Tuesday, March 06, 2007

To Boldly Go . . .


Have you ever tried to purchase something and neither one of you could really understand what the other is saying? I am not needing cheese or sugar but a wireless modem. Can anything be harder that that? Not only do I speak very poor Polish but I know NO technical words at all! The wonderful TP (the internet company) lady, Magda did not speak any English. So here we are staring at each other wondering how we can do this exchange. . .

I used my very limited Polish and pointed at the modem which is called a "Livebox". Okay, yes I want one. Cool. We got that right. I then had to get the owner of my flat on the line so that he could give permission for me to sign a contract with the company for his flat for internet serivce. Great! He was wonderful and we got it done.

Magda kept on typing on her computer and I was wondering what she was doing and then she showed me! POLTRANS! It is a Polish/English translator on line and she was trying to figure out how to say things. We laughed as she put things in and it made very little sense in English, but I got the gist to it all. It was like the episode in StarTrek TNG where Captain Picard is trapped on a planet with an alien who only speaks in metaphors. Picard knew the words, but had to figure out the meaning. That is how it was for me last night. It was great fun! It hope Magda had a good time too. She was delightful and helped me very much! So here I am blogging because I got to communicate with a wonderful Polish woman via POLTRANS!

1 comment:

BritBoat said...

You have wireless internet?! Amazing!