I might not make it to the New Year...

They're killing me at work! Have you ever tried working intensively for eight hours straight with barely a break to eat or use the toilet, five days a week for weeks on an end? It's unbelievably exhausting. Especially if the work is not the usual relatively creative and interesting design work I usually do (I'm an architect).

No, for the past month my desk has been hidden under piles of paper-work and files. And the more I get through, the more appear. It's boring, mind-numbing, repetitive work, but at the same time it's imperative no mistakes are made. And when I'm not filling in forms and putting together files, I am standing in endless queues in various town-planning offices submitting the files.

You might be wondering what all these mysterious files are about. As everyone knows, the Greek state is bankrupt and is looking for creative ways to find money. In that spirit they have passed a law that permits the legalisation (for forty years) of various illegally enclosed spaces within buildings, with a fine of course. Under the threat of extensive checks once the deadline has passed and a hefty fine for all offenders, everyone is rushing to legalise all they can. And it would not be an exaggeration to say that 80% of all buildings built after the 1980s have some sort of illegally enclosed space.

Why? You'll have to read the ridiculously confusing and irrational Greek Building Code with all it's glaring loopholes to start to understand. And then you'll have to take into account the incompetent, understaffed and often corrupted town-planning offices to get a more complete picture.

So anyway, all this paper-work is sucking all the energy and life out of me.

Before I go and crash into my beckoning bed, I'll leave you with a song I heard in the taxi home this evening. (Yes, on top of it all we have to deal with Public Transport strikes!) It's an old greek song I remember from my teenage years. It's called Didimoticho Blues (Didimoticho being a border town in the very easternmost tip of Greece. It's also possibly the most northern city in Greece too.)



I realise that if you can't understand the lyrics (which are quite good) you are completely missing what the song's about (it's about the army service which is still obligatory in Greece). After a bit of searching I came across this translation.