Only respect to the two main characters in the book kept me turning pages to the end.

View all my reviews

When God looked the Other Way

When God Looked the Other Way: An Odyssey of War, Exile, and Redemption by Wesley Adamczyk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dramatic story of a family caught in a vortex of the II World War.
On 1 September 1939 Poland has been attacked from the West by Germany, this event started the war.
On 17 September Poland has been attacked by Soviet Union - this move has been previously agreed in a secret Molotov - Ribbentrop agreement.
Few months after the invasion Soviet authorities deported from occupied territory to Siberia and Kazakhstan some 600,000 Polish citizens.
Among them was the author of the book - Wiesio (Wesley) with his mother, brother and sister.
Their father/husband was away, he joined Polish Army when the war started, it took few years before they learned his fate.
I found the book quite exceptional, it has been written from the perspective of 8 y.o. boy.
It may be some kind of disappointment for readers who expected to find stories written by adults rationally explaining what was happening around them. 
Wiesio relies completely on his own memory and on what mother or sibling told him. His experiences are very limited - mother decided not to send him to the Communist school so he spends whole days just wandering around a hut in which they are living, he has no company other than an old man nearing his death.
Fortunately I read some other stories covering these events so I could enjoy a company of very young boy telling me about his passage through the hell.

View all my reviews

Lessons in Chemistry

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Initially I liked this book very much.
The style, dialogs, surprising associations.
Further in the book I found some quite naive motifs - mostly those touching science and religion.
Not only naive, also angry.
Plus lots and lots extreme exaggerations, arrogance.
Mostly beautiful woman, most clever man, same applies to the dog and to the daughter. Actually I felt very sorry for her - child without childhood.
Finally - on one hand I liked descriptions of TV Shows, on the other one I was confused with a number of contradictory situations and number of manila envelopes sent in many directions.
One more points - the story of Calvin Evans childhood, in my opinion, went completely off the rails.
At that stage I gave this book 3 stars.
After few days I cooled down and thought about it as the author making a joke.
I raised rating to 4 stars.
P.S. I learned that the book has been converted to a TV serial, what is interesting - Harriet, the neighbour is black.
I cannot believe that her husband- a monster, could be black in the movie.

View all my reviews

Good Bones and Simple Murders

Good Bones and Simple Murders by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Liked it... cannot say why, just liked :)

View all my reviews

500 words

 Wordle...

I learned about this game from my son during my hospital stay - early 2023.

After a few random games and losses, I thought about the method.

I was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's story - The Gold Bug - in which treasure hunters have to decipher an encrypted document. They come up with the idea to base it on the statistics of the frequency of letters in English words.
I found information that the top letters used in the English language are E, T, A, I, N, O, S.

I decided to start with the word P-R-I-C-E.

The New York Times advised that a better word would be S-T-A-L-E, but the English word still smelled somehow stale to me, I preferred to know the price.

I will explain the rules of the game -

You have to guess a 5-letter word in 6 attempts.

After each attempt, NYT marks in black the letters that do not appear in the target word, in yellow the letters that appear but in a different position, and in green - the letters that appear in the given position.

In the given example, the situation was dramatic, two attempts and not a single letter.

After three words I could see that I was doing badly, it put me in a sour mood - I became jazzy - and that was the point.

Statisctics - 105 games, 80% wins, longest winning streak - 26.

3rd January 2024 - simple like one-two-three..

Another friendly case...
The first 3 words gave me only two vowels. Fortunately, not many consonants fit into them, so I managed to find a BUDDY.

Statistics informed me that it was my 500th game... 

So I've been playing every day since the beginning of February last year.

It's hard to treat it as a time-filler, an average game takes me about 3 minutes.

I imposed strict rules on myself - I don't try to find answers on the internet, I play without breaks until I succeed or loose.

The longest winning streak - 287 - that's over 9 months.

I achieved that at the end of May, 94% wins, 14 games short of 95% and then a streak of 4 losses came.

Supposedly I still have 94% wins, but that's a big rounding off, now I'm about 50 wins short of 95%.

And today - July 30... 500 won games :)

Super!!