Moths to a Flame

I'm in the UK at the moment and the press is flooded with coverage of the massive protests that disrupted the Olympic torch relay in London and Paris. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing.

I was at the stadium in Athens when the flame was handed over to the Beijing Olympic committee. It was a glorious Greek spring day and as I walked to the stadium, I wondered if I should do something. Couldn't I write FREE TIBET on my face with eye pencil? Why didn't I think of finding a Free Tibet T-shirt to wear under my clothes? I entered the stadium and walked to the far end past the throngs of Chinese supporters.

And do you know what? There were dozens of Athens 2004 volunteers there, who had turned up in our old uniforms. It hadn't occurred to me at all that they would get back together for this event. And the atmosphere was fantastic. Chinese supporters took pictures with the Athens 2004 volunteers and memories of pin-hunting came back as spectators exchanged wrist bands.

When I saw this, the ordinary people of different countries taking pictures with each other, smiling and laughing, it reminded me of how great the atmosphere was in Athens four years ago. The Olympics may have been hijacked by commercialism and may be a grand show-off, but it's also a chance for people from all over the world to meet and learn about each other and educate each other.

I believe people should peacefully protest for Tibet, but I think it's a real shame that suddenly everyone cares about human rights. Where were they all this time?

There has never been an Olympic host country totally free of sin. Where were the protests about America's abuse of human rights, the death penalty etc. for the times the US got the Olympics? Where were the protests about how Greece treats its Roma gypsy population? Did we see anything of this scale for the Aborigines when Sydney got the games? Were these issues no less deserving? Or is it that only nice, clean, white Western countries deserve the respect that comes with the Olympics?

China is no doubt guilty of serious human rights abuses, but why should people embarrass and shame the ordinary citizens of a country, especially when they don't get any say in their government's policies (hmmm, sounds surprisingly like the UK). It smacks a bit of Western superiority complex to me. We get to ELECT our dictators every few years and now we all want to jump on the human rights bandwagon. I admit that I don't really know much about the Tibet issue but thought of protesting about it, because hey, everyone else is.

I'm not really sure... all I know is that in the stadium that Sunday the atmosphere was wonderful. The mingling of cultures and making new friends - surely that should be salvaged at a time when the Olympics is turning into one big doping-scandal, logo covered, sponsor heaven, one-up manship, hollow farce?

That's just my opinion. I think Britain has no right to say a word about human rights with its history and current track record.

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Like You, No One

A global phenomenon noted by young ladies the world over is that of the creepy older man. Creepy older men are different to your average night out opportunist, because they make your skin crawl, never really get to the point and are inevitably unfortunate looking. And I am positively gifted when it comes to attracting them.

It's been a long while since this last happened because I have been building a social circle and finding my feet so not really having late nights out. But on Saturday night I got invited to a party thrown by the girls of my bellydancing class (more on the fab girls of my bellydance class another time, who are proof that foreign girls can make female Greek friends when I was told it was nearly impossible).

The night had been rolling on for quite a few hours and my company had got progressively merrier when I was introduced to a man who is somehow connected to my bellydance circle, I don't even remember how any more. Creepy Older Man. Dealing with them is very hard because their age obliges me to be polite, and this was my first all-Greek encounter with a genuine Greek Creepy Older Man (COM).

COM: "I've been watching you and I've been telling everyone to look at that Brazilian girl over there, look how she's just here having a good time, with her glasses. All the men are watching you."

Me: "I'm not Brazilian, I'm Asian."

COM: "How fascinating, you've got that exotic kind of beauty [oh here we go again with the Western exotic beauty sweet Indian girl fetish] and those glasses of yours! Don't ever take them off, you're driving me crazy with your style [someone's been watching too much secretary porn. Or too much exotic Indian sweet secretary porn]

COM: "So what do you know of Greece."

Me: [...??] "What do you mean what do I know of Greece? The food, the people, the place... etc."

COM: "Yes, but what do you really know of Greece."

Now I'm confused and he gives me this look like "Oh you innocent young thing, the stuff I could teach you..." Ew! Did he mean what do I know as in the Biblical definition of knowing?

COM: "You've got something about you which would make a man stop and look twice. They see a girl like you with your glasses [the glasses again.] and it makes them wonder Who is that girl? You're the first Asian girl I've met who speaks Greek and it drives me crazy."

Here, when I was filling in the bits with useless dodge tactic conversation, he made that orgasmic face that people in food adverts make when they bite into a product.

COM: "Do you have a boyfriend?"

Me: "I'm engaged." [leans over to his equally creepy friend and tells him in a low voice when they think I'm not listening that I'm engaged so forget it. Double ew.]

COM: "A man from your country?"

Me: "No he's Greek."

COM: "A Greek huh? You managed that! And where do you live?[I answer] Alone? Or with someone?"

Me: " Of course not alone, with my fiance!"

COM: "So... what do you like to do, what's your favourite thing?"

Me: "Writing." [that threw him]

On paper it looks like I was being quite rude and short, but actually I was trying really hard to be polite and was feeling very uncomfortable.

A whole bunch of other garbage followed about India and Indian women and what ladies we are, and I seriously beg to differ because lady likeness is relative. A true Asian woman would consider me highly uncouth to be sitting in a taverna at 3 am sipping rakomelo. I heard for the 100th time in my life how exotic and mysterious we are and how I should wear a bindi all the time because it would further fuel Western fetishes about Indian girls, oops I mean it would make me look even more mysterious.

Still no sign off getting to the point of what this pointless conversation was, and with my company way too merry to come and rescue me, I seized my chance for a graceful exit when he grabbed my hand and ruined the freshly hennaed design on it. My contribution to the party had been to do free henna for everyone. I excused myself, washed my hands and left.

I know women who deal with the above scenario by turning the tables and toying with their prey. I wish I knew how to do that. All I feel is extremely uncomfortable. It's especially hard when dealing with creepy older men in your third language. At one point he asked me if my normal price for a henna pattern like mine was EUR 5, what would I do for EUR 20? I said something more meaning a bigger tattoo, and he smiled a filthy smile and relayed this news again to his creepy friend when he thought I wasn't listening.

If the creepy older men I attract looked like George Clooney, I would not really care as that's some form of compensation for enduring their verbal diarrhoea. But why do they always have that certain look, those too-smooth cheeks and that hair stuck in the 70s? Do I look like my standard is so low that they have a chance? Why don't young, handsome men engage me in pointless long conversations? It's easier to tell them to get lost.

I got home feeling upset at not having handled the situation better and allowing it to end my night unpleasantly, but at least me and Mr Zeus got a good few laughs out of it.

Fragile Contents

There is plenty of debate in countries like the UK and Greece about nationality and what a national identity means.
 
I never paid much attention until it dawned on me that I might be becoming Greek in spite of myself. On Monday morning I arrived at Athens airport and checked in my 19.8 kg suitcase for a flight to London. More than half of that weight was composed of potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, oranges and onions.
 
Yes. I spent my first months in Greece sneering at the mothers who packed off their children to the UK with two tons of food in their suitcases. It isn't that bad, I would say. But faced with two weeks in the UK, two weeks of tasteless tomatoes and blindingly strong white onions, I realised I couldn't do it, hence my trip to the laiki for supplies.
 
Ah, Greece, where you can tuck into pornographically named treats like Milky Dream, buy a health suppliment called Good and Bad, watch garbage TV programmes with endearing names like Show Sexy and stir the deepest fears of lone homophobes driving on mountain roads with large signs that warn gravely of "Dangerous Bents Ahead."
 
A country that mercifully blagged its way into the EU to allow reformed doubters like me to carry a two week supply of fruit and vegetables to the UK without import penalties, so that I can at least console myself with a tomato salad as I complain relentlessly about the food and weather with my sister's French housemate, who naturally appreciates what I say being from the Mediterranean south of France.
 
When I gave her one of my precious Greek tomatoes she thanked me as if I'd just handed her a diamond necklace. "That's the reaction you were waiting for from me, wasn't it." said Sister, who like most people think I've lost it when I reveal the precious cargo that is the reason for my suitcase's weight.
 

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How's my Driving?

In case you've been wondering, I've driven three times since passing my test last November, all three times on the motorway. And I'm really bad, my level has deteriorated back to beginner. Possibly worse. I believe Mr Zeus's exact words were "So bad you're a liability."

There are a number of factors getting in my way.

First, I have had no time to practice in the day and Mr Zeus doesn't feel comfortable letting me drive at night.

Second, whenever some free time comes up, the car gets occupied. Twice now something has gone wrong with someone's car and ours has stepped in to help, which is totally fair enough, but it feels like the universe is trying to tell me something.

Third, everything I learnt was in the UK, on the other side of the road and where other drivers make a few allowances for other drivers. In Greece, forget it. I'm not saying I expect the traffic to part before me like the red sea, but here is an example: on the weekend when I was driving on the motorway a car in front began to drift along into my lane. I dropped back, at which the car then moved back into its own lane. As I built my speed back up it again moved across trying to get into my lane, so I panicked and floored it, trying to get away. Result: Mr Zeus thinks I drive like a drunk, my nerves were shred and confidence at an extreme low.

It leads to comedy-like scenes of the two of us bickering as my stress levels build.

Him: "After we pass the BMW, change lanes."

Me: "When? What?"

Him: "After the BMW... change.. lanes."

Me: "But which one is the BMW! WHY CAN"T YOU JUST SAY AFTER THE BLUE CAR!!!"

Him: "You're slowing down... when you change lanes you're supposed to go faster."

Me: "STOP CONFUSING ME!!!"

My most dangerous mistake is when he says to turn left and I merrily do... only I turn left as if I were in the UK and therefore I turn immediately left into oncoming traffic. Bad.

Fourth, all the other cars I learnt in were fairly new with power steering. The one in Athens is a reliable but relatively old Suzuki Swift. I don't know how much I can blame on that... but what the heck I will anyway.

It's driving (pun!) me insane, because at the point where I passed my test I was a good driver. Both my instructors told me I was a natural at driving and safe on the roads.

When I sit on the bus or metro and think of all the time and money I invested in trying to pass my driving test, it makes me feel really frustrated. The licence was supposed to have liberated me, and it hasn't.

Bugger!

Words of advice would be massively appreciated. As you can tell, it's a complaining sort of day for me today.

Image: corrupted from http://taiwanease.com/art/driving-article.jpg

Why Isn't it Summer yet???

Oh God! I'm so fed up of it not being summer. Just when I thought the weather was on course to get hotter it's done a U-turn, British weather style. I'm sick of feeling cold all the time!!! Please someone turn the heating to 35C.

I don't feel inspired at the moment so have some fun with these songs, here, here and here. Spot the connecting factor.

Hoing and Hoeing

Ho: Slang A prostitute

Hoe: A tool chiefly for digging up weeds, and arranging the earth about plants in fields and gardens.

You've all probably heard by now that the Greek Church in response to a potential new law that would give rights to cohabiting couples, declared that all relationships except for those joined in a Greek Orthodox Church were prostitution.

Oh man! Did I just get called a prostitute? Well that made me kind of sad. I took time out from my whoring ways to order some seeds online, since I'm surrounded by the new life of spring and wanted to create shiny new things, despite being as whorrific as I am.

So far I have ordered the following seeds:

• Lemongrass



• Kaffir lime



• Fragrant sweet pea



• Plumeria (we had a giant tree of this Back Home and I never appeciated it)



• Organic tomato



• Organic corn, normal and rainbow



• Organic sweet pepper



• Organic cucumber



• Organic green beans

Being doubly condemned by my own religion and the Greek Orthodox Church, I'm going to create my own little Garden of Eden right here on Earth. So na!

Image: http://www.konafriends.com/images/Plumeria.jpg

Reducing Rubbish

The strikes in Athens show no sign of letting up. In fact, they seem to be getting worse. I am more concerned with the building mountains of rubbish than the power cuts and have been taking measures to reduce the amount I throw out that will sit festering in the sun.

Athens accommodation consists almost exclusively of apartments. There is not much of a garden culture in this city. However, most apartment blocks do have access to a patch of land in their vicinity which is supposed to pass as a garden.

If you too have access to a piece of garden that you are allowed to use, keep a plastic container on your kitchen work top and save up all the organic waste you can. This means potato peels, orange skins, banana skins, onion peels, bland leftovers like boiled potato or rice etc. Dig a hole in the ground and bury this waste. It's fantastic for nourishing the soil and will help towards reducing the amount you throw out. Tea leaves and coffee grounds are supposed to be very good for roses, so save those up and sprinkle them around the base of your rose trees.

Things like oily waste, chicken skins, sugary, or salty food will still need to be thrown out as they will harm your soil rather than help it.

If you bury your organic waste and separate your recycling, the amount of actual garbage that gets thrown out is not all that much.

**This tip comes to you approved by my grandmother and Mr Zeus's authentic Greek yiayia.**

300

Athens: Dark and Smelly

As my life in Athens continues, I am struck more and more by the similarities between this place and the Home Country. It's sort of comforting. When the powercuts are hitting after work hours I enjoy them. At least they're striking in the spring instead of the summer.

In the Home Country, it wasn't strikes that caused the cuts, it was that there generally never was enough power to go around in the summer. And so the power would go for hours, sometimes days on end. In Athens I am impressed by the vast array of decorative candles we have accumulated which are being put to good use. In the Home Country, we somehow never managed to plan ahead and usually ended up with one solitary stump of a candle.

Those who could afford it had petrol powered electricity generators to deal with the problem, but my parents never thought it necessary to invest in one. I guess sweating it out in that heat with a banana leaf fan for heat relief was character building - the power cuts in Athens are a walk in the park in comparison.

The side effect of the power going Back Home was that the water stopped too. The moment the air conditioner ominously breathed its dying sigh, my mother would rush around the house filling buckets and bath tubs with water for as long as it would flow. When the water returned the taps would either run clear, pour out a rusty sludge or just hiss phlegmatically like a remorseful ex-smoker who had left his voice box on the bus.

Yesterday the news said that the DEH electricity strike was illegal and so the power cuts would stop, but no such luck. I think the picture says the rest.

As for garbage, we used to have a man on a donkey cart who would come and pick up the rubbish we threw into the alleyway behind the houses and if he didn't come around that meant he was dead, not that he didn't think he was getting enough pension.

The one saving grace of the rubbish strike is that since getting spooked about my young colleague's breast cancer diagnosis, I stopped using anti-perspirant. Sadly I'm not blessed with a naturally rosy fragrance, so my experiment will have to be terminated before my love life dies and plants start wilting in my wake.

At least all of Athens smells like a giant armpit right now so I don't stand out.

Summary of strikes going on in Athens:

• Electricity


• Rubbish


• Metro


• Banks


• Strikes against the strikes... don't ask questions, it'll only make you cry.

Image: http://radio.weblogs.com/0123486/myImages/newpix/jul23.04/9.19.04/12.19.04/2.24.05/bullshit.jpg

Going Round in Circles

Anyone who's moved to a new country knows that sometimes you really miss the little things from the place you once lived. On Sunday afternoon when I pondered my mountain of work and craved a Home Country treat, there was only one thing for it. So I did what I do best, I procrastinated and embarked on making home made jalebis.

Jalebi, pronounced ja-lay-bee, is a sweet of fried spiral batter soaked in syrup, a bit like loukoumades if they were curly instead of round. It's a sweet that is popular in the part of the world I come from, and its popularity means it features as part of many happy memories. After a long day shopping at the markets, we would go find someone making jalebis and order a kilo of hot, sticky jalebis to eat with a cup of tea. At birthday parties my mother would string up individual jalebis dangling down from the washing line and hold a competition to see who could eat theirs without their hands.

Last year at the Home Country wedding I went to, when we were all deflated from last second wedding planning, nothing perked up the team's spirits like a big plate of hot jalebis. This time at my friend's wedding in India, I sat in her house on the morning of her wedding and there they were again, jalebis for breakfast although these were a 5 star version I'd never seen, soaked in saffron laced syrup and dusted with ground cardamom.

I had worked all of Saturday and I knew both Sunday and Monday would get consumed by work, so I thought why not have a break? Jalebis are a favourite of children, and I thought it would be really sad if my own future children wouldn't be able to enjoy the hot jalebis I ate as a child.

Here is my recipe:

1/2 cup of plain flour

1/4 cup of yoghurt

Water as needed

pinch of salt

1.5 cups of sugar

1.5 cups of water

Plastic bag

Optional: pinch of saffron, ground cardamom

Method:

Mix the flour, yoghurt and salt together. Add water until you get a mix that pours easily, like cream. Leave to stand for half an hour. In the meantime, boil the sugar, water and saffron (if using) for 15 minutes. Test a little bit with a spoon, let it cool and see how it feels between your fingers. You're aiming for a sticky syrup a bit like melted honey. It should not be hot sweet water, that would be a disaster. Turn off the heat.

Take a frying pan and fill until there is about an inch of oil on the bottom and heat over a medium heat. Pour some of the batter into the plastic bag (a thick bag works better than the supermarket type) and tie a rubber band on the open end. Cut a hole in one corner of the bag and keep it sitting in a mug with the cut off corner facing up. This makes it easier to control, otherwise you'll have batter pouring all over your kitchen.

Now for the fun part! Test the oil is hot enough with a drop of batter. It should bubble up but not burn in a few seconds. Hold your bag over the oil and gently squeeze, pouring messy spirals into the oil. This video will demonstrate how, though you don't have to make joined up spirals, you can make them one at a time.

Fry until golden brown, remove from the oil and dump in the syrup. Allow them to soak for about 15 seconds and remove onto a plate. If you leave them to soak and soak they'll get bloated and soft. Jalebis should be juicy and a little crunchy. Sprinkle with ground cardamom if using.

Mmmmm! How delightful. By the way you can buy these in the Asian shops downtown, but there is nothing like the real thing fresh from the pan and ready made jalebis are bright orange because they add colour to the syrup. Hooray! My future children won't grow up not knowing the joy that is a hot jalebi!

Tip: If you end up with more jalebis than you can eat, my mum drops the leftovers into custard before it sets. Delicious.

Image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c7/Jalebi.jpg/800px-Jalebi.jpg

Women's Day 2008

It's Women's Day again and I was thinking about what to post to reflect this day, and I decided to be selfish and write something about me, me, me. I spent all my teenage years shying away from compliments and all my early 20s playing down my successes. Pah! No more!

So here is what Bollybutton loves about Bollybutton and being Bollybutton.

I have lots of dark curly hair which I love, because it's different. I love that at a wedding of 600 guests I was the only curly haired woman.

When I look at my body, I love the way it is beautiful and not just functional.

I love that I was brave enough to love someone who I should never, ever have loved and that I fought and continue to fight for him. Four years ago when I fell in love I was terrified and unhappy because I was embarking on an impossible quest. Home Country girls do not love Greek men, no good can come of it. But it did, and I am proud of myself for having the guts to be so relentless in my pursuit of what I wanted against everyone's advice and against all the odds.

I love my birthmark. It sits just above my hip bone and above an operation scar, which I also love.

I like that my smile is not orange-slice shaped. It's sort of... bean shaped.

My favourite part of my body is my hands. My fingers are long and slender and if I had taken better care of them when I was living near the desert, I could have been a hand model.

I have enough faith in myself to know that if disaster struck and I was left alone in this world I could still take care of myself.

I love my mothering side and how I enjoy taking care of people.

I love that I have a technical mind. As a little girl I delighted in unscrewing and fixing broken toys. It also makes me really good at puzzles.

I love wearing saris and I think I look great in them.

I love the colour of my skin and everything that goes with it.

I'm very creative and I love that I have several random projects in progress at any one time.

I love my capacity to learn and how my mind seems to swallow up information.

I love how I am progressing myself and my career and didn't have to be a bitch to do it.

I am proud of myself, and happy that I reached a point where I can say that. Before I would shy away from a compliment or play down my achievements. But not any more! I worked hard to get where I am and be who I am and I'm proud! Go me!

Happy Women's Day! To see why this day is still relevant, click here.

Image:http://www.headandheartcounselling.com/pics/laughing%20asian%20woman.jpg

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Not Patrick!!

Sad news. Patrick Swayze has cancer of the pancreas and his prognosis is terrible. Please, God, not the Swayzster!

I was 20 when I watched Dirty Dancing for the first time, 20 and emotionally stunted. My girlfriends insisted it was a must-see and so I sat through it and hated it. "This is garbage," I said, switching off the video recorder. They reminded me that I loved Bollywood and Dirty Dancing was nothing if not feel good escapism. Hmm, I see your point.

The truth is once I stopped being emotionally stunted I loved Dirty Dancing, and even more horrifically when I watched it again yesterday I realised how much I related to it. Naive young sheltered girl, irritatingly optimisitc, falls for an older man who is all wrong and who wins her heart by busting his sexy moves, thus discovering who she is and instantly getting demoted from her Daddy's Girl status.

I was a weird teenager and even weirder young woman. I even got told so by a guy who I took out with me one night and who expected that what I saw as an innocent make-new-friends outing would lead to a night of rampant passion.

At the close of the evening as we walked home, and I kept walking, he said "My place is this way."

"Well, goodnight then." I said, not getting the message. A conversation ensued on the footpath about morality and religion and when I was done, he said with a smile. "Bollybutton, you are beautiful but you are the strangest girl I've ever met." I understandably never saw him again.

I didn't make much sense. I was passionate about so many things and danced with no inhibitions, but when it came to my own desire, I wouldn't allow myself to question it, let alone other people. My mind was like a big house full of locked rooms which I refused to go near because they were full of things that I desperately wanted but refused to acknowledge.

It's really difficult explaining that to people who haven't grown up in a culture where intimacy is such a taboo, when they have grown up in a placewhere enjoying your lover's embrace is as normal and comforting as basking in the sunshine or a glass of cold water on a really hot day.

But my how I digress. Enjoy your own coming-of-age memories here. Get well soon Patrick!

Image: http://blogs.news.com.au/images/uploads/swayze_thumb.jpg

Misc.

Me thinks my blog is dying. I don't post nearly as much as I used to. Since it's been a while since my last post, this one is going to be a mixed bag.

Eurovision:

The song selection contest for Greece's Eurovision entry took place last week and the winner was Kalomoira Sarantis, a young Greek girl who grew up in America and came back to Greece three years ago to find her fortune, sort of like Sarbel. What made me happy about her song was that it opens with a typical punjabi sound, sort of like this song by Punjabi MC. Hmmm sweet, so now you like multiculturalism, do you? I bet if I had entered Eurovision with something similar my ass would have been kicked off because I'm not Greek but it's okay because Kalomoira is. Also she can sing, and I can't, so I would have lost anyway.

The show was a big deal as it is every year and presented by two dancing chickens aka the Magirra sisters. Of course the Greeks loooove to complain and the day after they totally ripped the night's offering to shreds, calling it overtly kitsch and boring in a trying-too-hard fashion. I thought it was okay, I fail to see what the difference was between this show and all the other kitschtastic offerings on Greek TV.

Macedonia:

Everyone is still upset about this one and I don't dare wade into it, because I'm young and I have my whole life ahead of me. I'll just offer this advice: if you are a foreigner in Greece, do NOT say "I don't get what all the fuss is about." in the company of other Greeks. I'm pretty sure just asking that question is reason enough to get deported.

American Cosmopolitan:

My sister brought one of these back after a trip to LA. Maybe I'm just getting old, but it struck me as a lot trashier than the UK version, and that's saying something. I had to ride the tube to Heathrow clutching a bright yellow magazine that was covered in the biggest font possible and leading with the story: YOUR VA-JAY-JAY. Classy. Everyone on the tube wants to see me reading about my vagina. Even if I was curious, there was no way I could read such an article with it's screaming sub headlines and graphic illustrations.

The C-word:

It's thrown around so casually these days it should have lost its shock factor by now, but when I bounced into work on Monday and heard my young, into good karma, vegan non-smoking head of department tell me that she has breast cancer I stood rooted to the spot, speechless. I've admittedly not had to deal with much hardship in my life and within the moment that my colleague told me she had cancer, the disease suddenly became real, as if up until then it was just a rumour or something other dimensional.

I'm scared because I don't know how to help her, what to say, what to do.

Something you could only ever hear in Greece:

Saturday afternoon me and Mr Zeus were strolling along on our way to lunch and we saw a small crowd gathered around a policeman and a young boy who had crashed his car. As we walked by:

Police: "So you have no licence and no insurance."

Boy: "That's what I'm trying to explain to you. Without the licence, I can't get insurance, they won't give it to me."

Police: "And why the hell are you driving without a licence?"

Only in Greece...

One Click could Change your Life

Yesterday morning I woke up and in a scene reminiscent from my school days, I burst into tears because I had too much work to do and didn't know where to start. Thank God for Mr Zeus and his pep talks.

This morning I woke up and thought "Come on, bollybutton old bean, it's only a job." As I schlumped through my morning routine I remembered something. Something IMPORTANT! Well, sort of.

This Friday is my big sister's birthday and I'm not going to be there, which makes me officially a loser since she only gets a birthday every four years. But equally interestingly, we are in another Olympic year.

Sweet, juicy, precious Olympic years, I do love them so. I am painfully unathletic but I always watched the Olympics and I can chart my life in Olympic ceremonies. The earliest I can remember was the Seoul Olympics, which I watched in the Home Country sprawled on the pushed-together beds me and my sisters slept on. Next came Barcelona, which I watched in the house of my mother's best friend as the British summer streamed through the vast french windows and onto the cream carpets.

By the time Sydney came around, that house had been repossessed and Freddy Mercury was long dead. I watched Kylie Minoque singing atop a hot pink stiletto as I sat on the floor of a family friend's house in Cardiff on my first day at university. I was an ugly duckling 18 year old, with braces and frizzy hair.

And then of course there was Athens, without which this blog and my moving to Greece would never have happened. I watched the Athens opening ceremony melting into the sofa of my friend's downtown Athens apartment, smiling because I knew the ceremony already having seen the final dress rehearsal a few days before. I was so happy.

In contrast I watched the closing ceremony in my Aunty's house in a Welsh village, miserable and furious because her house had no mobile reception and I had fallen in love in spite of myself and maybe right now, at that very moment Mr Zeus was trying to take the step I had been too chicken to take and declaring his feelings for me.

And I'd never know! I'd never know because of the bloody little Welsh village and it's lack of mobile reception and agreeing to my mum's idea of having a weekend by the sea! He might take my silence as rejection and by the time I got home our relationship would have begun and ended without me getting a chance to join in.

I acted like a spoilt child with an angry scorpion up its bum that whole weekend and I still cringe at how I behaved. On the drive back home, I cradled my stupid mobile phone the whole way until we reached an area with a mobile signal, only for it to lie there, mockingly silent. So he hadn't tried to reach me, eh? Well I wasn't about to let the dream die that easily. And the rest is history.

Today I did the same thing I did four years ago and submitted an application to volunteer at the Beijing Olympics this summer. Like the last time, I got my application in pretty close to the dealine. The end of March is the final date for submission.

Are you interested, dear readers? Why not give it a shot. At worst you'll have a ball making new friends and being part of the Olympics. At best, it might change your life forever, like it did mine.

Click here.

Image: http://www.fivb.org/EN/Infomedia/Photos/Thumbnail/logo_beijing_400.gif

The Jeans Shop, Take 2

I was having a bad day on Saturday so I decided to do some shopping therapy and catch the tail end of the sales.

Since I only own one pair of jeans it was time to invest in some new ones so I went to the same shop I blogged about. I told the girl the size I was wearing. "No way," she said "you're wearing one size bigger than that." Ignoring my protests to the contrary she pulled out a pair of jeans even tinier than the minute size I had forced myself into months ago. Admittedly they'd grown comfortably loose, but come on!

On the scale of asses, if you stood me next to your average Mediterranean woman my buttocks can best be described as mosquito bites. I felt a strange kind of kinship with the sisterhood as I stood in those changing rooms forcing, pinching and pummelling my misquito bites into a pair of too-small jeans. For a rare moment, I felt ample, womanly, like a ripe fruit.

Preditcably neither the zip nor the button would do up, and I was thankful that the mint green triangle exposed at the top of the sorry mess was one of my 'good' pairs of undies. "They fit fine on the legs, you just need to do them up. The guy downstairs can help with that. Shall I call him?"

This I had to see, so I said yes. She dangled over the banister and called out for the guy at the till and up he came. "May I?" he asked. With my permission, he stood behind me, hooked his thumbs through the waistband. "You need to get them over the hip bone and they'll close." he said and he hauled upwards, taking me and the jeans up off the floor.

With some fancy wrist work he got the button shut and I stood there, amazed. Remember a while ago there was scandal that posh Spice wears size 23 waist jeans? She must get this guy to help put them on. Next, he ran his hands up and down each leg and turned the excess length under. That guy must love his job. All day long he helps girls get into jeans too small for them and then crouches on the floor, ass at eye level, as he makes adjustments.

It was all very impressive but since the man was not included in the price of the jeans, no belt would convicingly hide the gaping button and zip and I obviously couldn't get into the jeans without help, I sheepishly opted for a pair of slim-fit Wranglers.

Same size, but with the gift of stretch denim.

Image: http://images.jupiterimages.com/common/detail/54/86/22778654.jpg

A Small Gesture

On my last day in Delhi, I was sitting in the back of a taxi which was waiting at a traffic light. The Sikh driver drummed his fingers on the steering wheel to the energetic bhangra tape playing, his electric blue turban bobbing from side to side.

Mr Zeus was sitting in the front seat with his window partially down. A scrawny girl in filthy clothes and no shoes walked between the traffic with an armful of magazines and threw one through the window. It landed on Mr Zeus's lap, and he passed it to me in the back seat.

"How much do we have to pay for it?" he asked, searching around for some money. "It says invitation price 10 rupees, so I guess that means it's free but if you wanted to pay that's what you'd pay." I replied.

The lights changed to green and the girl reappeared at our window, banging on it urgently. We paid her and her face melted into a huge smile as she disappeared between the traffic.

Today I got an chance to start reading the magazine the little girl pushed through our window at the traffic lights and I'm linking to the cover story of that issue. It's the story of Dr Binayak Sen, a doctor in India who spent 30 years working with the country's poorest and most disadvantaged who was arrested last year on terrorism and conspiracy charges.

In my last post I wrote about the poverty in India. Dr Binayak Sen is someone who worked with the poorest of the poor. I couldn't have said the things I said in my last post and thought "Oh well! I don't have to live there." and carried on. I thought I'd share the story since it has received so little coverage. This is a tiny gesture from me to spread this story.

Please click this link.

Hello Again

Well I'm back from my travels and feeling the post holiday blues. I had a brilliant time at my friend's wedding mostly because I caught up with good friends I haven't seen in years and was on my territory.

When it comes to getting dressed in Asia, I know exactly what I'm doing. I can make myself look absolutely spectacular because the clothes suit me so much better and I know the rules and tricks of the trade. It's double the impact with half the effort

Frankly speaking in comparison I feel ugly in the West. The clothes, the lighting, my skin colour, it's all wrong, wrong, wrong. Oh well, if it bothers me that much I guess I could just move back. Instead I think I will give myself more chances to feel beautiful by wearing all the amazing saris I bankrupted myself with on this holiday.

When I first got the invitation for my friend's wedding, I was already there. I spent days daydreaming about the music, the food, the clothes. Now that I'm back, I'm still there. Every now and then I get a flashback of me and my friends dancing our little hearts out on the dancefloor at any one of the five, yes five, wedding ceremonies.

Our schedule went something like this:

Wedding Day 1 am: Henna Party

Wedding Day 1 pm: Cocktail Masquerade

Wedding Day 2: Pre wedding ceremony

Wedding Day 3: Actual Wedding

Wedding Day 4: Reception

Five ceremonies in four days. I ate, drank, danced, got a tan, barely slept and reminded myself what it was I did with all those spare hours at uni - I was with my friends laughing until I cried.

India itself was a bit of a shock for Mr Zeus because it's so grindingly poor, and that's where the catch lies. I had a great time, but I have to admit that walking around the gigantic grounds of the wedding venue and past the servants who had been up all night stringing marigolds to trees, I felt ashamed in my multicoloured saris that cost more than what they might earn in a year. And that's despite having witnessed similar poverty in the Home Country. In comparison I found the poor of India much poorer and the gap between that haves and have nots much wider. It was a hopeless, desperate level of poverty that even I'd never seen before on such a scale.

The wedding was on a scale I've never seen in my life and I've been to hundreds of such weddings. On the final day, the Prime Minister of India himself turned up, talk about well connected!

In terms of the sights we saw, Agra and Jaipur were totally worth it. Delhi was a bit of a dump and I wasn't much impressed. The city I liked best was the up and coming Hyderabad. It was much cleaner, less touristic and more relaxed than any of the other places we went too, plus the world's number one Dj, DJ Tiesto, chose Hyderabad for his first ever trip to India so it's got to have something special.

As for those Incredible India adverts on TV, they could do with a bit more accuracy by showing the chaos that is Indira Ghandi International airport. It ain't all elephants and yoga out there. We landed at 6.45 am. I had already changed by internal flight once from 8.10 am to 9.25 am to avoid missing it. Between 6.45 am to 9.25 am should have been plenty of time, right? We got through immigration at 8.30 am only to be told that internal flights leave from a whole other terminal.

So we grabbed a taxi which can best be described as a bucket on wheels. At the internal flights terminal, I ran up and down counters, between ladies swathed in screaming babies and over suitcases to reach the check in desk exactly 5 minutes too late and had to rebook a whole other set of one way tickets at double the price of the original return set.

If you think that's a pain in the ass, imagine when on the return journey we got stranded in Doha because of snow in Athens. Snow. In Athens. Athens, which is in Greece, which is supposed to be sunny. My office must have thought it was the worst lie they'd ever heard when I got in touch to let them know I wouldn't be online as planned because my flight got cancelled because of snow in Athens.

The gods of global warming conspired to punish me for all the flying I do.

Oh and if you're wondering, none of us took malaria tablets, just some anti-mosquito cream. To be honest the drugs are so heavy that getting malaria and treating it is probably easier on your body. My own sister had it twice and came out unscathed.

We also escaped Delhi belly. Boil it, peel it, cook it or forget it. That's what Mr Zeus stuck to. Lucky for me I grew up in the Home Country which blessed me with a stomach and nerves of steel, hence my indulgence in food that would have been lethal for him and my steady pulse in traffic that is 1000 times worse than Athens. There really are no rules in India. You wanna drive on the other side of the road? You do it!

I'll leave you with a song that I heard a lot during all the dancing I did. Ignore the video, enjoy the song.

Bringing out the East in Me

A couple of months back I mentioned a wedding I had been invited to, which turned into the perfect excuse to take Mr Zeus to my part of the world for the first time. Not the Home Country, but the neighbourhood.

So I'll be gone for a while to my beloved Asia, where the weather suits my clothes and the food suits my palate, to charge my cultural batteries and bring out the East in me.

Image: http://www.geotonphoto.com/gtp/images/photos/wedding/i025.jpg

Rise up Against the Dummies

It's a sad fact of life that stupid people exist. You know the type, the ignorant morons who just assume crap and vomit out whatever random nonsense comes into their heads. It's kind of a waste, really. We could use such people for more useful things like propping open doors, or construct book shelves by making two dumbasses hold a plank of wood between them. We could even burn them for fuel, thus solving the crisis of non-renewable energy because stupid people are quite plentiful. Unfortunately, all of the above is illegal, and stupidos are free to roam our planet.

My good Irish-married-to-a-Greek friend, who I shall call Mary for privacy, recently had the luxury of a spa day with her hubby at a place called Evexia in Patision. Mary has been in Greece the same time as me and is quite proficient in Greek because her in-laws speak no English. When she and her hubby were done with their treatments, they were taken into a room where a fakity fake over made up woman tried to sell them more beauty treatments. Let's call her Janice for fun.

And there in that room Janice decided to embark on one of the worst sale techniques I have ever heard of. Not realising that Mary understands Greek, she addressed her husband on why they should buy more spa treatments and it went something like: "I mean look at her skin. God only knows what she's going to look like in 10 years. You should do something about it now!"

Mary was appalled and humiliated and I was appalled on her behalf which is why I decided to name and shame the spa, EVEXIA in PATISION - DO NOT GIVE THEM YOUR BUSINESS!

I had a somewhat similar experience on Saturday night when I was on a flight back to Athens. I took the window seat, Mr Zeus took the middle seat and next to him sat a Greek woman. She was in her 30s and petite, which as I learnt is the perfect size for the fascistaki that she turned out to be.

Whiling away the time before take-off, I listened to her talking a friend about so and so who was married to a Japanese woman. And then she said, in Greek: "I really don't like seeing Greek men with foreign women. I mean, it really really bothers me. These women should stick to their own kind. We have or ways, our traditions which foreign women don't understand. They just come here and spoil things. They make people unhappy."

I looked at Mr Zeus, shocked and convinced that I had mistranslated. I hadn't. Yes, she was THAT stupid. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but to express those views with a very visible foreign woman sat one seat away and a French-married-to-a-Greek in the row in front of you is just plain stupid. She put the cherry on the cake when she was flipping through the in-flight magazine and said " Vasiliiiiiiii... where is Strasbourg?"

Stupid cow. So remember, dummies, wherever in the world you may be; don't try to hide behind a foreign language you just assumed the people around you don't understand. All that will do is make you look more ignorant and the likes of me and Mary look smarter.

Image: http://www.northernsun.com/images/thumb/0826.jpg

You Can't Play

I was wearily going through my airport routine of browsing over-priced English paperbacks at Athens airport on Saturday when I saw this book. And I felt deflated.

I am not an American size 2 (UK size 6) most of the time, but now and then when I've lost weight because of the heat or because my worries have literally eaten me away, I become a temporary size 2. And some woman has gone and not only written but had published an entire book on how the likes of me are not real women.

That makes me irritated.

Can you imagine the uproar if someone wrote a book called "Real Women Don't Wear Size 22."? What a stab in the back to chop the likes of me out of the club just because we take up less space on the communal floor cushion! Thanks for nothing, sister.

So here is another thing to add to my list of what I am not. I am not English. I am not really Home Country. I don't feel British except by way of Nationality. I am certainly not Greek. And now I'm also not a real woman.

Sad times.

Image: http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/14600000/14603774.JPG

My Eyes and Ears are Bleeding!

I'm pretty unwell at the moment (has to happen when the weather is great, right) and then yesterday our internet stopped working. We're changing providers from Tellas to Hellas Online because Tellas proved to be rubbish and I need the internet for my job. When making the switch we specifically told them not to disconnect us until the switch was complete because I can't afford to be stranded without any internet. So of course they disconnected us, but lucky for them I was too unwell to work anyway.

The side effect of not having any internet to amuse myself with was that I switched on the box and started watching Greek daytime TV. The horror! How many animals were needlessly tested and tortured for the buckets and buckets of makeup worn by those female presenters? How much environmental damage was done by the gallons of bleach they insist on pouring onto their very dark (and I think beautiful) hair? I stared in hazy fascination. It was like a car crash - you want to not look but you can't help it.

On one channel the topic of the hour was "The Woman I Married Turned out to be a Man". Alright I kind of felt sorry for the man because he was desperate for a child after losing his only son and the lady knew this and didn't come clean about not being able to have children. But saying that a post op transexual is a man isn't right. A man by what measure? She used to be a man would be fairer. But to be honest if you're going to meet someone and get married to them in the space of six weeks, I don't exactly know what it is you're looking for.

I switched channels. This time another set, another sofa of fake blonds with too much makeup and the topic of the hour was the weight of women. Inneresting! This would be worth a watch knowing how blunt the Greeks are, so I sat back as they opened the phonelines. Boy do I wish I hadn't. The first caller was a women whose 27 year old son was in love with a girl who was a skinny bitch. She was mean and unhelpful and made her son miserable, but he loved her so he wanted to be with her. Mother understandably didn't want to see her child unhappy with this cow.

Actually I wish that had been the topic. In reality, the caller was a psycho mother whose 27 year old (note 27 YEARS OLD, not a child) son was in love with a girl who was a bit on the chubby side but had a lovely personality. "I don't want this to happen." she trilled down the phoneline, "I want my son to marry a model! How can someone who can't take care of herself take care of my son." Hmmm, yes. I see your problem. Your son is after all only 27 and probably can't even tie his shoelaces. How's Mrs Michelin going to reach past her belly to do that? I wonder...

And the moronic Barbies with an olive for a brain between all of them (should add that to my Olive post!) actually gave this insane woman airtime and tried to solve her 'problem', her problem being that she is an idiot who cares more about what's easy to her eyes than whether or not her child is happy. She admitted herself that her son could do with losing a few pounds. Translate: my son may be an ogre but I can't see that and believe he's a god. None of the Barbies said "So what if your son ends up with a tall blonde model who treats you and him like shit. Would that make it better just because she's pretty?"

It made me want to find this beleagured couple, marry them and then tie down the mother in law with toothpicks holding her eyes open as I forced her to watch her daughter in law eat the entire wedding cake. How do you like that!

The next caller was a man who cheats on his wife with skinny girls because after 10 years and two kids she's put some weight on. Wow. Way to solve a problem. So instead of trying to fix what you have you just throw it all out. Well done you. Now to a level I sympathise and bear with me. Most women would not appreciate the handsome man they married letting himself go and turning into a walrus. But couldn't he have tried some team work measures, as in from now on I'll do the shopping so that I pick up low fat stuff for me and you to get into shape together? Sounds like he was uncommitted and just looking for a reason to cheat.

Today I have my internet back and thank

God.Pros of learing Greek:Ease of communication

Cons of learning Greek:Understanding Greek daytime TV

An Open Letter

Sometimes there are things that need to be said and we don't say them. If I was doing a kind of emotional spring clean, this is what I would say if I had the balls, um I mean opportunity...

Hey! Hi there! How's it hanging? All good I hope.

Listen, I know you don't like me and I really don't know why. I also know I shouldn't ponder over this too much since, well, it's not like you're going to stop being the ice queen you are.

But I've got to say, I tried. Since I only ever extended good will towards you and you're still acting above it all, let me just say this:

I think you're a self righteous bitch.

Have a good weekend!

Image: http://www.adliterate.com/archives/Bravia%20balls.JPG

What to do with Too Many Olives

Harvest gone a bit over the top this year? Wondering what to do with all those olives? Wonder no more!

1) String up a line of olives and wear it around your neck. Fashionable and practical!

2) Ladies, kiss that pasty skin goodbye. Mash up some black olives, spread liberally over skin, rinse off after two days. Voila! Home-made self tan (you may end up purple but purple is IN this year)

3) Feeling shy on the nude beaches of Greece? String two olives with one piece of string (choice of colours) and a third olive on 3 pieces of string. Your attractive g-string micro bikini is ready to wear.

4) Bored of your eye colour? Take a green olive. Remove the stone and chop it in half. Next, using a sharp blade, cut off two thin rounds. Insert over cornea. That come hither look is now yours.

5) String an olive on a piece of string. Make a batch of these and sell them to unsuspecting tourists as "Traditional Greek Treat. Olive on a String!"

6) Attach olives onto hooks and use as fishing bait. If unsuccessful, wear as earrings to the taverna you will go to after fishing.

7) That guy you like not paying you any attention? Place two olives strategically under a tight fitting sweater. Enough said.

8) Roll black olives in dirt. Wait for seismic activity and scatter on the street. Run around saying "Did you see that giant goat that just walked past here? It crapped all over the street!"

9) Buy a glass fish bowl. Add fish-friendly gravel and plants. Drop in one olive. Your entertaining olive pet is now ready.

10) Try to convince checkout girls that the EU just okayed olives as legal tender in Greece.

11) Take 4 olives. Attach each pair in the middle with a paperclip. Your olive cufflinks will wow your colleagues and provide a nutritious snack during boring meetings.

12) Sick of being cat-called in the summer? Wear a pair of bicycle shorts and fill with olives all around. Walk down the street complaining loudly about your cellulite.

13) For that god-like feeling, purchase thousands of pairs of googly eyes and glue a pair onto each of your olives. Cover every surface in your house with your little minions staring up at you in awe and adoration.

14) Pour olives into bowl, add milk, eat for breakfast.

15) Break into the studios of any Greek TV channel in the morning armed with olives and a slingshot. Wait for the loud shouting matches to start and shoot olives into the mouths of the partakers of these embarrassing displays. The nation will thank you for the quieter, more relaxed start to their days.

16) Distribute olives to school children and encourage them to play conkers. But with olives.

17) Noisy neighbourhood? Olive earplugs!

18) Gents, still looking for your princess? Worry no more with this patented Princess Finder. Place one olive under your mattress and wait to see what your lady love says the next morning. If she didn't feel the olive, she is NOT a delicate princess, she is a tramp. Keep looking.

19) Freeze little cubes of gin with a toothpick through them. Serve in a cocktail glass full of olives. Whacky!

20) Stick an olive in each nostril. Well, you never know, it might be fun.

Image: http://www.argirioufood.gr/images/trofima/big/olives.jpg

Shimmy Shiver

Lately I've noticed my blog has spluttered to a halt in terms of content and readership. I've now lived in Athens for a year and a half and I guess the stuff that I used to get annoyed about before doesn't bother me enough to merit a post any more. I must be mellowing out in my old age.

So I'll talk about some general crap today, okay? Last night I grabbed a backpack and threw in two pairs of bellydance pants which I had made. It's been literally months since I went to class, for no other reason other than my own supreme laziness, and I wanted Rhea's opinion on my efforts. Since my day job is as dry as a cracker in the middle of the Sahara, I need a creative outlet to keep myself inspired so I decided to start making and selling these pants.

They seemed to be well received and we agreed on a price of EUR 40 a piece. This might seem like a lot of money, but making one pair of these takes hours and hours of cutting and pinning. Since I was on my way to meet friends I didn't stay for class but I did catch up with some of the regulars who I hadn't seen in a while.

As of next week I am going to go to bellydance class twice a week because in less than a month I'm flying out to the wedding of a good friend and I have offered to dance at her henna party. Yikes galore! I better get some practice in.

If anyone is seriously interested in getting a pair of pants, please get in touch with me through comments and we can go from there. The pants will be made to measure with any adjustments you want.

Over hot chocolates with my friends I admitted that I am sick to death already of it being winter. It's getting really boring now. How much winter do we really need? Can't it be just two weeks?

I'm cold and I feel like I'm about to come down with something. I'm a summer baby. Winter stinks, even if it is a glorious Greek winter. I'd much rather strip off in 46C heat than shiver and try to stay warm in 12C. I was made for summer. Moan moan moan.

When will it be summer...?

Image: http://www.ingmariesgarden.se/plant18.jpg

Alkionides

Didn't we have a beautiful day in Athens yesterday? The sky was as clear as the Mediterranean in August and the sun was warm. There was barely a breeze. I took walks every chance I got during the day and hummed songs to myself. That beautiful day reminded me of sunny winter afternoons of my childhood in the Home Country.

Winters in Greece are made much more tolerable for me thanks to days like yesterday, which are called Alkionides. What explains these 15 or so days each winter where summer gives you a sneak preview? Metreological magic? No! This is Greece and there is a myth to explain everything.

The legend goes like this. Alcyone was the daughter of Aeolos and was married to Ceyx son of the morning star. They were so ridiculously happy together that they went about calling themselves Hira and Zeus. Of course the gods were having none of that so when Ceyx went out to sea Zues fixed it with Poseidon to wreck the ship and Ceyx was killed.

Alcyone learnt about this when Ceyx appeared to her in a vision. She was so distraught that she wept and wailed and finally threw herself into the sea. Once their jealous egos had cooled down, the gods felt pretty bad about this so they changed the lovers into halcyon birds, otherwise known as kingfishers.

Alcyone made her nest on the beach in the winters, but the sea and the wind kept destroying it. So the gods got together and gave her 15 days of calm weather before and after the shortest day of the year so that she could nest and hatch her eggs.

That's where the alkionides come from. Enjoy them and don't anger the gods.

Image: http://www.cuerdenvalleypark.org.uk/jpegs/kingfisher.jpg

Mother Earth Rocks Me to Sleep

For my first post of 2008 I have chosen to talk about the 6.5 earthquake that hit Greece on Sunday morning. Many people I know were woken up in their beds by the major aftershock that reached Athens.

And me? I was sound asleep. I slept through an earthquake and only learnt about it when we watched the news. I've been living in Athens for 1.5 years now, and every single time there is a minor rumble I just happen to be away.

The only time I have experienced a tremor happened to me in Cardiff of all places. It was a calm evening and I was sitting on my bed in my university halls writing in my diary. I had my 'mood lighting' on and the wardrobe doors open. For some reason I could never sleep with them closed.

All of a sudden there was a creaking sound and I noticed the wardrobe doors swaying. Then my bed began to gently rock from side to side. It was so bizarre that my mind tried to find a solution to what was happening and came up with: "It must be the wind." About 5 seconds later, all was calm again.

The next morning the news confirmed that indeed a small tremor had hit the previous night and my Californian friend commented that it was just like being back home.

That was it. While many people were awake and scared by the Athens tremors, I was sound asleep. The strange thing is not a single thing was out of place when I woke up, not even the tube of lip balm that I keep standing on the edge of a shelf. Nothing fell over. Not even a drop of water splashed out of my fish's bowl.

A 6.5 richter earthquake hit Greece and there was minimal damage... gotta love that earthquake proof housing!

ps: Reading around, it seems that everyone else in the blog world felt the tremor. I am officially the laziest Athenian blogger. Yay!

Image: http://sar.informatik.hu-berlin.de/research/projects/2006-EWS/FOR_art_Tsunami_Seismogramm.jpg

Last Post of 2007

Lift your tear streaked cheeks off that keyboard dear fan(s) of this blog because I'm back after a week in Barcelona.

In case you were blind and hadn't noticed, I love food, so travelling for me is mostly about how good the food is. Every bad meal I eat makes me feel cheated, that I've lost a precious meal in my life which I will never get back. This trip to Barcelona was not my first - I did a grand tour of Spain in 2005. Out of two weeks, the only dish that sticks in my memory was a prawn and chilli tapas either in Valencia or Seville.

And this time round I can't actually remember anything that I ate which was WOW, apart from two rounds of dulce de leche, which is not Spanish it's South American. All that fancy architecture and good city planning makes up for it though. My only other issue with Spain is that I just don't understand why people there sit at home with their blinds shut. We drove up to Andorra and all along the way there were cars aplenty, people entering and exiting houses, but nearly all the blinds were down.

Why would you sit with your rollers open only a crack on a sunny day when your house faces the sea? It made me go all Greek, saying things like "Our salads are better." or "We wouldn't do that." and "We are more people in a city and our drains don't smell!" We, we, we.

I've noticed outside of Greece my Greek is pretty good because I only have one other Greek speaker with me. I could talk about whatever I wanted, make comments and in-jokes without anyone knowing what I was saying. I added a new word to my vocabulary, papari which I can't tell you what it is because anyway I only intended to use it when no one knew what I was saying, as in "What do you want to do today? Shall we go to Cafe Papari again?" Tee hee! Potty mouth! I told Mr Zeus it was his fault because like a child, I was learning the language by repeating what he said around me and if he didn't want me talking like a sailor he should watch his own language. He told me I was not a baby so I couldn't use that excuse.

Back in Athens my Greek instantly fell apart under the gaze of 5 million other Greek speakers. I'm also being a lady and not saying papari any more, because I've found the comic effect wears off pretty fast.

And now I find myself at the end of my first complete year in Greece. How do I feel? Pretty good. For the first time since I was little, I have reached the end of the year and done everything I had set out to do. Nothing is left over, I have no regrets.

Wishing you a great New Year!

Christmas Break

I'm off now for a Christmas break out of Athens so all of you enjoy. This is my first ever Greek Christmas tree which I put up this past weekend.

Greeks don't exchange gifts on Christmas, they do that on new year's eve. And trees, Santa Claus etc are relatively new trends. Traditionally a boat is decorated for Christmas in Greece.

And apart from my beloved honey cakes, melomacarona, I don't know what else is traditional Christmas food here, but I don't care because they're so yummy they're all I need. See you on the other side!

Why the Hell does she look so HAPPY??!!

This is a post for the ladies so any boys reading, leave now or else have your illusions of where our smooth skin comes from shattered.

Last night I was engaging in some cosmetic gymnastics, hot wax in one hand and a glass of Dutch courage in the other and I thought “How ridiculous. It’s December and I’m still waxing to within an inch of my life.”

Why do we do it, ladies? What is the deal with body hair? The moment I get one area waxed and under control, another starts begging for attention. I’ll be done waxing my arms and my eyebrows will grow overnight. When I inspect my finished eyebrows, I notice my upper lip could do with some work. It never ends!!

Add to this that I do not have a waxer in Athens. I do it all myself. Yes, all of it. All you need is a mirror and a few yoga positions. Mostly I am too chicken to try my Greek when dealing with sensitive and unmentionable areas. It might all come out wrong and end up with getting told off for indecent exposure, you just never know.

Plus I might find the one racist waxer in all of Athens and well, let’s not go into details other than to say that even a one degree temperature difference when using hot wax makes for a pretty miserable week, and I should know.

A girlfriend of mine once complained that men had it easy. All they have to worry about is the hair on their heads and face. I disagree. We women do this to ourselves. For example, my foray into bikini waxes began out of boredom one Saturday afternoon. I left the salon with a mixture of triumph and horror. Why would anyone do that to themselves on a regular basis, I wondered. But smooth skin for a woman is addictive and before I knew it, I was whispering into my phone during work hours, booking illicit waxes.

Asian girls, have you ever tried to leave the house for a bikini wax when Mum is around? It’s like the Spanish inquisition, you can’t very well admit you’re off for something as new age and depraved as *gasp* a bikini wax, but none of your excuses cut the mustard either.

“I want to take a walk.”
“But it’s raining.”
“I have something to do.”
“What exactly.”
“Stuff!”
“What are you up to?”
“Mum I’ve got to go I have a er… hair consultation.” (that’s partially true)
“Why are you getting a hair consultation when you’re flying back to Athens tomorrow?”

Frustration! And the dumb thing is that women wax for the benefit of other women. Common wisdom has it that once the clothes are off, most men just hope that you are not another man. You could be covered in scales for all they care. But women check other women out, looking for more/less arm hair to feel better/worse about themselves. You would not catch a man pouring hot wax onto their nether regions unless a bet or a sexual quirk was involved.

Isn’t it all so stupid. I bet we could have cured AIDS by now with all the man hours we spend waxing. That’s another reason life in Greece suits me. The Hondos Centre has an entire aisle of hundreds of different products dedicated to hair removal. No offence, but the women here are much hairier than Northern Europe so when I’m going through a lazy spell, I feel right at home.

Image: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/109/312580609_132cc5acac_m.jpg

Aegean or Asia??

An interesting thing happened to me on this trip to the UK. A potentially life changing thing and to tell you about it I need to go into a bit of background.

I'm an Asia girl at heart. I love Asia. It's where I grew up and no matter what part of Asia I'm in, it all feels smoother, easier, more homely, more familiar. I would love to go live somewhere in Asia, but the Home Country is out of the question because I'm too used to my freedom as a woman.

In 2004, I turned a corner in my life after a period in which I had hit rock bottom and decided to change everything. I treated myself to a birthday in Southern Malaysia, staying with a friend and driving the 30 minutes to Singapore nearly every day. I loved that part of the world; no winters, spicy food, variable scenery, organised and affordable. "This," I thought, "is where I want to live."

Back in the UK I fired off job applications to Singapore. And then the Olympics happened and everything changed. I moved halfway between Asia and Europe and I am happy. But I'm not a risk taker. I don't burn all my bridges, hence negotiating to keep my job just in case things blew up in my face here.

Now I am faced with a very tempting situation. I have been offered a job in the Singapore office of my company. If I was single I would have taken it tomorrow, but I'm not single and I also now have the benefit of hindsight to see how hard it was to move away from my family. I don't know if I could handle doubling the distance.

Mr Zeus is also a Greek Greek, in that Greece is the only place he can see himself living forever. I can't see myself living anywhere forever, but that's my problem. I could not take him somewhere and watch him be miserable.

The ideal situation for me would be to go do this for a year or two, have my adventure in Singapore and then come back and pick up where I left in Athens. What if I go and I hate it? Or Mr Zeus hates it? What would I do for work back in Greece? There isn't a nun in a sex shop's chance of me getting the same arrangement I currently have.

This is the problem with people like me. No where feels like home, no where feels permanent, no where - not even Asia - feels like I could live there forever, and it never will. If I had some sort of affiliation to any place, I could have turned the job down instead of day dreaming about humid weather and laksa. Instead, my risk-averse side has wedged itself between myself and a decision and I am frying necessary braincells trying to figure out how to have my cake and eat it too.

I think my best strategy is to take a deep breath and deal with this in the new year - I have time. Also, I'm not one for horoscopes but the very day this offer was made to me, I decided to read mine and it said that something I desperately want is right infront of me but I should not act too hastily.

But hey, you know what? Sitting at home in these four walls with a fish for company day in day out is pretty confidence killing. Whether I take the job or not, being told that they are not going to start looking for someone until they have my answer makes me feel pretty good. I am walking a little taller, my head a little higher.

Image: http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/07/24/laksa24706_wideweb__470x317,0.jpg

I'm Becoming Obnoxious

I'm back after my short trip to the UK but this time it feels like I've been away for months even though I only left last Saturday. I have been fretting on the flight because for the first time in a long time I didn't really feel like coming back to Athens.

I put this down to all the socialising I did on this trip - I felt my personality sparkling at mega-watt strength and it was really nice, you know? Just being able to communicate so easily, making jokes, discussing stuff. I felt alive and entertaining. I don't feel that spectacular in Greece, though I do try, and I suppose time and more Greek will fix that. I was reassured when we came in to land and I gazed fondly over the olive groves. It was a nice sight after the concrete of London.

And I am proud to report I finally cracked the Greek Girl look. This time I didn't pack my runners at all, and gave myself what seemed to me a Greek girl’s choice of shoes: painful or very painful. Even my new flat heeled boots caused me huge amounts of agony which I count as an achievement because I reckon it gave me that aloof look Greek girls wear. I finally know what that is, they're just zoning out to block out the pain they're in.

Early this morning I left the flat in my boots but couldn't take the burning pain where the boots squeezed my little toes. So I opted for the less painful option of aching foot arches, and do you know what I achieved today? I travelled in stilettos. Yes! I did it and I was also well dressed! Now all I have to do is dye my hair a uniform shade of blonde and leave my eyebrows black.

My main purpose for going on this trip was to attend my workplace Christmas party and it was there that I realised what the relaxed, earthy attitude to life in Greece is doing to me. The morning of the party I grabbed a bottle from my sister’s desk and sprayed. Come evening, I was giving it my all on the dance floor and it became obvious that whatever I had sprayed on was deodorant and not antiperspirant.

Two years ago, maybe even a year ago, I would have been taking regular trips to the bathroom and stuffing tissue in my armpits, mortified. But Greek living has affected me to the point where I thought “What the hell, it’s pheromones not sweat. Mi casa su casa.” I couldn't do anything about it so I genuinely didn’t care, which is a good thing considering how plagued by stupid little hang-ups I can be. I have teenage Greek boys in summer time to thank for that one.

Everyone keeps asking me when I’m going to get married and it got me thinking about it. Maybe we should fit that in somewhere. Me and Mr Zeus can be terrible procrastinators. We’ve been saying adamantly that we’ll join a gym every other month for two years now and still not done it. If we don’t start getting around to some form of initial wedding planning, I can see us still sitting around in 10 years time, looking at our calendars and saying this will be the year, then getting distracted by something.

People have already invited themselves, we have to deliver on the building momentum.

Image: http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/HPM/BM1142~I-Just-Don-t-Care-Posters.jpg

Things To Make And Do

We all need a break from the routine sometimes. I bet you now and then even Dora Bakoyiannis sits in her office late at night, going through papers, looking out of the window and thinking "Man, I'd just love to go get a kebab right now. And then go to bouzouki, drink too much whisky and kiss a guy who by harsh coincidence happens to work with me...sigh!"

When Athens life is getting you down, I suggest you head out of the city and refresh your eyeballs with just how beautiful Greece is. Last weekend we went north to Larissa and Meteora to visit some of Mr Zeus's family. When I met him I imagined a giant clan like in Big Fat Greek Wedding. Instead I could fit his family in a matchbox. As for me every time I go back to the Home Country I am met by some kid at my uncle's door who I don't know, to later discover he is one of the four new little cousins born in between a visit. I have over 20 first cousins alone.

Anyway, Larissa and Meteora are both such beautiful places they just take your breath away, especially Meteora which ranks amongst the most amazing places I've ever seen in my life. It's like a bunch of giant boulders were dropped in the middle of nowhere. It's really beyond what words can describe so I suggest you go there. There is a lot of internal tourism to that area so bus tours from Athens shouldn't be hard to find.

That area of Greece looks identical, and I mean IDENTICAL to Northern Home Country, and there were other things in common too. Each aunt and uncle that met me embraced me like a long lost child (I think they'd all given up on Mr Zeus ever marrying) and tut tutted that I was too skinny. It was like my own aunties and uncles but talking in Greek: eat this, eat that, no I don't want to hear that you've eaten enough you're too thin, whatever diet you're on drop it now, here I've packed you some fruit preserve, eat it for breakfast every morning and you'll be fine in no time.

I never knew what to expect when I embarked on meeting Mr Zeus's family but hand on my heart, they have welcomed me without a single question or issue from day one. We may have started with next to nothing in common, but we both had appreciation of family as an uncompromisable value.

The afternoon we were leaving for Athens I was chatting to one of my new Greek cousins, alternating between Greek and English when I couldn't find the appropriate vocabulary. Her seven year old son said: "I know why she's talking in English. She's saying something she doesn't want me to hear."

"No," I explained, "I don't know Greek, I'm still learning that's why."

"You don't know Greek?! But I knew Greek from when I was a baby."

"That's because you were born here. I wasn't."

"She doesn't know Greek!"

I bet you next time his mum makes him sit down for homework he'll say "Yes mum but remember that girl who was 25 and can't speak Greek. God only knows what she did in school, at least I'm not that bad." In an effort to teach him a little bit about different cultures I grabbed the receipt on the table and wrote his name in Home Country script for him. He was suitably impressed.

Ain't playing families fun?

I've got to say though I am a good old fashioned Greek/Home Country Mother In Law pleaser type of girl. Growing up in the Home Country in a small town there was next to nothing for a young girl to amuse herself with that wouldn't get her disowned and so we were trained in a variety of crafts that kept us out of trouble. Thus I'm a 21st century girl stuck with defunct skills like embroidery, lace-making, dress making and crochet. But hey what better way to please Ma in Law? How could a girl who can make a doily be an evil son snatcher?

Oh well it means that I can search the bargain bin in the yarn shops downtown, find the good stuff and get to the till faster than the grannies. I may get laughed at for crocheting scarves at my age, but I'm saving the drugs for old age. I think I'll be more grateful for them then.

Image: Meteora

Friend Wanted - Must Not Be in Denial

One year and six months after moving to Greece and my life is pretty much the way I wanted it. I now have social options I never had before, as in I can choose to entertain myself, or call a variety of friends to arrange coffees with and stay out late and then be able to direct a taxi home. Don’t ask about my Greek, it could be better, and I am being nagged nagged nagged about it. More on that in another post.

One thing I do feel very frustrated about is the information blackout I receive on all things Greek with my Greek friends and contacts. They will talk to each other about how bad a certain law is, but if I bring it up, they’ll paint a rosy picture and tell me I’m wrong, or get irritated and start comparing the laws of other countries (where I don’t live so not interested) or ask me how much better things were in the Home Country (ditto), remind me that Greeks Invented Everything and close by saying I am a foreigner so it’s not really my fault that I don’t get it. All this without trying to help me get it by talking to me as openly as they would to a Greek.

Don’t understand how this works? Here’s a fantasy scenario to help:

Bombs are raining down on the streets of Athens and Kostas is thinking to himself:

Kostas: Popo look at this. Look at what our country has become. There are bombs falling on the streets of Athens. Our politicians are IDIOTS! We deserve better than this. This is how we are treating our people in 2007? Very bad.

*Bollybutton comes crashing into the room*

BB: There are bombs falling outside!!! Oh My GOD!

Kostas: Aaaah BB. Welcome! No don’t worry it’s nothing.

BB: Nothing?! How can you say that!! Those are bombs not nothing!

Kostas: *shakes head in a pitying manner* Silly BB, those are not bombs, they just look like bombs to you. It’s just a matter of Greek politics.

BB: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!

Kostas: What they’re doing is they’re taking the tarmac off the roads because it needs redoing.

BB: Kosta. They are not taking the tarmac off the roads. They are bombing the city. Look! That building just got hit.

Kostas: That needed demolishing anyway, you know how slowly the mayor gets around these things and then they have to rush. Seriously it’s all under control.

BB: Why are you saying that. Do you think it’s normal for bombs to fall from the sky?

Kostas: *irritated* So? We can make our own laws. You think America isn’t dropping bombs in Iraq? At least we have democracy here.

BB: But can’t you see that this is WRONG?!

Kostas: BB it’s Greek politics, you can’t understand because you’re a foreigner. Don’t forget the Turkish occupation.

BB: Yes, the Turkish occupation, I know and I understand. But that’s over now, you have EU funding, things shouldn’t be this way! I mean really, bombs are normal?

Kostas: I’ve told you already they’re just taking the old tarmac off the street.

And so on and so forth. So I am advertising a vacancy. I want a Greek friend who will talk to me openly and honestly about Greek politics and life without:

1) Trying to make things sound better than they are
2) Jumping straight to defence mode
3) Refusing to accept that Such a Thing (insert as relevant) happens in Greece
4) Blaming it all on the Turkish occupation
5) Blaming it all on the Americans
6) Making irrelevant comparisons to other countries
7) Deciding that I won’t get it because I’m a foreigner

Applications on a postcard to this blog.

I live here, I want to understand how this country works. Tell me the truth, I won’t run out and erect billboards saying “Greece Sucks”, every country has its own issues and I want to fully understand Greece’s. Give me a chance.

Image: http://www.jonco48.com/blog/denial_small.jpg

One Down

I have several posts in my mind today so this will be the first. If you haven't already done so, I suggest you pay a visit to California Kat's American in Athens blog. Kat is leaving Greece for good, but I don't know when. I get the feeling that it's soon though.

She has been providing top-notch information on her blog and I don't know what we will do when she leaves :(

Nothing else left to say really, except pay her a visit, and good luck with the moving, Kat. Here's wishing your next destination provides the life you hoped for.