If you've Never Watched Bollywood Movies...

... here's a four minute crash-course from the dynamite BBC series, Goodness Gracious Me.



I've had the 'pleasure' of meeting some Chunky Lafunga Bollywood actor types. They really are like that.

Around this time of year I always start getting painfully nostalgic for the Home Country. I can tell myself as much as I want that there were reasons we left, very good reasons, that my life is so much better etc. etc. etc. and all of that is true.

But you still miss the place you grew up, however good or bad, and time has a funny way of accentuating only the good memories. You're left with memories of places that in your mind are more beautiful than they actually are, tastes that were more delicious than they actually were, seasons that were more gentle than they actually were, people that were nicer than they actually were.

In effect, you pine for a place that doesn't exist any more, because it never existed in the first place.

So this is going to be a bit of a boring post, with some of my favourite songs from the Homeland from the best of the best - Junoon.

Friday Bollywood Beatbox!

It's been a while so let's take it slowly and get into the spirit of things with this smoldering love song from the movie Dil Se, with a naff video. Sorry about that!

Oh, No Baby!

Happy New Year, honey pots! Hope you all had a happy and healthy start to the new year. I saw the new year in away from Athens in our country shack. Most Greek families have a place in the country to retreat to - a throwback from times when holidays abroad were too expensive.

We had fancy honeymoon plans for the two weeks we had taken off, like Cuba or Brazil. But in the end, being so tired and run down from stress, we packed off to our country shack where we hung out with the sea urchins and the sheep for two weeks. It was grand. On new year's eve an old couple, family friends, invited us over for dinner.

We went expecting a quiet evening. Don't be fooled even by little old couples in Greece. Those two had a sleight of hand technique of topping up my glass with so much all-too-easy-to-drink home made wine that I went home buzzing, and when I woke up I was still drunk until around 2 pm the following day.

The one thing everyone, and I mean everyone said when wishing us a happy new year was "And a baby!" Several even went as far as saying "Don't tire yourself in your condition!" to which I would think "Wow! How does this lady know I'm on my period! How considerate of her to... oh. You mean the OTHER condition. The opposite of this one."

As it stands me and Mr Zeus are the only recently married couple still without lump or bump. The issue is two-fold. First, we have no where to put our shoes so where would we fit in a baby? Second, this time last year I was so desperate for a baby that in order to drag myself away from thoughts of baby-snatching and unsolicited attacks on Mr Zeus, I brainwashed myself into cooling off the baby idea.

Unfortunately for me I'm a little too good at brainwashing myself. I overshot the target and now I don't want a baby at all, which has crossed with Mr Zeus starting to come round to the idea. I foresee battles ahead. And don't tell me how fabulous it all is because you're preaching to the converted. And then unconverted.

I currently know five friends who are expecting. Lately as soon as a female friend says she has news, I automatically know what it's going to be. Which is fantastic, but I only have one simple request.

There was a period when I went nuts bidding on yarns on ebay and for the first time I won every bid. Sadly, all this yarn is in shades of pink. So PLEASE!!! Help me use it up and have baby girls!!

Image: http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/dreamgirl/filesend/2900/crew.jpg

Junk in the trunk

I've been getting so much useful information on my blog lately via comments. I am now rich beyond my wildest dreams! Want to know how I did it? With a cucumber and one single click! Then, tired of being a skinny nerd, I was able to buy a ton of V**I$#^A*^&G**R##A online and my penis is now gigantic and rock hard and She is Begging Me for mOre each nite.

Further to that, I became throughly eloquent but for as in the great pickle went mountain cheese oh my said lilian.

Spammers. FUCK OFF!!!!!!

Have An Economic Meltdown Christmas!

The very first thing that happened when I set my dainty foot on the main floor of the office where I work in London last week is that all the analysts wanted to know what the dealio was with Greece. Is Greece the next Dubai? How soon do I think Greece would default on her debt? What are the odds of Greece abandoning the Euro and the EU? And now you guys have riots on the streets too because of the economy! Tell us, Bollybutton, what in Zeus's name has happened to make the Greek economy so bad!

And I was standing there thinking "For shizz?" Let's straighten out a few things here. Greece's economy isn't that bad, because it's never been that good, and to understand why, let's take a quick refreshing dip into her past.

For a country to have a strong and stable economy it needs a strong and stable past. Once's Greece's glory day party was over, all she was left with was an unmade bed and the West promising to call.

In the 1800s, Greece emerged from a 400 year Ottoman occupation which is no mean feat. By lots of scheming and dodging, Greece is one of few countries that emerged from a 400 year foreign occupation with her religion, language and culture practically unscathed.

How does this relate to the economy? While much of the West was having the Age of Enlightenment and the Renaissance, the Greeks were standing infront of the equivalent of a bored bank employee telling them "Computer says no" every time they wanted to try something new, say, like develop their country.

So in the 1800s the Greeks waged a bitter and bloody battle for their freedom and won it in a totally David vs Goliath kinda way. They'd barely had a chance to crack open the ouzo when World War I busted in to break up their party.

World War I ends, and Greece ends up pretty much bankrupt having sided with the Allies. The Allies think "Jolly wot wot, let's give Greece Smyrna as a reward". They let Greece invade Smyrna, the Greek army runs wild, and the Turks brutally retaliate while the Allies wonder what's for pudding. As a consequence of the immediate tragedy and the League of Nations' ridiculous solution in 1923 of forcibly moving all Christians from Turkey to Greece and vice versa, 1.5 million refugees pour into an already ruined country.

So that's Greece in the 1920s, absolutely at her wits end and being saddled with more people. Soon follows World War II, a civil war, a military dictatorship and it isn't until the 1970s that any kind of democtratic stability returns to Greece.

Now, how exactly do you build a world-class economy in the space of 35 years? The answer is you don't. You can't. It's like taking a starving orphan and saying "Next week, I want you to look like Mr Universe."

So back to what my colleagues asked me:

1) Is Greece going to default on her debt?

Not a chance. We're in the EU. Why would we want to go the way of Iceland? Though part of me thinks we should do it just to piss off Europe.

2) Is Greece the next Dubai?

You mean a ridiculously oil-rich country with more money than taste? Again, no way. And this is for a number of reasons. First, Greece hasn't enjoyed anywhere close to Dubai's boom to be in danger of a bust. Second, Greece has next to nothing in common with Dubai as a society, and that is very important to factor in.

A friend of mine earlier this year wrote an article on how well Greece was weathering the credit crunch compared to her neighbours. This has a lot to do with the social set-up. Greece didn't suffer the wave of bank crackdowns and reposessions that the UK did.

In Greece, it's unthinkable for someone to let their child or friend lose their house because they fall behind on payments. People will pitch in to save you losing your house, because home ownership is extremely important to the Greeks. Never underestimate the Mama Factor! Mama will sell everything she owns if it means saving her child's house. Are you listening, analysts in London? Next to Greece, write MAMA FACTOR in big red letters and put a circle around it.

If it's known that you are financially comfortable and let your child or friend lose their house, you will never be able to show your face in public again.

3) What are the odds of Greece abandoning the EU or the Euro?

Minus 2000. Neither of the above will happen. Greece totally lucked out by getting into the EU and will not jump ship. It's ridiculous to even suggest this. Same goes for the Euro. Sure, life is a lot harder for people here since the Euro, but if Greece still had the Drachma when the credit crunch hit, with the way interest levels went haywire Greece would have been totally screwed with a cherry on top.

The Greeks are crazy, but not that crazy.

Why then, is the economy in such a hideous state? Because pretty much everyone avoids following the law. You have more chance of getting a Greek woman to tell you her natural hair colour than you do of your average Greek paying their taxes. They just don't like doing it, because all Greeks distrust the government, and if you look back at their history it's not surprising why.

Still, these shouldn't be excuses, and maybe this crisis is exactly what Greece needs to get our ass into gear. I've always believed in Greece and her potential. It's an amazing country with amazing potential, especially the new generation. Greece deserves progress, change and reform, but this has to come from within, and it's a very messy situation to untangle. Undoing so much corruption will take a very long time. The public sector, where everyone gets paid to do nothing, needs to be shruken or made electronic, as does the system for paying taxes.

Also, declaring self-employed earnings needs to be simpler. I know people who tell me they tried to get their earnings legalised and taxes paid, but it became such an impossible maze of stamps and paperwork that they gave up and went back to flying below the radar.

So, dear analysts in the West, relax. All you need to do with Greece is wait and see. I know a lot of your bonds went bust because of the downgrade, but sit tight and you'll see things will look brighter in the summer. And lastly, those economy-related riots all the news channels in the UK were showing actually have nothing to do with the economy. Those riots were pretty much unrelated. Think of it as our equivalent of a street party.

Have a good Christmas and next time check your facts a little before you go off downgrading your little hearts out.

Image: http://www.athina984.gr/files/imagecache/main/files/news-images/finance_0.jpg

Once I Had a Love and I danced Bharat Natyam

In Monday'sriveting episode of GNTM, the girls had a pop icon photoshoot. How old did I feel when 18 year old Denia didn't know who Debbie Harry aka Blondie was?

For those not in the know, this is Debbie Harry:



















and this is Denia not being Debbie Harry:



















Needless to say, she got the boot.

Meanwhile, Mr Zeus is always telling me that you can find ANYTHING you need in Athens, and he was right. Can you guess what I found? A Greek lady with a classical Indian dance school: http://www.shantala.gr/index1.html

Another Burning City

I have just finished reading a book that shook me to the core like no other book I have ever read in my life. Never before have I flinched and cried out while reading something in a book or felt like I had to stop because I couldn't read on.

Yet, here I was in the comfort of my own home living in times of peace, reading words printed on a page that can't even begin to come close to the horror of the real events it documents. That perhaps was most upsetting of all - knowing that what I was reading actually happened.

I'm talking about a book about the destruction of Smyrna called Paradise Lost by Giles Milton.

Like many people in Greece, Mr Zeus's maternal side traces itself back to Minor Asia, specifically the city of Smyrna (Σμύρνη) today known as Izmir. I remember Mr Zeus telling me the stories passed down to his grandfather from his parents - of the city burning, of the Allied ships docked in the harbour cutting the fingers of desperate refugees trying to swim onboard their ships to escape certain death, rape, murder, torture, a city gone mad.

In this city where overnight Greeks and Turks were pitted against each other, it was the Turkish neighbours of Mr Zeus's great grandparents that helped get them to the harbour and then the safety of Mytilini. The two families never met again and Mr Zeus's grandfather was born two days later, a stranger in a foreign land, unwanted by both Greece and Turkey and within spitting distance of their once cherished homeland. He went on to marry my beloved Greek granny, a midwife in her youth trained by a doctor who fled Smyrna with only the clothes on his back and a thermometer in his pocket.

One day I pulled out a recipe book and started cooking Tas Kebab, a typical dish from Minor Asia. I threw the spices together in the pestle and mortar, and when I stopped to take a sniff, for the first time in my life I smelt something like nostalgia. It smelt so good, but the unusual combination of cumin, coriander, salt, pepper, chilli and cinnamon made me feel strange; it stirred something in my heart. The food itself moved you, it had a story to tell, and so I decided that it was high time I educated myself about the history of my Greek family.

I can't even begin to say more about the massacres of Smyrna, except for how horrific it was. One source quoted in the book, says that if you were to take what happened in those awful days of September 1922, added your own personal horrors and exaggerated as much as you like, you would still not come close to the reality of how terrible it was.

What struck me most of all is that I knew nothing about Smyrna before I met Mr Zeus. The West never mentions it. Who can say why? Out of guilt that they sat on their ships watching people get slaughtered and ordered their dinner bands to play louder when the screams began to disturb their dinner? Because they are heartless? I don't know.

However I will say if you are a foreigner living in Greece and planning a future here, treat is as your duty to learn more about the history of this place. There are things, thoughts and attitudes that you will never understand unless you do. This one book has helped me understand so much about modern Greece in a way that hours of talk and debate never did. Most importantly, it is written by a neutral source, neither Greek not Turkish, and so I place my trust in its accuracy.

Paradise Lost can be found for sale on Amazon.co.uk, with delivery to Greece if brought through Amazon rather than a vendor. Once you read it, once you read how peaceful, prosperous and beautiful Smyrna was, you really understand how apt the title is; it was Paradise that turned into hell. And I can't tell you how my hair stood on end, how sick to the stomach I felt reading scenes of desperate refugees huddles on the seafront, filthy, starving, sick and with absolutely nowhere to go, praying for a ship, any ship, to come and help, and knowing that somewhere among those souls were the great grandparents of my husband.

Image: http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/x3/x17542.jpg

Shopping Therapy

I'm holding an Indian bazaar this Saturday 4th of December in downtown Athens, near Akropoli metro if anyone is interested in seeing my bangles, saris, kajal, perfume oil and henna transfer tattoos in person. Email me at bollybutton@gmail.com for the wheres and whens!

Image: http://www.welt-atlas.de/datenbank/fotos/5-171/big/5-171-29.jpg

Biryani to Kill and Die for

The city my dear mummy comes from in India, Hyderabad, is famous for two things: bangles and biryani.

Biryani is a type of Indian rice dish that consists of a delicious layer of spiced meat covered by a layer of rice, sprinkled with saffron and steamed. The following recipe is the extra fancy version:

Ingredients for 4-5 people:
1/2 kilo lamb (or chicken)
250 gr basmatic rice
1 large onion, or 2 medium ones
1 cup yoghurt
3 garlic cloves minced
about a tablespoon of grated fresh ginger
1/2 cup of chopped coriander and 1/2 cup chopped mint (important, you can't cut corners here, it has to be fresh coriander not the seeds. Ask your local laiki or central veggie market near Omonia)
2 chopped red or green chillies
Olive oil
a generous pinch of saffron soaked in three tablespoons of warm milk
handful of cashew nuts (optional)
6-7 dried plums or dried apricots (optional)


Spice mix:
1/2 tsp chilli powder - or more if you like it spicy
1/2 tsp tumeric
1 1/2 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp cumin powder
2 cloves, pounded

2 cardamom pods shelled and seeds ground to powder
1/2 inch piece of pounded cinnamon or 1/2 tsp ground
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 bay leaf, broken into pieces and pounded as fine as you can
Salt to taste

Method:
Cut the lamb into bite-sized piece. If you have lamb on the bone, toss the bone in too. It gives extra flavour. In a bowl, mix the yoghurt and the spice mix along with the garlic, ginger, mint, coriander and chillies. Toss in the lamb pieces and mix everything nicely, salt to taste. Leave overnight if you can or a few hours, but if you don't have time you can move on to the next step.

Finely chop the onions and set a frying pan with some olive oil over a medium high heat. Try to get the onions nice and fine, because you're going to be browning them so it's less of a hassle if they are uniformly cut so that they cook uniformly too. Fry the onions in batches until golden brown, but not burnt. Like with curries, this is the secret.

This is where the depth comes from. Don't let your onions look anaemic, they should look like they spent a day at the beach rubbing baby oil on themselves. You'll recognise this from the yummy smell they release - if they start turning too brown the smell turns acrid.

Drain your fried onions on some kitchen paper. In a heavy-based pot big enough to contain the meat and rice, add some oil and toss in the lamb with the yoghurt. Cook on a medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring now and then, and add the fried onions. Cook everything on a medium heat for 20-30 minutes, stirring to avoid sticking. You'll notice everything start to get nice and juicy and dark as the fried onions break down and the yoghurt thickens.

Cook until the lamb is tender and switch off the heat. If using the plums and cashew nuts, add them about 5 mintues before switching off the heat. Don't use them if you're not a fan of mixing sweet and salty, but I love it, this is how my mum does it. It's not overwhelming, you get a burst of pluminess with random bites.


The meat mixture shouldn't be too watery, but it shouldn't be dry either. Somewhere in the middle. The lamb piece should be about 1/2 poking out of the liquids. Check for salt. It was at this stage that I remembered to take pictures. If you're wondering about the ring of dough, ignore that. I have a hassle free alternative to achieve the same thing further on. I was just showing off.


















Take your basmati rice and give it a good wash in 3 changes of water. Add enough water to cover it, salt and boil on a medium heat for around 5 minutes. Drain the rice off and layer it over the meat mixture. Sprinkle your milk with saffron over the top. It will be a pale yellow. Ever eaten traffic light yellow biryani? That's usually food colouring.





Set over a medium heat and allow to come to the boil. Do not stir anything from now on. Take a towel and soak it under the tap. Wring it out, but not completely - juicy wet but not dripping. Wrap the lid of your dish containing the biryani in this wet cloth, as if you're gift wrapping. Reduce the heat to the lowest possible setting, place the wrapped lid on top of the pan and if you have something heavy, weigh the lid down with that, like a marble mortar or a stone.



Leave undisturbed to cook on a low heat for 15 minutes. After the time is up, get a fork, crack open the lid and dive in to try the rice and see if it's cooked. Two important things here: 1) try not to faint with joy at the delicious aromas released when you break the steam seal 2) get in and out with your fork as quickly as possible and replace the lid. If your rice is not done, if will need to keep steaming and this will take longer if you let too much steam out.


When my mum was a little girl, her father would throw parties where cooks were hired to cook great big couldrons of biryani over coal fires. The traditional method of sealing the pot is with a ring of dough. This ensures absolutely all of the steam gets locked in to cook the rice, and the dough around the pot collects the best nutrients from the cooking rice and meat. A friend of my grandfather would volunteer to cook the biryani for parties so long as he got dibs on all the sealing dough afterwards. Personally I don't see the attraction. It tastes pretty awful.


And there you have it. Dig right in and enjoy this lucious, luxurious biryani. Mr Zeus didn't like it, I think it's too complicated in taste for him. But if anyone's interested I've got enough biryani for 4 people, so come on over!

Tips for success:

1) Make sure your salt levels are right. I'm still getting this wrong as the rice sets off a lot of the saltiness

2) To steam the rice, it's important to have a lid that fits snuggly onto the pot.

3) Once you've started steaming, resist your curiosity to crack open the pot and spoil the steaming. God knows I've been chased out of the kitchen by my spatula-wielding mother enough times as a child for sauntering over to a pot of rice and lifting the lid to take a peek.

4) Expect some stuff to stick to the bottom of the pot when steaming. You can reduce this by having a sturdy pot to start with as the heat distributes better. If you only have crappy pots with very thin bottoms, you can avoid too much burning by placing a frying pan on the heat and then your crappy pot on top of the frying pan. This makes the frying pan act as the bottom of the pot and the heat is distributed better.

The Best Indian In Athens?

At tango class on Monday one of the girls slipped me a menu from a restaurant she'd been to. "The best Indian in Athens!" it declared boldly. "Oh really", thought I, "I'll be the judge of that!"

The place in question is Jaipur Palace in Glyfada which I've heard of but never been to. The menu was a takeaway menu from there. Last night I began to flick through it and practically fell off the sofa laughing. By way of the stupid prices, this was one of the most unintentionally funny menus I'd ever seen.

Chicken curries from EUR 9.60 each, chicken tikka EUR 10.30, lamb karai EUR 11.80, one tandoori roti EUR 1.50. And this is just the takeaway menu! These prices are totally ridiculous. Ah Mr Zeus, I wonder if you realise how much money you're saving by being married to me. What are they using in their curries to make them so expensive? Garlic grown by blind Tibetan nuns? Chillies irrigated by the tears of a thousand Indian princesses? It's curry, not rocket science!

I was impressed though that the menu contained one of my favourites, dahi papdi chaat. But then it went on to list something called a chef Dhananjay salad with eggs, ham and cheese. You would grow old and die searching for that in India... because it doesn't have any business being on the menu of an Indian restaurant.

Still, who am I to rip this place apart without trying it first? I feel an undercover restaurant review coming on! I'm most curious to see if their biryani is actually biryani. Will it be actual saffron rice, or just yellow dyed rice?

Speaking of which I have lamb marinating for a biryani right now. I'll post the recipe if it's a success, and save you all paying moronic prices for it.

Start the Week with a Bang!

In less than one month's time, we pass the winter solstice which means the days then start to get longer and summer will be approaching day by day. With Athens basking in 20C and sunshine the last week, reaching this milestone doesn't feel all that impossible.

Hooray for living in Greece, where you can get a tan even in the winter! Here's to the summer just a couple of months away!!



ps: Bollywood Beauty Bags now up on ebay via the link in my blogroll, and my online shop which I'm trying so far unsuccessfully to direct to the domain name I purchased: http://www.freewebstore.org/bollywoodbazaar/

Big Screen and Small Screen

Friday night is date night, baby, so I decided to take myself out for a movie. The movie of my choice was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Yes, the original one. Palace theatre in Pagrati is showing it: http://www.athinorama.gr/cinema/data/movies/default.aspx?id=4194

I didn't to ask anyone because I didn't think anyone but me would be interested in such an old movie. Who would want to spend two hours drooling over the hunky Paul Newman and gorgeous Elizabeth Taylor on the big screen except me?

I got to the cinema a few minutes after the movie had begun. "Do you still want to see it?" asked the usher. "Yes I do."

"Okay, then go ahead and pay us when it's over."

I stepped into the gloom and took a seat right in time to hear Lizzie utter those immortal lines "I feel all the time like a cat on a hot tin roof!"

And then as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I realised I was all on my own. I had the entire theatre to myself. I really was the only person in Athens who wanted to see this movie. That's the first time I've been for a movie completely on my own, without even other movie goers for company.

***

Despite my initial concerns, I have found GNTM to be strangely addictive, and already favourites and demons are starting to emerge. So it was with a heavy heart that I learnt yesterday that two contestants, Anthi and Ramona, have dropped out. Who else but Star channel would get the exclusive on this, and Anthi dished the following eye-popping home truths about 'reality' tv:

• She totally got the feeling they weren't looking for Greece's Next Top Model, just making TV. Gasp!
• Vicky Kaya is completely different off-camera to how she acts on-camera! No way!
• There is nothing real about reality TV, everything is constructed and everyone is playing a role. And there I was thinking reality and TV are two words that go together like peas and carrots.
• The judges deliberately pick your worst picture just to pick it apart. Well, babycakes, if they showed how well everyone was actually doing, the show would be over in about 10 minutes.
• She got the feeling the winners have already been picked and the wrong people keep getting eliminated and the directors are deliberately keeping in the types that stir trouble (and make good TV)! Oh honey buns, if you had watched as much ANTM as I have, you'd know it's just a show and Tyra week after week makes decisions that make even an avid fan like me think "Hell, no!"

Ramona has promptly left on the heels of Anthi saying that she doesn't think the show is geared to what they were made to believe it is, which is to find Greece's next top model. Girls, you would not have had this existential crisis had you watched 13 seasons of ANTM like I have. Let's analyse ANTM's greatest contribution to the world of fashion, the most wow and eye-opening thing it taught us which not many of us knew before:

What is a weave and what are eye smiles.

There. That's it. That's ANTM's contribution to society.

In terms of who will make the biggest media career out of GNTM, I think it's going to Areti. Areti is a nasty little piece of work who's only purpose in life seems to be to bitch, moan, complain, backstab, gossip and stir up trouble. She's is suffering from Madonna/Whore syndrome and comes out with ridiculously schizophrenic points of view, one minute stating like the Virgin Mary that she would never stoop to Naila's levels to win a task

at about 5.40 minutes - before all of a sudden having no problem doing this:

Areti comes across as being the kind of person with all the necessary 'qualities' to make it to the top, ie. she wouldn't hesitate to kick burning kittens out of her way if it meant five minutes of fame.

Meanwhile, GNTM's contribution to my life took the form of the undies the girls were posing in and I promptly went out and bought a Venus Victoria bra like the ones in the photo shoot. EUR 29.95 from Hondos Centre!

Preening and Prancing

Remember back in the summer when my face was falling off? Well I'm happy to report, at the risk of bad-eyeing myself, that my skin is now nearly back to its peaceful, almost spot-free self.



So what was the secret after months and months of creams, lotions, potions and facial torture? One fine morning as I was about to apply my usual round of creams, I stopped. I put them back. And since that day, I have gone back to doing what I was doing all my life without any problems, which is absolutely nothing. I wake up, I wash my face with water and that's all I do. No cleanser, no toner, no cream.



My creamy quest has its origins in yet another female friend who practically fainted in horror when I said I have no skin care routine, just water and sun cream in the summer. "You'll regret that when you're 30!" she exclaimed.



Oh heck! Could she be right? What if I should really be joining them in stripping off my oils and then applying artificial ones? What if I wake up tomorrow looking like a prune? It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. You go to bed on the eve of you're 30th birthday, a fresh-faced 29 year old and wake up a hag!



I don't know. I have a sneaky suspicion we're being lied to. It's like when you stop using lip balm. The first week your lips rebel like crazy and then they say "Whatever" and get on with their naturally kissable lives.



I think my skin is doing the same thing. Sure, now and then when it's particularly dry or cold, a little sweep of almond or olive oil won't do any harm. But I'm so glad to be getting my old skin back I'm not messing with it again.



***


In other news, thoughts of tango are completely taking over my life. It's turning into yet another infectious disease along with everything else I'm riddled with. A few days before my dance disaster on Saturday at my tango lesson I had probably one of my best dances ever. Not from style or technique but it was the first time when I switched my brain off and enjoyed the dancing. It was light, lovely, and sweet, the dance equivalent of chocolate mousse (at least in my not-so-expert-one-month-of-tango opinion).


When I came back home, I told Mr Zeus how I had felt a sensation right in my gut while I was dancing, like being in another world and speaking in a totally new language (now I know that was probably my lungs preparing to spend the next few days chucking themselves in every direction).



But still! I wake up and start playing tango videos on youtube. I polish the wooden floor by walking backwards across it. I gorge myself on tango related information online until I feel disgusted and say "Enough!" then the next day I do it all over again.



And I look at tango shoes, especially Comme il Faut, which are like lingerie for the feet and atomic bombs for the wallet. I might just have to start a separate tango blog at the risk of boring you all to death.

My First Milonga... A Tale of Woe

After years of daydreaming about it, I finally took up tango about a month ago. Classes have been going well so far and all us tango newbies have been progressing at a good pace. It may not be much of a tango, but I am so happy that I am finally starting to dance something that resembles tango.

Last night I finally went to the dance my dance school throws every two weeks. Here's the background. I've spent the best half of last week with a cold that turned to flu, lost my sense of smell and some hearing thanks to my blocked sinuses. On yesterday's gorgeous Saturday morning I was totally determined not to miss my first tango social dance and had every ambition of not falling any further apart. I knew just the thing to make me feel good - tango shoes! Sadly the shop was located in just the place to make me feel like a sloppy, sniffly, red nosed, frizzy haired peasant - Glyfada.

Glyfada is like the Los Angeles of Athens, where all the rich and beautiful people go to hang out and judge you. Amongst them I dragged myself from shop to shop like Quasimodo. Glyfada is the only part of Athens where I feel like a foreigner and I can't wait to leave fast enough. It's probably all in my head, but meh! They shoot unfashionable people, don't they?

So anyway, on to the shoes. The shop in question is conveniently owned by the father of our koubara (witness to our wedding) so I got a nice juicy discount. I was stuck between red and black. Black being the obvious choice for seeming like a grown-up tango lady. Red was, well... when you are feeling ill and running out of positivity, red is the colour to go for. So that was what I did.

Next stop, Hondos Center to see if they sell those sweet old fashioned stockings with a seam along the back. I asked the lady and she said "Yes we do. They're EUR7 but we have more expensive ones too." Glyfada is the only place in Athens where they'll tell you you can get the same thing for more money.

"Anything for less than that?"

"No you filthy poor person. Out, out with you! Security!" Okay she didn't really say that, and I decided that while faking it till you make it is always a good policy, I should not be drawing too much attention to myself with seamed stockings and red shoes when I only have one month's worth of tango under my belt.

I spent the rest of the day scraping myself back together again, de-monobrowing and fixing my hobbit feet. Being ill is when I realise how much daily fine-tuning it takes to keep the wilderness at bay. Three days out of action and the follicles think it's Christmas.

By nightfall I wasn't feeling all that much kefi and I was starting to loose my voice. You know when you just feel that it's not going to be a good night, and you go anyway? Mistake. But dammit, I braved Glyfada and I was going to my tango dance no matter what.

I walked into the dance school and my first impression was that I knew no one. My second impression was that the people who were there were a bit mean. I said hello to a couple and got a big fat zero in return. Others were really friendly and nice though and kept my company all evening, so I suppose it's luck of the draw.

Something about not being able to talk, smell or hear that well threw my dance skills into total disfunction. I accepted five dances and all five were disasters. Seriously, I've danced better with my dog standing on his hind legs. The mega boss of the dance school invited my for a tango and since lately I had been getting such good feedback from classes on how I was doing, it would have otherwise been an opportunity to shine.

But instead I was horrified that he should pick my stuffy, diseased self on that night when I knew the magic wasn't happening, and I danced like ASS you guys!! He, like all my other partners, was super gracious and said I had done really well. Yeah, you're telling me that when I'm watching people on the floor that can change lightbulbs with their toes.

And, I was the one and only person in the whole room with red shoes on. It's like they were screaming "Hey everybody! Look at us! Aren't we great? Shame our mummy can't dance for shit!"

I thought a milonga would be fun and easy, but I found my first milonga really stressful. I was trying to remember so much at the same time and the sad truth is that it was the worst time I've ever had dancing. Too much thinking, too much structure, I was dancing all from the head and nothing from the heart.

By midnight I'd well and truly lost my voice, the remaining scraps of my kefi and had had enough so I walked the short distance back to my little flat to be consoled by my dog and my beloved Mr Zeus who I told all about how miserably I'd done. But he being my knight in shining armour blamed my skanked up sinuses for my dancing and not me. Hooray!

All the Single Ladies!

Yours truly was at last night's Beyonce concert. It was divalicious!

Bollywood Beauty and Friday Beatbox

Ever wake up and think "This is just the kind of day to rub soot in my eyes!" Once again, I have a feeling these whacky new-age ideas only occur to me.

In a quest to add some extra special goodies to my ebay venture, I have started putting together Bollywood Beauty Bags, each of which contains a bindi, a vial of arabic oudh perfume, and box of incense and maybe kajal, the super dark traditional kind that I use. But I thought I could give myself an edge my making the kajal myself, the old-fashioned way!

So here's what I did. I made an oil lamp from a clay pot with a cotton wick poking over one side and filled it with olive oil. Next, I balanced a metal plate over the flame with the help of two empty jars, and let the flame and the oil do the rest. I left out a whole bunch of steps, like soaking the cotton in a special blend of herbs and juices and drying it, soaking it, drying it over the course of a day. But so what! Details, details.

An hour or so later and I got bored of waiting. A nice bunch of black stuff had collected on the steel plate. Once it cooled, I added a few drop of olive oil and mixed it up into a paste. It was promisingly black, and I did what any normal person would do. I applied this to the inside of my lower lids.

Well you can imagine the results. My eyeballs didn't rot and fall out, but they were pretty pissed with me, and considering I have a day job to concentrate on, partial blindness because of oil and soot in your eyes was not going to go down as an excuse.

This leads me to believe:

1. All these people posting home-made kajal recipes online have never actually tried them


2. Not everything our grannies did was a good idea


3. Some things are best left to a professional

To celebrate my stupidity and the fact that it's Friday, here's a collection of songs that mention kajal:


Referred to here as kajra (and has a really filthy sounding screen-grab which I apologise for):




And here. I painted my eyes with the kajal of your love, this kajal drove my insane (ie. your love)
I sacrifice myself to you
The world is after me,
But I'm after you
Make me yours
I sacrifice myself to you



In my eyes there is kajal, in that kajal is my heart (hopefully not itching profusely from home-made kajal)



The kajal of my doom is in your eyes, the redness of my ruin is on your lips. Yeah. Guys say that to me all the time.



Paint your eyes with kajal darling. Featuring my favourite actress, also called Kajal. And containing about 2000 reasons to be glad the 90s are over in Bollywood world.

These eyes, this kajal, this hair, this scarf, you are a beautiful sonnet. Sorry, but you'll have to try harder than that when you're a troll seducing a sari-clad babe.


You'll notice most of the songs pining after a woman's smokey eyes are from back in the day. Presumably this means men of today have discovered other more entertaining aspects in a woman than her eyes. Which is a shame. It must have been nice to floor a man with one look of your smoky eyes.


Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjANS-n8Nl6kyYA6XLLNxAVGgsIn0HczwQ_dmFHePnPdv0Pm6T6V2TuYiOuCpMqkoQae4gBwdAlRvEGbibzXxXNQ9DjF0e2KmVCl9CutK7vbpe8I3fITyrIKEv0vxJI0dcTHTqjTA/s400/Rani+Mukerji-2.jpg

Oh Crap

After looking for my winter clothes without success for a couple of weeks, today I had a very good root around for them with no luck and have come to the conclusion that yes indeed, I accidentally gave away all my winter clothes instead of the bags of clothes to donate.

Rats. I had acquired some really cool stuff in the winter sales last year too. :(

Image: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1046/1154311210_51183d9c4b_o.jpg

Midweek Masti

So here we are halfway through the week. Is it just me or does no one seem to be having a good time at work these days? Every time I open my mouth to complain, I get a flood of work-related misery in return. Could be the unsettled weather in Greece, could be the position of the planet in our galaxy right now, could be the energy that Greece gives out sitting as she does across a couple of converging tectonic plates.

Who knows! But let's not mope too much. Time to throw on your hot pink sari and shake off the mid-week blues. Here's to all us small people with big dreams and pie-in-the-sky escape plans from our 9 to 5:

Get Your Goat

Ever since I moved to Greece, I have been campaigning for Mr Zeus to let me keep a goat and two chickens, but he ain't having none of it.

A weird request, you may think, but what can I say? Goats and chickens make me happy. Just watching them go about their little lives is like a philosophy for living. Search here, search there, eat what you find, make a noise when you do something good like lay an egg.

On Sunday we went to Schisto bazaar, a sprawling market that is laid out near Pireas and it was just divine. For one thing, it was just like being back in the Home Country. Secondly, it had that same Home Country appeal of anything and everything being collected all together to be sold. There were people literally selling junk, but kudos to them for being that ambitious.

Okay, now I know Schisto bazaar is in the news now and then for the shabby conditions they keep the animals they sell in, for example teeny little puppies out in the open, shivering on a cold day when they had no business being away from their mothers in the first place etc. But guys, I have to tell you, my heart lept a hundred metres off the ground when I spied a pen containing kids. No, no, not the manifestation of all the threats mothers in Greece dish out about the Gypsies kidnapping you if you misbehave. Kids, as in baby goats.

My oh my, it has been years since I laid eyes and hands on a baby goat. They are about the cutest little creatures you could ever see. If you feel around in the fur on their heads, you will find adorable little horns. They smell like earth. Sadly I had no camera to capture myself with a baby goat in arms.

But they took me right back to my childhood days and our goat couple, Elvis and Priscilla, with whom we enjoyed many a happy frolick before they disappeared. I don't know for sure if they were sent to the village or if they ended up on my dinner plate. I wasn't a particularly questioning child. But I have pictures of me and them and some of their offspring.

Next up were cages and cages of fabulous chickens. They were all so round and lovely and looked so delightful pecking about here and there. Life is not complete unless you own chickens! Another childhood memory of visiting our aunt in the village and searching for warm, shiny, brown little eggs laid here and there, which our aunt boiled and served to us with bowls of hot tea before cups and saucers came into fashion.

Mr Zeus thinks chickens stink and the fact is that to me chickens smell like chickens, and that's not a particularly bad smell. That's just how chickens smell. It's not their fault! And they should not be barred from my household just because Mr Zeus was born and bred in a city.

But he said pooh to that, and no chickens were to be had. Oh well. Back to urban living without goats or chickens. I think he worries that I'm a stone-hearted bitch who will eat my goats and chickens once I'm bored of them, and it doesn't help that I go on about how tasty goat curry is. It's not like my childhood doesn't back up his claim. Mwahahahaha!!!

Okay I didn't eat my pet goats and chickens. Just the ones that people brought as payment when they didn't have money (see, I didn't personally know these goats or chickens so it was alright). Oh and there was one time a baby chicken we bought from the market grew up to be a really mean rooster who we gave away to a rooster fighter. Who probably ate him. And if you knew this rooster you'd agree that he deserved it.

Image:http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3015/2342781829_bc0f1ee7bb.jpg