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May 29 Greece Trip: Day 5 For some reason I had a pretty rough night, couldnt sleep much so ended up getting ready at 5 am when the ship reached Piraeus. After we disembarked we got a cab (who charged us more than 25 instead of 10 that we was supposed to) to get to the hotel. Since we were very early we just dropped off our luggage and proceeded to the Acropolis. This place we pretty crowded but at the same time a must:  We walked through the entire ruins to finally get to the Parthenon:  The view from the top is pretty amazing, you can see the entire Athens city from there.  Next we walked by the new Acropolis Museum (to open on June 11) and to the National Gardens  Exited from the Sundial exit to get to the Parliament and the Syntagma Square  We also saw the changing of the guards at the Tomb of the unknown soldier  After that we went straight to the hotel, ate some of the snacks we had at home and decided to take a nap. Evening we trip to go to an indian restaurant by taking the metro, walked a lot to get to it but it ended up being closed and so we just ordered some pizza in the hotel room. Next morning, we dropped mom off to the airport, took the bus on our way back and then relaxed some in the hotel room. I finally got on the plane by 3 pm, to get to Paris CDG by 6. The new lounge at CDG is really nice, after which I took my flight to New York. Stayed a night in New York and finally got to LAX by 10 am on Wednesday morning. Long flight.. but enough breaks to make my recovery pretty speedy! Greece Trip: Day 4 - Crete and Santorini This time we werent missing the historical excursion even though we did not sign up for it. We got out on time at 7 am and decided to take a cab right from the port. This time we bargained with the cab so that we got the price we thought was right and we decided to hold him for a good 3 hours that we had on the island of Crete. The port was at the capital city of this large greek island: Heraklion. As we went through the city we saw a lot of shops, a hospital and a school - all closed because it was a sunday. First stop Palace of Knossos. We shadowed some guides to get some of the historical information, we gained the rest of reading the little palques with all the information on there. This place has been restored fairly well to be able to imagine how this palace may have been. They also have an orange grove outside with the most amazing fresh orange juice and an entertaining guy who is selling it in Greek, French, Spanish and English!  Next we drove around the vineyards which are really typical of the area and finally ended the tour at the venetian fort. This was a nicely restored castle from the outside where one could walk around and watch the fisherman get ready for their daily expeditions.  We boarded the ship back at 12 and were told not to take a nap because we were approaching the best island of the trip:Santorini and we should be on the deck to see it when it arrives. We were also warned that since the two excursions were on different parts of the island that if we missed when they called out our tender boat number, we would miss the excursion. One went to the volcano and the other to Thira and Oia villages. We took the latter. We got in our buses and started to tour the island, initially it didnt seem like that big a deal, we saw ridges on the mountain which denoted the different lava formations and indicated time of different explosions and then we started climbing higher, we noticed the white greek orthodox churches with blue domes, saw some of the vineyards and next thing we know, we are in Oia.  Then we were told to hang out there for a few hours, the moment we started walking we noticed the breathtaking views that everyone was talking about and thats when we saw the most beautiful picturesque view ever! We couldnt stop gazing, finally we decided to get some frappe and sit down in one of the cafes so we can keep looking at the view for a complete hour before we had to head back. If I ever go to Greece next time, thats the place I want to go!  Next we proceeded to take the bus around the island to Thira where we were left by ourselves to walk through the little town and get to the cable car and go back down to the dock where our tender boats were waiting to take us back to the ship. So we enjoyed a few more hours of this breathtaking view, walked around some nice stores and then headed back via cable car.  The last night ended uneventfully as we packed and got ready for a whole day in Athens before we head back to our homes abroad. Greece Trip: Day 3 - Kusadasi and Patmos After a relatively peaceful night, we woke up to sounds of docking in Kusadasi, Turkey. Since we werent taking the excursion we decided to take the breakfast at the buffet restaurant on the deck and then proceed to the town to check it out. In hindsight we should have done the Ephesus Neopolis excursion, instead we took a stroll through the local bazaar, got scammed by a riskshaw driver, pleasently surprised by a shopkeeper who spoke gujarati and finally had a long inviting conversation about how the turkish fought the war and who they make their wares in a shop run by a family for 3 generations.   They also gave us free apple tea which was pretty awesome in the cute turkish cups. Another interesting place was the water fountain in the middle of the bazaar. There was also a burger king with bean burger and a starbucks with turkish coffee! After we came back aboard and got some lunch, I decided to sit at the sun deck for a while. The swimming pool was so small that there wasnt a single person in there, so I skipped that and only layed out in the sun for a big. We were taking our first excursion in Patmos that evening so we got ready for that. Once we arrived in patmos, we were taken in by Tender boats to buses which were going to give us an island tour. We had chose to go to the scenic tour as opposed to the tour of the monastery.  First we visited the cave where John the Evangelist/divine wrote the Book of Revelations.  Next we visited a little town-Chora by the monastery and then drove around the island and back to the port town of Skala where we had our 'coffee time' and drank the Greek Frappe for the first time. It was just like a cold coffee.  Day 2: Cruise Begins, Mykonos Free breakfast is always a good way to start the day :-) We check out from the hotel, catch the taxi to Piraeus and off we are to board the cruise. Ours was Louis cruise lines and we were taking the Aegean legends tour with 4 islands in Greece and 1 in Turkey in 3 days and 3 nights. Our ship was called the Aegean Pearl:
 The ship was not what I expected, its a lot smaller than the standard cruises that we have in the US with a swimming pool that's almost non-existent. the rooms were decent size, with one restaurant where we first gathered for our safety seminar and to note our muster stations. The beauty salon and casino were really small, also the piano bar and other rooms were nothing to write home about.  The point however of the cruise (and I didnt know this then) was the islands and we were pretty much going to hit an island every morning and evening. We signed up for excursions in Patmos and Satorini. In Mykonos we took the shuttle - tender boat to the town center. In the other islands we decided to do things on our own. After a nice meal and a quick nap, we arrived in Mykonos after early evening about 4 pm. This island below me way, the whole place was totally catering to tourists, it was incredibly beautiful and clean. the scenery was breathtaking and it was so convenient to walk to the windmills, little shops, cobbled streets and cafes with incredible views.. I felt like I was in a fantasy world.   We walked up to the windmills and then sat in a cafe for a bit before we bought some souviners and headed back to the ship. After getting back, we had another round of our wonderful 5 course dinner and joined a bunch of people for a show in the clipper lounge: New York to Paris. This turned out to be a buncha songs in different languages done by a group of very bad singers and dancers... all the same it was enjoyable to wind down with some music... Greece Trip:Day 1 -Athens, Microlimano and Plaka I just got back from Greece, I didnt keep good notes on places we visited this time around but I am going to try and chronicle from memory: Day1: Delta flight: LAX->NYC->ATH Starts at 4.30 am, when I left for the airport. Flight's on time and the layover was a very quick hour and half and then we were in Athens before I know it. Flight to New York had screens per seat but I could only watch TV, everything else was pay per view in coach. Flight to Athens was worse, aisle seat and no screen at all. Which worked out pretty good since I managed to read The Blind Eye for most of the 8 hour flight. Such an gripping and horrifying book! Immigration was very simple and then I waited in the baggage claim area for an hour waiting for mom-dad to come from Istanbul where they had spent the previous week. Once they arrived, we got a taxi to the Hotel: Parthenon right by Acropolis. The country at first sight looked more like asia with the density and pollution. The traffic was pretty crazy also, the way no one respects the lane dividers, most people seemed to drive between the lanes. In terms of infrastructure it does look pretty good, we saw the first 1896 Olympic stadium: Panathinaiko Stadium on our way there:  Since the Acropolis museum is set to open on June 11, they closed down the road to go to our hotel so getting there through all the one ways and no-u-turns was quite a nightmare for the taxi driver. He finally decided to take the risk and take a turn where he wasnt supposed to. We probably saw Hadrian's arch and Temple of Zeus about five times before we finally get to the hotel. We had no idea that it was this 'must see' ruin that we kept repeatedly pointing at...   On reaching the hotel, I practically just crashed since it was 3 am my time. Got up in 3-4 hours and then we decided to make our way to Microlimano. We had a hard time getting a Taxi since none of them would stop on flagging, some guy try to scam us by charging 30 euros to go there but luckily my mom already knew its less than 10. Finally we did manage to hail a cab, a nice new mercedes with a young driver who spoke pretty good english.. he kinda became our tourguide. on our way there, he shows us the 2 new stadiums that were built for the olympics:   Microlimano ended up being just a pretty strip of exclusive restaurants with the view of the marina. We ate some yummy pasta at a place called Pesto Pasta and Pizzas after walking up and down the strip twice and looking at the beautiful boats and view of the marina.  our view:  The restaurant called a cab for us after I overtipped them since I forgot that you dont tip more than 10% in europe, they even gave us a free shot of Limencello in a chocolate shot class and on my mom's request their little dip cups for the pesto and red sauce that they served with the bread! Once we got back, we decided to hit the Plaka area which is full of restaurants and shops but it also a nice place to walk around. There was live music, roasted corn and beautiful sunset...  May 15 Paris–Athens Related to the story I am reading right now:
TODOROVDEN (St. Theodore's Day) St. Theodore's Day is celebrated six days after Shrovetide. It is also known as "Horses' Easter" because of the horse races (kushii) commonly held on that day. According to folk tradition, the newly married women would make a ritual Theodore's round loaf of bread decorated with a dough-modelled image of a horse's head. Pieces of this bread used to be given out to neighbours or strangers by the women who would accompany the ritual with bouncing and neighing like mares.
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was a prominent American comic actor and filmmaker. Best known for his silent films, his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".[1] Keaton's career as a performer and director is widely considered to be among the most innovative and important work in the history of cinema. He was recognized as the seventh greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.[2] In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Keaton the 21st greatest male actor of all time. A 2002 worldwide poll by Sight & Sound ranked Keaton's The General as the 15th best film of all time. Three other Keaton films received votes in the magazine's survey: Our Hospitality, Sherlock, Jr., and The Navigator.[3] Jacques Tati (October 9 1907–November 5 1982) was a noted French comedic filmmaker. He was born Jacques Tatischeff, the son of Russian father Georges-Emmanuel Tatischeff and Dutch mother Marcelle Claire Van Hoof, in Le Pecq, Yvelines, and died in Paris. Paris Airport in the 60's Greek military junta of 1967–1974The Greek military junta of 1967–1974, alternatively "The Regime of the Colonels" (Greek: Το καθεστώς των Συνταγματαρχών, To kathestos ton Syntagmatarhon), or in Greece "The Junta", (English /'dʒʌntə/ or /ˈhʊntə/, Greek Χούντα, /'xunda/) and "The Seven Years" (Greek: Η Επταετία, I Eptaetia) are terms used to refer to a series of right-wing military governments that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. Rule by the military started in the morning of 21 April 1967 with a coup d'état led by a group of colonels of the Greek military, and ended in July 1974.
Turkish invasion of CyprusThe Turkish invasion of Cyprus, launched on 20 July 1974, was a Turkish military operation against a coup which had been staged by the Cypriot National Guard[citation needed] against president Makarios III with the intention of annexing the island to Greece[citation needed], but the invasion ended up with Turkey occupying a considerable area on the north part of it and establishing a government on it that only Turkey recognizes, in contradiction to the terms of the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee. The invasion came after more than a decade of sporadic intercommunal violence[citation needed] between the island's Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots resulting from the constitutional breakdown of 1963.[citation needed]Turkey claims that she invoked her role as a guarantor under the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee in justification for it.[1] The United Nations have challenged the legality of Turkey's action, because Article Four of the Treaty of Guarantee gives the right to guarantors to take action with the sole aim of re-establishing the state of affairs.[2] The aftermath of Turkey's invasion however, was not the safeguarding of the Republic's sovereignty and territorial integrity but exactly the opposite. The de facto partition of the Republic in two, the creation of a political entity and the forceful expulsion of Greek Cypriots from the north. Turkish forces invaded the island in two waves, occupying 37% of the island's territory in the north-east. The operation led to the widespread displacement of Cyprus' ethnic communities, dividing the island between a Turkish Cypriot north and Greek Cypriot south. In the aftermath, Turkish Cypriots declared a separate political entity in the form of the Turkish Federative State of Cyprus and by 1983 made a unilateral declaration of independence as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which was recognized only by Turkey. The United Nations continues to recognize the sovereignty of the Republic of Cyprus according to the terms of its independence in 1960. The conflict continues to overshadow Turkish relations with Greece and with the European Union. The United Kingdom even considered taking military action to stop the invasion.
Nikos Kazantzakis (Greek: Νίκος Καζαντζάκης) (February 18, 1883, Heraklion, Crete, Ottoman Empire - October 26, 1957, Freiburg, Germany) was arguably the most important and most translated Greek writer and philosopher of the 20th century. Yet he did not become well known globally until the 1964 release of the Michael Cacoyannis film Zorba the Greek, based on Kazantzakis' novel whose English translation has the same title. Raymond ChandlerRaymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American crime writer, who had an immense stylistic influence upon the modern private eye story, especially in the style of the writing and the attitudes now characteristic of the genre. His protagonist, Philip Marlowe, is synonymous with "private detective," along with Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade.And now the story that made me look up all these references. The story is so universal and feels kinda personal yet resonates with me immensely! From Paris–Athens Translated from the French by Alyson Waters To my father I. Silence I don't know when I started to write this book. I know that today is the 9th, I'm looking in my datebook: Sunday, November 9th, 1986, St. Theodore's day—no, I'm off by a week, today is only the 2nd, All Souls Day. I would have preferred to start on the 9th—Theodore is a Greek name. Oh, well; the Day of the Dead isn't bad, either. Actually, I didn't begin this book today. A year ago, perhaps. Perhaps twenty-five years ago, when I left Greece. I was seventeen. I no longer remember at what time the ship set sail. It was daytime, it was hot. I remember the sunglasses my mother wore to hide her tears. I had a big white imitation-leather suitcase, and other luggage as well. While I was struggling down the pier, I looked at my shadow. It reminded me of a comic figurine, decked out in an enormous rectangular skirt. Did I really look at my shadow? Is that really what it reminded me of? I can't swear to it. In any case, maybe that was the day I began this book. I was too moved to speak. At the origin of every book there is, I believe, a silence. There have been other silences since. A year ago, I tried to write. I spent hours, days, staring at the blank page without managing to trace a single word; I was incapable of choosing between Greek and French. It was precisely about the difficulty of this choice that I wanted to write, but how can you write without choosing? I thought of a sophism we learned in Greek school: a crocodile (Why a crocodile? Have there ever been crocodiles in Greece?) kidnapped a child, then said to the mother: "I'll give him back to you if you can guess what I'm thinking." "You're thinking that you won't give him back to me," said the mother. "You lose," answered the crocodile. "Because if I'm thinking not to give him back to you, I won't give him back to you, since that's what I'm thinking. If I'm thinking of giving him back to you, you guessed wrong, and so I won't give him back." "You're the one who loses," the mother retorted. "Because either you're thinking of giving him back to me, and in that case, you'll give him back, since that's your intention, or else you're thinking you won't give him back to me, in which case I guessed correctly and you have to give him back anyway." My powerlessness as I faced the blank page made me furious. Partly to console myself, I told myself—but in which language?—that there was no reason to put a single mark on the paper, that it expressed my situation perfectly exactly as it was. On the small street where I live, in Paris's fifteenth arrondissement, there is an Arab café across from a dance school that nothing but a plate glass window separates from the sidewalk. You can see the women dancing very clearly—the shade that's supposed to screen them is never drawn—but you can barely hear the music. You can, however, hear the music from the café very well; the door is always open. This bizarre scene of young women studying modern or classical dance to Arabic music, which could come straight out of a Buster Keaton or Jacques Tati movie, makes me extremely melancholic. I feel a bit melancholic every time I come back from Greece, too. I'm surprised when the taxi drivers at Orly airport speak to me in French. It's as though I have trouble acknowledging that I've really returned. I'm surprised to hear myself speaking French. In fact, I have trouble finding the right tone and difficulty speaking clearly, which explains why I always put off making that first phone call. When I finally do make the call, I still have the impression that I'm hearing someone else speak through me in my own voice. I remind myself of an actor watching himself dubbed on the screen. Suit in the Soil Just read about this place:
The Krapi Plateau is on the road to Sfakia from Chania, before Askifou Plateau. Sight's area of interestSAMARIA GORGE AND THE WHITE MOUNTAINS WESTERN CRETE, GREECE Rich in history, spectacular vistas and sunny days, Crete has long been renowned for its agreeable Mediterranean climate that has always been attractive to humankind and allowed the ancient Minoan civilization to flourish over four thousand years ago. Crete, the largest of the Greek islands, defines the southernmost boundary of Europe and is located at a point where three continents converge. Its unique geographical position is responsible for Crete being able to boast an incredible variety of flora, many of which are endemic with Asiatic and African relationships.
The Sfakians (or Sphakians or Sfakiots; Greek: Σφακιανοί) are the inhabitants of the region of Sfakia located in western Crete. The Sfakians hold themselves to be the direct descendants of the Dorians who invaded the island around 1100 BC. The inhabitants of Sfakia have faced numerous foreign invaders, to which fact they owe their reputation as firece and courageous warriors that they have had for centuries. 
Askifou Plain CreteThe newly improved road south from Vrisses rises steeply to the unfortunately named KRAPI village then drops to the ASKIFOU plain. Shockingly green after the climb through the grey mountains, flat and fertile it is surrounded by magnificent mountain crags. The village itself has no tourist facilities, just the ruins of a Turkish fortress. The road drops south from the Imbros plateau to the delightful IMBROS gorge. There is a walking trail down the 7km gorge that takes the visitor through tight crevices, some only 2 metres wide and 300 metres deep. Cypress, pine and evergreen oaks grow in the bottom of the gorge which is a favourite with walkers. 
EAGALEO,
commonly Aigaleo or Egaleo is a municipality west of Athens , it is situated west of the Cephissos river. One quarter of the municipality is industrialized mainly in the east where the Cephissus valley is located and is connected as the Athens Industrial Area. The first name of Egaleo was "Nees Kidonies". Today its population is about 120,000. The most of its citizens are workers. The soccer team for the city is Egaleo FC Egaleo. The FC is a Greek football club, who play at Egaleo, Athens. Its city newspaper since 1985 has the same name with the suburban city called Aigaleo. It used to be the seat of Western Attica. The community will have a subway station named Aegaleo. About 1/4 of its area is full with factories. The biggest problems for the past few decades was smog and traffic congestion. Here's the story, brilliant piece, specially if you see the images of the places he is talking about.. great writing too. From Suit in the Soil Translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich The cab driver was in the mood for conversation, but his passenger wasn't. So the tape deck came on and Angela Dimitriou started work at seven-thirty in the morning. Side by side in a silver twin frame on the dashboard, the singer and the Virgin Mary kept the driver company. He was a thirtyish, scrawny man with a huge mustache and big brown eyes, a frappé in a special holder, and a well-cared-for car with good tires that was now leaving the olive groves behind, climbing the switchbacks up into the mountains. When they reached the Krapi Plateau the driver asked if he could pull over to take a leak, since, as he soberly confessed, he had made a vow that he would stop here whenever a ride brought him to these parts. He zipped up his pants, washed his hands in the spring-fed basin, glanced toward the solitary little church of St. John the Baptist, crossed himself and, sprightly and refreshed, walked back to the car. —Go fuck yourself, he told his cell phone, switching it off. This place demanded quiet. His passenger had gotten out and was sitting on a rock, talking to himself and wiping sweat from his face and neck with a handkerchief. The taxi moved forward and the plateau moved backward as they zigzagged up the switchbacks, and the passenger, glued to the open window, one hand shading his eyes, gazed up at an eagle, the only dark thing moving in this endless grayness, mountains without a spot of green, sky without a spot of blue. The Sleepwalker I like the writing style on this one... Margarita Karapanou From The Sleepwalker Translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich "Flying Dolphin!" Alan leapt out of bed. It was a quarter to seven and he had missed the boat. He had packed his bags and dressed for the trip the night before, and though it was May he'd even put on his Burberry raincoat so as to be completely ready. Then he sat on his bed smoking and drinking coffee, listening to the church bells marking the hours, counting them as they passed, holding his watch up to his ear to make sure it hadn't stopped. He saw the whole night pass before his window, heard the first owl of the year, and talked to himself for hours on end, which made him laugh, because in his novel he was trying to write an interior monologue, and though he knew the mechanics of it and had studied lots of other writers to see how and when they used it, he just couldn't make it work. As soon as the main character started in, he seemed like the waiter at Antonio's café yelling, "Ice cream! Ice cream!" to the Japanese tourists as they climbed down the gangway of the cruise ship. "And now look," he said, "here I am, alone in the night, creating an interior monologue I'll never be able to write." Alan drank coffee and smoked, stared out the window and said, "Dear darling island, how I hate you, you're a prison smothered in flowers, I've never been more eager to leave a place. I can't stand this enchantment anymore, I can't stand being bewitched in this way—when I look at you, my gaze turns to nothing but a mirror of light, I'll be staring at you for ages, hypnotized, and when I stop seeing you I'll feel you, and when I stop feeling you I'll die. How I long for ugliness and filth, cities, streets, cars, I want to wake up in the morning and wait at a red light to cross the street, I want to wait and watch busses pass by, faces peering at me through the glass, then the light will turn green and I'll walk across the road in the pedestrian crosswalk. By this time tomorrow I'll be walking in some city. I'll have been saved." More...Kaspar Hauser in a Desolate Land from The Double Book I like this one.. quite simple and universal. Kaspar Hauser in a Desolate Land from The Double Book Translated from the Greek by Peter Constantine I haven't seen that chain-smoking Spanish girl for days. Not at our ten o'clock break, and not during the shift. I guess she's been fired. Keine Disziplin!—no discipline. She'd told me in the corridor that she can't handle all this. What can't she handle? She can't handle all the rules, all that Disziplin. A village girl like her couldn't cope with walking on concrete city sidewalks after our shift. Maybe she's dead. But if she'd died, her people would have buried her with Spanish rites and ceremonies. I saw one of them buried once, that's how I know. There was even a flag. Imagine me buried and wrapped in our Greek flag, I thought to myself, white and blue! Poor girl… I miss her. She was a skinny little thing, pale, with large eyes like my Anastasia's, and with thin reedy arms—scrawny as a mudstick, as we say back home. Among all of us, those Spanish girls are the worst, really the worst. They stick together like a swarm of bees, like ants in an anthill. Where there's one Spanish girl you'll find others too, or if not, they'll show up soon enough. As if they're frightened of being alone. They can't live without each other—tweet, tweet, tweet—always twittering among themselves. Brousakis over at the café told us they all come to Germany straight from their villages, and can't break free from the well on the village square, the cold water, the gossip, the goats, the village boys. Brousakis the philosopher tells us their villages haven't come apart and died the way our villages in Greece have. So after work all the Spanish girls rush out to find one another: the maids from the houses, the restaurant dishwashers and waitresses, the girls from the pizzerias and cafés. They crowd together and whisper their gossip on street corners, just for a little while if they have to get back to work—quick pecks on cheeks, tomorrow same place same time—they must rush, quickly, so they won't be called to account for Disziplin by ladies like Frau Baum who employ them in their homes and who'll have none of this. There's a whole Greek world in Stuttgart, some forty thousand of us, more, in other words, than the whole town of Volos back home. And there are a lot of Greeks among us who've brought their villages with them: they sleep in them at night, and wake up in them every morning expecting to hear roosters crowing that never crow here. Here these villagers walk on concrete sidewalks and have no rocks to trip over—instead they trip over the construction lumber and cables. I'm not going to tell you about them, that's not my job, go look for them, they can tell you more about the Greek world here. What I'll tell you about is me. And I'll tell you that I've been away from Greece for four years now, but never once, not once, have I felt that longing for my country. I don't even know what that kind of homesickness would feel like. The way I see it, my country is not a fatherland to me in the way Spain is to those silly Spanish girls, or Greece to my fellow Greeks who are wracked by longing, the way my pal Skouroyiannis longs for that village of his, Dobrinovo. I'm never back in Sourpi, never at the bus stop where Anastasia stood waiting for me, never at the main square in Almiros where our Sunday movie theater used to be, or at the lumberyard, or down at the canteen in Volos where the boss used to take us. I don't see myself there. I don't want to go back. I am, I guess, a man without a country. From The Book of Andreas Kordopatis, Part I, America I am going to spend the weekend reading Greek translations... here's my first: Thanassis Valtinos From The Book of Andreas Kordopatis, Part I, America Translated from the Greek by Jane Assimakopoulos I kept walking slow-like, straight ahead, the road took me back to the river. Same place the ship stopped the first day, then it left and went further up. I saw someone who looked like a watchman. I ask him, Grik sala? No answer. I ask him again, he points further up the road. I walk along in that direction, there was a small house with a fence around it, real low. I go inside. Hello, I say, they look at me, two men and some women, they don't say a thing. I turn to go, didn't want to get myself beaten up, then it dawned on me, the place was a whorehouse. I go back outside. I had a small booklet, an English dictionary. I walked round and pretended to be reading, I was so afraid they'd come looking for me. Time was passing, it was starting to get dark. I didn't know where on earth to find a Greek hotel. I ask the same watchman, he points to the street where he's standing. More...Almost extinct Language and Cultures in the northwestSalish speakers gather: Tribes hope to save disappearing dialectsSPOKANE — It wasn't until 11 Kalispel elders died within three months a few years ago that the tribe realized the urgency of its mission to preserve its Salish dialect, a tribal elder said Thursday. By Kevin Graman The Spokesman-Review SPOKANE — It wasn't until 11 Kalispel elders died within three months a few years ago that the tribe realized the urgency of its mission to preserve its Salish dialect, a tribal elder said Thursday. "It is said if we lose our language we are not going to be a tribe anymore," said Francis Cullooyah, one of more than 64 speakers of Southern Interior Salish, including 30 elders, gathered from several tribes for a two-day language summit at Spokane Falls Community College. No one can remember a gathering of so many speakers of the first language of the Inland Northwest, said Michelle Wiley-Bunting, board president of the Center for Interior Salish. The center's task is daunting, she said, because few fluent speakers are left of the language once heard from Vernon, B.C., to Vantage, Wash., and from Wenatchee to the Bitterroot Valley in Montana. "Our elders taught us that we are like brothers because of our language," said Coeur d'Alene elder Felix Aripa. He spoke in English and Coeur d'Alene, one of seven dialects of Southern Interior Salish spoken Wednesday. Also attending were fluent speakers of Kalispel, Spokane, Colville Okanogan, Wenatchee-Columbian, Pend Oreille and Montana Salish. UNESCO's project on digitalizing old manuscripts from museums This is pretty amazing, check out the ones in Asia.. there are 100's of such things scanned in..
Australia's Funniest Ghost Writer: Oscar Brittle so awesome! Article.
May 11 Naples, Pasadena and Temecula Its been a pretty busy weekend. Friday we drove to Naples, dinner at Sushi of Naples. Naples is a neighborhood of Long Beach, California, United States built on a series of islands located in Alamitos Bay . Naples consists of three separate islands, divided by canals which open into the bay. The streets on the island have Italian names. The center of Naples features a large fountain which serves as a popular meeting spot.  Spent Saturday in Old Town, Pasadena. Awesome place to walk around till late at night, quite popular too.  Historic Old Town Pasadena California is located just minutes from downtown Los Angeles in the beautiful San Gabriel Valley. Bordered by Marengo Ave. on the East and Pasadena Avenue on the West, Old Pasadena stretches from Holly Street on the North to Green Street on the South. Shown below in a photo circa 1928 and to the left as it appears today, is Colorado Boulevard. Better known as the street on which the major portion of the annual Rose Parade takes place, Colorado Boulevard has become the main strip of Old Pasadena and is packed with pedestrians and vehicles nightly. A mecca of entertainment, dining and shopping, Old Pasadena and bordering areas including South Lake Avenue have become increasingly popular as tourist attractions and night spots. As seen here, Old Pasadena looks very much as it did seventy years ago. Many of the historic buildings have been restored and the street-front shops maintain their appeal to the hundreds who stroll the sidewalks each day. Old Pasadena abounds with night clubs, bars, over 50 restaurants serving all types of cuisine and countless specialty shops offering such items as clothing, antiques, furniture and exotic items from around the world. Weekly, one can find all genres of live music from rock, jazz and blues to classical plus dancing, comedy, and billiards. With something for everyone, it's easy to see why Old Pasadena is one of the hottest areas in Southern California. See The Old Pasadena Book Dinner at Villa Sorriso  Spent Sunday at Temecula Wineries - we hit 5 of them: 
Best Almond Champagne ever!!! 
Had a really good Petit Syrah here, which wasnt really on sale. 
Awesome Super T!!! 
Great Brie Breadbowl and a white-red combination 
Awesome place to smoke a Cigar and drink some Cab Franc. The Mystery of the Vanished PositiveA very Descript Man .... J H Parker My nerves are strung, my hair is kempt, I travel cognito and make My dignation would be great If I should digent be: I trust my vagance will bring An astrous life for me. May 07 Palm Springs Weekend I spent last weekend in Palm Springs, CA. Very interesting place, the whole landscape is one big oasis in the middle of the desert. From Wiki: Palm Springs is a desert city in Riverside County, California, approximately 111 miles (177 km) east of Los Angeles and 136 miles (225 km) northeast of San Diego. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 42,807. Golf, swimming, tennis, horseback riding and hiking in the nearby desert and mountain areas are major forms of recreation in Palm Springs. It is one of nine adjacent cities that make up the Coachella Valley (Palm Springs area). The area code for Palm Springs is 760. The ZIP codes for Palm Springs are 92262 through 92264.  First stop: PS Aerial Tramway This is a totally awesome experience
On the top you can do some interesting hikes. Palm Springs Tram Hiking Trails At the top of the Palm Springs Tram within the Mount San Jacinto State Park and Wilderness are 54 miles of hiking trails which should be sufficient to satisfy the appetite of the most avid outdoor enthusiast. Trails range from the awe-inspiring five and one-half mile trek to the 10,834 foot peak of San Jacinto to the just over one mile nature walk through picturesque Long Valley, located just behind the Tram's Mountain Station. Next Stop: Palm Springs Canyon Drive Quite a fun place to hang out. Palm Canyon Drive is the very heart of the city of Palm Springs. Here is where you'll find all the shops, galleries, restaurants and attractions that make Palm Canyon Drive a wonderful and memorable experience. Tall, light-covered palm trees, gently shade the street as you stroll beneath majestic Mount San Jacinto. The atmosphere is friendly and fun. They have the most awesome date shakes from the date fields near by. Lapperts has some really good icecream. We went to this restaurant called ZIN, which had some really good wines. Day 2: Hiking 
Fifteen miles long, Palm Canyon is one of the areas of great beauty in Western North America. Its indigenous flora and fauna, which the Cahuilla people so expertly used and its abundant Washingtonia filifera (California Fan Palm) are breathtaking contrasts to the stark rocky gorges and barren desert lands beyond. A moderately graded, paved foot path winds down into the canyon for picnicking near the stream, meditating, exploring, hiking or horseback riding. While in Palm Canyon visit the Trading Post for hiking maps, refreshments, Indian art and artifacts, books, jewelry, pottery, baskets, weaving, and conversational cultural lore Did that all morning, got really hot by the afternoon. Went to this hotel for some awesome breakfast at Norma's Parker Hotel
Time for some SPA experience: I did the 5 waters treatment, scrub and a 90 minute swedish massage at this spa: The magic springs eternal!The Spa's signature service is the "Taking of the Waters," a journey par excellence that leaves your mind and body thoroughly refreshed, relaxed and rejuvenated. As an introduction to the countless services and benefits you will discover at the Spa, this experience is truly incomparable. Steam, Sauna and Eucalyptus inhalation is followed by the famous "Taking of the Waters," a therapeutic, relaxing 10 minute soak in a private sunken tub of our famed mineral waters. A soothing visit to the Tranquility Room to relax your mind and awaken your spirit is the final stop for this remarkable treatment. Please allow 50 to 60 minutes to fully enjoy your spa experience. Citrus Salt Scrub SRC Signature Massage It may not be the best, but they definitely have some great deals:Resort Spa Casino Next time, i'll pick the spa more wisely. Last thing on the way back we stopped at the Triple outlet Malls: Santa Barbara Fire Heard from a friend that she saw 10-20 firetrucks on 101 on Monday... and sure enough there was a fire in Santa Barbara this week.. here's some pictures from LIFE magazine.  This is pretty bad. Link Recent Obama Sightings I've been so busy at work that I havent had a chance to view the whole 100 day reporting for Obama Administration. Finally given some breathing room, here's some interesting stuff on youtube that I am watching Reaching out to Iran Is America exceptional? More from this article Nose to Nose: Patient-Phaysician Contact Another great piece by Abraham Varghese In my previous post I used a phrase from a Lee Robinson poem that had the line "finding each other nose to nose." That prompted Bill to write:
What Bill described is a great example of ritual, a subject that interests me in the context of the bedside examination of the patient. Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a President are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation. Examining the patient at the bedside has all the critical
ingredients of a ritual: it is usually performed in a special space
(the doctor's office or the hospital bed); it involves one person
baring his or her soul and then baring his or her body and allowing
another person the privilege of touch; the person examining is often
wearing a special uniform (the white coat) and performs a systematic
examination where the steps are somewhat mysterious to the patient and
using instruments that are the tokens and talismans of the profession.
If done well, skillfully and respectfully, the ritual earns the trust
of the patient, and it also lays the foundation for the
patient-physician relationship. If done poorly, or cursorily, or
sloppily (applying stethoscope to the clothing and not to the bare
skin), it does the opposite--it creates mistrust, or even a sense of
being disrepcted. My sense is that the wonderful technology that we have to visualize the inside of the body often leaves physicians feeling that the exam is a waste of time and so they may shortchange the ritual. The dangers are twofold: at the simplest level you miss the opportunity to be present with the patient, to conduct a ritual that cements the relationship; on a more pragmatic level, you miss obvious diagnoses and obvious bodily findings that might obviate the need for further testing. Much has been made of the Institute of Medicine's Landmark report on medical errors. But I don't think we even begin to comprehend how much a sloppy exam costs us in terms of missed diagnoses, unnecessary tests, and complications from tests (such as reactions to contrast for a CAT scan) that were never indicated. When you were last examined by a physician, did it go well, and did you have a sense of participating in a skilled ritual, and did that matter? May 05 Sunday NYT Great blog entry from SAJA, I read most of these.. but its a good way to compile your readings. ----------------- As an incorrigible Desi Spotter, happy to note all things South Asian that I see around me, today's New York Times had my feeble brain working overtime. Among the things I was able to find again online:
On Thursday morning, my neighbors and I
joined an orderly line in front of the election desk at the end of our
street. We did what the public-service ads had been urging us to do for
weeks: “Give them the finger.” The polling officer didn’t even raise
her head. After dipping a plastic straw into a bottle of purple ink,
she drew a blotchy line down the middle finger of my left hand. Then I
stepped up to the voting machine to press a button in India’s 15th
general election.
I left Calcutta when I was small and promptly forgot what I knew, such is the thick velvet curtain the immigrant child draws over memory. Every few summers, when my family returned for holidays, I would be escorted from one relative’s house to another, scolded for being too thin, and force-fed heaps of sweets. On Park Street, I would be invariably accosted by a hungry, barefoot child. The only thing more confounding than going to Calcutta was coming home to suburban Southern California; how do you explain the city of dreadful night (Rudyard Kipling’s phrase, not mine) to friends who had spent the summer listening to Olivia Newton-John?
I had just interviewed Mobarak Haidar, a Pakistani author who was confidently predicting the end of the world. Islamic extremism, he said, was a wild animal that would soon gobble up Europe and all of Western civilization. “All the world’s achievements for the past 500 years are at risk,” he said in a gloomy tone, sitting in his living room. Soon there would be no more music, dancing or fun of any kind. The power went out and candles were lit, adding to the spookiness. And then, as I climbed into a car to go home, a wedding party came out of nowhere, enveloping us in a shower of rose petals. Men playing bagpipes marched toward us, grinning, while dancing guests wriggled and clapped, making strange-shaped silhouettes in our headlights.
SocialScope, a program from Amit Kumar,
a former Bear Stearns investment banking analyst, is tailored for
BlackBerry phones and lets users check multiple social networks. Though
it is only in beta mode, it is already a more full-featured window into
the social network than Facebook’s own software for the BlackBerry.
“Checking your stream on your phone becomes oddly addictive,” Mr. Kumar
said.
The opportunity has even attracted some large Internet companies, like Glam Media, the New York-based network of some 600 lifestyle sites and blogs aimed at women. Samir Arora, Glam’s chief executive, says that one of the company’s highest priorities is Tinker, a Web site that allows people to sign up for moderated streams of updates related to specific events, like the Oscars, the latest episode of “Lost” or the N.F.L. draft. Mr. Arora believes that edited streams of conversations, culled from the social networks, can attract companies that are interested in advertising on social networks but are hesitant to position their brand next to unmediated Internet chatter.
IN 2003, a Bangladeshi Muslim named Zia Hashem took out a loan to buy a
condominium apartment in Parkchester, in the Bronx. During the two
years he lived there with his wife and young son, he was perpetually
uneasy about having borrowed the money.
“There was definitely a guilt,” Mr. Hashem, a 33-year-old systems engineer, said one recent evening after the sunset prayers at Baitul Islam Masjid, a small mosque in University Heights. Many Muslims believe that paying or receiving interest violates Shariah, or Islamic law. Thus, for Muslims, buying a home in the United States often means violating religious principles.
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