A Few Observations and Changes After Returning from Poland to Thailand

At the end of May, I flew to Poland for the first time in two years. For a month, I tried to meet as many friends as possible, get a new passport and visa, take care of many other things, and eat as much pizza, pierogi, and roulades as I could (a Silesian dish—highly recommended!). I wasn’t planning to take any photos, so the camera stayed in Thailand. I brought only a compact Canon G7X II that I’d bought for vlogging. As usual, I didn’t record anything, but I did take a few photos, including the one illustrating this post:

There are also a few more photos from the same series, but I haven’t had time to work on them yet. They were all very simple, with no flash and at most a tiny reflector, so there isn’t much to write about. You can find some of these photos without my editing on Karolina Zientek’s Instagram.

The weather was excellent. Apart from the first few days, it was only a little cooler than an average day in Bangkok. So while everyone kept saying it was impossible to live because it was “so hot,” I was thinking, “another cooler day.”

The entire month flew by, and I’ve been back in Thailand since Sunday. Right now it feels like 38 degrees, while the air conditioning everywhere makes sure no one minds. I decided that this return would come with several changes, but I’ll get to those in a moment.

Changes in Poland

I’ll repeat what I told everyone in Poland: Warsaw has changed tremendously. Six years ago, I would’ve lived there only out of necessity, because it was the only place where anything happened in the Polish modeling industry. Today, it’s still very far from perfect, but it’s much better than it was not so long ago. In Bangkok, only scooters make sense; kick scooters and bicycles wouldn’t work at all. In Warsaw, they apparently work extremely well because they’re everywhere.

If I lived there, I’d also get around on an electric scooter or skateboard. I’d never want to go back to using a car in a place like that.

The change in how pedestrians cross the street over the past few years is very noticeable. I’ve always liked the Thai approach, which works the same as in Poland at traffic lights but differently away from crosswalks. When one side is clear, a pedestrian crosses and stops in the middle of the road, standing between cars that are probably already moving in both directions. When the other side opens up, they continue. This means you don’t have to wait until there are no cars coming from either direction at the same time, which makes things much easier on roads that often have more than two lanes. Drivers slow down when they see a pedestrian, and no one honks at anyone. It works smoothly because everyone is used to it. In Poland, I wouldn’t dare stand in the middle of the road between moving cars, but I really like how Poles now cross at crosswalks without traffic lights. As the average Pole approaches a crosswalk, god mode activates—or at least that’s what they seem to think—so they don’t even bother looking around. They just cross. Drivers are used to it by now, so by the end of the day the number of fatalities is surprisingly low. I drove for several weeks without a single emergency stop, so it’s clearly something you can get used to quickly. Even so, as a pedestrian I’ll probably keep looking both ways.

I know there are places where this goes even further and pedestrians are protected by law in every respect. That’s probably the right direction. Just before that, I was in Hanoi, Vietnam. Even by the end of my stay, I still had no idea what rules governed crossing the street there. I would’ve needed suicidal thoughts to step confidently onto a crosswalk at a green light without dodging the approaching cars.

There are a few more things I’ll miss in Thailand, with Apple Pay on my watch near the top of the list. Even paying by card isn’t a given in Bangkok, so cash remains the main form of payment. I’ll also miss the prices of candy, though it would probably be best to stop eating it altogether. 

Changes

Q&A At the beginning, I mentioned the upcoming changes. I’ve already announced the first one on my fan page: there’ll be a second season of my Q&A. It’ll be produced differently than before, probably outside the apartment, but the idea remains the same—answering various questions, usually ones that come up often.

Office
The second change is upgrading the room with the computer so I’ll be more willing to spend time there and can produce better livestreams. I’ve never had better equipment, yet I clearly don’t like being in that room. Whenever I can do something in the office or anywhere else, I choose the latter, which usually means a café. The office also doesn’t give me enough room to set up comfortably with the iPad, my main device for everything except photos and video. The conclusion: I need to replace the small desk with a huge one that works for both sitting and standing, meaning it’s electronically adjustable. It’s supposed to be delivered on Thursday. This will also lead to better webinars, but more on that in a moment. I also need to change the sound system because I previously had only Logitech speakers in there, which weren’t much good for listening to music. I considered putting a HomePod next to the monitor, but I’ll probably move it to the living room and put something else in the office.

The office is also the only place in the apartment that I hadn’t previously managed to automate fully. I wanted the lighting to behave differently depending on whether the computer was on or asleep, but until now the apartment couldn’t detect that. I finally have the rest of the equipment I need, so I should be able to change that. 

Better Live Video and Webinar Quality 
A few months ago, I managed to get Photoshop to display continuously in very good quality during my livestreams. Unfortunately, the camera image was still far behind, and the camera remained far above me rather than straight ahead, which made speaking directly to it practically impossible. The combination of a huge monitor and an unusually tall desk prevented me from improving it. The problem will remain with the new equipment, but it’ll be much smaller. An Elgato Cam Link 4K that I brought from Poland will take care of the image quality; I connected a Nikon D810 and continuous power to it.

The difference in image quality is enormous. Even if I limited the Nikon to 720p, it would crush the quality of the Logitech Brio supposedly recording in 4K. During webinars, however, I’m not going to limit the quality, and everything will run at 1920 x 1080 px. You’ll see how it works in practice in the upcoming webinars.