Frequently Asked Questions

Yes.

I am someone who can tell when an hour passes without watch on me, whether I am busy or not. I can do same trick with minutes. What does this even mean? I can usually estimate how long a task can take me, how long I already been working, or how long I have been resting. It helped a lot with routine work, such as laboratory, but it also helps tremendously with organisation.

I am a person who is obsessed with numbers. Everything is some sort of numbers. Everything that we see could be mapped on impossibly large coordinate plane, every length, width and height. Every second the resulting image updates. A tossed object moves on a parabola matching negative quadratic equation, influenced by the thrown force applied usually at angle, and the downwards acting force of activity.

I can not see it. I can not measure distance all that well with my eyes, but I can feel those numbers as if they were real next to me. I can feel how distances between objects change, how sounds feel harmonic thanks to some underlying beautiful equation.

I am the sort of person that perceives the world as this never ending complex math object, a model with virtually unlimited variables. I am the sort of person that sees every situation as some sort of math problem, often with unspecified units and increments. Every task can be improved, made more efficient, or faster, or more accurate. Did you know that hummingbirds flap their wings in figures of eight to be able to hover? Incredible. How much work had to go into development of such mechanism?

Every past moment is a valuable experience to learn and take into account. Future is something graspable and predictable, that can be used to set goals, or to avoid failure.
Present is most important. Things happen now. There is always the best possible move in the present, the worst move, the inaction move that often times is bad or worst move, and the better-than-inaction-and-good-enough move. I firmly believe that tasks need to be done, and that people should always strive to aim for best, while also being introspective and predictive.

I am a person that loves math, numbers and information.

This is one of the simplest questions that can be occasionally asked in an interview or casual conversation where I find myself at a loss of what to say as no straight answer is really satisfyingly correct, while a complex answer takes a bit too long to express properly, especially considering that the person asking the question usually expects a singular answer in order to form a connection with me. Most people have firm roots in at least one place. I lack them.

Luckily since this is an easy to browse webpage with categories that can be skipped depending on the interest of the reader, I have the freedom to express a bit longer answer.

I was born and raised in Poland until I was 13 years old. I finished my high school and university in England where I lived until I was 21 years old. Straight after university, I went to work in Sweden, until I was 24. Currently, I am living in the Philippines.

Living in a country until 13 years old is an interesting experience. You grew up there, you get immersed in the culture, you know the standard set of folk stories, customs, you start to get an idea of what life is like after education when you will be 18 in 5 years. You are obviously aware that different countries have somewhat different traditions, that holidays you took for granted are not existent, or performed differently abroad, but it is not that pressing, you are living in your home country after all in which you will grow old, following similar sets of traditions.

And then you move to a foreign country in an entirely different language group from your original one. Of course, you have studied the English language in schools, you can ask people about their favourite colours, or animals, but you have no idea how to respond to a classmate who is determined to trip you into saying something wrong, stupid, or offensive. You can't really escape it, every day you are solving a puzzle of a foreign language, finding new words, memorising them, and every sentence spoken to you needs to be deciphered.

You start to see differences in things. Educational system structures, poverty, different things offending people in one nation to another, different ways of talking about so many subjects. You grow further and further apart from the country you were born in until you can't recognise yourself as a "true" member of it. Unfortunately, the same new perspective that cleaves off your connection from your homeland is also preventing you from forming a true bond with a new country.

You grow from deciphering a language to thinking in it more than your native one. It's been years since I've engaged in a conversation in Polish lasting longer than an hour. The books I am reading, the shows I am watching—they're all in English. Even my own thoughts are in English. People occasionally are asking "What is your level of English fluency?" and what am I supposed to say? C2? C2 level indicates native speaker, but I have been going to school with native speakers, and I can say with 100% certainty that I know native English speakers with far worse comprehension of this language than I have. Am I supposed to say native? I guess I could do that, though theoretically, I should have started speaking in English 6 years earlier to truly qualify.

I finished my education and I moved to Sweden. It's a beautiful place really, especially if one loves peace, quiet, forests, and gorgeous, gorgeous low temperature. I love cold. I wish I could forever live in an ambient temperature below 12 degrees Celsius every day. I love the feeling of air on my skin, I love how my body heats up internally to keep up. It's nice living in Sweden. I could live there forever.

I could live forever in England. I could live forever in Poland.

And right now I am living in the Philippines. Eternal summer, constant heat, different continent to my own. In a certain way of looking at it, a year or two ago, I could outright call it my definition of hell. I live in my definition of hell, and you know what? Hell is beautiful. Sun glows so nicely, there is so much stimulation in terms of sounds and sights, and heat that used to be my doom and nemesis for years is not even bothering me that much.

I could live forever in Philippines.

Given time, I could live anywhere forever.

I do truly hope this may allow you to connect with me more than hearing me say "I was born in Poland."

I have bachelor degree in Biochemistry, and two associate certificates for Data Analysis and Data Science from Datacamp courses. Other than that, I am fully self taught.

This could be the end of the answer, and by all means it is, don't let me stop you. What I am about to write further in this section is just a bit about my pre university education, a bit of perspective on my own self studies and so on.

Getting bachelors isn't hard. If you are a smart person, and I do believe that I am, as long as you attend your classes you can get it. I never had doubts that I could gain bachelors in biochemistry, my proficiency with science and mathematics was certainly more than enough for that. Getting into university to study something is usually a straightforward path for any student in highchool, requiring no extra effort, skill, or motivation besides what is expected of every student.

Except, it wasn't that simple in my case.

Where do you put a new child in English school without prior history, and without English skills? Why, of course in the bottom classes. To even have biology and chemsitry as a subject, I had to go to the teacher in charge of department and get them to move me up. This was something I had to do by myself. First classes were awful. After all, natural science relies on knowledge, and so my first tests came out abyssmal. I had to catch up with a year of education, but it was worth it.

I didn't went to university because I was smart, or because I payed attention. If I would be just that, I simply wouldn't get in due to lack of appropiate grades. I went to university because I had drive and passion for studying, enough of it to put myself through discomfort and extra work to fullfill it.

That said, my favourite subject isn't Biochemistry, my favourite subject in the world is Mathematics, and I while I don't regret studying Biochemistry, as it is interesting subject, I miss math more than I can imagine.

I always enjoyed Math. It made me feel happy and safe, it gave me something to look forward to, and it made the world simply more beautiful in my eyes. It just made sense. Not everyone feels that, and sometimes that makes me feel sad, especially that usually the reason for it is lack of good teachers, or resources. And fairly decent number of people who'd like to make math sound grandious and impossibly complicated. It isn't. It is something closer to an additional sense, just like sight or hearing.

Studying Math in England has been my way of communicating and building social bonds even before English. It allowed me to communicate competence, value, and also friendship through sharing homeworks and most importantly trying to explain it. When I was a child, I used to have very heavy accent - But when the only kid who knows the answer in class and can share it with you speaks in too heavy accent, you simply get a kid who speaks Russian to repeat after him in softer accent.

In the final years of my highschool, I was doing additional math modules. Imaginary numbers, matrice algebra, proofs, statistics. I may not have had central limits theorem in my university, but I definitely had studied them before I left highschool.

Today, whenever I find a moment, I find myself drawn to my old mathbooks. I like reading and studying them, but it's not just that. In the next 10 years, it is my goal to attain bachelors in mathematics. Not for my gain. Not for professional advancement. Just to satisfy a yearning in me that I need in my life.

I don't give up on things I want to know. I have a direction and a drive to pursue it, I am active and able to take initiative over my life, just as I am able to take initiative over any tasks assigned to me. Whenever I feel I don't have enough work, or that I have adapted to current conditions, I take more on myself. There is no such thing as a subject I could not learn.

I am a naturally industrial person, with penchant for some verbal praises and feeling of accomplishment. And I am a naturally curious persion, satisfied by learning something new, or getting new exciting error messages to correct.

Those two parts make me an incredibly easy person to motivate, almost like self powering machine. Repeatably and reliably, I find myself in state of focus in which I can perform my tasks, or task adjacent activities without thought of hunger, or sleep. Not thirst though, I rely on water for cooling.

Performing my tasks at high competence make me feel a bit indestructible and excited, a little bit like stepping down from a rollercoaster. In other words, what motivates me the most is being able to do a lot of work at once.

I am not particularly motivated by money or possessions. One day, I wrote out a list of every material thing that I want to have and I could fit within one page. It really wasn't much, if I were serious about fullfilling that list I could probably get every item within a 1-3 years.

What I am motivated by is learning. If I were to have unlimited resources, I would study everything I could get my hands on, and for holidays, I would just study something different. I occasionally come to view myself as a tool - a very versatile, adaptable, and incredible tool - assisting in some task, just to exhaust my everlasting energy and pour it into something.

I enjoy working by myself. It feels quick, easy, I can set up my working space however I please. It is a very freeing set up, that comes with drawbacks of solitude, lack of collaboration, and the sheer responsibility of handling something by yourself.

I am used to working by myself. I enjoy it, and ownership of a project gives me somewhat of an energy rush.

Working in team is more complex than working solo, at the benefit of collaboration, easier workload, and social cohesion. A well performing team is infinitely more valuable than a solo worker, while a dysfunctional team might be worse than one dedicated worker.

Thanks to my love for learning I am a good assistant that identifies key tasks quickly, learns them, and find niche in the team that needs filling. In addition to that, as an individual, I am competent and versatile, meaning that I tend to learn universal skills that can help a little bit in all potential roles within the team, should the need arise.

In addition to my love of learning. What striked me the most when I moved from Poland to England was how much simpler certain math topics were simply by virtue of rephrasing them. This had sparked in me an interest in teaching, and at some point I wished to become an university lecturer myself.

The last team I worked with was in laboratory during Covid-19 pandemic. At first it was a bit chaotic. New laboratory, lack of established team, high sample loads, and occasional priority customers. While the work involved analysis of PCR data, validation of samples, and other responsibility, on the daily basis it could be very physically demanding.

I was the first employee within the team. I taught every new worker. I was responsible for arranging daily work, schedules, holidays, as well as solo projects of method validation, managing inventory, ordering consumables and others.

I had experience with clashing personalities within the team, conflict management and resolution, and leading the team.

I performed well in team management due to willingness to pick up extra tasks, being diplomatic, knowing ins and outs of job requirements and being a positive person who tries to pick up on any signs of weariness, anger, resentment, finding ways to remove them before they will grow beyond managable level, as well as recognising positive qualities in each team member and actively stating my appreaciation for them.

“Got any ideas, Carrot?” he said.
A second thought struck him. Carrot was a simple lad.
“Corporal Carrot?”
“Sarge?”
“Sort this lot out, will you?” - Men At Arms, Terry Pratchet

In this scene, a problem is posed to police officers: Citiens are about to riot, things are going to get ugly. Nobody wants to get mixed within the crowd, it is pretty much a suicide. Officers could discuss for hours about what to do, how to stop it, how to not get hurt.

But Officer Carrot can be just ordered. "Sort this lot out". And Officer Carrot, in his honest simplicity, fixed it.

It's a bit like so called "Proof by homework" where in 1939, George Dantzig arrived late to his class, and to try to catch up, he copied two statistics problems from the blackboard, thinking it was a homework. What Dantzig didn't know was that the problems on the blackboard were not homework, but an example of famous unsolved problems in statistics. Within few days, Dantzig solved and submitted proof for both of them.

Sometimes the question of what can a person do is not as simple as sum of education or past experience. Sometimes it is just a matter of saying "Do it" rather than "Can you do it?"

I can readily do calculus, statistics, I can read five books on specific business to get up to speed, I can program in python, write querries in sql, do machine learning. It's not important, summary of those you can find in my CV in the corner. What does matter is that when project hits an obstacle that isn't in any way standard, I will be the one to pour myself into the subject to fix it, regardless of how complex the problem might be.

I can also hear a question "Can you do this?" and reply "Let's find out" returing with a fixed task.

I used to think a lot about my weaknesses. After all, what are strength without weakness? One of more popular interview questions.

So...I used to think my weakness was English language, or literature. Then I started writing in my free time. I used to think my weakness was working with people, and then in university I found pure joy in working with people. I used to think my weakness was leading, design, html. And each time I thought of a weakness, I worked hard to turn it into another strength. Today, I no longer ask myself what are my weaknesses. I just fix them as they come, just as I fix anything that I am missing to feel competent.

Except drawing. I still draw stick figures, and I am not feeling like changing that anytime soon.

Yes!

Honestly that depends. I don't have a problem with running a DnD game for a group of people who want to slay some monsters, or to just have fun drinking night with addition of DnD.

That said, DnD is not really a system that I want to run as a Game Master. I admire design of 5e, with it's bounded accuracy, easy to make characters which are not prone to being overly weak or strong out of the gate, and obviously the single biggest feature of all: The sheer size of 5e. I have a library of homebrewed mechanics, classes, overhauls all stored away in my computer vaults which I treasure. I would love to have opportunity to run Naval Code, with it's ship roles, focus on travel, and battles. I like Darker Dungeon overhaul, together with Class Compendium by the same author, for the simplicity of additional rules verging into equipment management through slots, gruesome wounds and scars, sickness, and sanity management.

You may have already guessed where this is going. I am constantly modifying and theory crafting a system, to the point that my ideal DnD has less and less of similarity to standard 5e. To make the matters worse, due to bound accuracy and the range of results on the twenty sided dice, whenever I do run DnD it feels a little bit like an action/comedy. There is nothing wrong with that, it is a blessing to run a cheerful game focused on tavern and funny memorable situations arising from natural ones and twenties, it's just that I personally prefer something a bit toned down.

My current favourite system is Witcher TTRPG by R Talsorian Games, but I couldn't bring myself to earnestly recommend it to a stranger. The book has constant spelling errors, it is badly formatted, author company is on strict creative ban at the moment due to internal dealings regarding handling of Witcher IP, which is just a whole lot of mess.

What I do like about it though is that Attributes and Skills are ranging from 0 or 1 to 10, that there is Stamina Points, that martial characters feel entertaining, that weapons and armours feel significant and dangerous, and that monsters feel like living creatures that just live in the world rather than exist as a levelled opponent for player group to face in balanced, sport like fair combat.

At the moment in my free time, I like to write new homebrew mechanics for Witcher TTRPG System, like hunger, thirst and tiredness, more dedicated haggling and concerts for musical characters, sanity, and many others.

I would love to run some Witcher TTRPG. The problem is that I want to run it as a general fantasy using it's mechanics, rather than have it in strict universe of Witcher IP.

For those who are not familiar with DnD, or don't really see a point in listing a game on the portfolio:

What I do for enjoyment in my free time is sitting down and doing imaginary inventory management, sometimes for a backpack, sometimes for a warehouse.

I roll a dice of different shape a hundreds of times and record them, just to do statistical analysis to detect if my dice are broken and more likely to favour certain numbers.

I create math simulations for real world situations and I test them to look for holes, upon which I must decide what breaks from reality are acceptable and which are not. This is due to theorycrafting new system, rather than just playing.

In addition, running game comes with ability to create compelling narratives, keeping attention of audience of 3-6 people, ability to say no, ability to say "yes, and" to encourage positive thinking and gain new ideas, and in general it can be used as a brain teaser.

While hobbies, even if heavily industrious, may not always lead to transferable skills, I certainly believe that I do gain healthy amount of practice in work related skills. I believe it is also additional testament to the way I think, as outlined earlier.