Born on the 13th of February

My dear friend Steph has tagged me for this meme. A meme about what other important events (appart from the birth of yours trully) happened on February 13th through history. Let's have a look see shall we?
Instructions: Go type in your birthday in Wikipedia (month and day). Write down three events, 2 births, 1 holiday and tag 5 friends.

Events

• 1633 - Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.
• 1894 - Auguste and Luis Lumiere patent the Cinematographe, a combination movie camera and projector.
• 2004 - The Harvard-Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics discovers the universe's largest diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093!

Births

• 1950 - Peter Gabriel, British musician (Genesis)
• 2974 - Robbie Williams, English singer.

Holiday

• None, but it's St. Beatrix day!

Tagees, please slot yourself right on the last slot and bump everyone up. And the list: Are We There Yet?, Gran’s Memory Keeping Corner, Teacher Julie, Mommyness is Happiness, This is a miracle, Blur Ting, Remedial Rumination, Epimenides

And now, brace yourselves for my "13 of 3's", the second instalment of the meme:

Three things that scare me

1. Roller coasters.
2. Women with PMS!
3. Isolation

Three people who make me laugh

1. Rowan Atkinson
2. Billy Connolly
3. My girl, when she says "I'll do you in the street" (which means: "I'll take you out tonight" you dirty minded so-and-so's)

Three things I love

1. My family and my girl.
2. Manchester United.
3. Laying on a quiet beach under the sun, listening to the sound of the waves.

Three things I hate

1. Pretentious people
2. Dishonesty
3. Seeing children starving and suffering

Three things I don't understand

1. What was there before the big bang
2. Thousands of foreign languages and dialects
3. Why this particular question is limited to only three things

Three things on my desk

1. My PC monitor
2. A cup of coffee
3. My feet when blogging at home

Three things I'm doing right now

1. Boring you to tears
2. Sweating! (A third heat wave this summer!!!)
3. ...and blogging, I suppose.

Three things I want to do before I die

1. Have a happy family of my own
2. Travel the world
3. Retire a filthy rich person next year!

Three things I can do

1. Liven up a dull party
2. Put a foot in my mouth
3. Cook and iron pleats!

Three things I can't do

1. Retire a filthy rich person next year!
2. Speak Portuguese....but I'm working on it!
3. Stop boring you to tears, I guess.

Three things I think you should listen to

1. A pregnant woman's belly
2. The sound of the sea
3. Your gut feeling

Three things you should never listen to

1. Yourself criticising you
2. My elephant jokes
3. Politicians

Three shows I watched as a kid

1. Stingray
2. Dallas (and later on, Debbie doing it)
3. Bonanza

Please feel free to participate as I will cheat again and not actually tag specific people for this meme!

Doing Nothing

I thoroughly enjoyed today, and it isn't over yet!

As I mentioned in my previous post, today is a public holiday in Greece. It is Holly Mary's Assumption day (thanks rebecca for the terminology) and every thing in Greece is closed.

I woke up late - at least by the standards of the past couple of weeks - at around 8.30, had some breakfast and listened to some music while taking a long hot shower.

Stood in front of the mirror and looked at my reflection for some time and noticing my "love handles" have significantly reduced. Even in my grossly overweight days, I never did have a pot belly. For some strange reason, I've always expanded laterally. I was what you would call two-and-a-half-dimension fat!

The black circles around my eyes have reduced, too, since, I started applying a soothing lotion, and though unshaven for a day, the stubble on my face had some "designer" quality to it.

I felt comfortable enough with my appearance to be in the public view!

We spent the day at my Uncle and Aunt's place in the north suburbs of deserted Athens. We had a barbecue lunch and a good laugh. I hadn't seen them for weeks, and even then it was in a hurry!

Returning home, I decided to make yet another significant donation to the mobile phone company, and rung up my girl in Rio. I've been trying to get through for the past couple of days, but it was all in vain. Today was different! Though I didn't succeed in waking her up - I believe I've mentioned how much I like her sexy, freshly awoken voice - it was a sexy discussion nevertheless! My non existent Portuguese flowed effortlessly from my mouth, and she made sense of it! I do improvise well, I suppose.

She will be visiting soon for what she describes as a "lua de mel" (moonlight of honey = honeymoon) vacation, and I'll reciprocate with a "lua de mel" visit to Brazil soon after. A hell of a lot of "mel" coming my way, and, boy-oh-boy do I have a sweet tooth!!!

My next task in this do-as-little-as-possible day, will be to listen to the football match on the internet and hope that ManU don't fail to score again today!

Tomorrow is back to the old daily routine! Doesn't time fly when you're having fun?

Back to "Normal"

Just a brief post to thank you all for your kind words of support and encouragement for this philosopher who was feeling a bit overawed by life last night! I truly thank you all!

As of the time of opening my eyes this morning I've been in a great mood! Perhaps it was just a phase of the moon the affected me - I do fit in the category of those affected by the lunar cycle. The lunatics! - or perhaps it was the fact that today I have the day off! Not just me. It's the whole of Greece. It's the commemoration of the death of Holly Mary, and it's a public holiday!

It is also my mom's name day - a celebration on the day of the saint somebody is named after - and, typical me, I will present her with just a hug and a kiss! I once again forgot!

Work today was actually pretty good. The typical daily shambles, but I just seemed to be in a cloud of my own the whole time.

On my way back home, I had a close encounter with a hearse - I keep drawing them to me it seems - in somewhat of a hurry! I mean, I was doing sixty and was barely keeping up! Count Dracula must have been thirsty for some young virgin's blood. He must be new in town, because there's hardly any young women of that variety left. The only virgins in Athens are the Caryatids at the Erechthion at the Acropolis, and even those are plaster cast fakes!

I got home safe and rewarded myself with some Haagen Das, Belgian chocolate ice cream!

I have the opportunity to sleep in tomorrow and that is worth a calorie abundant celebration!

Here goes another one

...flying over the cookoo's nest!

This seems to be the best description of office life these past couple of weeks.

Thankfully, I'm not the only one in there desperately trying to keep up with what seems to be a long lost plot!

It has now become painfully obvious that our ERP and WPS systems are not best of friends, they hardly ever communicate with each other, except for human intervention. We have therefore changed our job titles to "Human Interfaces", constantly transferring data from one to the other.

Meanwhile, we try to put some discipline into the two spoilt kindergarten brats, only to be thrown back by some new surprising behaviour by each of them. The use of pen and paper has become mandatory, to such an extent that we seem to go through a dozen of trees' worth of paper a day!

Deep inside, all of us are aware that we are completely and utterly screwed for the next few months! It'll take a lot of time for the two brats to reconcile their differences and become the friends we all hope and pray they become. Time that we don't have since the Earth revolves around itself every twenty for hours!

To make things more interesting, the majority of the people are taking their annual leave around this time, leaving behind a couple of heroic fighters trying desperately to joggle a few hundred of daily tasks between them.

What is surprising though, is that this state of affairs has brought up the best of the previously untapped humour hidden in each and every one of us!

No action occurs without somebody making a funny remark about it! Especially when there some kind of a cock up involved. And believe you me, there's a heck of a lot of cock ups these days!

The hours we spend at the office, carrying out our "interface" duties are building up to such an extent, that today we even ordered out for a pizza for dinner. Other co-workers go out for drinks or food. We bring it to the office!

With September being the busiest moth in the year for our company, and the proverbial light-in-the-tunnel of our current software mess being months away, we have all resigned to the idea that the trend of pizza dinners at the office is going to become a status quo.

Anyone care for a slice?

Friday poetry

I drive as fast as the wind blows,
to office every day.
The cops have missed me every time,
I haven’t had to pay.

Sit on my desk, coffee in hand,
Greet everyone around.
I crack a joke, or maybe two,
The girls think I’m a clown.

Before too long it’s clear to see,
There’s lots of shit to do.
Roll up those sleeves and get to work,
Without further ado.

Between the phone calls and the tasks,
It’s time to have a snack,
Another coffee, maybe a scone,
Cutting the staff some slack.

Phone calls, more tasks and then some more,
Back to the crazy run,
Peak at the clock and realise,
Crap! It is only one!

The time flies by and people leave,
They are all heading home,
I’m still around, and will be more,
They’ve left me all alone.

It’s closing nine, more crap appears,
From almost everywhere,
It’s Friday night, I’m going home,
I really do not care!

Insurance Claims

The following are actual statements found on insurance forms where drivers attempted to summarise the details of an accident in the fewest possible words.

• The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intention.
  
• I thought my window was down, but I found out it was up when I put my head through it.
  
• A truck backed through my windshield into my wife's face.
  
• The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.
  
• I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law and headed over the embankment.
  
• I had been driving for 40 years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident.
  
• I was on my way to the doctor with rear end trouble, when my universal joint gave way, causing me to have an accident.
  
• An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car and vanished.
  
• I saw a slow moving, sad faced old gentleman as he bounced off the roof of my car.
  
• The pedestrian had no idea which direction to run, so I run over him.

That was the week that was

Fourteen days without break, and I have the Sunday off! Fourteen really long and eventful days, that, come Monday are sure to be followed by more of the same.
I am tired, angry and frustrated that somebody is using my staff and I as beta testers and Guinea pigs for a stupid, pointless project while ruining three years' worth of hard work of organising a department to virtually run itself.
The "brain" - and I use the term loosely - behind the project, even had the audacity to complain about my staff's performance and adaptability to me. I didn't dignify him with a response - which would probably have been the Greek equivalent of a torrent of four letter words - and instead opted to give a piece of my mind to my boss the following day. As they say about people of my size: "Good things come in small packages, but so do potent poisons"!
You do not destroy something functional because you cannot carry out basic project planning and because you want somebody else to do all the hard work for you, and then turn around and insult them! It just isn't on!
I have good relations with all of my staff, and I'm actually proud of their work, development and effort! No, incompetent ass, no matter how far up the "food chain" will be allowed to speak a bad word for them, and expect to get away with it. I am a vengeful sod, and I'm in the process of gathering information for a detailed report to the MD about this sorry excuse of a project.
Why then do I commit myself into this work so much as to sacrifice my personal time on it? It's not because of job security purposes, I can ensure you. I can stay without work for a number of years, during which time I'll surely encounter something better. It's not because I'm expecting comments of gratitude and appreciation from this lot. It's simply because I don't like seeing three years of hard work crumble to pieces in a fortnight! Most importantly, I cannot sit there and watch a perfectly good team of people being used as pawns in some moron's project wet dream!
I know I am ranting and raving - perhaps not even making any sense - and you don't deserve to be reading this crap. I just need to vent out the frustration of the past few days.
This blog, however, is dedicated to at least providing a smile on the face of the people reading it. Judging by the ladies' comments on my previous post, there is quite an interest in jokes about guy's "members" - for need of better expression - so I hope you enjoy what follows below.

A guy walks into the Gents' and notices a rather tanned gentleman standing next to him bearing a huge "dingaling"."I wish mine could be as long as that" said the man, unable to hide his admiration."No problem", said the coloured gentleman. "All you have to do is tie a bit of string to a brick, tie the other end to your willy, and walk with it dangling between your legs for a week".The next week they meet up in the same toilet in the same bar."That treatment of your is fantastic. Look!" he said pointing at his willy. "It's already turned black!"

Two guys are enjoying a beer at the bar.

Noticing a dog, lying on the floor, licking it's genitals, one guy says to the other:

"Oh! How I wish I could do that!"

"Give him a couple of biscuits and perhaps he'll let you"

Stavros

It's been a long 14 hour day and I just got in from work. I am too tired to post anything serious tonight - as if I ever do - but I'll share with you a joke I heared today.
This Greek guy full of himself, lets call him Stavros, takes his wife to the maternity clinic to give birth. He is a scruffy looking kinda guy, with a long moustache, sideburns, and greasy hair. He is wearing a shirt with only one button done, at the level of his belly button, a large belly, bearing a hairy chest and a large cross hanging from his neck on a large golden chain.
His wife is taken to the operating theater - or whatever it is called - and soon after the doctor comes out to speak to Stavros.
Doctor - "Your wife is expecting triplets, sir!"
Stavros proudly responds - " Well, of course doc! With Stavros' tool being as big as a hosepipe, what did you expect? And I bet you they are all going to be boys!!!"
The doctor, in shock from Stavros's answer, shakes his head and goes back to attend to his wife.
A couple of minutes later he comes back outside.
Doctor - "What do you know! The first one is a healthy boy!"
Stavros proudly responds - "I told you doc! With Stavros' tool being as big as a hosepipe, what did you expect? And I bet you the two are going to be boys, too!"
Shocked again the doctor returns to the theater.
He emerges a couple of minutes later.
Doctor - "The second is a boy, too!"
Stavros proudly responds - "I told you doc! With Stavros' tool being as big as a hosepipe, what did you expect? I'm sure the third is male, too!"
Once again, the doctor returns to the theater, shocked with this crude guy.
Comes back outside for the third time.
Doctor - "The third one is a boy as well!"
Stavros proudly responds - "I told you doc! With Stavros' tool being as big as a hosepipe, what did you expect?"
Annoyed by now with Stavros's cockiness, the doctor responds.
"Well, my dear friend Stavros, it's high time you started cleaning your hosepipe because all three boys have come out black!"

Gangbanged!

My dear fellow bloggers, this is not an X-rated themed post, although the odd profanity may make its way to the text. Instead, it's a pretty accurate description of how my co-workers and I feel after this weekend at work.

A more accurate description would by "gangbanged by a Viagra overdosed horde of elephants, freshly released from a ten year sexual drought". Yes! That's more like it.

I find stock taking a tedious, boring, but nevertheless important part of working life. It comes once or twice a year, and everyone is mentally prepared for getting bored senseless of trying to find stuff and accounting for any kinds of variances. So how do you make it more interesting to the staff?

Well, our gracious employers, always considering the best way of maintaining the spirits of the staff high during such periods, this year came up with an alternative plan! At the end of it, they planned the live introduction of an additional software package, designed to make our lives easier, and reducing the manual input of data to our ERP system.

It has been a project going on for the past four, perhaps five months. There have been meetings upon meetings, discussions upon discussions covering the length of the project, including a whole one hour (!) training session for the people who are going to be using it. It was during that training session, that we all realised we were dead meat! We raised questions about the procedures, the input method and so on and so forth. The software company representative who was giving us the training had an answer for each of our questions.

Yet answers of the type: "They didn't mention you need this!", "We were not requested to cover that kind of situation", "Is that what actually happens?", are hardly reassuring that all is well in the western front!

Come last Sunday every tiniest fear we had that we were totally screwed, was finally realised!

We finished our stock taking by 09.30am and then it was a matter of going live on the new system.

To be fair, the first couple of tests gave excellent results. We were cooking with gas!

Were we f..k!!! When it came to linking to our ERP, you could actually smell the foul scent of shit, while listening to the deafening sound of it hitting the proverbial fan! 11.45am the whole process ground to a halt, while the IT guys were trying to sort out the issue.

It was a slow and painful experience that went on and on. Five coffees later, hours and hours of SQL-what the hell it is I don't even want to know-we were getting a dim bright spot at the end of a quite long tunnel! In the meantime, several of the staff were excused to leave and join their families, for whatever was left to them of the Sunday afternoon. I went around the premises seeking for the dog - she has not been seen since Saturday and I fear she has met with some kind of ill fortune from the mongrels in the vicinity of our offices - then watched a helicopter do water drops on a rubbish pit fire 300 yards away, and then sat on my desk and doodled some tropical island scene.

The sun descended into the horizon, but we were still there, by now struggling with the communication between the software packages. To cut a long story short, some kind of a breakthrough came by 11.45pm, and we all decided to call it a day.

Monday was going to be better, we reassured each other, while getting into our cars. Was it f..k?

Come Monday morning we realised that although the two systems were communicating, they were exchanging information of no use to each other! Wait! Wait! It gets better!!!!

Lots of IT fiddling going on, the whole premises ground to a halt, and the phones starts to ring. Our inter company customers were calling to find out whether our logistics department was going to meet their needs! Ha! Fat chance! Not in your lifetime dude! Not with this kind of project preparation!

It turns out that our new super duper package can do virtually anything you ask it to do. It's a real pity, though, that during all these months of running the project, nobody considered looking at our procedures, nobody thought it would be worth their while to if not ask, at least sit in a corner and take notes of how the department works.

As a result, we are now three days into the system going live, we have managed to cover about 20% of our work, and the paperwork raised requires a small army of personnel for data entry alone! It is like someone came to your house, decided to use your stove to bake you a cake, and demolished your kitchen while doing it!

This is a big mess that will take some time to set straight, especially with virtually half of the people due to go on leave in August! Perhaps the Chinese proverb says "may you live in interesting times" but this is pretty much ludicrous. Bloody Greeks, taking things to extremes again!

Helicopter putting out fire across our offices

My island retreat doodle

Mutt Update

It turns out that Mutt is actually a female! Slap my thigh! It was a pimple after all!
Yes! It has been officially checked and confirmed - and cost me a fiver on a wager. The methodology used was pretty scientific! We gave him...her something to eat, and then stroked her - got it right this time - while she was lying on her back.
(I suppose a little rehash of the birds and bees story is pretty darned necessary in our offices. After all, even the ladies got the gender wrong! It seems that as far as a sex life goes, we are a pretty miserable, useless bunch in there. People reading this blog will know my excuse. I wonder what theirs is).
On the positive side, at least it's not a stray, skinny dog with a pimple sized willy!
Since obviously Mutt is an inappropriate name for a female dog, we now need to come up with a new name. There was a big debate during lunch, and the final options are:

1. Bitch - my choice (both a female and cost me a fiver!)
2. Lady - I find it pretty pedestrian.
3. Bones - Might give her a complex (you know, with all this Anorexia halabaloo going on)
4. Tart - I just came up with that! (similar to Bitch but sweet, too!)
5. Some other pretty lame, finger-in-throat kinda name.

PS 1. I believe this post has cost me ALL my female audience!

PS 2. She still eats as if it's going out of fashion!

The block that wasn't...

Three seconds to the final whistle, they were down by nine baskets and the opposing guys were preparing to add insult to injury by slam dunking! Perhaps it was only a two-on-two game, but he could not allow that to happen! It was bad enough that they were going to pay for the beers at the bar, but to also have to live through the taunts of a double-score defeat was simply not on.
His eyes on the ball, he summoned all his energy and run behind the attacking centre, poised to make the block. Almost in slow motion, they both lifted up in the air, the ball landed into the basket, and Epi on the guy's calf.
First to speak was Snap. He spoke loud, with his electric voice rushing through Epi's right leg! Upon hitting the ground, Crackle decided to have a word as well. His message was clear and made it's way to Epi's brain in a flash!
He collapsed on the floor in agony. His best friend V. rushed over to see what happened.
"Oh! It's nothing! I think I twisted my ankle! Nothing that a little cold water can not make good." Epi responded.
Couple of minutes later, they are driving back to the house, discussing what went wrong with the game and, perhaps most importantly, which watering hole to visit for the evening. No problem with the legs. No pain on either of them as Epi was pressing on the gas, or the clutch while shifting gears.
They got to the house within ten minutes. V. got out first while Epi was preparing to place the sun screen on the dashboard. He tried to get out of the car, but on touching the flood with either foot, he felt the electricity flow through his body. Those bastards, Snap and Crackle were still around. Good job Pop missed the party!
He was taken for X-rays, where it was confirmed that he had broken a bone in his left foot and one in his right leg. 100% success! As the radiologist jokingly exclaimed, almost falling of his crutches - he had met with Snap only the previous day on the football field.
Another half an hours drive to the nearest hospital, and Epi was flat on his stomach, with both legs up in the air, and plaster applied to them.
It definitely was not the kind of "plastering" they had in mind when they were making plans for the evening with his mate V!
All that was nothing compared to the phone calls the twenty seven year old guys would have to make to their folks, telling them what had happened. They would go ape with worry, and all kinds of questions would have to be answered.
Phone calls made, the complicated trip to the bathroom handled with success, they sat on the front balcony of V's summer house, staring at the sea, drinking and having a good laugh about life!
At least it meant that Epi was going to be two weeks late going back to work in Nigeria!

Elemental Chemistry 101

HOMME

A Chemical Analysis

Element: Man

Symbol: Ma


Discoverer: God


Atomic Weight: Accepted as 150 but is known to vary from 125 to 300.


Occurrence: Usually found in close proximity to alcohol.


Physical Properties:

1. Surface often rough, although can be made smooth if deemed necessary.
2. Found in various states but rarely pure.
3. Non-magnetic.
4. Appears to be repelled by any quantity of coin.
5. Very strong attraction to fast cars and bikes.
6. Low melting and boiling points, hence often unstable.
7. Physical size prone to change - see chemical properties

Uses: None

Chemical Properties:

1. Able to absorb vast quantities of alcohol, although saturation can have disastrous effects on reactivity.
2. Shrinks in contact with cold water.
3. Highly volatile if left alone with a female.
4. Specimen not affected by light, although often more reactive in the dark.
5. Often prone to gross exaggeration.

Tests:

1. No test yet devised for purity.
2. Turns yellow if placed beside a bigger specimen.

Caution:

1. Larger specimens should be treated with extreme care.
2. Smaller specimens should be treated with sympathy.

FEMME

A Chemical Analysis

Element: Woman

Symbol: Wo

Discoverer: Adam

Atomic Weight: Accepted as 118 but is known to vary from 100 to 160.

Occurrences: Surplus quantities in all urban areas.

Physical Properties:

1. Surface usually covered in painted film.
2. Boils at nothing and freezes without reason.
3. Melts if given proper treatment.
4. Bitter if used incorrectly.
5. Found in various states, ranging from virgin metal to common ore.
6. Non-magnetic but attracted by coins and sports cars.

Uses:

1. Highly ornamental, especially in sports cars.
2. Most powerful money-reducing agent known.
3. Can be great aid to relaxation.

Chemical Properties:

1. Possesses great affixity for gold, silver, platinum and precious stones.
2. Able to absorb great quantities of excessive sustenance.
3. May explode spontaneously if left alone with male.
4. Insoluble in liquids, but activity greatly increased by saturation in alcohol.
5. Yields to pressure applied to correct points.
6. Leaves red deposit to china and cigarettes.

Tests:

1. Pure specimens turn rosy tint if discovered in natural state.
2. Turns green if placed beside better specimen.

Caution:

1. Highly dangerous except in experienced hands, and must be used with great care if experiments are to succeed.
2. It is illegal to possess more than one permanent specimen, though a certain amount of exchange is permitted.

- Manchester and Salford Students' rag mag 1988

Back to work

"Tell me why I don't like Mondays. I wanna shoot the hole day down!" the Boomtown Rats, of Bob Geldof fame, used to sing and was it appropriate for me today!!!

Having spent two weeks off work, this morning was a wake up call. Reality doesn't change, it's just our perspective on things!

Reality slapped me in the face this morning in the rudest way possible. It was not the early (5.30am) wake up, it was not the traffic driving to work, none of these usually frustrating things. It was the realisation that it's now almost four years that I have been doing a job I don't enjoy a single bit, for employers that I've grown to dislike for their ineptitude, disorganisation and bigotry! (I am not trying to be an arrogant sod, nor am I claiming to be God's gift to management here).

"Congratulations Epi, you've invented the wheel!" I hear you cry out in unison. "As if it is the only company in the world that works that way".

I am fully aware that it is not- philosophers know such things you know. It is just that I got weak at the knees because all my efforts to leave there and improve my working life, have to-date proved futile.

Patience and perseverance I know- You see! You jumped the gun again -is the name of the game, and believe me I'm making valiant efforts to improve on that. Sometimes, however, I get scared with time and life passing me by! Could I be going about things wrong? Possibly! Am I spending too much time worrying about things? Certainly! Should I be concentrating on my personal life more than my career? Most definitely. (After all, I sacrificed a good career in search of personal happiness). Could I get through to you-know-who in Brazil over the weekend? No! QED!!!

Anyway. I don't want to pass the negative feelings of my return to work, on to you.

I would like instead to share with you some of the photocopies I got scanned the other day that perfectly describe what I've been ranting about. (I don't know if it is possible, but feel free to make copies of them, as I'm sure they apply elswhere, too).

Have a good week!

Friday morning in Athens

I couldn't get to sleep last night, so I took my drawing pad and started doodling, while listening to soft music and drinking water. I know, not much excitement in drinking water, but it is still quite hot over here.
The result was something that looks like snoopy and his little bird friend, whose name, for the life of me, I cannot remember. Behold the evidence:

I didn't wake up until nine this morning-I wish it was ten or eleven since I am not working today, but alas, once I opened my eyes, that was it. So, what better excuse to go to the city centre for a walkabout, take some pictures and buy some contact lenses. (Perhaps I've omitted informing my audience that Epi is blind as a bat, and without contacts he would be walking into furniture or even worse, walls).
Equipped myself with my iPod, tickets and patience for the bus, and started off into my Friday morning adventure. I always find it an experience taking the bus. Thankfully, these days they are air-conditioned, but still remain rather "vibrating" -for need of a better word - and with the added bonus of standing, you get to thoroughly enjoy the drivers' impressions of Nikki Lauda! I'm sure it must be quite an experience for all the ladies on board, if you know what I mean.
The excitement only lasted for about ten minutes-suggesting that quite a few folks have started leaving the city for their summers holidays-and we were there!
Since some of you requested photos of Greece, what a perfect opportunity to oblige by mingling with the tourists and going to the change of guard in front of our parliament house. I missed the change of guard by a couple of minutes-damn-but got a couple of photos of the soldiers, the square and the parliament house itself. As far as mingling with the tourists is concerned, I stuck out like a sore thumb, being the only one there without a camera!
Its been such a long time since I last went to that side of the square. I remember my grandpa, Canon, used to take me the to feed the pigeons and the swans in the National Gardens further down. (Great! Now I feel a thousand years old).

Syntagma (Constitution) Square, with the Parliament house in the background

And again.

Parliament House

National Guard in summer uniform

By the end of this excursion down memory lane, it was time to buy my contacts which were packaged for me in a bag bearing a rather odd-as far as optical products are concerned-advert on it. No wonder my eyes water every time I wear my contacts!

Will I grow more eyes in a few months?

Words

As I was leaving home to go to school, my mom would always tell me: "Have a good day, and remember to be careful of traffic, women and drugs".
Wise words, that have followed me through my life! So long, I've only had a single encounter with drugs, and never had an accident in the streets (though I've come close to, twice). It is just the part of women that I haven't mastered yet, and never believe I will! What can I say. It is not as if I'm the only man on the planet who has not mastered the art of reading a woman's mind.
But I digress! The issue for writing this post is to share with you the words of a not so famous Greek expat in West Africa. Words that I return to on difficult times.

The gentleman has called a subordinate to his office to give him a piece of his mind for something that was done contrary to his instructions.

The subordinate is trying all sort of excuses to cover up for his mistake in a vain attempt to pull the proverbial wool over the manager's eyes.
Frustrated for not being able to find the cause of the breakdown in communication, at the end of his tether with listening to stupid excuses the manager lashes out:

"You think I know fuck nothing? I know fuck all!"

True words of wisdom! Words that are etched to my mind forever....

Discoveries of Man and Woman

Man discovered COLOURS and created PAINTING

Woman discovered PAINTING and created MAKE-UP

Man discovered WORDS and created CONVERSATION.


Woman discovered CONVERSATION and created GOSSIP.

Man discovered PLAYING and created CARDS.

Woman discovered CARDS and created TAROT.

Man discovered the EARTH and created FOOD
Woman discovered FOOD and created DIETS
Man discovered FEELINGS and created LOVE
Woman discovered LOVE and created MARRIAGE
Man discovered WOMAN and created SEX
Woman discovered SEX and created HEADACHE
Man discovered TRADE and created MONEY
Woman discovered MONEY and...
fucked everything up!!!!!!



Ladies please be lenient and consider that the above is only a joke! Further more, please take into consideration all the time and effort put into placing all these GIF's into place (and they still don't seem to function!).