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May 31, 2006
South of Sparta
Ok, ok, I'll finish up my stories about Mt. Athos, soon. Right now, however, I am in Krokeai, Laconia, (also known as Lavetsova) south of Sparta where my father is from. This is a small, somewhat isolated village. When I first came here back in 1982 or 1983, there was no local bank-- a van came around twice a week from a bank in Sparta so that locals could do their banking transactions.
Now, not only is there a local bank, but there's also an internet cafe that has recently arrived, and here I am, making a blog post from this village in southern Greece. Ah, technology. :) Though when I have a hand-held satellite transceiver that can give me broadband internet access anywhere in the world for a nominal monthly fee, then I'll know that all my concerns have been addressed.
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May 30, 2006
Clarifying a Few Things
A reader in the comments asks:
Lemee get this straight - you went four whole days without seeing any women? Did they try to recruit you into the er, monkhood?
The answer to the first question is yes. The funny thing was that on the night before I left for Mt. Athos, I was having dinner in Ouranopolis, and right at that moment, a tour ship, presumably one which gives tours of the coast of Halkidiki, stopped at the dock and the passengers disembarked. The passengers were entirely women, and they all walked by the restaurant where I was eating, perhaps on the way to their hotel or tour bus. It was as though I was being told, "this is the last sight you will get of women for the next few days." Permits to visit Mt. Athos, as I said, are only issued to men. The peninsula itself is basically one large monastery. The largest portion of the visitors appeared to me middle-aged Greek men who decided to spend a weekend "on retreat" at Mt. Athos. For Orthodox visitors, particularly if one lives within driving distance of Mt. Athos, it's not that difficult to get a permit, and one is pretty much free to take part in the daily lives of the monks. For those who need more explanation of Orthodoxy, this cheat sheet to Christianity might help...
Orthodox(ok, though, seriously, there are better explanations here)
For many years, American scholars believed the Orthodox were, like leprechauns, unicorns, and Eskimos, purely the product of the fanciful imaginations of medieval writers. Recent evidence leads us to tentatively conclude, however, that Eastern Orthodoxy may have somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 million adherents. Protestants tend to see the Orthodox as "Catholics with beards," while Catholics confess to a haunting sense that they are simply "Orthodox without beards."
One of the reasons that I started out at Xenophontos monastery was because of the suggestion of someone I met who said that they were relatively laid-back-- there I was able to take pictures inside the monastery, the monks were receptive to visitors, and non-Orthodox visitors wouldn't immediately feel out-of-place. Xenophontos was hosting a long-term visitor who was a retired Episcopalian Art History Professor who had been visiting Mt. Athos almost every year since the early 70s, and he felt welcome there. Along with only issuing 10 permits a day to non-Orthodox visitors, some monasteries only allow Orthodox Christians to attend church services and eat meals with the monks. The monks seem to be caught between the act of trying to maintain receptivity to visitors yet at the same time seamlessly maintain their monastic lifestyle which is going to be a bit challenging when you have more than 20 visitors a day, every day, coming to stay with you.
Was I being "recruited into the monkhood"? Well, as I said a couple of days ago, one monk at Dochiariou monastery did point out to me the very valid point that there were plenty of people in Computer Science, while there is a greater need for people to join the clergy, and he asked me why I didn't study theology and join the clergy. So I'm sure that no one there would have minded if I told them I wanted to stay, because monasteries always need an extra set of hands. I should note that there are rumors of monks with Ph.D.s in Physics and Electrical Engineering who decided that they wanted to stay on Mt. Athos, but I'm putting the place in a category of "great place to visit, wouldn't live there."
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No Problems!
For anyone who heard that there was a bombing in Athens, no one was injured. It was far enough away from where I was staying that I didn't hear anything of it until I saw the news about it on television.
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May 29, 2006
Well that was interesting
Traveling down from Thessaloniki to Athens by bus, it seems that the police are taking rather active measures at cracking down on illegal immigrants. Today, the police stopped the bus after a toll station (presumably at random-- this was the first time I've seen this happen) and boarded. Keep in mind that we were nowhere near a border crossing. They then looked around and asked anyone on the bus whose complexion was darker than the typical Greek's to produce his papers. Charming. I don't normally mind having to produce my passport when I check in at hotels or need to produce some sort of ID for various reasons, but, as I've said before I find it somewhat distasteful to be asked to produce "my papers" for day-to-day interactions, even if, in this particular case, I wasn't targetted.
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Day two at Mt. Athos
After spending the night at Xenophontos monastery on my first day on Mt. Athos, I decided to spend my next night at Dochiariou monastery.
While Mt. Athos does have some roads (mostly unpaved) that one can walk on or get a ride on to head to your next destination, most everywhere is connected by a network of footpaths. It was a 30 minute walk from Xenophontos to Dochiariou along a small path by the western coast of the Athos peninsula:
At Dochiariou, the monks work hard-- really hard. The monastery has a very extensive woodshop, and when I arrived, I saw a monk bent overusing a power tool to scrape away the grasses and weeds that had grown up in between the stone pavings outside the monastery. I later found at that Dochiariou was known the monastery with a distinct reputation for working its monks hard.
Here's a picture with a monk standing outside the woodshop which also shows the grass and weeds growing up between the stone paving, giving you an idea of how much work one of his fellow monks had to do:
This monk's name is Fr. Philotheos, who is also, I believe, an ordained priest. He explained to me that there were already thousands of people studying the computer sciences and that there was a greater need for people to enter the clerical vocations. While I understood his point of view, I didn't plan on moving into Dochiariou.
More pictures and descriptions after the jump...
Continue reading "Day two at Mt. Athos"
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May 28, 2006
A More Complete Assessment of Mt. Athos - Notes on My First Day
So, as I said earlier today, I have returned from my four-day stay on Mt. Athos, which is why there was no weblog posting or electronic communication from me over the past few days. Mount Athos, or Agion Oros-- "the Holy Mountain" --, as it's known in Greece, is a semi-autonomous community of monasteries in northeastern Greece. Almost a month ago, I arranged for a four-day permit to enter Mt. Athos which allowed me to stay at and visit the monasteries there.
This is my permit. Mt. Athos allows 100 Orthodox Christian men and 10 non-Orthodox men per day to enter the peninsula. I went to Ouranopolis, which is the last secular point on the Athos peninsula before leaving for the monasteries. From there I hopped on a boat and headed to my first stop, which was Xenophontos monastery on the western coast.
More pictures and descriptions after the jump...
Continue reading "A More Complete Assessment of Mt. Athos - Notes on My First Day"
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Back from Mt. Athos
Big surprise-- there's no internet access on Mt. Athos. I'm back in Thessaloniki now, and I'll be posting pictures and stories from my travels there, soon...
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May 24, 2006
Video Wednesday
Having referred to both the sight of bizarre Finnish rock bands and dancing firewalkers, I figured I should provide some videos of the aforementioned events.
Here, I have some video I took of the firewalkers dancing after returning from walking on coals, perhaps to cool themselves down after whipping themselves into a trancelike state:
(here's a direct link to the dancing if you're having trouble seeing it)
Here is a video of the performance of Eurovision's winning band Lordi:
(via YouTube)
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May 23, 2006
Visiting Art Galleries in Thessaloniki
While wandering through Thessaloniki yesterday, I came across the AAS Gallery where there was a gallery show by Steven Woods, creator of the British show Tiny Planets promoting his latest artwork "Monasteries and a Monk":
It's a collection of illustrations of monasteries at Meteora and Mt. Athos depicting what Woods perceives to be the everyday lives of monks.
They made up a set of pretty entertaining cartoon-illustrations, and while his webpage isn't up yet which gives a fuller view of the artwork, I'll post it as soon as it becomes available. So, if you just happen to be in Thessaloniki between now and the 25th of May, check it out. Steve will even offer you a drink and hang out with you at the gallery.
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May 21, 2006
How I Celebrated My Name Day
Alternate title: I can't believe what I just saw tonight
This evening, from Thessaloniki, I travelled to the town of Langadas, which is about 15 miles north of the city. A small group of people who live there are descendents of those who used to live in the town of Kosti, a Greek village on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast. After the Balkan wars of the early 20th century, these Greek villagers migrated to northern Greece, where they now live. They brought with them an odd tradition-- every May 21st, the feast day of Ss. Constantine & Helen, the patron saints of their village, they perform a firewalking ceremony while holding icons of their village. The tradition holds that in the 13th century, the town's church was on fire, and they rushed in to save the icons and escaped miraculously unharmed. Quite possibly the tradition dates back to pagan times. In any case, while the ceremony used to take place in the town square, the church became upset enough about it that the Metropolitan Bishop has forbidden it from taking place in the center of town, and it now occurs in the outskirts, starting around 9, with preparations beginning around 7 in the evening.
(For potential tourists: from Thessaloniki, you take the 27 bus westbound to the Stavropoli Terminal and then grab the 83 bus to Langadas. The ceremony takes place near the last stop of the 83 bus, though your best bet, in case the festival has moved, is to go to the main square of Langadas and ask someone where the festival is being held. After it's all over, it's almost midnight, so grab a taxi back to Thessaloniki, which cost me 15 Euros)
The name for these firewalkers is the "Anastenarides" -- "sighers" or "moaners" -- referring to their cries in song while they dance on the coals.
Pictures and more explanations after the jump...
Continue reading "How I Celebrated My Name Day"
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Back in Thessaloniki
I'm back in Thessaloniki on my way to Langada and Mt. Athos. I was last here in March on my way to Istanbul. Now I'm here for a week-long stay in northern Greece before heading all the way down south.
I don't have any fun anecdotes of note at the moment. I'm just staying in Thessaloniki as a stopover. The picture above is of the "Lefkos Pirgos" (White Tower) which was part of a larger fortress that used to defend the city from sea attacks. For a while it was used as an Ottoman prison, and now it's a museum with great views of the city on the top.
Also, last night, the city was transfixed by the Eurovision song contest which was won by Finland with their representative band Lordi.
Posted by Dean at 8:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 20, 2006
Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You (Tonight)
So, unbeknownst to me before leaving, I seem to have arrived in Athens during the Eurovision Song Contest. Had I planned ahead a bit more, I would have tried to get tickets to see one of the shows.
Apparently analysis of who's going to win is a big passtime here in Europe, and I have to admit that it seems that the contestants have a bit more personality than those on American Idol.
Most amusing of all is the Finnish group which appears to be staging a Spinal Tap revival band. What else can you say about a band whose song is entitled Hard Rock Hallelujah?
Posted by Dean at 5:04 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 18, 2006
Arrived in Greece
At the moment, I'm staying at Athens Backpackers Hostel in Athens, and this is the view of the Acropolis from the rooftop. I'll be staying here for a day or two before heading up to northern Greece.
Posted by Dean at 1:16 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
On My Reading List
My current location: Zurich International Airport, Pier A
One might notice that the "Reading" entry on the left-hand section of my weblog remains blank. It's not because I haven't been reading anything. It's because when I'm not travelling and busy with work, I will typically have a book by my bedside for quite a while, and the "Reading" section remains disturbingly static, implying that I am a pathetically slow reader. As a consequence, I stopped updating it. Now that I'm travelling again, I think I will return to using that section to indicate which book I'm reading at the moment. During my previous travels, I read the following books:
Dog Days by Ana Marie Cox (I saw the author give a reading from her book and blogged about it)
Things Can Only Get Better by John O'Farrell
Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Baudolino by Umberto Eco
At the moment, I am reading Krakatoa by Simon Winchester. The problem with travelling is that I typically bring a lot of books with me-- along with all my travel guides, I'll bring a bunch of heavy books I've been meaning to read for pleasure. To relieve the weight of carrying them around, I will typically ship them back home when I finish them. Then I will run out of books, causing me to buy more books, which adds to the weight I'm carrying.
Posted by Dean at 2:56 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 17, 2006
About to Leave, again
Something to remember while I'm in the airport, constantly making sure I have my conference poster with me, constantly checking to make sure my iPod didn't walk away, repeatedly looking in my bag to ensure that my digital camera is still right there where I put it, and contending with that feeling in the back of my head that, somehow, I've forgotten something:
UPDATE: If you don't understand the reference, please catch up on your reading for the sake of cultural literacy.
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Buck up, Cantabridgians
The sunny weather today has given us a brief respite from what seemed like two straight weeks of rain. The weather reports indicate that there's going to be more rain at the end of the week. With nothing to do about it, one can only take the advice provided by this sign outside The People's Republic:
Easy for me to say-- I'm leaving for Greece tonight on my way to Mobile IST. Enjoy the rain, suckers!
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May 15, 2006
Catching up on Movies
I've been spending time at home catching up on movies that I didn't get a chance to see over the past 18 to 24 months while I was deep into thesis mode. Over the past couple of weeks, I've seen:
A History of Violence - This movie was done right. It was well written and pretty good (SPOILER: The film is violent).
The Ice Harvest - This was also really, really good. If you really liked "A Simple Plan" and "The Grifters" and want to see a movie similar to them, you'll enjoy it. If, on the other hand, you liked those two movies because they were new and interesting to you, "The Ice Harvest" won't get your blood pumping, because you'll realize that you've seen it before.
Undercover Brother - This amused me quite a bit.
Fever Pitch - A romantic comedy in which Jimmy Fallon is a high school teacher and Red Sox addict who starts dating high powered executive Drew Barrymore... SPOILER ALERT: they live happily ever after in the end! I know, I was so surprised!
Starsky and Hutch - This was also very amusing.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - This was impressive how they managed to translate the humor of the book onto the screen. Also, Trillian was hot.
Serenity - Characters acting outside the law go out of their way to rescue and protect special and powerful and young woman while discovering dark secrets about their world.
Elektra - See above, except not very good and with ninjas (there was probably a connection between those two attributes).
Capote - It's hard to believe that Phillip Seymour Hoffman was really playing a person who actually existed until you see the archive footage of Truman Capote on the DVD, and then you realize Truman Capote actually acted just like that!
The Omega Man - I had to see this to finish the "Charlton Heston Science Fiction Trilogy" which also includes "Soylent Green" and "Planet of the Apes." Charlton Heston is the guy that Arnold Schwarzenneger wished he was.
Daredevil - "Better than most movies based on a comic book." Considering that this movie also stars Ben Affleck, you can rest assured that it probably exceeds your expectations.
A View from the Top - This was cute. You can't really go wrong in a movie featuring Gwyneth Paltrow in a flight attendant uniform. Also, it was good to see Mike Myers do something else than serve as the voice of Shrek.
Art School Confidential - I can name everything that's wrong with this movie. I can describe, in excrutiating detail, why I shouldn't like it. The problem is, however, that I do actually like it. Yes, it's a set of sight-gags stretched out to the length of a feature film. Yes, there's a murder-mystery plot that doesn't belong there. Yes, there's a bit too much violence for something that's supposed to be a comedy. Yes, the film resorts to including a love story to lynchpin the plot. However, I couldn't help but enjoy the movie, despite its flaws.
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May 12, 2006
Preserving Net Neutrality
When I set up this weblog, I paid for the bandwidth. I pay money for the internet pipe that allows other people on the internet to get here. If this site becomes too popular (not something I have to worry about anytime soon), I will have to pay more money to the ISP that manages this host. You readers also pay for bandwidth. You pay an ISP to give you access with the assumption that you'll be able to access anything else that also has an internet connection.
However, your ISPs are trying to change that and recent attempts to enshrine net neutrality into law have been defeated in the House. In a nutshell, they want to be able to tell you that some sites the internet will be inaccessible to you unless those sites pay them "protection money." E.g., unless Google pays Comcast a monthly fee, Comcast's customers (such as myself) wouldn't be able to get to Google. Or maybe Comcast would say that for lack of payments (or simply out of spite), none of the material on blogspot would be available. The internet would no longer be "neutral," and the assumption that one IP address on the internet could communicate with any other IP address on the internet would no longer be true.
Ok, this might be a bit complicated, and I might not be explaining all of this very well. This explanation about net neutrality from Ask a Ninja might be better:
Help Save the Internet
(via mydd)
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May 11, 2006
Experimental Music at The Middle East
Tonight I headed over to The Middle East to check out Experimental Dental School, who hail from Oakland, California. My tastes normally run in the direction of indie pop and synthpop when it comes to going to rock shows, but EDS actually turned me on to experimental music. The lead singer has a lot of personality, and the music is interesting.
On the other hand, their opening band Magic People explains the prejudice in favor of rockism. When a band member begins with the intro "This song is about the future and how the forests are going to take over-- so watch out," followed by dissonant music performed by a flutist and a goggles-wearing keyboardist, I was feeling like I'd rather listen to a guitars-and-drums rock band rather than being assaulted by their attempts to sound deep.
More pics after the jump.
Continue reading "Experimental Music at The Middle East"
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May 10, 2006
Lifestyle's Abbey Lounge Residency
I love The Abbey Lounge. It's a complete and utter dive, both as a bar and a music venue, and that's why it's great-- and to think, that's after the renovations they did on the place a couple of years ago.
Every Tuesday in May, the synthpop band Lifestyle is playing at the Abbey Lounge. Opening for them was the synthpop duo Cassette whose campiness causes the performance to skirt the edge of being a novelty act (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Celebrity sighting: Liz Enthusiasm of Freezepop was in attendance. She'll be hosting Group Therapy Karaoke at Lifestyle's next Abbey Lounge performance on the 16th of May.
More pics after the jump.
Continue reading "Lifestyle's Abbey Lounge Residency"
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May 9, 2006
My new Neil Young CD meets its neighbors
After much anticipation, Neil Young's Living With War album came out yesterday, and I picked up a copy, where it joined my CD shelf alongside the rest of my Neil Young CD collection.
Despite my obsession with the iPod, I still insist on buying physical CDs which I then rip to mp3 before putting them on my iPod instead of buying digital music files. I just feel like I need a physical copy of my music... I need something I can hold play from a physical object, and I don't trust keep around a copy-protected file lost amidst thousands of other music files on my hard drive.
So, welcome, "Living With War" to your new home on my CD shelf.
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May 6, 2006
MIT Steer Roast 2006
Every year, I make an attempt to come back to MIT for Steer Roast, a weekend-long party that takes place at a dorm called Senior House. The festivities begin with the annual lighting of the BBQ pit. As the festivities involve serving a large amount of food, the BBQ pit has hundreds of pounds of meat that will be cooked all Friday night.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people gather in the courtyard, mostly current students and alumni back to see their old friends:
Pictures of the lighting after the jump...
Continue reading "MIT Steer Roast 2006"
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May 5, 2006
Getting ready to leave again
In anticipation of my upcoming trip to Greece for the IST Mobile Summit, I've realized that it's time to abandon my vintage guidebook and buy the 2006 edition of the Lonely Planet's guide to Greece:
Unlike my vintage-1998 version, the maps are actually up-to-date, it's not stuffed with 8 years full of museum and bus tickets, and the prices are listed in Euros, not Drachmas. Woohoo! I've caught up with the 21st century!
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May 2, 2006
Obscure Liquor Review: Mastic Liquor
I'm a big fan of ouzo and generally make sure to pick up a good bottle while I'm visiting the country. My personal favorite is Barbayannis's Aphrodite Ouzo. This past trip, however, I passed through Chios, and they have a cottage industry dedicated to exploiting their local production of mastic sap for various various uses including Mastic Liquor:
It turns out that this stuff is actually good. It's a bit on the sweet side and really likeable in small doses. It's like liquid loukoumia. On the other hand, mastic-flavored ouzo doesn't quite work very well:
The problem here is that this is already anis flavored liquor. It doesn't need another flavor-- putting in mastic kind of defeats the purpose. It's not quite as syrupy, though, but I like my regular ouzo, and the Chioti version isn't an improvement.
Posted by Dean at 10:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 1, 2006
Creepy Public Animations
Down by the south Boston waterfront near South Station, there's a pedestrian bridge with a really creepy animated screen of a walking man, I suppose to tell everyone that this bridge is for pedestrians:
Whose idea was this?
Posted by Dean at 5:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack