Dean Christakos« May 2006 | Main | July 2010 »
June 28, 2006
The radio / Has let us know / That this is not a test
Fresh from Washington, DC, where I was stranded at the airport for a few hours again, I see that the rain actually caused the Emergency Alert system in the DC area to get used for real. It wasn't "only a test" this time!
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June 27, 2006
Facing Flooding in DC
Some readers may remember the time when I gave a sendoff to my readers of "So Long, Suckers," in the wake of weeks and weeks of constant rain up in Boston.
Today I am down in the Washington, DC area which is now dealing with lots of flooding as a result of having received more rain in the past 3 days than it did in the entire month of May, delaying my flight down here for more than 4 hours. Karma's brutal, apparently.
It also dawned on me as my plane touched down that this was the first time in a long time that I had been on a flight that did not require me to carry around my passport.
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June 25, 2006
Jello Biafra comes to Somerville
Friday night, Jello Biafra, original lead singer for 70s/80s punk band The Dead Kennedys came to the Somerville Theatre to give a spoken word performance. Actually, outside of his "Stay In Your Homes" monologue, which was actually pretty funny, the rest of his performance was a talk on politics that went on for a few hours. Now, some of it was pretty interesting, like his discussion of his experiences visiting New Orleans, which still looks like it has been run through by a disaster just yesterday. Much of the rest is the sort of thing you've heard before if you've been obsessively reading political weblogs for the past couple of years.
Amusing moment: hearing him say that Gray Davis, whom he said was obsessed with money and power and himself, was "kind of like [former DK bandmate] East Bay Ray".
I do want to find out where I can get that shirt he was wearing, though:
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June 16, 2006
Opening of Pandemonium Books' New Location
Pandemonium Books & Games has been in Cambridge just about as long as I have been there, having opened in 1989, right before my first stay in Cambridge in the summer of 1991. I've been a fan of the place, originally in a small upstairs location above Harvard Square's late, lamented "Wursthaus," ever since. In a constant shuffling of stores that never seems to stop in Harvard Square, the bookstore moved down the street to The Garage and stayed there for many years until moving to its new location in Central Square, where a grand opening including a book-signing by author Esther Friesner was held.
It's a great space and the new location, near the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Pleasant Street, across from the post office, is great. Plus, moving to Central Square proves the increasing cultural superiority of Central Square over the slow but inexorable mallification of Harvard Square.
More pictures after the jump...
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June 15, 2006
Not Just Coke -- Coke Black "Blăk"
Sometimes, you come across something in a grocery store that makes you ask, "What the hell is this crap?" This was one of those times, namely coming across a four-pack of a beverage called (I am not making this up) "Coca Cola Blăk". I suppose this is in keeping with a pattern we've seen of products like "Polo Black" and "Djarum Black" and "Johnny Walker Black Label" and other such things to imply that something is sleek and subversive.
What's "Coca Cola Blăk"? Well, from the label, it claims to be a "Carbonated Fusion Beverage." Since neither the bottle nor the four-pack had any indication of what kind of "fusion" this was, Star Market helpfully informed shoppers that this was a coffee-infused beverage. So, I decided I had to buy it and pour myself a glass, which is just what I did:
I mean, it looks a lot like Coke, doesn't it? It turns out that it doesn't taste completely awful, actually. It tastes a lot like Coke mixed with coffee syrup. I can only assume that there was some corporate meeting in which someone stood up and made a Powerpoint presentation showing that coffee consumption had been on the rise (met with replies of, "ah yes, I hear that coffee is the big thing these days" and "my teenage son is always coming home with those 'vedi' coffees or whatever they're called-- it means 'big' in Italian!") and that Coke needed to attract the "coffee drinking demographic" and that Coke could leverage its brand to appeal to this new market and that they'd find a lot of synergy with coffee syrup suppliers. A branding committee was no doubt formed to come up with the "Blăk" name and logo, ("we feel that the 'c' didn't play well with focus-groups, and the 'ă' was popular with the 14-25 demographic, polling poorly only among those who felt that it looked 'too French.'") On the heels of pouring lemon syrup, lime syrup, and vanilla syrup into Coca Cola (all of which, I might add, ended in failure), the idea of pouring coffee-flavored syrup into Coca Cola was born.
Look, it's not the most awful stuff in the world. The truth is that I kind of like it, being a fan of coffee and sweet beverages, but I'm not going to sit around and drink the stuff all day. So, as my sister would say: "meh." Heck, I have, in fact, actually bought and made drinks with the aforementioned Autocrat coffee syrup, but I haven't done so in years. I only hope I get around to finishing the remaining bottles I have before they become so old that I'm reluctant to try.
UPDATE: A reader in the comments points me to the blog by the author of the novel "Syrup" whose author has also discovered Coke Blăk and realized that it bears an eerie similarity to the premise of his own novel.
Posted by Dean at 8:48 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
June 10, 2006
I Graduated!
Ok, technically I've been done with grad school since January, but now I have the real, live diploma in my hands. Plus, MIT lets me keep the Ph.D. hood. The only cost-- 5 years of my life and the health of my psyche.
Posted by Dean at 11:15 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 8, 2006
Public Service Announcements in Athens
Many might remember the film Airplane! with its repetitive parking announcements of "The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only, there is no stopping in the red zone" that become more and more absurd as time goes on. While waiting in the Athens airport, I was confronted with the following creepy, upbeat announcements:
We are happy to celebrate our 5th anniversary, but it is even better to know you are happy and safe here!
Five years at Athens International Airport. We keep on growing in the city that always stays young at heart.
This year we are celebrating our first five years. But we want to remember most the smiles on your faces.
We are happy to have visitors to see Athens International Airport on our 5th anniversary and always keep in mind that a gramme is better than a damn!
Only one of these was completely fabricated by me. I felt like I had entered an irony free zone.
Posted by Dean at 4:56 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 7, 2006
Some Thoughts at Athens International Airport
After having arrived in Athens at 9pm this evening and evaluated various lodging options before determining that the most economically and time-efficient thing to do was to spend all night at the airport waiting for my 7am flight to Zurich, I've had a few thoughts about my recent travels:
I feel that 3 days in Mykonos have atrophied my Greek skills. First of all, those days were spent at an English-language conference. Yes, I was in Greece, but I spent all day (and sometimes the evenings) speaking English with my fellow conference-goers. Plus, I swear, I almost felt embarassed speaking Greek on this most touristy of islands in which the shop owners greet me in flawless English which they speak much better than I'll ever speak Greek. When I ordered a gyro in Greek in a restaurant located in the center of the touristy main town right next to an American tourist who just ordered in English without a problem, I felt like a pretentious lout ("look at me, I can force the clerk to listen to me practice my Greek skills while I order!")
The island is damn expensive. After 2 weeks of staying in various low-rent hotels, hostels, and boarding rooms of monasteries, paying through the nose for mediocre rooms in Mykonos felt extravagant, not to mention wasteful. They don't exactly have youth hostels on this island, which caters to well-heeled tourists. But what could I do? That's where the conference was.
The effective range of a small motor scooter is about 5 miles. Driving such a small scooter on a trip any longer than that is a "big trip," especially when you're putt-putt-putting up and down hills.
There's something that you don't notice about the USA which becomes blindingly obvious when you leave for Europe-- the rooms in the USA are covered in wall-sockets, while in Europe (particularly Greece), each room has, at most, a couple power-sockets at their extreme ends. Everyone was jostling for a spot near the one wall-socket for their laptops during the conference talks, while in the USA, hotels typically have power-sockets all over the place, knowing that people need to keep their components charged. Also, there's little concept of going into a public resaturant or café, ordering some coffee, and doing work at your laptop (e.g., as in The Onion's, "Everyone in Coffee Shop Billing for Their Time" or the days I've spent doing work at the Central Square 1369 Coffee House in Cambridge). I had to finish writing another paper while I was on the road, and I confined myself to my hotel room to finish up my work. This was related to the lack-of-wall-sockets issue: it's not as though there was a public place I could plug my laptop into. (On the other hand, I did manage to get free wireless access to upload my photos and other work at the corner of Ploutarchou and Mitropoleos in Thessaloniki and from room 209 of the Hotel Acropol in that same city, you can get free wireless access courtesy of someone whose router's ESSID is called "giannis")
Finally, there are no easy solutions when you have a 7am flight out of Athens. There are a couple of nearby hotels that charge between 150 and 200 Euros a night. There are a couple more in the sub-100 euro range, but you're stuck blowing money on a cab at 5am the next morning, because there are no airport shuttles at that time. Going into the center of the city is a waste because, once again, you're stuck having to get a cab out to the very-distant airport, and by the time you get to the center of the city and get a hotel, you're paying that money for at most 4-5 hours in a hotel room. It'salmost 1am. I figure there are 4 hours until check-in. I can handle that wait.
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Evidence That I Actually Did Work
See! I was being productive! Really!
My favorite was the professor from Spain who looked at my poster and said, "I wish I had thought of that."
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June 6, 2006
I Manage to Take a Good Photograph
This is so totally the quintessential picture of Mykonos:
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I Always Miss the Exciting Stuff
Being away from Athens, I didn't get a chance to see or hear about this Athens prison break until the next day:
One of the most wanted men in Greece pulled off a daring jail break Sunday, landing a helicopter in a prison yard to pick up his brother and another inmate before fleeing in a fog of smoke, police said.
I look forward to the Law & Order episode based on this episode... or at least the Jerry Bruckheimer film, both of which would be derided as completely unbelievable.
Posted by Dean at 2:41 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 4, 2006
One Last Thing from Athens
I am in Mykonos right now for Mobile IST, but I wanted to draw attention to this last little tidbit from Athens: The Irish Republic of Plaka, ruled by Tom. This Irish guy lives here in the Plaka section of Athens. I don't know how he acquired this piece of property in a top-notch location, but he seems to have set himself up pretty nicely.
Posted by Dean at 3:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 3, 2006
Following up from previous travels
Regular readers of my weblog may remember when I traveled to Corsica back in early-March. My goal from that trip was to check out the village of Cargese where Greeks emigrated from the Greek town of Itylos back in the 1600s, bringing their icons with them and setting up a Greek church on the island.
Well, during my travels in Greece, I decided to check out the town of Itylos, where those Greeks came from before they decided to leave for Corsica.
More info and pics after the jump...
Continue reading "Following up from previous travels"
Posted by Dean at 10:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Back in Athens
Ok, so I'm back from Athens after traveling around southern Greece, which I will post about soon. Meanwhile, time staying in the village of Krokeai was time well-spent: I finally figured out the alchemy of making really good Greek coffee.
Posted by Dean at 9:22 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 1, 2006
Last couple of days at Mt. Athos
So, when I woke up the next day at Dochiariou monastery, I decided to head over to Karakalou, which is on the southeastern end of Athos peninsula, on the opposite end from my current location. This meant that I needed to hop on a water taxi to the port of Daphi, further down the west coast of the peninsula and then catch a bus to Karyes, on the other side of some steep hills that divide the western coast of Mt. Athos from the center and eastern coast. Karyes is the closest that Mt. Athos has to a "town." Basically, it's a transportation hub and a place that people can stop to pick up supplies at local stores. Here, we can see some monks and pilrgims waiting for a ride to their next destination, having just disembarked from the bus that came from Daphni:
Some of the store owners have pretty tough lives-- one of them I met had a store in Daphni and lived there 20 days out of the month. Like being a truck driver or in the military, it's something that keeps you away from your family for a pretty long time.
Up until the mid-90s, the only way to get around Mt. Athos for the average visitor was by foot or by renting a mule. Now, however, there's a pretty extensive system of taxis and shuttlebuses, some of which are run by the monasteries themselves. From Karyes, I was able to grab a shuttle over to Karakalou.
More pictures and chronicles after the jump...
Continue reading "Last couple of days at Mt. Athos"
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