Taking a short break

So it's been hot hot hot lately, and I've been depressed and irritable. I have a hard time sleeping at the best of times, and now with this awful heat, I hardly sleep a wink. As you can guess, I'm quite bad company lately.

Last week-end the latest heat-wave culminated, reaching as high as 41 and 42 degrees Celsius in Athens. Being forewarned by the weather forecast and having had a better proposition that sitting sweltering in the hell-hole that is Athens in the summer, I left the city.

Friday, right after work, I rushed to Piraeus - the port of Athens - and got the boat to the near by island of Kythnos, where a friend was holidaying. Taking the boat to an island is so much of a familiar summer ritual. It's one of the slowest, most boring and yet most calming ways to travel. This time my trip was only three hours long, but I have frequently taken twelve hour long boat journeys (sleeping on the deck of a boat is a marvelous experience) and one memorable time - never to be repeated - I took a never-ending impossible twenty-six hour boat journey!

I have visited Kythnos many times, so it's a very familiar island full of old memories. The small apartment my friend rents the whole year round so she can visit anytime, has the view of her favourite beach, and was the location of many of our teenaged high-jinks.



Like many greek islands, Kythnos has blue blue seas and bare bare hills.



And most of the photos you take end up looking like post-cards.



As you can see, I don't have much to say for myself and am copping out by posting photos instead.

I only stayed the weekend - having to be back to work on Monday - but it was certainly better than nothing! And now, the little trip is over and I'm back in Athens counting down the days till my summer holiday (two more weeks!).

Birthdays and Blues

It's my birthday tomorrow and I'm feeling blue. My blueness and my impending birthday are totally unrelated. They just so happen.

I am totally past the feeling sad and teary part of depression and have moved onto the listless, apathetic, un-motivated part of depression. It's hard being depressed when it's so hot (so hot! too hot!) and the sun is so bright (burn your eyes bright!), but I am managing.

Unfortunately I am not one of those constructive romantic depressives that stop eating (what a great diet plan!), put on too much eyeliner (can't be bothered!) and go for long walks in the rain with a book of french poetry in their pockets. (I suspect that those are the depressives that snag all the boyfriends.)

No, I'm one of those pathetic loser depressives that stays at home Saturday night to watch youtube videos with a tub of chocolate ice-cream (it's hot, I say!) for company. (No wonder I'm single!)

Yesterday (which wasn't Saturday!), I managed to force my inert self to close my youtube tab and watch a film instead. An 80s Kevin Bacon film (Quicksilver!), one of the best pick me ups out there. Kevin Bacon is sexy (especially in the 80s) and bicycles are cool (always!). And here's the proof:



And if you're still not persuaded that bicycles are cool, how about this?

Better late than never?

Or maybe not...



Last sunday (last sunday! I'm so bad at keeping this journal it's not funny) I took part in this year's summer Alleycat Race organised by this great group.

I have taken part in a number of other alleycat races. They are great fun and always pretty exhausting, but I think this one beat them all in the exhaustion factor. It was almost 40 Km long! It took me three hours to complete it - the winner finished in one and a half hours. When I finished I was in pain - I have bad knees - and didn't stop hurting for a couple of days. What can you expect, we cycled the whole Athens seafront, practically from beginning to end!



Check out some photos here.

Just an average saturday

Nothing much to say for myself.

I dragged my lazy arse out the house (I like to spend saturdays mooching) and went to the market to buy fresh vegetables and fish. I love the market! There's nothing like buying your vegetables straight from the farmers. And it's practically the only place you can buy greek vegetables in good condition in my neighbourhood. The supermarkets only seem to stock un-frozen imported vegetables. And the market is fun! You get to rub shoulders with old ladies and middle aged mothers as you prod the vegetables and compare the prices between stalls to choose the best. Plus if you go late enough you can pick up cheap fish from the fish stalls. I got two kilos of gavros (which my dictionary translates as hornbeam. Is that right? Strange name.) for five euro, which is pretty good. Now to decide if I want to cook it today or tomorrow...

It's a pretty muggy hot day today and on the way back from the market I got caught in a sudden downpour. Just enough to get very wet and annoyed. Now the sun is back out and it feels even more like a sauna than before...

To top up my post of nothingness, guess what I can hear one of my neighbours listening to via the interior courtyard. You'll never get it.

One of Odysseas Elitis (nobel winning greek poet) most famous poems that was set to music by Mikis Theodorakis (famous greek composer). Real highbrow stuff. Actually real left-wing (that the socialist right? I always get mixed up) highbrow stuff. To whit:



And just because, here's another awesome Elitis poem set to music by Theodorakis:



I do realise that if you don't know greek these songs won't really mean much to you. Ah, the old language barriers!

Why I don't like parties

So I'm feeling depressed and anti-social. Actually I have been feeling depressed and anti-social for a couple of weeks now. I was planning on telling you about the party I went to last Saturday. The party that only proved my point. That I have a reason for being a miserable anti-social sod.

So yeah, a friend (a close friend) invited me to a party she was throwing together with another friend of hers where they had invited a ton of people (a ton of people I didn't know). I rarely get invited to parties, so I went. I tried my best to hype myself up to the difficult occasion of meeting so many people and of being friendly and sociable. I hyped myself up so much that I ended up coming off as manic - like I usually do on occasions like this.

I tried to start conversations with an amazing amount of people (and was blown off by most of them) and I asked people to dance with me - men and women - (and got turned down by most). As the night went on and I eventually got a bit drunk, I started to come down from my self-created manic high and realise that almost no-one had tried to start a conversation with me first and that absolutely no-one had invited me to dance - despite me hopping up and down on the dance floor like some sort of demented bunny.

In a last desperate bid at sociability - even though I can feel myself slipping inexorably into my usual people-hating mood - I pick a young woman standing in the corner tapping her feet to the beat and ask her to dance. She agrees and I start feeling a bit more optimistic. One of the many guys I had tried talking to comes and joins us and I start to feel that things are truly looking up. Only the guy, after giving me a cursory greeting, turns his back on me and starts hitting on the other woman. They end up leaving me dancing by myself. The fact that the other woman was obviously much prettier than me, certainly didn't help me feel any better about the matter.

So somewhere there, I decide to give up the party as a lost cause. I spent the rest of the night talking with my few friends who had come. Stupidly I decide not to leave when I truly have had enough, but to wait for the friend I went with, who wanted to stay till the end to help clean up... In the end we don't leave last, but we do clean up most of the mess first.

The only nice thing that happened the whole party - besides meeting an acquaintance I hadn't seen in over fifteen years - was that one of the many guys I tried dancing and talking with, made the effort of saying good-bye before he left and kissing me on the cheek. He was plastered, but it was sweet of him nevertheless.

So now I think I can happily let another six months or more pass until I decide it's worth my while to make the effort of being pleasant and sociable again. By then I will have forgotten this fiasco and have persuaded myself that - despite previous evidence - I can make people like me.

No, I'm not bitter. Not at all.

Midsummer's Night

As usual I have a number of things to say, but am putting them off until I feel up to it.

So for now, let me just tell you that last night I went to final day of the three concerts for Europen Music Day. This little music festival has been happening for a number of years now in a large number of european cities. Athens festival is nice enough, but it's not nearly as much for as the one in Paris that I went to for two years running. In Paris there are not only stages for professional groups, but on every street corner and every square you can find choirs and amateur groups making music. All kinds of music! And it lasts all night!

So yesterday I saw:

Dustbowl, who where very good. They played americana so well, we almost thought they were american.

Electric Litany, who I really really liked. They played the sort of atmospheric rock I love.

The Meanie Genies, who well where rather dull. They sounded like every other greek rock group.

The Boy, who really has gone a long way since I first saw him with Mary (as Mary and the Boy). I have heard him play dozens of times, and each time he's better than the last.

Burger Project, who where the headliners. They mostly do remakes of well known songs, but they are a tremendous amount of fun and one of the most danceable bands in Greece.

Everybody knows this song, right?

How soon is now?

I think I must have mentioned my oddly optimistic friend who thinks that revolution is near. He happily believes that if you push the people far enough (and we are being pushed, believe me! We are near breaking point) they will have no choice but to revolt.

Will they hurry up then? I am more than ready for the revolution. I have so much pent up rage, I dearly want an excuse to unleash it. There is only so long I can hold on to my righteous anger, before it turns into useless despair.

It's imperative we take control back from the economists and the corporations. They are the people that got us into this mess in the first place. And I'm not only talking about Greece, but the whole world. It's very clear that the people in charge have no idea about the real world. Do we really want people who apparently have lost all their humanity and sense of compassion calling the shots? And worst of all do we want people who are incapable of logical reasoning and are devoid of simple common sense making decisions for us?