Where Dark Lord Sauron shakes the ground

There was a big earthquake here in Greece a couple of days ago and it was felt in Italy and Malta too, or so Reuters said. It was 6.5 on the Richter scale and lasted for 10 seconds. That’s years in earthquake time. Nobody was hurt, because although that was a very strong earthquake, its epicenter was somewhere in middle earth so the Hobbits dealt with it, or something like that.
We were asleep and we jumped out of bed and as soon as the quake was over we went out on the street barefoot and in mismatched pyjamas.
To be more precise, my son and I went barefoot while M instinctively ran to save his laptop. After he had saved it he brought us socks and coats. This goes to prove my beliefs about the human male, which I am not going to dwell on right now, but has something to do with prioritizing.
It gets better. Read on.

Where somebody’s tears are wetting my new shirt

Today, I had to take a taxi to go to the nutritionist. It was going to be a very early appointment and as I have to wait for my son to leave for school, there was little time left to take the bus.
If you have been reading this page for more than a month, this is the point where you are beginning to suspect something is going to go wrong.
Yet, in spite of your guessing powers, you aren’t even close. Because you are basically good people, and good people’s minds turn to good things, maybe with a little spice, but essentially good.
The taxi driver would make Britney Spears look sensible and sober by comparison. Because I was running late, I asked KINDLY, if he could maybe not stop every 10 m. to fish for more clients (he had already stopped for two) and make it quicker since “I have an appointment with the doctor”.
Exactly, you need to validate your wish to be on time.
His answer was: “The horsewhip is in the trunk of the car, so I can’t go any faster.”
In other taxi driver posts, I would go on to describe the dirty car, the cigarettes, the loud radio with the people who curse other people’s football teams, the seatbelt that didn’t work and the subzero temperature. However, I won’t, because I want to jump to the point where the taxi driver cannot find the street, starts swearing at other drivers and possibly me, drives past a hospital and not looking ahead or keeping his hands on the wheel for that matter, turns back and keeps telling me louder and louder “I am going in there, in there, right NOW, I can’t take it anymore” meaning the hospital if I am not mistaken. And then he starts crying, stops the car and starts banging his head on the wheel, and yells “I’ve been driving for 20 years, I’ve never had a worse day in my life”.
Boohoo.
So I got off and walked the rest of the way, feeling like a hunted animal.
Next, I am going to tell you what happened at the nutritionist’s. That’s another unhappy ending altogether.

Where he is acting high and mighty in sweatpants

Once at the nutritionist’s –my sister’s nutritionist, whom she introduced to me- I felt better. My last check-up hadn’t come out so fantastic, so I was hoping (am hoping) to change those numbers.
I didn’t like the nutritionist. Not at all. He was very patronizing and in his sweatshirt and sweatpants. But maybe that outfit is a ploy to make the client feel that the nutritionist is practising what he is preaching, so okay, let’s not judge him (I thought).
After I had to listen to him insist that there is real coffee (black) and fake coffee (sugar), after some bullying I got for saying I don’t want to use aspartame (“nothing proves that it causes cancer” he said), after some insults (“do you know what a cup is?”), I was told that he cannot “co-operate” –his words- with me, because I am a vegetarian, and he doesn’t do vegetarians. He only “does” people for whom he doesn’t have to devise a whole new plan, but one that he can print out in 2 minutes. Do you have a problem with that?

Oh and the phone at home doesn’t work.
I went to collect my payment. The cheque wasn’t ready. Next week.
The printer is acting up too.

P.S I found another nutritionist who says he’s okay with me not eating any members of the animal kingdom (maybe he feels safer that way).

 Strange fruit I’ve encountered this week

From my son:

-Can I tell you what I want for Christmas?

-Sure.

-A carnivorous plant.

From the taxi driver:

Driver: Women don’t make good historians.

Me: Why not?

Driver: Because they can’t memorize things.

Me: Oh yeah? How come they remember a shopping list of 20 items or more?

From the same taxi driver (he’s full of wisdom):

Driver: Polish people have low IQ.

Me: How can you say that!!?

Driver: My wife is Polish.

From man on the bus:

Ticket inspector: You mean you don’t have a ticket?

Man (exasperated): I don’t, I don’t!

Ticket inspector: You will have to pay a fine sir.

Man: No, you will pay a fine for all the times I had one and you never checked.

From credit card salesperson on the phone:

Me: Do you know you are violating the law for personal data protection when you call me at home to sell me credit cards?

Salesperson: We certainly don’t. We don’t know WHO you are.

Me: But you called me by my last name.

Salesperson: But we don’t know what you look like.

So I was in the taxi again today. I know, I use them a lot. I should stop financing the lousy bouzouki music habit I am subjected to when i am in there going somewhere and ending up being incoherent and with a headache. Once, I had translated some of the lyrics of these songs to Stephanie while we were going home and you can ask her if you don’t believe me, these songs are the modern equivalent to medieval torture. It’s something between the Head Crusher and the Chair of Torture. May you be plagued with gnats, flies and locusts, O ye taxi drivers, creatures of the pit.

Where was I? Oh yes, the bouzouki in the taxi. It is so incoherent to me that people drive and listen to this miserable, whiny music and that this music accompanies them in their lonely task throughout the day. I would kill myself if I was forced to drive in Athens AND listen to this stuff. So I thought maybe taxi drivers are not that stupid after all. Maybe they are creatures of higher intelligence. And maybe they subject themselves to this music as a form of self discipline, to practise patience and fortitude. Now that I think of it, I am pretty sure they don’t really like that music. And I salute them in their quest of nirvana and undisrturbed bliss.

Freaks only:

Last night I watched this movie "Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus"  with Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. The film tells you little about Arbus, but it tells you a lot about freaks. If you, like me, often feel that you are a freak, that you belong nowhere, that you make unintelligible sounds instead of sentences, see this film. It is moving.

Only in Greece - Number 1
My sister is a bookseller. The other day a man went in the shop and asked her in the casual manner we reserve to make enquiries about food or clothes: “Do you have anything by Plato?”
My sister answered that yes, there was the Apology, the Republic and the Symposium, and would he like one of these?
“My masters and teachers have told me something I must share with you” he said.
My sister has had her fair share of loonies at work, just like the rest of us, but she couldn’t possibly be prepared for what followed:
“I may be Plato’s reincarnation you know. Our ideas are identical even though I haven’t read anything he wrote”.
  
Only in Greece - Number 2
I call a taxi to go to work. I need to be there at 5 o’ clock exactly. The taxi driver does not know the address and grimaces at the map I have earlier printed out from the internet to make his life easier. Apparently the map is not helpful enough.
“Do you want me to look it up in your street guide?” I offer –because I am silly and still believe in humans.
“Don’t bother” he mumbles.
“I am only telling you because I need to by there by 5” I tell him whereupon he turns and looks at me and hisses: “You ALWAYS do that. You ALWAYS say you are in a hurry”.
“I say that? I, as in I personally, or I as in all your clients?”
“You personally”.
“But I’ve never seen you in my life before!” I protest.
“But I’ve seen YOU. I remember you. We remember you. You always say that.”

Reader, I am glad to be alive.

Only in Greece - Number 3
Greeks voted for conservatives again. I am flabbergasted.

juice for breakfast

This weekend I want to make ouzo meze –little food that goes with ouzo- for friends, clean the house, buy a pair of flip flops, drink iced coffee and do some work out in the balcony, see my son’s art class painting exhibition and go to the open air cinema to see Pirates of the Caribbean, or some other silly movie.

What I don’t want to do is talk on the phone, think about money, see unpleasant people, listen to sad music, deal with my son’s room and go to the supermarket.
Also, dear God, hear my prayer: do not let rude taxi drivers in my way this weekend, the first weekend of summer. Amen.

A little background
I am waiting for a taxi, in some faraway place in the outskirts of Athens, with my son and his friend. We are going to the Playmobil fun park. We have been traveling for 1 hour and a half by car, metro and train and we just need a taxi to reach our destination.

Taxi driver: Where are you going?
Me: To the Playmobil Fun Park, 10 minutes away from here.
Taxi driver: Nah, not going there.
Me: Why not? (a rhetorical question; I never learn)
Taxi driver: Just because it’s MY taxi.

In the taxi with the racist taxi driver who keeps swearing at immigrants I never expected to experience this moment of peace, while listening to Fade Into you.

Somehow it is surreal that I am sharing this song with that awful man who obviously doesn’t notice it and just tolerates it. Still, I am grateful for that moment of clarity after a hard day full of chores and a hard night full of thoughts and weird dreams.

My Christmas list didn’ include my most precious gift of all, the sense of belonging somewhere. I want to wake up one day and not to be a stranger. To walk on the street and feel one with what I see around me. I want to be consumed by this earth I walk on; I don’t want to slip away. Is love ever enough? Is a little less love and a little more understanding a better trade-off? I am happy in myself and I want to share this feeling but it is expressed in a language I don’t speak and one which I’ve never heard being spoken. It is not a dead language, it is an unborn one.

How air conditioning works in a stinky driver’s taxi: Unless the air conditioning is set at a sub-zero freezing temperature where bacteria hibernate, what air conditioning effectively does is recycle and evenly distribute the air under the taxi driver’s stinky armpits in the front and back of the taxi. Being human, you most probably rely on aerobic respiration for living, in which case, the stinky, poisoned oxygen that is transported throughout your body kills you. A dirty and painful death.