Sunday, April 29, 2007

...and more


third post in three days?

It looks like I am on fire or very bored. But the truth is that I woke up at noon, it is almost raining outside and I feel like writing something instead of going through Sunday afternoon melancholy.

Sundays are not that bad when you feel like doing nothing and provided you are well equipped with a comfortable sofa, some nice films, books, newspapers and music everything works out almost perfect. You may be a bit frustrated reading that one guy got killed in riots in Talin, Estonia as a follow-up of bringing down a monument to Soviet soldiers from the local government. It looks like people in Estonia (and also Latvia, Lithuania and so on) are being juuuuuuuuust a little bit over-sensible against the Soviets forgetting that they were actually fighting the Nazis! It looks a bit stupid bringing down monuments to people that lost their lives against the Wermacht while openly allowing neonazis to march around the cities with the excuse of being anti-communists.

Stupidity, they say is infinite and they may be right!

Anyhoooo...I am overcoming my afternoon frustration with seeps of Greek coffee (OK it's turkish, or actually arab), listening to Brad Mehldau's Trio covering Nick Drake (Day is Done, look it up it's really cool) and "youtubing" the best of Johan Cruyff! coming up is me with my book of narratives by Marguerite Yurcenar on a strict 180 degrees position on the couch and later on come the games of the day from la Sexta! ("Football con fatatas!")

thus, I 'll just follow a great advice and won't get bitter on this Sunday evening. A new week starts tomorrow, which in addition is a week with one day off and Champions League semifinals!

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Something for the weekend


Yesterday night I went to a party, organized by a friend's friend in the middle of the Raval neighborhood. The house situated on one of the narrowest, lightlesslest streets of Barcelona was a really old block of flats, in which the apartment had the special privilege to occupy the last floor, that should allow at least a few hours of direct sunlight every day. Apart from all that, the place was quite nice and the people were all having fun, (some actually having reached, US-college-party-throwing-up-all-over-the-place levels of fun) . But strangely, I found myself in an awkward, unsociable position.

I did not feel like dancing to the cheesy latin music, nor making casual conversation with people I did not know, nor meeting people...is something the matter with me?

Yesterday I was wondering about the same thing, but maybe it is just a phase I am going through, one of this periods, we men may also have, moody and melancholic, probably for being unable to keep up with the general spring blooming that goes on around me. I had my moment though, once I reached the tiny balcony, looked over the small street on both sides, filled with its prostitutes whose callings did not make it to the fifth floor, the nordic tourists whose bodily odors DID make it even up there and suddenly felt the breeze coming down from Montjuic, whose lights blinked behind the nightly haze. The crappy music faded, irritating people became invisible, the smell of vomit and piss dissolved into the thin air, I felt calm and peaceful.

Maybe nothing is the matter with me after all. Maybe I just need more of these moments. As May is closing in, I might have to try earning them a bit more.

Somethings for the weekend
check this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiatUjDlROs&mode=related&search=

sound-track (top 5 in my mp3 player)
1. Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers feat. Wynton Marsalis - Time will tell (Indeed!)
2. Tom Waits - Invitation to the blues (yes it is true!)
3. Frank Sinatra - I 'll remember April (of course I will)
4. The Beatles - Abbey Road (brilliant! all the second half is a non-stop musical poem in the form of a farce!)
5. George Gershwin - The complete songbook for piano (recently saw "Manhattan" again and got into a complete NewYorkean Gershwin mood)

word-track (books I have read or am still reading...)
1. Fernando Pessoa (Bernardo Soares) - The book of disquietude (As depressing as it can get, not the best for spring, but Pessoa is a great master of words and if you step aside from the communicated feelings you can appreciate it)
2. Roger Penrose - the Road to reality (started reading this "encyclopedia" volume at the background of so many stuff that it will make no sense to talk about it now...will come back to you once I 've reached a 10% of this book...which will be in a 100 pages or so!!!)

film-track (films I saw lately)
1. Barry Lyndon - One of Kubrick's classics which I really enjoyed, with great cinematography (as Julien had already told me before seeing it), old-stylish story-board but with some captions deliberately made so that they look like Flemish master paintings. And Marisa Berenson is absolutely gorgeous.
2. Manhattan - Saw it again, liked it the same, most of all for the feeling that the New York, classy Gershwin music communicates throughout. See sound-track.
3. RadioFreccia - Saw half of it in italian!!! yesterday and managed to like it although I understood a bit more than half. A typical auto-biographic-for-the-70s movie (I think every country has at least one of those) but very nice in all, amusing and with a great soundtrack. Will try to see it in soon in a language I understand better.

waiting-for-track
1. Second leg of Champions League's semifinals, with my favourites Liverpool and Milan battling for a come back after the first games
2. Getting in journey mood on my way to the US East Coast

the end of the week...best known as "week-end"


Weeks that come have a special characteristic of either being anticipated or hated in advance depending on the work load ahead of you, the percentage of days off, the weather, the absence of interesting football games, the expectation of parties and so on...
Weeks that go, on the other hand, normally leave you with nothing so strong, it is the week-end that gains all the anticipation and steals of the week whatever its attributes have been.

Well, it's not always that easy!

Two weeks ago I was talking about a tough week I had ahead of me and I had better kept my mouth shut. It turned even worse than I was thinking when apart from the workload, I had to add going down ill on the weekend, which I passed in the midst of one more of my seizures of extreme hypochondria that only left me time to spend an amusing barbecue with part of the brazilian community of Barcelona. And not only that, but the week to follow, the one that just ended, turned out to be equally disturbing, when on top of all, came a stressful two-days which I spent on the phone and on e-mail talking with embassies, secretaries and immigration experts for what in the end proved to be a non-existent visa problem for my forthcoming trip to the US.

Nonetheless, this past week, whose sole, but time-lasting highlights will be Kaka's second goal in the Old Trafford semifinal (still fantasizing about it) and Julien's bumping against the bookshelf in the office...(still laughing with it), ended with a feeling of relief. And this is one of these week-ends when you really feel relaxed, thinking about only a few things, (although some may still be work-related). The whole recent derangement though made me really ponder a lot about whether it can or not affect my personality overall...

Doctor, am I fastly becoming and old and weird fellow?

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

What a week...is coming?



After a violent comeback (in terms of abrupt break from holiday to 12-hour workshifts) and a tiring weekend, the week looks even worse. For the next three weeks, I have three main projects running and a side-one lined-up, numerous meetings pending, a poster to prepare and another one to think about...work seems to be piling up on me as pay-back for my being so consistent in disliking it...

But what can I do...I just clench my teeth, sing along Sinead o' Connor (see soundtrack) and wait until all this is behind...or actually until I put it behind me. Until then of course, my continuing mental instability seizures, accompanied by transient memory loss, repetitive delusions of pettiness and lapsing feeling of self-consciousness may carry on...But I wonder if maybe they are due to too much staring at my desktop...

............

As you may see the soundtrack these days is doubly biased towards melancholic and speedy-violent stuff. It is mostly because of post-holiday melancholy and speedy-stressful situations at work...I just hope that soon I go into summer mood and relax a bit (see waiting-for-track)

sound-track (top 5 in my mp3 player)
1. The John Coltrane quartet - My favourite things (with one of the most haunting piano solos EVER! by McCoy Tyner)
2. Muse - Asassain (cool new album..this belongs to the speeeeedy stuff)
3. Sinead O' Connor - You made me the thief of your heart (excellent song from the soundtrack of In the Name of the father)
4. Sinead O' Connor & the Chieftains- Foggy Dew (recently discovered this cover of my favourite Irish classic hymn and cannot stop listening to it)
5. Arctic Monkeys - Fluorescent Adolescent

word-track (books I have read or am still reading...)
-While in Greece there is a great debate on the revisionistic primary school history book, I got interested in some history of the Balkans in order to do some research on my own. I found a lot of my history books I keep in Athens stimulating even if I had to rediscover them by reading them over again. (Fortunately I read history books keeping sidenotes). Just in case someone would be interested in Balkan history (as I would really recommend to Greeks and all Balkanians so that they do not get fooled by so-called experts) some of the best books in my humble opinion would be:
1. The Balkans since 1453. Stavrianos (the ultimate reference)
2. The Balkans. Mark Mazower (modern approach by one of the leading 20th century historians)
3. History of the Balkans. Georges Castellan (especially for the part that covers the 18th century and the two crises of the oriental issue)
4. The age of Revolution. Eric Hobsbawm (could not NOT cite my favourite guy, but still 19th century world history and revolutions are his forte)

film-track (films I saw lately)
1. Ocean's 12. Follow up of Ocean's 11, a really "feel good" film, with the usual trio Sondeberg-Clooney-Roberts reaching co-operativity at high levels while having real fun. In all I liked it maybe even more than the first mostly because I felt it was made without trying to prove anything deeper than being an amusing "movie". Waiting for Ocean's 13 (coming soon)
2. The wind that shakes the barley. Typical case of disappointment due to over-anticipation. I wanted to see this latest Ken Loach film for a long time and I was a bit let down. In all it is good but it strongly reminds me of "Land and Freedom", falls into a lot of cliches about civil wars and is as one-sided as every Ken Loach movie. But again this is why we love him anyway).

waiting-for-track
1. To get in the REAL summer mood
2. to get some load of work of my back (necessary condition for #1)

Saturday, April 14, 2007

How Football saved my life


It sounds plain but it is true. I think us Greeks have something from Ulysses inside us. Maybe it is me more than the average Greeks or then perhaps all people are like this and it makes no sense to recite stereotypes. But it is true that "goodbyes" become harder every time you have to repeat them.

The most recent one in a series that seems too long already, was two nights ago, during dinner at a very nice restaurant in the neighborhood where both me and my father grew up. She was sitting next to me, with so many things to say but still we were talking about a whole load of things that were not important as if small talk would save us from another awful, depressing farewell.

I came back home in sorrow, thinking that there was no song that could make me feel a bit better or at least fill in my blank with music. And then I was saved by the one thing I had deliberately forgotten completely.
I entered my parents house thinking about nothing, having to pack my stuff for the day after, feeling empty just in time for my father to inform me that Manchester United had beaten AS Roma 7-1 in the second leg of their Champions League quarter-final. It has been the greatest performance by the "devils" ever since their historical treble back in 1999 and with no doubt one of the greatest games of the Champions League ever and I had missed it. All the same, I felt no guilt for having chosen to put myself through another painful goodbye. Instead I sat myself in front of the TV to watch the extended highlights of the game. Then came eight brilliant goals, the "theatre of dreams" in full swing, a great night for ManU -although I am the exact opposite of a fun of them- then the great last minute win of Chelsea in Valencia which meant they were through to the other semifinal to meet my beloved Liverpool.

Before I knew, a full hour had passed, as had my initial desperation. My impulsive sadness had sedimented, having given its place to more optimistic thoughts. I went on to pack my suitcase and finish my book, having realized that football had saved my life... or at least my humor

Saturday, April 7, 2007

AthensBios



Back in Athens, at my parents place for what is supposed to be Easter holiday but for the time being is not exactly developing like one. At least, running tests on genes to propose a definitive set for experiments to Nacho back in Barcelona,while preparing an abstract for a conference with a close deadline don't exactly suggest holiday.

But all well that ends well they say and it seems that I can enjoy at least three days of complete un-distracted, flesh-eating feast, among family members and that I believe to be the most accurate definition of greek-orthodox Easter. I won't complain though, -even if it occurs to me that I always say that immediatelly after having done exactly that-.

During the last week I met beloved persons, hanged out with old friends, tried to make amends with old ones for having neglected them -due to my absence mostly-, have laughed with my sister, talked to my mother and quarreled with my father more than adequately, thus giving everybody exactly what they have yearned for, including myself of course.

Spring is the best time to see Athens at its real best, as in this photo, distributed along three different layers, set by its ancient classical beauty, its byzantine grandeur and its rather ugly, modern dynamism.My birth city, looks as beautiful, as dis-orientated, frenetic and self-unaware of the fake metropolitan magnificence as it has ever been. And I still love it for that, although I find it more and more difficult to bear. Thinking twice, love is like this, the more you understand you can bear someone the more you realize you can still stand it, therefore the more time you have spent with it, quod erat demonstratum...as some wise would say. I have not had the chance to walk around my old neighborhood that much, at least not as much as I wanted, but it proved enough to make me appreciate some things once more, make sure the Acropolis still stand on solid ground, remember primary school excursions in little hills that looked like mountains back then and to notice how, although we have all grown considerably, the streets where we used to chase the trolley buses have only slightly changed.

Saddest thing of all is that some are not with us anymore and instead of having changed, their absense is the same as ever, once you take the usual walk around their old place...

...But such are the ambushes that memory unwillingly sets in our way.

The whole working frenzy and memory lane strolling notwithstanding, I still had the chance to update my "custom tracks", some of which have been given the benefit to host really interesting things.

sound-track (top 5 in my mp3 player)
1. Horace Silver - Song for my father (accidentally bumped into it at a friends place, a precious jewel of hard-bop)
2. Thelonious Monk with the Jazz Messengers (found it back at home where I hoped it still existed and was happy to prove so)
3. Jesus Christ Superstar (well, it goes with the season...)
4. Camera Obscura - Eighties lover
5. Krzystof Komeda - Astigmatic (likewise 2)

word-track (books I have read or am still reading...) 1. Gerhardt, Kirschner - The plausibility of life. I had significant trouble finishing it and was quite disappointed. The whole idea about revisiting Darwin's theories is quite interesting but they have published a paper with all there is to say. To curious readers with biological background I would strongly recommend to stick to that only.
2. Marguerite Yourcenar - Nouvelles Orientales. I have stated my admiration for this great writer before and this book can not change my opinion. My french are far of the level that would allow me full appreciation but it remains a collection of beautiful stories, mostly dealing with the Balkans, which for a Greek is an additional plus. The dedication of the book to Andreas Empeirikos stimulates a bit of research as well.

film-track (films I saw lately)
1. All the King's men. A remake of an older film with a fantastic cast, an amazing Sean Penn and an even better Anthony Hopkins. A great storyline which makes you doubt a lot with characters that leave you with the bitter aftertaste of pure reality. Directed by Steven Zaillian who has also wrote the screenplay as he did for the Interpreter, Schindler's List and Awakening...I am waiting.
2. Pride and Prejudice. Absolutely brilliant! I regret not having seen it before. Makes you think how little is needed for a great film apart from a witty screenplay based on a novel by a good writer, a line-up of devoted and low-profile actors (well OK, including the cutest Keira Nightley...) and a director with some perspective. Come to think of it, maybe it's too much to ask, at least for Hollywood

waiting-for-track
1. Demetra to come back from her parents home-town
2. Demetra to take her out to dinner
3. To see how I 'll cope with missing the Champions League games for a second consecutive week for fulfilling the above tracks.