Saturday 16 August 2008

W domu dużego brata

Big Brother. It's still going. For the two hundredth season. Yes folks, that's right, in 1808, twelve people selected at random were thrown together in a house for eight weeks in the hope that they would get it on in front of the cameras.

Apparently, some people still watch it, rather than switching the TV off for an hour at 9pm (or changing to BBC, which is not really an improvement these days).

Being in the Big Brother house is rather like living in a student flat in Poland.

No, hear me out: all the girls live in one room, all the boys live piled up in another. The bathroom door doesn't shut properly. Everyone hoards toilet paper. It is impossible to calculate the number of actual occupants (x = y [occupants] + boyfriend A + cousin B - flatmate a(b)/c * PI r squared...). The furniture is made of MDF or plywood. However tight your budget, there's always money for alcohol.

Welcoom to the Big Broover Hoose. Sixteen housemates, one bathroom. Who goes? YOU decide...

Day 1

The housemates arrive. A massive party ensues. Nine bottles of vodka and forty cans of Tyskie are consumed and the fridge is left full of mysterious liqueurs which may or may not have been brewed in dziadek's shed.

Day 2
Housemates A and D (girls) get up early, clean up, and spend the rest of the day looking self-righteous. At 2pm, the boys wake up and sit on the sofa, drinking the remaining beer.

Day 3
A random new housemate arrives. Rumour has it that he is Agnieszka's second cousin, but this remains unconfirmed. The housemates set up an extra mattress in the boys' room.

Day 4
Term has begun in the Structural Design faculty, and the first task has been awarded to one of the housemates: create an interior space with two staircases meeting on a mezzanine floor. Model this in cardboard.
08.55: Housemate D enters kitchen, with cardboard model of room.
08.59: Kettle boils: housemate D -who has been up all night - adds two drops of hot water to 20 grams of instant coffee.
11.20: Housemate A enters kitchen. Housemates D and A hold intense discussion for several minutes. Housemate A takes hold of model, twists it several ways, scratches head, sits down.
11.23: Housemate A makes more coffee.
13.14: Housemates B and C (boys) enter kitchen in underpants. Housemate B takes beer from fridge. They greet A and D, still at the table. More discussion. Housemate C takes the cardboard model.
...
21.53: There are now nine people in the kitchen. The cardboard model is beginning to look rather the worse for wear. Housemate E (female) enters with Boyfriend A. They greet D. Boyfriend A sits on floor and begins to twist cardboard model.
21.58: Housemate A mixes milk pudding from a packet. Housemates C and B and boyfriend A eat cold frankfurters in plastic. Housemates D and E make porridge.
...

Day 5
04.17: A loud shriek is heard. Housemate D runs into kitchen, brandishing completed, sellotaped cardboard model. There is private rejoicing.
...
06.40: Two female housemates get up early and decide to do sit-ups. This sporadic burst of random insanity is never observed more than once in any Big Brother session.

...


Day 16
02.23: The housemates have now lost all concept of time. Polish winter has fallen and the exterior world is in perpetual darkness, with the exception of a twenty-minute period around lunchtime. Everyone looks at the floor. Someone has left a Coldplay CD playing on 'repeat'.

Day 18
No-one has seen housemates B and C since their Mechanical Economics exam 48 hours ago.

Day 19
Mid-term. Unfortunately, the housemates have failed in their Classic Mime task. Their food budget has been severely restricted. They are reduced to drinking Warka Mocna. The fridge is full of beer cans and free garlic pizza sauce.

Day 21
National holiday. The housemates go home for a week. The next door neighbours break in and use their electricity.

Day 28
The housemates have returned from their holidays to find a message under the door: Big Brother wants to see you in the Diary Room... at 9am...

9 comments:

pinolona said...

Comment, you bastards!! What, you think I write these things for fun??
Jeez am I the only one who can't afford a holiday?!

Anonymous said...

Well, it`s "Warka Mocne" actually. The word "piwo" is silent, you see.

pinolona said...

ok I know I ask for the linguistic corrections but somehow they're not as much fun...

Anonymous said...

Sorry, from now on I will limit myself to moral posturing :-)

Anonymous said...

Great. I lived in a student flat for three months with my girlfriend and her friends. Quite busy.

But the thing I most connected with was the garlic sauce pots in the fridge. It always tastes a bit wrong and yet right.

Keep posting the BB.

P.S. I am very very surprised that no one has ram-raided the BB house and gunned down the idiots within. Bit aggressive? Probably but then they'd be surprised if someone entered the house with an active self-control mechanism, wouldn't they?

Tom

pinolona said...

Tom: The garlic sauce thing is so true! We had a pizzeria downstairs so you could always tell when we couldn't be bothered to cook cos the fridge would be full of the free pizza sauce things. There's a tasty spicy tomato one too.
Hope you enjoyed your student living: it does get a bit cosy though when grandma and six cousins come over and all sleep on your flatmate's floor...
I suppose the BB thing is a surprise. I know they have lots of barbed wire and stuff but since the whole house appears to be made of chipboard you'd've thought ramraiding'd be fairly easy...

Peixote: I look forward to some hearty moralising. I suppose someone's got to do it.

Anonymous said...

Very amusing! Lived in Poland for two years now - almost forgotten how much I didn't miss BB. Thanks for the reminder!

Can UK TV get any worse?! Bring back Naked Jungle I say!

Anonymous said...

Ha! Genialny wpis! :]
Kiedyś mieszkałem w 5, 6, 7, 2, 3, 5 osób! (ul. Sarego) Nigdy nie sprawdzałem formuły na ilość mieszkańców. Zgaduję, iż wzór jest empiryczny i działa z pewnym przybliżeniem?
W każdym razie, u mnie to jeszcze nic w porównaniu z moimi sąsiadami, u których nie sposób było przewidzieć "właściwych mieszkańców". Ilość ich wachała się od zera do paręnastu i przychodząc po coś należało się przedstawić... ZAWSZE! A o tym, kto jest gospodarzem wiedziała tylko osoba będąca w posiadaniu cyrografu. Byli jak stacja benzynowa, lecz bez przerwy na zamknięcie dnia fiskalnego.
Ehhh... Słynne imprezy u Cześka (Czesiek to był wąż do wlewania do półtorej litra piwa za jednym zamachem). Wydawał się być jedynym bytem (osobą?) obecną na każdej imprezie. Może on był gospodarzem? Chyba do końca mojego życia nie da mi ta myśl spokoju...

Michael Dembinski said...

Not "Warka Mockney", but "Warka Pstrąg", the ale that tastes of sugary fish.

Living in the Miserable Grey Little Island must indeed be getting to you if all you can do is comment about some toadally sad TV programme watched by the ASBO classes and their offspring.

Kraków, I feel, somehow beckons.

Poland's genetic superiority (tongue in cheek here!) over Britain's is proven by the fact that Big Brother stuttered to a mere four seasons before the Nation realised that this is Utter Twaddle.