road sign

road sign
Originally uploaded by Dimitris Mazarakis.

dms

I got the news via sms about dms in Greece (dinosaur motivation seminar), which is of course an alumni meeting. It's about to happen on april 16-17 on Levendi hotel, which is where we spent most of our AIESEC conferences back in my time. It's the first time such a thing happens and I have no idea what's gonna happen there, but I hear there's gonna be a lot of people I long to see in a long time indeed, and it's gonna be fun, needless to say.

Too bad my leave starts on the 20th, so i cannot be there. Next time though, i won't miss it...

perspective

I think I have a few potential friends from my current experience in the army. One of the closest people so far has been George, who is a lawyer with studies in Athens and Strasbourg, France.

During the past week we spent about 42 hours in service together, guarding and patrolling, most of which has been conversation. And I discovered that being the listener that I have come to be, talking about all issues in life with a guy who is stubborn and always has strong and structured opinions about different aspects of life, is giving me a good and different perspective on life.

I thought I had lost the mood to debate, but I discovered that I haven't, and that's very very good. I felt alive again through all those conversations. And I am soooo glad.

Thanks, George.

Book review: Black House

blackhouse
Originally uploaded by Dimitris Mazarakis.

Well, here's the second book i have read by stephen king. The first one was "Misery", back in 1997, which is of course a classic.

I have no much experience of reading this kind of fiction. Only thing I can say is that I felt that the book was well written to take you through 650 pages comfortably, although the end was kind of hollywood like. But it was exciting, it was a page turner, and it definitely was good company. I Am going to prefer King again to read when I am in mood for fiction.

What impressed me about the book is that it is written like a movie, describing the scenes from the perspective of the director. And that pretty much creates some additional interest/ownership from the reader's point of view.

Recommended to those of you who enjoy mystery/science fiction/adventure.

not at my best but still

I spent one week in the sub camp and now I am back to civilisation for a week, going out almost everyday for the next week (starting today) until I go back.

I had a couple of moodswings while spending my days there, but I have decided that this thing I am being through is no bigger than I am. I am stronger than this, and won't allow myself not to enjoy what I can enjoy and let the rest pass along.

Now enjoying your online company for another week :)

on social circle

Have you ever thought on how much your social circle has changed, say, during the past 15 years?

I had this thought yesterday.

I have more or less 4 people whom i consider my core friends. All of them are male. One of them I met in highschool, two of them we grew up together with (one of whom I have long lost touch with but i still consider him one of my best friends). The last one is my cousin.

I have a lot more people whom I consider friends, good friends. A couple we met through the department at university. A lot more I met during my 5 and a half years in AIESEC. Don't ask me to express why I don't consider these people my "best friends", there's no real argument for that, but all of these people could be my best friends if we had the opportunity to spend more time together.

Is time the real factor? Or distance?
No.

But we just didn't have any of the two enough to get closer and say reach "a higher level" as stupid as this might sound. At some point in time we did have it though, when we worked together, when we lived together, when we spent time together. This one-look-is-all-it-takes communication, this knowing when one is down and when to help out when not, being able to laugh with each other's joke (hard to do with mine, i have to pay a compliment to all of you out there for doing so :-), being there at the good and bad times.

Then I have a few potential friends out of the army. People we spend time together because we have to, but also because we choose so, as we see some matching opportunity (after all each of us has the choice not to socialise with anyone at all, though it's like being insane). Really cool people, from different backgrounds and with different interests.

My total number of people in regular communication, meaning frequent in saying so, is no more than 10 or a bit more. They don't necessarily match with my closest friends. I don't know how to distinguish the closest friends within all the friends around, but one conclusion is that my social circle has changed a lot in the past 15 years, from school, to university, to AIESEC, to the army. And it keeps expanding instead of shrinking, in contrast with a lot of people I know in GR who stick with the same people for a lifetime.

I am willing to value good friends as they value me in life, but having them as my only company for a lifetime is a choice I can't make. I need new contacts, new perspectives, the excitement of meeting new people and them meeting me run in my veins.

I think my next level of making new friends after the army is my new job and my new country. Damn, i am looking forward to that!

I am on track

I came accross this link somewhere in my mailbox, aging from the beginning of my AI term, when we were making the AI profiles to upload on the AI homepage. Strangely enough (or not at all) not much has changed in the way myself and other people describe me. Maybe my favourite song has changed, but "Dreams" from the Cranberries still rocks for me.

Check it out for yourselves.

http://www.aiesec.net/users/paul.c/Team%20Profiles/Finalised%20Team%20Pages/dimitris.htm

if you don't like something,

change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. And that's what i 'm doing.

Where the streets have no name

I want to run I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside
I want to reach out and touch the flame
Where the streets have no name

I want to feel sunlight on my face
I see the dust cloud disappear without a trace
I want to take shelter from the poison rain
Where the streets have no name

Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name
We're still building then burning down love
Burning down love
And when I go there
I go there with you
It's all I can do

The city's aflood and our love turns to rust
We're beaten and blown by the wind trampled in dust
I'll show you a place high on a desert plain
Where the streets have no name

Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name
We're still building then burning down love
Burning down love
And when I go there
I go there with you
It's all I can do

Our love turns to rust
We're beaten and blown by the wind
Blown by the wind
Oh, and I see love see our love turn to rust
We're beaten and blown by the wind
Blown by the wind
Oh, when I go thereI go there with you
It's all I can do

change of mood

temporary or not?

time will show. It's bcos my parents r in town for the weekend. And i hope it lasts for a while, cos i am far more optimistic now.

At 12 i exited the camp, went for coffee with parents, and - have i told you about them - they are really cool folks, like talking with your friends - your best friends. Anyway, after that we headed up north to Soufli - visited the silk museum showing the procedure of how to make silk textile etc. then went to Orestiada even further to the North for lunch. All these places are new to me and it's one of the things i wanted to visit the area around until i get away from this place in May. Too bad I cannot visit Turkey, Istanbul should be around 4 hrs aay from here by car - never been there.

After that we visited the place where my dad served as a soldier 31 years ago, outside Orestiada, in a small village. Well, everything up here was a small village back in 74, times changed since then. Orestiada was a town of 1500 inhabitants back then, and today its population is close to 30,000. My dad was shocked. Anyway, he stayed there for 12 months, out of the 2-year service back then, and during 74-75 there was the whole crisis with Cyprus, Turkey etc. - long story to analyze here, and lots of different perspectives in GR and abroad about this too - but the conclusion is that he had a lot more difficult times than i am having now. I am more into the philosophy of comparing what i am experiencing with what i can take rather than with other ppl's experiences, but still our conversation about those times made me feel more optimistic about the next 7 months. I hope it lasts.

Tomorrow i am spending half of the day with my parents, they have to leave by noon, and then i am just hanging around till midnite out in Alexandroupolis, which is suddenly a friendlier place.

face it

ths blog is not about news anymore, not for the next 7 months that is. It's going to be mostly about my thoughts and ideas on different things around me. Last night a friend smsed me ending the message with: "send me your news when you can". I have no news at all, and no exciting stories to talk about, at least not about my current life...

parents in town

my parents are visiting for the weekend, and i will spend the weekend in Alexandroupoli, but out of camp, which is both a good opportunity to catch up with them and to improve my mood. I can also combine some sight seeing which i haven't done at all for the 3 months that I have spent here. Await the photos online soon :)

what i am reading these days

"Black house", by Stephen King. It's rather good although i am not so much into fiction, i prefer history and politics for reading. But the plot is good and keeps you wanting to read more. The previous one I read by King was "Misery" back in '97, which was also kind of cool for its type of a book.

...

these days have been rather strange. I am out of the postman deal for a whlie. Instead i went to a smaller camp with some 20 other ppl from our camp (all or most of the divisions) for a week. We are supposed to be going there and guarding some heavy ammo for a week each time, twice a month. Nevermind that, in 3 months it's been only my 1st time there. One week with no contact with the outside world, no exit from the camp (warehouses basically), somewhere hidden in the mountains, all you have is your fellow soldiers.

Though i didn't have a bad time i am glad to be back in town. In fact, i have all sorts of philosophical approaches about the experience I am currently into, but this time after an intense army-week, something within me snapped. I more than ever feel that i have to talk, talk openly.

The army is like a brainwashing machine. You have to go just because you have to. And what kind of logical organisation takes people who have studied, worked in their lives, some of them have wives and kids at home, and places them in an environment where you actually learn nothing. At all. In an environment you want to get away from, from the first touch you have with it. You know, in the beginning, i said to myself that i should be patient. I should give it sometime, not be so negative, and see what i can gain out of it. Enough of that. I want out. But i can't get out of it. Or rather i can, but i should have to serve the remaining time sometime in the future, and i'm not willing to do that any more than i am willing to get it over with and be a civilian again in november.

The army is like big brother, you know, the tv reality game. It tests your ability to sustain yourself within 12 months you do nothing you want to do, being treated in the worst way possible, like you would never treat someone, survive within superiors and co-soldiers that can be anything close to people you would never want to meet, away from home, friends, job, girlfriend and anything at all that you love in life. Or almost anything. But you have to be patient. Stretch your limits, more than you imagine you could do. You basically learn how to be idle, how to obey orders, how to do things that are completelly irrational, and you know my problem. I am a numbers person. Logic came built-in in me, when i was born. I can't stand this. I can't stand having to wake every morning at 6:15 when you got almost nothing to do for the whole day. I can't stand having spare time when i am actually allowed to do nothing - not read a book, hang out or listen to music. People look at me like i am a UFO when i read after lights are out at night with my torch, but hey - that's my life-saving raft for now. That's keeping my brain working, my imagination vivid (along with the time i get to be off camp). I keep making plans for the future, and lets see how many of those i will bring to life.

But the contrast with my "previous life" is still too big. You can't change an organisation as discipline oriented and irrational as the army. Period. And this organisation basically teaches you how to avoid any kind of responsibility and opinion on things, which comes in contrast with both my character and what i carry as experience from my life before and during AIESEC, where a lot of things were paved under a lot of personal initiative from people, and endless effort to reach a goal.

Of course you meet people that are worth keeping up with outside camp as well. And that's just about the only benefit that you can have out of it, pretty big one under good circumstances. But something that can't soothe the feeling that you are actually absent from life for a complete year.

Anyhow, i am not in that bad of a state, i am more not doing so well on the psychological front. Some of my hair is getting white (!!!) over the past two weeks or three. I am very much looking forward to a change. Maybe when i get my transfer i will be somewhere close to home and i will be able to move some things around. That should be around the beginning of May.

In the meantime, I am counting the days for November 8th. 235 + today.

Il postino

Today, all of a sudden I became the postman of my unit, I don't know how long this is gonna last. But it suddenly made my time here better. I will explain to you what I do in the mornings, for you to understand the big change.

1. wake at 6:15, like everyone else
2. By 8 am take breakfast, tidy up, clean up etc etc.
3. go to the secretary of the unit at 8 and prepare all outgoing mail.
4. 9:30 i am off to the city, military post office, city post office and anything else i need to do
5. 13:30 i am back in camp, classify new incoming mail etc.

The deal is that from what I saw today you barely need 2 hours for all you need to do in town during the 4 hours you spend there, if you are fast enough. Basically the rest of the 4 hours you stay in town waiting, so you can do anything as long as the patrolling military police doesn't see you anywhere :) It's good to be out of camp everyday :). Lets see how long they keep me in this post though. I hope for at least 10 days...

Different day

I spent my 3rd evening off today by borrowing a car from a friend who stayed in camp and visiting another city some 50km away, Komotini. The weather today was excellent (in contrast with the previous days when we had cold and continuous rain). SO i took the trip and visited a few soldier friends over there.

Komotini was really beautiful although i stayed only for 5-6 hours and didn't see much of it. Half the population of the city/town is christian and half is muslim and there's a different character to the coty as opposed to most of the other ones in my country. In addition to that, the city has a few active university departments, which means trere are a lot of young people around and places to have fun of any kind.

I hope to have the chance in my next 2 months here to visit a few places I haven't seen before, since in the beginning of May I will be getting my 2nd transfer (hopefully somewhere closer to home). For now I will just try to get through the next 10 days with no exit from the camp.

Happy birthday mum

Mum has her b-day today and unfortunately i am some 700 km away (actually 900, since she is in Athens today). But I wish her the best :)

Looking for a motive

I am looking for a motive to quit smoking once and for all.

For those of you who know, I like smoking and I enjoy it very much. I always quit for specific periods of time, knowing that I will start again after 6, 3 or whatever months everytime. When I smoke I smoke like 2 packs a day. When I don't smoke I don't smoke at all, not a zip, no cigarettes at all. I want to feel like I am in control but also that I am free to start again whenever I want to do so. I have quit a few times in the past for specific reasons i.e. putting the money i would spend aside, gain stamina, see if i can take it for six months. I've been through all of that successfully.

The latest though i have is to quit once and for all. But I need a bigger motive on that one. Like becoming a lung donor in, say, 15 years from now. So I won't get to smoke at all for the next 15 years. Any thoughts, suggestions on that one?

Photoblog online

I finally got some time to edit my photos and put online a photoblog at http://dimitrisgrphotos.blogspot.com (also at link on the sidebar)

There's 2900 photos online over there - i wish you all happy viewing!

Alexandroupolis

A few things have changed. the weather is not one of them. One of the major rivers of the province has flooded and the military camps up north are in alert helping ppl out of their houses. Luckily we are not. Weather is still rainly and cold though.

My first impressions after a sleepless 8 hour trip on the train are no the best possible. In fact I am already counting days to my 2nd transfer which will be in May. And I certainly hope to be somewhere close to home.

Anyhow Friday and weekend evenings i will be out and that's cool enough since i am spending th enext 210 days and nights guarding etc, so not getting out of camp. My time in Athens was too exciting to hold me down now and keep me compromised to my military service. But things will get better, i am sure. It's up to me.

How many things can you fit into just a couple of days?

Well, I tried and succeeded to fit a lot of activities in my one and a half day in Athens. I chit chatted with my sister, I met my cousin George and my friend Panos, stayed at both places. went out for drinks, went clubbing, bowling, bouzoukia (live Greek music) last night till 6am this morning. And I had lots of fun, the truth is.

The only not so much fun fact is that in the morning I missed the train (I was supposed to leave Athens at 8, to be in Lamia in the morning, so as to have the time to prepare for my transfer to the border. But, what the hell. I arrived in the afternoon and I do not need more than a couple of hours to do last minute shopping and to pack. Anyhow my train leaves at 11pm.

It is a sad note to say that I wish i would not go in camp again these days after so much fun, but I have to. I will take my books and music with me to keep me company though. More blogging from Alexandroupoli, the following days.

Whateverland

This is my latest nickname for my country. Sometimes I get the impression that there is complete anarchy in all forms of social behaviour. Everyone (or almost everyone) makes and follows only the rules that suit themselves and most of the time only very few of the people they live or work together. I am getting sick and tired of this.

March

There is a saying in GR talking about March, and saying it is the most unpredictable month of the year, in terms of weather. Normally March is considered to be part of spring, in fact last week we had like 17 degrees during daytime. But now we have the thermometer going to minus and snow and rain all over the country. When is this winter gonna finish?