This is where the Internet rolls its eyes

I have a confession Internet. A small cultural transgression, that could make you storm out of this blog, mouse trailing, never to revisit me again. But, I need to get this off my chest once and for all. What you are about to read might make you raise a disapproving eyebrow, roll your eyes and cringe away.

I like boy band music.

Yes, Internet, I own Backstreet Boys' Greatest Hits and the fact that I can't have Westlife and NSync in my collection is a direct result of Goth Daughter's threats and show of disgust that we could ever be related. (This from a kid who asked Grandma to get her the "Spice Girls" CD back in the seventh grade. Sheesh).

I think it all began back with the Bay City Rollers. Mom wouldn't let me hang posters of them or David Cassidy (who "thought he loved me") in my room. She'd go "ti tous theleis tous malliades!" Which loosely translates: "What do you want with those long-haired no-good-doers" which really meant "if he's not Greek and doesn't have short hair, I will die from a heart attack".

Unrelenting, I saved my allowance to buy their LPs and kept them secretly stashed in my bookcase behind piles of Nancy Drew books. Boy bands helped me oppose what was proper and expected of me. Little did I know that I'd get hooked.

This post was triggered by the news that Kevin Richardson decided that it is time to leave the Backstreet Boys. The end of boy bands, the end of my teen years. Sigh, all things must come to an end, I guess.
I have to go now and take down their poster that I kept concealed in the back of my closet.

:-)

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All things come at a price

Well, Daughter#1 finally talked me into it. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I came home these past few months, bragging how fast my recently upgraded internet connection at work was and Daughter#1 would whimper in the background. Admittedly, our slow home connection -- a PSTN dial-up on a 56K modem -- was seeing its last days, having served us well for nine years.

We signed up for home DSL internet connection. However, there's a catch as in all things that are too good to be true. I have to wire half the house in order to connect her high-school graduation gift (a used laptop) with the wireless router hooked up on our old, yet trusty, PC. Seriously geek inventors, why do you call it 'wireless' if it needs a wire from every PC?

There's another glitch. Our home now has super-fast Internet connection 24/7 on one computer but no dial tone to phone out. 'How ASDL filters and splitters work' have become the main reading course and my current nightmare. Why did I have to brag how fast my work connection is? Next time, think woman, before you speak!

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Woo-Hoo!

Yesterday the basic results for Greek university entrance exams came out. Daughter#1 did very well. Extremely well. We are pleased as peaches on cream here in Flubberwinkle home. Down-to-earth husband, however, has asked everyone to wait until all the results* come in before we start counting our chickens. You know the saying "opposites attract"... that's my marriage. Slap-happy silly versus stout sobriety. He has a point and I won't argue with reason. But it doesn't keep me from doing the victory dance when noone's looking.

I didn't think I'd get mushy, but when Daughter#1 called me at work with the first results my eyes filled with tears of joy and relief. My co-workers gave each other dubious wide-eyed looks, unsure of what I was hearing from the other side of the receiver. After telling them the good news, everyone went WOO-HOO (in Greek, it translates to BRAVOs). Then they took turns remembering the first time I brought her in the office 16 years ago (she was nine months AND walking, with cute bunny shoes, a bonnet and matching non-gothic baby outfit). She was the first baby by an employee and dubbed office mascot until my colleagues started mating and making mascots of their own.

And now, *sigh* she's off to University. Now that I think about it... someone should warn the University. I've unleashed my half silly (takes from my side)/ half serious (takes from daddy's side)/ heavy-metal / goth-sprinkled / Tolkien-fan / know-it-all chatterbox on them.

*all the results means including the "special" subjects such as foreign languages, which haven't been graded yet. She's already taken the English and German exams. Next week is the Italian language exam. These subjects are required if the candidate wishes to enroll in English, German or Italian Literature and Philology Departments.

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What if I want them sunny-side up?

The following post is courtesy of my brother who sends me weird, yet oddly informative, stuff...

How Two Russian Journalists Cooked an Egg with their Mobile Phones

Vladimir Lagovski and Andrei Moiseynko from Komsomolskaya Pravda Newspaper in Moscow decided to learn first-hand how harmful cell phones are. There is no magic in cooking with your cell phone. The secret is in the radio waves that the cell phone radiates.

The journalists created a simple microwave structure as shown in the picture. They called from one cell phone to the other and left both phones on talking mode. They placed a tape recorder next to phones to imitate sounds of speaking so the phones would stay on.

After, 15 minutes: The egg became slightly warm.
25 minutes: The egg became very warm.
40 minutes: The egg became very hot.
65 minutes: The egg was cooked. (As you can see.)

Conclusion ..1: Cooking eggs with mobile phones is possible but very expensive ($4.55 or 123 Rubles)
Conclusion ..2: All this talk of danger is exaggerated; even if your brain gets cooked, it would take a couple hours of talking on a cell phone.
Conclusion ..3: We dont recommend carrying cell phone in your pants.

Original story here:
http://www.kp.ru/daily/23694.4/52233/print/

And... if you really want to laugh try translating from Russian to English via worldlingo.com

(e.g. Is it possible to weld egg with the aid of the cell phone?)

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World Refugee Day

Somewhere I read that the majority of the people on the planet, at some point in their lives, will be forced from their homes, either because of climatic conditions or wars. The next refugee could be you.

The UN Refugee Agency
How you can help

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So much for da code

I don't know about you but when I finished reading the "The DaVinci Code" I thought I had just finished reading a movie script. So, a million other readers and I weren't suprised when news came out that the book was being made into a movie. Personally, I was suprised Tom Hanks had been cast for the role of 'Robert Langdon' (the script described the leading man as a Dan Brown look-alike, if memory serves right).

Anyway, last night husband and I saw the movie for two different reasons. Husband, hadn't read the book, wanted to know what all the ruckus about the film is about (Greek church demonstrated outside cinemas on opening night) and I wanted to see how the movie script fared under the direction of Ron Howard.

We gave it a thumb up for Ian McKellen's appearance and I personally liked how Howard managed to intertwine the character's pasts with the present (i.e. Sophie's memories). Hanks was good choice. For those who've read the book no surprises.

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Remembering how they couldn't reach the faucet

Last night was Daughter#2's graduation from elementary school.
The highlight of the school's festivities was a grade-school version of Aristophane's play "The Birds (Ornithes)" which was applauded with enthusiasm and a variety of songs and dances presented by all 6th graders.
I looked at those kids on stage and over at Daughter#1 (aged 17, finishing high-school) hugging her first-grade teacher and wondered how fast time has gone by. It seemed like only yesterday I was combing pigtails and packing lunches for my girls and I didn't have to squeeze between the two of them, in front of the bathroom mirror, to comb my hair.

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Sandi Thom, ladies and gentlemen

It's been a long time since I've been pleasantly suprised by an up and coming artist.
This morning, while drinking tea and getting ready for work, I chanced on this young lady's video clip singing a capella on the greek MTV version [Mad.tv]: "I was born too late to a world that doesn't care, Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair".
I like her style, like a breath of fresh air with her cute cd title: Smile... it confuses people.

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I say, Holmes, are those Kermits?

Daughter #2 wants to attend swimming lessons with her best friend at our community pool. Fine. Went to ask for necessary requirements (doctor's note, equipment etc.) where I noticed the grass area around the pool and its facilities was 'moving'. On closer inspection, I realized that the 'moving' grass were zillions of tiny baby frogs hopping towards the main road.

As if I didn't have enough worries, what with global warming and what to make for dinner, I asked myself:

1) Where did these lilliputian amphibians come from? The pool? Ewwww, and it looks so clean! (Note to self: Remember to ask for documentation that the pool has been inspected by the state chemical lab).

2) Why were those pollywogs moving, almost mesmerized, towards high-speed vehicles? Were they born with a built-in death wish to be squished before they can even 'ribbit'? Is there a frog joke I'm missing sort of like "why did the chicken cross the road"? To get to the other side. But the other side doesn't have ponds or water to tempt you, like the dark side has cookies.

Another of life's mysteries to taunt my brain.

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Best coffee break ever

Yesterday, Daughter#2 didn't have school so we spent the entire day together, starting with a heap of morning errands followed by a full day at work. She kept herself busy with yahooligans and drawing pictures for co-workers while I was overwhelmed with my workload and various personal thoughts weighing me down.

She looked out the window and pointed to the sky: "Look Mom, doesn't that cloud look like a sitting camel?"
I followed the direction her finger was pointing and after a few moments my eye-brain coordination started functioning and I saw it. I smiled at my 11-year-old look-alike, "You've got a good eye. Too bad we don't have a camera with us".
In a matter of minutes, all the stuff that had been going on in my head took a backseat and seemed lighter as we tried to recognize other white fluffy creatures in the sky.

Best coffee break ever. They should have kids in every workplace to help ease the tension and get the creative juices flowing. Or at least the sound of kids' laughter.

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When Steven Seagal makes movies, Greek convicts take notes

Greece's main prison is the Korydallos Prison Complex. It is located in the Municipality of Korydallos (hence the name), a western suburb of Athens with an estimated population of 65,000. Greece's largest correctional institution is situated right smack in the middle of a densely populated town with schools and kindergartens across the street.

In 1990 about a hundred prisoners broke out, found hiding places in the abundant apartment buildings and easily fanned out by camouflaging as civilians. There's an obvious reason prisons are built in large open spaces. Greece, the size of the state of Illinois, undoubtedly has empty area issues but there are plenty of wide-open rural spaces, albeit hilly and rocky, to accommodate a penitentiary. A jailhouse, of this magnitude moreover, must be transferred from this inhabited urban district. This particular prison is unaccommodating for the convicts (overcrowded, lacking in facilities), but also extremely dangerous for the innocent outsiders as yesterday's news headlines proved.

On Sunday afternoon, a helicopter circled the prison a couple of times and then landed in the courtyard of the men's wing, where inmates were 'exercising'. The chopper and its pilot, hired by two men and then hijacked under the threat of a bomb, was ordered to "pick up" two convicts. The prison sentries couldn't discern anything amidst the dust and debris the chopper's propellers had caused, so they didn't risk shooting at uncertain targets, with shrapnel ricocheting off the chopper, perhaps sending the helicopter whirling off in pieces and killing innocent civilians outside the prison's perimeter and unaware inmates within the prison courtyard. The escape plan went off without a hitch for the people who had organized it. They landed several miles away at a cemetery and both, convicts and hijackers, made the last leg of their getaway on stolen motorbikes.

The Greek media is having a field day with this one: how unprepared the guards were that they didn't shoot to stop the helicopter and how extraordinary this escape was. Granted, Greece has never had a helicopter escape but it's been done before (many, many times in France, in Italy, the US and if I'm not mistaken once in Australia). So much for innovational. I swear some reporters can't hide their disappointment that such a Hollywood-themed breakout had no blood to boost TV audience. I can't even imagine how many people would have been injured and killed if rampant shooting had been prompted by prison lookouts. It is my humble opinion that the police's non-action was most likely a godsend.


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A tragedy no ancient greek playwright could fathom

This weekend Greece sat anxiously by their television sets to see if the remains of 11 year old Alex from Veria, missing since February, were buried in a old, run-down house not far from his home. The tragic news that broke out late on Friday evening were that 5 juveniles (aged 11-13) had confessed Alex's murder and then... "took it back". "We said we killed him because we were scared of going to jail", said one of the 5. The body of young Alex wasn't found at the place the suspects had reported they had buried him in their confessions before they retracted. And foul play by an adult who conspired to help them is suspected. My role isn't to report the story, I will link you to what english pages I can find regarding the story here, here and here. However, I can't restrain myself from commenting what I felt as the story unraveled and then got tangled again.

I felt horror. Some people cried racism was the motive, I'm not sure this is the case, however, since the perpetrators (assummed innocent until proven guilty) are of mixed backgrounds, they are Greek, Romanian and Albanian. Their common denominator, however, is their social and family status. Kids from unstable, low-class homes that seek vengeance for their underpriveleged lives by bullying other kids who are better-off than they are (not in terms of money, but in terms of happiness). In this case, Alex. Alex was a gifted child, a good child that stood up to them during recesses and their bullying but was caught alone with them one cold February evening, never to return home, to his loving family and stable environment.

Whether they did it or not, the situation is troubling all the same.
If they didn't do it, what sort of people will these 5 young kids grow to be when they can lie about murder as easily as if they hadn't done their homework?
If they did do it, how do 5 young "innocent" souls live 3 months without remorse? If they are able to live with blood on their hands at 11, 12 and 13, what will they be capable of "living with" as adults?
What cruel family environment and incognizant school played part in their making?

My eyes brimmed with tears, while I viewed Alex's mother pleading for any information regarding her son's whereabouts, her brave response to a callous reporter's question "What do you think?"... she hopes Alex is still alive somewhere, somehow.

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It's all Greek to me

When I was in school, teachers would always pick me to give the definition of an English word derived from Greek. This is one of the disadvantages of being a Greek kid in a US public school; teachers think you're Aristotle's midget reincarnation. The first time this happened (4th grade), Ms.Venckus turned directly at me and asked if I knew where 'psychology' came from. That should have clued me off immediately that the word was Greek because I hadn't even raised my hand; whereas our class geeks, Ortwin and Vicky, were already waving theirs impatiently in the air. Caught off guard, I squeezed my eyes shut to make the answer pop out. But no.
"Sorry, ma'am. I don't know it".
"Yes, you do".
"No, I don't".
By now, Ortwin and Vicky were using their other hands to hold up their tired raised ones.
Teacher gave up and turned to the blackboard to write out the the word and its definition. Then suddenly as if a light bulb had just lit up I blurted out: "OH! You mean ψυχολογία (psi-ho-lo-gi-a)!" I emphasized the Greek pronunciation in order to justify my former lack of noesis. And then with the know-it-all attitude of a ten year old, "You pronounced it in English, THAT'S why I got confused". Teacher nodded her head amusingly at my bilingual show and tell. Ortwin and Vicky bit my dust that day.

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