Relevantly Irrelevant
This seriously made my night. Not that my night had any problem; the pic just made it better.
Taken from strangemaps.wordpress.com – Post #420. Link on the pic. Strange Maps is a fascinating site, I recommend it to anyone, especially of course to anyone even mildly interested in geography, maps and the odd in general.
“The Matrix is a system Neo. That system is our enemy, but when you’re inside, what do you see, business men, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save, but until we do these people are a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. Most of these people are not ready to be unplugged, and many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”
– Morpheus, Matrix
Last night we had a big discussion with Alex about Facebook… It made me think a lot about my use of the site. It was nothing new though. Alex has been frowning upon the whole trend of Facebook for months now. Huh, frowning upon is an understatement actually. She hasn’t missed a single chance to express how much she hates it and how it should not exist at all.
Now, I’m not a particularly heavy Facebook user but the past few weeks I’ve been logging in more and more. The Kinimatografiki Symmoria and organizing it has played a role in this but there are just so many new people I’ve met recently that checking up with them seems natural.
Well, Alex argued last night that Facebook does not fulfil any real needs. It only creates more and more needs that revolve around itself. Basically, she said that time spent on Facebook is 100% wasted: the only activities one engages in are voyeurism and pseudo-socialising with few “real-world” implications. “Why should anyone have a Facebook account?”, she pondered. “It’s just for self-promoting of the worst kind, I cannot see how it might be useful in any other way.” We argued for hours. I said that Facebook has become an integral part of one’s web identity and that it has become as necessary and versatile as a “real” mobile phone in some cases. I told her that my recent spark of interest was purely functional.
Deep down though, I knew that she was right. She had a point, at least. OK, Facebook is useful for managing groups and events. But apart from that? One creates photos for them to be seen, oggled, admired. One creates the perfect representation that most often comes from a mold of familiar shape. One exposes everything to his or her circle of imaginary friends… “Would you shed a single tear if any of these damn friends of yours died?? Would they ever call you to tell you their problems? Would they?!”, said Alex screaming almost but trying not to wake up my mother. It was late you see.
“They’re contacts, not friends.” I told her. “At least, most of them are contacts, but there’s friends in there as well, people I meet in my everyday life.” -“Do you need to contact them through Facebook? Is this the kind of communication you want?” -“No, but you cannot deny the usefulness of having your entire cirlce of friends within your digital reach.” -“Isn’t this what MSN is for? Can’t you send them an e-mail? How many people actually register on Facebook so that they can speak with their friends? Few, if any. Most just want to show off their entirely simulative representation which often has little connection with reality, find chicks or boys, create a circle of friends so that they can have the impression of being a part of something. Well, it’s not like this. If a group of friends decides to do something and forgets about me because I’m not on Facebook, therefore I’m not in, I won’t care. I do not want to be a part of anything that might resemble this. It sickens me!”
“Weeell… I understand what you’re saying but it’s not necessarily like this. I can do without my Facebook”.
-“Oh yeah? Delete it. Tomorrow. You can’t.”
-“I can! It’s not that I can’t, I don’t want to (that sounds very… not addicted, doesn’t it?). I mean, I’m using it everyday and I need to manage the Kinimatografiki through it. I would delete it if I didn’t need it as a basic means of representation on the world’s biggest social network. It’s part of my studies and field, after all.”
-“If you really wanted to quit it, you would have when you deleted all your photos and put that kangaroo as your profile pic. That was a nice middle finger. But no, you stayed. Something kept you in it. And now you’re hooked again. You just can’t do away with checking girls’ profiles, can you? You want to be seen.”
-“…”
-“Have you even thought of how much idle time you, everyone you know, and everyone you don’t know, spend on Facebook? Doing nothing productive, just having the impression that you’re socialising, when you’re only there sitting in front of a computer, writing comments on pics, not because you really mean to comment on them, but becase you want everybody else to see that you made the comments. Do you really think anyone cares about what you have to say on Facebook? I mean anyone who wouldn’t sit and listen to what you have to say in real life?”
-“…”
Long story short… I realised yesterday that when presented with the dilemma of deleting my Facebook profile or not, a profile on a site that isn’t really all that important for me, I couldn’t press myself to do it. I was making excuses, I could see this much. But as Alex was quick to point out, it was showing signs that it was controlling me and that I wasn’t fully able to control it. Keeping my Facebook use to the bare-minimum, would I truly be able to control the urge to play around with it, look at pictures, use applications, make my profile look good? Even if I get outside it, people still inside it might look for me. And then?
The whole question concerns the whole world wide web (WWWW), especially now that everyone has a voice and anyone can speak. Now that blogs are a force majeure. Is the “System” just Facebook, or does escaping mean abandoning the web altogether? If not, what constitutes being outside, or for that matter, inside the System, especially when everything is linked? Such questions might prove to be very intriguing, not to mention crucial, in the following years.
After much thought I decided not to delete my Facebook account altogether, even if such a move would be brave indeed. I’ll hide behind my excuses of responsibility but I’ll delete my pics as I had done a few months ago…
And I shall ask you:
“Would you fight to protect the System?”
Bonus thought-provoking:
It did not take much at all. My interest in film photography having been kindled since August already, the university photography club and all the cool people I met there only made me more passionate about finding the Olympus film camera I had been looking for. An OM-2n, some say one of the best cameras ever made… I just had to make it my first, and probably last, film camera. Not to mention that, with the proper adapter, I’ll have a perfect new lens for my digital Olympus e-510.
I had been eyeing many different auctions on eBay for days, but today was special. “Dimitris,” I thought, “today you’re winning one of them”. And I did!
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160370141566&
Soon, this used but (apparently) well-kept Olympus OM-2n will be reaching my grubby mitts! The point of this post? I just wanted to share the joy of winning this auction with everyone.
I would also like to thank mum who is helping me with this purchase. It is true, yesterday’s incident was not good at all for my financials. But you know how these things go: you get unlucky but at the same time it’s your nameday the next morning. I couldn’t get further from complaining.
Today, I woke up early, after just 3 hours of sleep, for my morning Virtual World & Animation class. In this class we discuss about the history of computer animation, analyze short and long films and talk about the philosophical aspects of cyberspace and virtual worlds.
I was caught off-guard when Mrs. Dimitra showed us the works of John Whitney, the person who is credited as the first to make animated films using computer graphics. His works are of course remnants of another era, where computer animation did not have the huge potential it has today. However, they show as well as any film the time-transcending power of art…
These films reach a form of spirituality in their abstraction… I felt as if I was genuinely meditating while watching Arabesque. I like the music very much as well. Genius.
Oh it feels so good having classes and attending lectures as fulfilling as this! 🙂
-Gamers, what does the scouter say about his gamerscore?
-…IT’S OVER 9000!!!
-What, 9000? There’s no way that could be right!
9035, to be exact… all thanks to new recent acquisitions of Guitar Hero 5, Rock Band 2, Shadow Complex and Battlefield 1943!
It’s funny how with this meme, 9,000 is now much more important a hallmark than, say, 10,000…
Check my PlayFire profile for more details about my gaming activity!
And for the uninitiated…
Ships, ships, ships, only a pee away from shit.
I believe that I was one of the best customers of the shipping companies this summer. A normal person wouldn’t take more than 4, 5, a maximum of 6 ships during the summer. Not me. Hohoho, not me. Between mid-May and my trips to Athens for supporting Alexandra’s exams effort and mid-August and our return to Mytilini, I travelled in a grand total of 18 ships (not 18 unique ones). My rough estimation is that I spent a total of 156 hours of this time travelling at sea. That’s about a week’s worth of non-stop travelling!
The problem is that greek ships are, well, shippy. I mean shitty. Most of them are old, the new ones are too expensive, the food and drinks on board are ridiculously expensive, they go slower than what they claim to in order to save fuel… They treat passengers as if they’re worthless sheep. Even when some of the crew are trying to be polite, you know that the general company policy is “passengers are sheep, and you are the herders!” It’s just a huge industry of money-thirsty shippers. They are the ones who control the Aegean Sea. I really hate them all. What I hate the most is the spam with which they bomb you on board: the safety messages, the cheesy music (especially ANEK’s, although Hellenic Seaways is epic as fuck! Tan-taaaaaan, tan-tan-taaaaaan…), “passengers wishing to di(n)e are kindly requested to proceed to the self-service restaurant, “due to increased truck, the ship will delay”, I could go on forever! These can be a good source of amusement for the first few trips but after hundreds and hundreds of hours on board it gets kind of… annoying.
Anyway, it’s no wonder I find it ironic when people wish me a good journey before I hop on a boat for the umpteenth time; it’s become a second nature finding a comfy spot, laying my sleeping bag, watching One Piece or reading a book for tens of hours at a time, no matter how shippy the shits are! Oh, the joy of studying 12 hours worth of voyage away from your own, but also your girlfriend’s, home…
Destruction of small neighbouring house 
Ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, I remember walking by a strange old house on my way to school and the neighbourhood mini-market. I could see this house from the heights of the balcony of my room for many years. It was a nice old abandoned house, with dense foliage and many cats living around. I never really knew if anyone did live there, apart from the cats. The guy owning it supposedly died at some point and his wife moved to another house.
A few months ago, to my great astonishment, mum told me that they had put up a sign in front of the house announcing that the house would be demolished and a brand new block of flats would be built in its place. Right then, I felt as if part of my childhood died.
The actual demolition only started in July. Hammers and bulldozers worked furiously every morning. The noise of course was too much to handle so me and Alex always had the balcony door closed, which led to extreme temperatures building up in my room. Mum warned me that during most demolitions swarms of cockroaches crawl out of the fresh ruins looking for new homes. Not really into the idea of hosting a dozen or ten cockroach clans, we decided that we shouldn’t leave the balcony door open even at night.
This went on for many weeks. Even when we left Athens a few weeks ago, terrible machines were still digging for the foundations. The hole was already abyss-like in depth.
In a few months from now, my once bright room will become dark and gloomy. This new apartment building will block all light coming to the back side. But it’s not only this. When certain things occur, it just hits you that you’ve grown old enough to see the world change. Nea Smyrni has sure changed in the 15 years that I remember it. The Alsos next to our home, the new parking, Nea Smyrni square, the tram… The city has even expanded during my lifetime. Places I remember as being just soil and nothingness (at the borders with Brahami) are now fully urbanised. Nea Smyrni has sure changed.
Recently, I found out that Nea Smyrni was originally meant to remain a lower density suburb. The height of apartment buildings used to be regulated everywhere in the city but along Syggrou Ave. Only after 1974 and the fall of the Junta were the regulations revised. Ever since, the number of small houses has fallen dramatically. I don’t think the surviving ones will be around for much either, unforunately…
Alexandra’s Dream 
Quick question: What had Alex been doing the past year? I’ll let you think for a second. Yeeees…
If you haven’t remembered by now, allow me to remind you. She was studying for her Panellinies!
Yes, Panellinies. This little final exam that gets all 17-year-old nervous and their parents broke. This exam that’s stuck somewhere between the Middle Ages and the Paleolithic Age that forces teenagers to decide what they’ll do for a living within a matter of months. This incredible exam that works by somehow making mathematics, greek language and physics only slightly less important than special subjects when calculating points for entry in the university or school of choice. I could go on.
Alex had a strange experience last year. When we met, she was studying German so that she could go to Austria and become a better musician. Apparently though, she had a change of heart somewhere along the road and decided that she did not want to either leave me, her country, (the rest of) her loved ones ;P or all that. To just suddenly go and live abroad for almost 6 years. I agree, that would be a shock, even though shocks can be useful from time to time. All was good then. She didn’t have to leave and we could stay together. Here comes the strange experience though: she realised that she was already 22 and had not lived the life of a student, she hadn’t gone through this magical process of living on her own! Many times before had this change of scene been delayed and her not going to Austria was added to the list. What was she to do?! Oh the horror! I can still remember when we were talking on MSN and she was panicking about her future, or lack thereof, as it seemed at the time at least.
The answer came quickly. She did not have to move out of Greece to receive the musical education of her dreams. A bit of research later and along came Musical Studies Dept, Ionian University, Kerkyra (Corfu… silly name). It sounded like best thing since Geometry Wars. Indeed, all opinions agreed on how it was one of the best, if not the best, musical universities in Greece. The problem? She couldn’t just walk in and start lessons; she had to be admitted. And how do people get admitted to universities in this day and age? Exactly.
Panellinies was the name of the game and Alex was more than willing to play. She even travelled to Kerkyra to see for herself before doing anything rash. Typically, she fell in love with the town and student life. I was slightly depressed at the time; no matter how good and well it is in Mytilini, I will never forget my disappointment when I failed entering Audiovisual Arts in the Ionian University.
All this was around this time last year. Alex did play hard. Harder than I expected. I was telling her “you’re gonna get in, but only just. You’ll be too lazy to get a better score, but not lazy enough to fail”. This year we even met every weekend almost, much more often than last year. She’d have all the excuses in the world to not go very well. But she did. And it was awesome.
In May I watched her as she fought hard for her 6 compulsory subjects: greek, maths, biology (easy and hard mode), physics and chemistry. If you’re wondering what all that has to do with music, well… don’t ask! Her score was a very satisfying 14860, thousands of points above the previous year’s minimum. She hadn’t even begun with her music subjects yet! But that was the catch; one wrong step at that point and all would have been for nought as it’s necessay to have a score greater or equal to 10/20 in both music subjects to get into a university musial dept.
The harmony exam was a breeze, Alex got more than 18 in that one. Dication was a surprisingly cruelexam though. It was plain evil. Girls got out of the exam centres crying, everyone was pessimistic, it was a mess. Alex was on the positive side although not certain and got a 12 finally, thus securing her entry in the uni and ending a few weeks of nervous uncertainty for both of us.
A few weeks ago the official result were announced and as we all expected, Alex is among the people that will be studying Music in Kerkyra starting this year. She’ll probably be getting a laptop too for her superb results!
It’s been a happy story till now. But there is a darker side to it, as the most perceptive of you will have noticed.
Till now, our relationship with Alex has been mostly uncomplicated. I live in Mytilini, she lives in Athens. A big obstacle for some that we jumped over easily. As if it did not even exist. Only rarely has distance ever affected our relationship. Distance can also be refreshing for a relationship. As I said in my previous Plus/Minus, travelling 8-12 hours at a time is manageable, as is travelling twice a month to Athens and back. No big deal, right?
Right! But what about… 24 hours worth of travelling? Starting in a few weeks, Alex will live in Kerkyra. That will be her effective home. Consider this: Mytilini is on the border with Turkey; Kerkyra is on the border with Albania and the western-most island of Greece, only a few hours away from Italy. How will this ground-shaking change affect our relationship?
This past summer I’ve been thinking about all these things. Not just me, of course. Alex has been just as pondersome. This feeling that our days are numbered hung, and still hangs over us, affecting our emotions. The natural response is to try and make use of these remaining days the best way one can. This often backfires… The looming sensation that time is running out often makes one take even less advantage of what time really remains. But maybe it’s because deep down we refuse to believe, no, we refuse to make the “time is running out” a facet of our reality. I still do not feel as if it’s anywhere close to being over. On the contrary.
All that said, how does this imminent change (and its awaiting) strike me, in the end?
: Alexandra’s finally finding her career path. It is the change she’s been waiting for years. She’ll do what she loves most and get even better at it. I can’t even imagine what great music she will compose! She will find new friends in the ultimate artsy-cultural university city in Greece. I am really and sincerely happy, most of all, that she’s getting exactly what she fought for, she’s doing what she dreamed of doing. It is something a lot of us forget to do nowadays. We compromise. We think too much of what people will (or won’t) say or what people will or won’t do as a reaction to our actions. Alex is setting an example. An example of purity of intent. How difficult is it for us people to know exactly what we want to do and be sure that it is exactly what will make us happy? Besides: travelling to Corfu? Count me in!
: The distance between me and Alex will soon double. What will happen between us? Taking for granted that we will keep on seeing eachother no matter what, there are two scenarios within sight:
1. Distance only makes us realise how much in love we are with eachother. Our less frequent meetings are much more intense and we live happily ever after.
2. We’ve thought of giving eachother the freedom to experiment with random people if we so wish (now we’re yound and free etc) while still, in theory at least, remaining a couple. I can already imagine the clusterfucks such a scenario might produce, the jealousy and quarreling… but we will end up together in the end, and we’ll live happily ever after.
Whichever of these 2 scenarios happens, increased solidarity is something that might help me concentrate on my last year on this island and all this might implicate…
OK, OK. That last part was a bit emo. But you can’t help it. Most emos become emos over stuff like this. Now just let me look at the glass half-full again…
Done!
Kalo mina. It is September already, isn’t it. I’ve been writing up the following post for almost a month now. Day by day, hour by hour even, more and more stuff is added to this list. I can’t keep up anymore! Originally this was intended to be a complete ++– of my summer highlights… This is quickly becoming overwhelming, what with the summer not being over yet and bits and pieces of my life constanstly becoming potential highlights. I will post what I’d already written weeks now and see how it goes. Oh and I’ll start with the most recent ++, what took most of my time these days actually.
~
August.The cicadas are chirping, Taurus and Orion have just started to appear a few hours before dawn, summer is depressingly close to its end. Depressingly? This word is up for discussion. Yes, I do agree that summer is almost over and that that is generally considered a bad thing but no bad thing has ever come with no benefit; autumn is right around the corner and along with it comes everything that symbolises our hopes, plans and process of renewal. Everything flows, said Iraklitos (and the Book of Change).
Enough with this little introduction. What I want to share with this post is the good, the bad, the attrocious and the fantastic of this year’s summer, which (for good or bad, you decide in the end!) is over in a few weeks, at least theoretically (cause really, who knows till when the weather’s going to be happy this time around?) In short, I’m giving you another Plus*2/Minus*2. And this one is going to be loooong!
Flash, Grafistiki and September Exams
This year the comeback to Mytilini has come earlier than usual. I had long decided that this time I would stand 100% ready for the upcoming exams. I would study a lot, do all my projects in time etc. August 21st was the day we returned to the island. Happy Rock Band 2, Mordread’s birthday and Alex’s nameday aside, it hasn’t been all that fun for me! First thing I wanted to do was complete my Flash/Grafistiki project. A couple of bucketfuls of tears of *insert feeling here* later (including joy, frustration, achievement and despair) and stinking my chair from sitting in it for tens of hours, I can proudly say that today, just in time too, I presented my work to Myrsini. And it was good! It has got to be one of my most advanced works to date. It being in Flash makes it even more impressive of course. I invite you all to have a look and tell me what you think:
www.hallografik.ws/oldstuff/grafistiki
This, of course, is only a sign of things to come. I can stand proud, can’t I??
Today was special in another way as well. I sat for another two subjects, namely Java and Image Editing. Too much effort put into the Flash Project, of course I didn’t have the time to study them properly. Yet I didn’t do all that badly. I think it’s been a successful day… But I REALLY WANNA PLAY SOME GAMES! I MISS THEM. And even though Alexandra is around and has helped me considerably with housework, cooking, cleaning, relaxing, keeping in touch with the real world etc… I do not think we’re spending our time together as we should be. I mean…
…nah, this is another highlight in its own right.
Salonica: City of Ghosts, by Mark Mazower
I finished reading this book in June. I must have mentioned it before, or maybe it was Mazower’s “The Balkans”, a short introduction to the regional history, especially during Ottoman times. “Salonica” is similar. It takes you from the creation of the city in ancient times to what it is today, focusing on its multicultural identity during Ottoman rule (1430-1912) and until the Second World War and the jewish holocaust which killed a significant part of the population.
Did you know that Thessaloniki was only founded after the death of Alexander the Great? Kassandros, the guy who got in charge of the province of Macedonia after Alexander’s death, named this newly founded town after his wife Thessaloniki, daughter of Philip II and thus Alexander’s sister. So why the statue of Alexander in the centre of the city? Why has the city been so closely connected to Macedonia and indeed Alexander?
Did you know that in the 16th century thousands of sephardites, jews that were pursued out of Spain, emigrated into Salonica? They remained the majority (!) of the city, with muslims coming second and christians (greek and slav speaking) third. These jews really considered Salonica their home, they spoke a strange dialect of spanish changed throughout the years from their contact with turkish and greek. During the Second World War most were killed by Nazi Germany and their plan to eradicate the world’s jews (along with other unwanted elements).
Did you know that Salonica became a greek city in 1912? The greek revolution may have happened in 1821 but before 1912 the modern greek state’s borders had not yet changed into the form we know them today. Salonica, along with most of the Eastern Aegean islands and later Thrace, were conquered in the First and Second Balkan Wars by the Greek Army. Salonica wasn’t a particularly greek city before that. As I said, greeks were the minority. However, within 10 short years and after the Population Exchange that made all the muslims leave the city, Greece used the poor immigrants from Asia Minor, some of which did not even speak greek, to effectively “hellenize” its newly conquered territories with christians. Descendants of Macedonians? I don’t think so.
The rest is, as they say, history. Leaving 400 years of (mostly) peaceful and tolerant coexistance behind, the greeks swiftly destroyed everything that would remind them of “the dark ages”. A lot of the historical city centre was burnt in the Great Fire of 1917, however most buildings that had survived did not make it into contemporary, metropolitan Salonica. The “neogreeks” of course have dug up any roman or byzantine (to be fair, Thessaloniki was an important byzantine town, with Ayios Dimitrios and everything…) building that is possible to find, at the same time trying to hush-hush, forget and destroy history, situations and buildings much more relevant to the Greece of today and not the Greece we would like to once have existed.
“Salonica: City of Ghosts” tells a story you’re not likely to hear. It tells of Salonica’s cosmopolitan days, of when it was a crossroads of cultures. A true multi-culti gem. It was a book that gave me a brand new perspective on matters with superb research and excellent, gripping writing. It made me want to visit Thessaloniki, even if the Thessaloniki it desribes is long part of the past…I recommend it to anyone who might want to study revisionist greek history but also the history of the Balkans or the Ottoman Empire.
Did you know that the White Tower was an Ottoman prison?
June Exams
I can say that I was quite satisfied with my exam results. I did not sit for many subjects. In fact, 2 of them I sacrificed in order to have time to go to Rodos in mid-June. For those I did sit for, however, I could not have gone better! Stefanos and me, together with the –let’s face it– minor contribution of Anna and Vasilis, worked on a Flash application during May and June that represents the various kinds of relationships students have with Ermou St. in Mytilini. This was for Cultural Representation II. It gave us a straight 10, for all its misgivings (I’ll make sure to upload it in the main site as soon as possible!) This project’s design along with some personal graphic designs scored me another 10 in the respective subject.
Last but not least, I got another 10 at perhaps my favourite subject last term: Cutural Industries and Digital Culture. Despina Catapoti was our mentor, a great person and teacher! She turned the subject I failed one year ago into a fresh, postmodern-counterculture-philosophical experience! I got a 10 for my answers to the inspired, open-ended test. But I give her a 10 as well for her very interesting, knowledgeable lectures and her special way with the students. I can only say that I cannot wait to learn beside her once more come Spring.
I got a 2.5 at Montage and that thanks to the… interesting video Garret and me made one day at the lighthouse. 😛 Otherwise I would have got a 0. I’ll be quietly sitting for this one soon.
Counting Sheep, by Paul Martin
Picking up books on random, fascinating subjects as I sometimes do, this summer I got a book on sleep called “Counting Sheep”. Alexandra used to mistakenly call it “Science of Sleep”, like the movie. I thought it was funny mixing the two names up! On a side note, we still haven’t watched “Science of Sleep” in its entirety.
“Counting Sheep” is the ultimate book on this 1/3 of our lives when we “go comatose while hallucinating vividly”. REM sleep, which is the scientific term for dreams, actually occurs for just 25% of sleep in adults. The rest is NREM (non-rapid eye movement) sleep. This is the wiki on NREM, pretty interesting. NREM is vastly different from REM in many aspects, in fact brainwaves during this state are much more characteristic than the respective REM ones (which are, unsurprisingly, similar to our waking state ones). Our sleep can thus be divided into two distinct states which leads to the conclusion that we go through three unique cycles, not just two: waking state, NREM and REM. Each cycle of sleep roughly comprises 90 minutes, going through the 4 stages of NREM sleep and finishing with REM. A typical night’s sleep will consist of 5-6 cycles…
…I can’t stop! Here I am typing scientific stuff about sleep from the top of my head. I could go on. But “Counting Sheep” is not just excellent explaining how sleep works. It goes through all kinds of culture that has been created around sleep, beds, caffeine, dreams, lucidity, sleep disorders, it tells tales of horrible sleep-deprivation and resulting torture, it outlines how sleep works in animals (every single living being, even bacteria, display some kind of low-activity cycle — dolphins sleep one brain hemisphere at a time!) and perhaps most important of all, it definitely proves that sleep is not only important, it is also a luxury and a pleasure unsung for – nevermind the ridiculous numbers of relevant William Shakespeare quotes.
“Counting Sheep” makes you want to rush to your bed, hug your pillow, rub your feet under the quilt, hang a hammock from the trees outside your door or in case you have no trees plant a couple for this very purpose. It makes you cherish your only pure and unfiltered existence and not feel guilty about that couple of extra hours under the blanket. This book proves that the world would be a much, much better place if only politicians, drivers and nuclear reactor operators took their40 winks more seriously. If you, like all too many of us these days, think that sleep is nothing but wasted time, you ought to make yourself a favour and read this!
Gytheio
Urk. Gytheio is supposedly the correct way of writing the greek town name in English. But you pronounce it “Yithio”!
Anyway, I went for 3 days and 2 nights to Gytheio to find Fanis and a couple of his friends who were camping there and stay with them. It was fantastic! I had only ever camped once in my life before (Bouka Beach Club! Savi, Tousis!) and it was great, not to mention 3 years ago. So I had a great, fantastic time camping again.
The beer was cheap, the friends’ friends I met there were pretty interesting and unique people (a 15-year-old bassoon-player rocker anime lover? A 17-year-old who was exactly like Garret in almost every way, except he liked One Piece and played the clarinet and was thus also musically inclined), everyone was relaxed but also cheerful and funny. I was at peace.
On the first night it was full moon. We made a fire on the beach, just like the second night. On the first one though we also went for a swimin the sea right in front of the fire. The moonlight was so bright and the sea so calm I could literally see the sandy bottom. But it wasn’t like looking at it under daylight. It was different, it was magic. I felt the sea different in spacial kind of way, as if I could really feel how deep it was or that I was actually floating in it at that point. It was truly something else.
Alina, another member of our charming little party, showed me her father’s camera. It was a Nikon F301 he’d had for almost 25 years! The sound of the shutter, the complete lack of electronics, the large viewfinder, the sturdy lens… It certainly didn’t take me a lot of messing around with it for me to realise that I NEEDED ONE OF THESE! So, oh what surprise, ever since I got back from Gytheio and that’s 11 days already, I’ve been hunting…
Camping is probably the best type of holiday. Not a care in the world, total relaxation, socialising, enjoying nature. Sleeping in a boiling tent just might be the highlight. I’m already looking forward to doing some more.
Deutsch
Dieser Sommer ich habe gedacht:”Ich hatte genug!” Danach habe ich mehr Deutsch studieren. Ich will das Zertifikat in Januar bekommen. Ehrlich gesagt hoffe ich, dass ich nicht zu faul bin… Mama ist aber eine gute Lehrerin!
KTEL
Buses have become, or have always been, I’m not really sure, the main means of transportation for those who want to go from one greek city to another. But they are so bad. The stations are dirty, the drivers are rude, the schedule is seriously strange, and the bastards have made it so that you can’t find out when your bus is leaving unless you call a high-cost helpline! They’ve even removed lists and schedules from the internet, at least from what I’ve seen.
Even more worrisome is the fact that there are no plans of expanding the train lines in any part of Greece. Actually, OSE announced during the summer that they are changing their routes so that only connections between the main cities are properly serviced. Where is the environmental planning? Where is ANY kind of planning at all? If you could go anywhere, anywhere at all, just by hopping on a bus, things would be different. If they weren’t so polluting or if the drivers were a bit more considerate about their clients music tastes, things would be different. But they aren’t. And as it is, people like me that object to owning a car have little choice. It’s depressing…
At least the tickets are relatively cheap. For now…
To be continued… with more amazing ‘s and even juicier
ActionScript is annoying but addictive.
Days pass with me taking little notice. Will it be worth it?
“Ackbar’s fishsticks from the sea
they cook so tender and flakey
whip some up for you and me
to pass them up is a big mistakey!”
I love anniversaries and birthdays. Their meaning transcends human social constructions: they come in intervals of 365 days, the number of days the earth takes to draw a full circle (or eclipse) around the sun and arrive at the same relative spot in space from which it began. So birthdays, anniversaries and other annual events are good opportunities to look back at how things were when the earth’s position was last the same. Just as the circle comes to its closure (and a new one opens every single day).
This time last year, when the summer seemed close and all, something very important happened: a young white felis catus, a.k.a kitten, came into my life. It was a sunny morning. I was walking down the street close to Mousiko Kafeneio, not at all aware of what was about to happen, when I saw Oliva sitting there holding a kitten. It was grey and white. She told me she got it from a veterinarian right next to the post office. I went to have a look and there they were: two white kittens, the one with splashes of black (or was it black with splashes of white?) Myrsini, the vet, told me that someone’s cat had given birth and they’d brought the kittens to her so that she could give them away. Me and Mario did take both away, not sure yet who and if we’d keep them. My initial thought was actually to keep both kitties but Mario offered to adopt one. We paraded up Ermou street, big new expensive cat toilet in hand and kitties on shoulder all the way to Mario’s place. It didn’t take long for Mario to realise that having a kitten around that generally doesn’t know where the right place to poop is was a bit too much. Eventually Mordread tried to keep the B&W one. He couldn’t keep her either though so he returned her to the vet. I, however, had fallen in love with the white one before we had even stepped out of the vet’s.
I remember once telling Ines that if I ever had a white cat, I’d call her Yuki, which is japanese for snow. I’ll admit that I did sit and think about the white kitty’s name for a while but it didn’t take me more than a few hours to naturally start calling the little bright-coloured storm Yuki. I will never forget our first night together. I prepared a nice little bed for her lining my fruit basket with a red shirt and a dirty pair of jeans and invited her to join me into the world of dreams. Though reluctantly, she stepped into the comfy-looking bowl and eventually called it a night. The next morning I woke up and saw her curled up and sleeping peacefully.
All wasn’t well, however. When I said that kittens don’t know where to poop, I really meant it. Yuki was barely 3 months old when I first got her and she couldn’t properly climb into her toilet so a lot of the time she’d just poo and piss wherever. I remember somehow “feeling” that she’d gotta go and I’d promptly pick her up and put her in the toilet. When she would indeed relieve herself, I felt genuinely happy and satisfied with myself. But the first week had a lot of waking up in the middle of the night because Yuki would have a nice case of diarroea under my bed. It seems that during the first week diarroea was the only thing that would come out of her little feline bottom. Thankfully that soon stopped.
One of the hardest decisions I had to take in September when I had her neutered. I was anxious she’d leave and get ran over or something. Or she may have had litters of kitties every few months. I still question my decision when I think that I’ll never see Yuki-kittens or my cat will never have sex, but I guess this is human thinking in the end.
What I really like about my cat is that she’s genuinely good. And I mean good as in lawful good. She’ll never attack out of spite or hate. On the contrary she loves attacking just for fun or when she wants to play. I also love it when she comes and sits in my lap whenever I’m on the computer. She loves climbing to the highest (and often silliest) spot in the apartment. She’s perfect with strangers. When she was little, I often used to leave her care to friends when I was away from home for whatever reason. She’s also grown used to travelling which is always good. Most funnily of all, my little feline lacks any grace cats are generally known for. As we often say with Alex, Yuki has all the elegance of a happy-go-lucky dog. As they say, pets become like their owners…
In the end, I really love my cat. Even one year later and now she’s no longer a kitten but a proud full grown adult cat, even against all odds and expectations from others and even myself that my lifestyle wouldn’t allow taking care of an animal, I can see us maturing together.
My first day with Yuki was May 6th 2008.