Το φιτρί αγόρι (colourful life)

It’s not so late to look back and see what happened during the time I spent (and I spend) in Greece. The main difference I can name is that Erasmus period is over. Therefore my time as a student has come to an end after 5 months in the TEI of Irakleio. I’ve learned a lot of things, mostly about life, and even it can be said “I don’t regret anything I did”, I guess some things I could do them better.

About friends, I made really good friends in Ioannina in summer 2006. I still meet them from time to time (Greece is really small sometimes). And also others from Irakleio during the same summer. The latter ones I find them by chance in the streets, I go walking and you see someone you think you know and…. One of the Greek guys from the Irakleio conferences. It happened twice to me and the same friend was with me, she can ratify it :P. I hope not to loose these old friends. Some times you make new ones and you don’t give to the old ones the time they deserve. I’m sorry. Even for those from Spain, form the university or from the library: many kisses from Athens

About… life status. Well, my life has changed from student, to unemployed, to worker in a big company as a code monkey. I had been working before, but perhaps I wasn’t working in the same way as now. As a teacher you do your time, and in your free time you prepare the lessons as you want. Some days it isn’t so much time, but others you stay until late. Perhaps was that kind of freeness I liked, and now I feel a bit trapped.

As a new life comes, it doens’t come alone, it comes with responsabilities, drawbacks but some advantages. One of those “advangates” is to be able to invite you friends and no so friends to have a coffe in what I name “my place”. So visit me, because I bought teas, and coffes and I cannot finish all of them by myself!

In the picture: Zubi, Kostas (greek hero) and me.

After I don’t know how much time without posting a word here. I want to inform to all my friends that I’m alive.

Well, lets summarize what happened in all those weeks. I’ll try to post on those things when I have more time

• I finished my project in the TEI of Irakleio, about a 3D editor using X3D and P2P networks to communicate with other peers.
• Therefore I finished my erasmus period in Greece and I’m an Engineer
• Instead of returning to Spain, I’m living in Athens.
• More precisely: I’m looking for a job in Athens

That’s the summary of my life until now

PD: The baby it’s not mine.

There are some kind of products whose users are branded as geeks, addicts or fanatics. I guess that is that people that brand you as a mac geek, makes you a mac geek, even if you are not. So, encouraged by those people I felt the need of “renew” my faith on the big apple (or small apple). Even they don’t pay me for doing this (they should), I prepared this present for a good friend.

I thought in a string with an apple in the front but I wanted a big apple. Something like “hey! look at my apple” Therefore, even the “apple string” is more sexy. I prepared the “big apple in your ass” option But as you can see in these pictures, no one tried it on. The pictures with it put on I reserve them for my private gallery .

Have a great Mac  day!.

Perhaps continuing with BIG things (no, I’m not going to remove my trousers). Today I’d like to introduce my best job in the kitchen that didn’t burn: The Spanish omelet with 6 eggs, milk and the two biggest potatoes we could find made in a frying pan with 28cm diameter. Of course as and always, it was made with teamwork: Stella and me. Yep, I’m not able to flip that big omelet by myself.

As always the frying part is a bit complicated because you have to put much oil for that amount of potatoes. Therefore, not always you fry the potatoes right, some of them are hard and some of the ok. But this one got the right amount of oil, the potatoes got the taste of the olive oil, and got fried perfectly. We used the technique of “flip the frying pan”, to be able to flip the omelet. It lies in flip the frying pan to match the dish with the omelet and flip both together (something like in a movie).

The reason to make this omelet was Stella’s birthday. Now she is <censored> years old. So we prepared the house and some food for the people: omelet, pasta with cheese, cake, salty stuff, sangria and other things I’ve forgotten. Now its time to wash the dishes. Uf!, the stack is not big, but it scares me.

After waiting more than 30 minutes for the menu, we received this “blanket” in the restaurant. It was a small restaurant in a village near Patra. The place is just in the limit with the sea, and it has beautiful views. And everything they have there is BIG. Starting from the BIG menu, big salads, big dishes, big everything.

The prices are not bad, a big salad is 6 euros, but the salad is for you and 5 friends more. You can have a meal with that salad!. But the even if in a restaurant the most important is the food, here you can enjoy with the views thanks to the location near the sea. You can feel the waves hitting 1m near you. And of course, smell the salty air typical from the beach. I forgot the name of the restaurant, so I can only give you a picture

For a student who lives in a flat with no so many tools to cook, not so many time to spend cooking, and the most important: with no so many “energy” to cook (yep, I’m lazy). For a person who fulfil those characteristics the student restaurant is the best place to eat healthy and cheap.

The first is cheap, beacuse you can eat for 2 euros or 1 euro with a 15 days luncheon voucher. That’s in Irakleio, in Patra you pay 1,9€ and you can have lunch and dinner, free salad an fresh water (from the tap). In Irakleio you have to pay for a bottle of water, there is no tap, and you can only pick one salad and a piece of fruit.

Healthy. Not so many people can say that the food from the student’s restaurant is healthy. It’s not always good, and some days it s***s. But you can find fish, vegetables and other things that your mother told you to eat and you always forget to buy in the supermarket

Well, to finish, the picture was taken in one of those “Apple Lover” moments one have every day. As you can see my skills with the knife are not very good, so I will not open a shop selling that stuff. But it’s something funny

If you don’t know what HDR is, check this link to wikipedia. The first time I heard about HDR, someone showed me an image over saturated and I had to ask what was in the image, because I couldn’t recognize what was that. After that I forgot about HDR, until I saw this pictures on Flickr and I started to realize that perhaps I could make nice pictures using that technique.

I don’t have a tripod here therefore I used the old trick of “don’t move the f****** camera”, and I went near Patra’s harbour to get the sunset near the sea. In Patra the sky turns pink, its very nice, but can a digital camera take that moment? Only “a bit”. Here I leave my 2 first picture using HDR and “potochop”.

In Greece you can find lots of animal kinds. But in the TEI there is a special fauna, well I guess all around Crete, but the TEI has a special road that goes up and it have nice turns to do μαλακίες (malakies). There you can find the typical cretan driver, called also μαλάκα (malaka). They drive cars, motorbikes and buses. And in this picture you can appreciate the wildness of two of those animals when they met.

The bus is in the middle of the road, almost entirely in the opposite way, invading the lane. In the other side, you can see a car trying to get out its parking space. Why the bus was going through the other lane, and why the car driver didn’t take a look ahead, nobody knows. We know from our Greek history lessons that when you want to cross a road, you have to look left, right and up. ¿Up? Yes, for the flying motorbike.

It wasn’t a big crash, only the wheel of the car was damaged, and the bus was like new. But that stopped the traffic to and from the TEI for 15 minutes for the rest of the buses, not for cars because the bus was so much in the other lane that almost all the cars were able to pass. And of course, like in Spain, lots of people watching (even me). I don’t know if I was risking my life taking this picture but… here is it

Did I drive here? Yes, I did. In Athens, going down a road like in Tokio Drift but without drifting and shit-scared because the road had no protections in the limits and we were in a mountain. Also the car was very wide for me (Audi A4), and the road was not very wide. Driving with the fog and long distance lights. One of the normal lights was broken (very common here). The way down the road was ok, and the highway was ok, the problem was in the city. You don’t have to stop at the STOP sign, other drivers can “eat you”. And of course, you have to go as fast as possible, if not, suddenly a car will overtake you without any warning: no lights, no horn. And that happend: a car tried to go out from a street to my street, it put half of the car in my lane, I avoided it, and at the same time a car overtook me and we almost “kissed” our side mirrors. But, I survived!!!!! Im alive!

Moral of the story: If you drink, don’t drive. And if you live in Crete.. watch out!!!!

Chanle, Alberto, Carmen, Zubi and me. Five future erasmus party… err.. students, who went out one night through Valladolid.

Say “thanks” to Alberto for allowing us to sleep in his house, so I was able to return to Palencia more fresh :D. And the last link to the photo gallery