Return to Greece

Status symbol

2006-12-10T14:16:00.000+01:00

Expensive mobile phone = success in Greece you know... where I was before it's just a tool so nobody cares. Was trying not to give in to the pressure of the society on that, but did not last long. After a week of feeling like homeless with my sub 100 Euro mobile, I went and got me a fancier one. I still use it the same like the old but, hey, it does have a camera so I can put it to good use for my little space on the net. So after a long text only time, here is the view at sunset from my bedroom ;-) that I have been seeing these past few weeks.

Amen

2006-12-09T14:00:00.000+01:00

Finally, I actually got the internet connection at home. And it the speed sucks more than I thought it would. Oh well, at least I can see email attachments now. I would have gotten it earlier as it turns out, if I had gone earlier to pick up the equipment from the Greek Post Courier office (located 1km from my house) where it was sitting for 4 days. If you want to use this service (to send me a Christmas present maybe? ;-)), it's called Door-to-Door (sorry no english page yet, it was only founded in 1987) but I warn you, they do not mean your door.

9 1/2 weeks

2006-12-05T08:38:00.000+01:00

in Greece already. (Well, it is 9 weeks today to be exact but it's a catchier title no?) Point is, time flew by very fast. In the mean time I still got no internet and it is still July in Belgian Weather (BW) time units. Eat your heart out (I'm joking... but not really). AND, I have been enjoying Stella Artois and Belgian cookies from my local Supermarket that I was surprised to see it had the Delhaize sign on it, so what is there to miss ?? Well the Stella is made in Greece actually so I guess it is not the same :-( As for my future office, it is coming finally together. Simulations show that it will actually have two (2) real walls (and another two "last minute" additions) - thats two more than I am used to as most people know. In this rate I will get one with four walls by 2020. I guess the good news is that the "last minute" ones will fall more difficultly in case of more Shaky Shaky. That's what the builders said at least...

Nice day but it rained

2006-11-23T13:06:00.000+01:00

Well, it was not that bad... in the tax office I mean. I must have found them in a good day or something. You know, sex in the morning or the night before. Whatever it was, it took me only a couple of days to get my job done. So it seems I might get paid soon. Oh, and it rained finally. And usually the shit hits the fan when that happens. Somehow the greek ground is not engineered for rain. It is waterproof I think. So it all stays up there and makes a big mess. Oh well, tomorrow it will be sunny again.

New look...

2006-11-15T12:47:00.000+01:00

for the blog not for me, I still look the same. Please do not comment if this is good or bad. I cannot take any chances here. BTW, I finally got a fixed phone in case somebody did not hear about it. Now there is another quest to get "fast" internet as they call it here. Look back 4-6 years at the internet market in north Europe and you will get the idea what they call fast. I guess it is a geographic problem since here is really south. South of the border as they say.

Shaky Shaky

2006-11-11T11:02:00.000+01:00

So, I was minding my own in business in the office corridor that I came to know as my temporary office space, and then the whole building starts shaking (little bit.) It only lasted like 3 seconds but it was enough. The Arabic guy in the next office asked "was this an earthquake?" and the others casually answered "yes yes it is normal don't worry". Don't worry? Patras is in close to one of the most active earthquake areas in Greece. Ok it is not Japan, but the constructions are not like that either although they try. Oh well, it was a small one after all....

Can you spell that?

2006-11-08T21:43:00.000+01:00

Well, it took a while to notice, but it finally registered after a while trying to get stuff and speaking to people. Nobody asks me to spell my name for them anymore!? Then, I remembered the pain everytime I had to tell to people my name and all the times they killed it calling me or talking to me. Oh the variations I heard and saw written. Even copy-paste was not working. Nothing sucks more than having your name spelled badly on a badge, letter, credit card, and I have seen it all. And now, magically, they understand me again. Don't have to spell it, don't have to say it twice, don't have to write it myself or point it on the screen or find it or... you get the picture.

Back (semi-)online

2006-10-20T12:49:00.000+02:00

OK, I have to write something otherwise I repeat everything on emails (no nice pictures however because I cannot get them from the camera yet.) The trip was good and the search for house went great (for those that forgot, I'm in Patras.) Got a nice little place with a view to the sea - it is blue here as I remembered it. For the moment the furniture searching is going so so and yesterday I made a trip to good old ikea in Athens. In the rest of the life, things do not seem much different than i remember.... everything is beautiful, underestimated, and underdeveloped. I have no phone no internet and no office in the university, yet so communication as I knew it is very difficult. Hope to have more options soon.

Entering radio silence

2006-10-03T01:12:00.000+02:00

Last entry, seconds before declaring radio silence for the transfer back home. Next entry should be from the trip destination. Just for fun, I did a comparison of my digital and analog belongings (pictures not in the same scale.) Yeah, I know, digital books, articles, photos, cds, dvds are much lighter to carry around...

Last chances

2006-09-24T22:53:00.000+02:00

Long delay again before updating.... was sure this was gonna happen from the beginning, but I'm prepared to continue fighting it. So things got ugly this month with rushing to finish the stuff and to arrange some of the details. But now it is finally better. I'm 90% packed and even my one-way ticket arrived together with this very appropriate advertisement in the mail. Actually it is about retiring your car (which I did) and getting up to 2 years of free public transport in Brussels and 400 Euros for a bicycle or car sharing. Now this is something I'm sure you don't find back home (nahhh, public transport is not that good there anyway.)

I also took a last chance to profit from being here by doing a 24hour trip to Paris for a party. Greece is too far away to do these things - or maybe not if you have friends all over Europe.

2006-08-21T22:39:00.000+02:00

TODO item 4312: Booked a one way airplane ticket. Seems weird. One rarely books a one way ticket to anywhere. The significance of the event is still sinking in.

2006-08-18T00:07:00.000+02:00

VW Golf RIP 1987-2006. I know you would have liked the dry climate for your retirement, but you would not be able to endure the long trip to the south.

2006-08-06T20:34:00.000+02:00

Long time since last post. Well, it is justified, not much happened in the "Return to Greece" front during this time. Did some cool things in the meantime though. Ok, one cool thing. Went to Los Angeles for a conference yada yada yada. If you read this blog you knew that anyway. I finally got around it, and now you can check out the pictures.

Best of LA

Jul 21, 2006 - 83 Photos

Moving around in LA you always feel in the middle of some movie or TV series

Inside the movies

Jul 24, 2006 - 10 Photos

But the highlight was really visiting Joshua Tree National Park (sorry no digital pictures of that) and Palm Springs close by, for american standards, to LA.

Palm Springs Aerial Tramway

Jul 20, 2006 - 10 Photos

No trip feels complete without some art so I stopped by the Getty center before leaving. They build the damn thing with 16000 tons of the same stone as the Colloseum delivered from Italy on 100 shiploads.

Getty center

Jul 22, 2006 - 26 Photos

After that it has been going downhill. Went to the "beach" here in Belgium one day, but I will complain about it another time. Then it started raining and being 20 degrees again, and on top of that my birthday is approaching fast and I will be definitely older than the expected temperature. But then when I was browsing the web for something to cheer me up I found :-( and I thought this would make a perfect birthday present if anybody reads my blog ;-)

2006-06-27T00:14:00.000+02:00

Saw this video today (people who have been in my car will recognize some words I'm sure.) Oh the memories that came back. All those years of driving a motorbike in Athens while I was in the university. So convenient, so cost and time efficient. Everybody drives one there - permanently. It's the Greek answer to the traffic problem. Here, you rarely see them, except for good weather days, so, hmm rarely. But I better not get started on the weather. Let's talk driving. So, people drive bad here. People have priority from the right (and use it) even if they are in a small side-street of an avenue. The law even gives them priority to enter any lane of the street, so you should give way even if you are in the left/middle lane of a big street. Consequently, you approach each intersection with one eye looking right and the foot ready to hit the break. And when they come they don't even peak at your way, let alone stop! But every time, my sense of self-preservation makes me slow down and check my left when I'm about to enter a bigger street. Maybe it is all these years of driving a motorbike in Athens (the video is proof I guess) but it seems like common sense.

2006-06-22T00:24:00.000+02:00

Wow a blog! Never thought I would get one. Never thought I would go back home either. So here you go. Anyway, since several people I know have a blog to keep in touch with their friends after they went abroad, I had the inspiration(!) to make one for my friends about (what I expect to be) the adventure of returning back to Greece after 7 year in Brussels. So I mainly expect to be full of complaints about Greek/Belgian bureaucracy, disappointing facts about Greece that I read in the newspapers and the occasional funny story (hey, all stories sound funny after enough time.) BTW, writing a PhD thesis you (at least I) learn that you should put the punctuation marks before closing parenthesis/quotes. Anyway, back to the main subject, with ~3 months to go before ... going I set to make a TODO list using Google Notebook, handy to make notes from parts of websites for future reference. Of course, seeing the size of this list was not encouraging at all but I guess it will help eventually. This reminds me something I read somewhere:

My TODO list is, ironically, incomplete.