Sea Bounty

Everytime I've been back to Greece over the last say 10 years, I have had a thought - really more of a regret - about a certain device that would make my Greece experience that much more "rewarding". The device that I am referring to is a metal detector.

I've spent a fair amount of time at American beaches over the years in Florida, South Carolina and Virginia. One thing that is a common sight in the morning hours at these beaches is a middle-aged to elderly male with a metal detector wearing a set of large headphones and slowly pacing up and down the coastline scanning the ground for the telltale beeps and whirrs of sea bounty. Really it's more like careless tourist bounty, with these guys seemingly always coming away with anything from pocket change to jewelry, safety pins to watches, you name it. This is finders-keepers-losers-weepers in action.

Back to Greece. In all of my 30+ years of going back to the homeland and in all the miles and miles of beaches that I've dug my feet into, I have never once seen anyone with a metal detector! The apparent lack of loot detecting equipment has naturally lead me to daydreaming my way to all the riches I could potentially fall upon if I were resourceful enough to someday bring one over with me. I envision piles and piles of gold crosses, gold kombolois (worry beads), gold watches, millions in Euros (and likely in worthless Drachmas). It's enough to make a man go mad!

Well, that time is here. For my birthday this past May, my lovely wife bought me a sweet-ass metal detector! After all the years of me painting magnificent visions of the fortune we could amass with the help of a booty buddy, she made my dreams come true! I have yet to use it as I have been waiting to let it fulfill its destiny and my dreams all at once. So, this past Monday, I packaged it all up, took it to the local post office and sent it on its merry way to my cousin's house in Greece to await my arrival in a few weeks.

The only thing worrying me now is putting all my hopes of financial indepence in the hands of the Greek postal service. I need my komboloi!

Nose Hair Trimmers

I've mentioned before that I am by education a designer of products. In my field, one of the things that we do quite frequently is what's called a "product landscape audit". This is sort of fancy industry jargon for going to stores and looking at stuff. I really enjoy product landscape audits.

I could actually write alot about this sort of activity, if only because it is one instance where I have found a common sweet spot that satisfies both my soul and my bank account. I will save that for another time and really just talk about one thing I find funny, nose hair trimmers.

First off I'm completely blown away at the number of makers and variations of these magical little grooming devices. Pretty impressive. Wow, this one does nose hair AND ear hair, awesome! They're truly technological wonders that our foerfathers would likely have fought wars over.

Why is it though that typically, when you look at the picture of the guy on the package, you dont see that glee conveyed? Is he not super stoked to finally not have a second mustache creeping out of his nostrils? Are these little mechanical friends not also the saviours of the tear inducing hair pluck? Take a look at these pictures and see for yourselves.



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These guys seem more frightened than empowered. Maybe it's just extreme concentration. Who knows?

Here are a couple of my favorite versions though. The 1st one appears to have a glowing end that will light its way into your sinuses. The second one, well....look for yourself. Well summed up.

Connections

Our trip plans are now complete! This might not sound like much of an achievement, but what many may not realize is that when I say "yeah, we're going to Greece" getting there is only the beginning.

Greece may be on the Euro and Athens new airport may have been voted tops in all of Europe, but my homeland is not too many years removed from antiquity (more like antiquainted). That is most apparent on Greece's national airline, the majestic Olympic Airways. The clerks still smoke at their desks. The flight attendants still wear the same uniforms that they were issued in 1963. And most annoyingly, if you wish to fly to any island or city in Greece, you MUST fly through Athens! That means that although far more time efficient than taking the boat, you'd never be able to go from say Limnos to Chios (which are fairly close to eachother) without going via Athens. Crazy! What this also means is that you have to buy all these tickets pretty much a la carte which really adds up.

So, with family scattered all around Greece, getting to Athens is only the beginning. One of the funny things about that is that it can actually be cheaper in some cases to fly to another country altogether! And that's exactly what we're doing! Rather than go to Corfu to visit yet another cousin, my lovely bride and I are taking a 3 day side trip to Venice. We sort of figured that since Venice is slowly sinking into the Mediterranean, we only have a finite amount of time to actually see it. I hope the Italians there are friendlier than the lady who works at the pizza place at the Rome Airport that we always seem to run into. She's not so nice.

While I'm excited to see Venice, the canals, the architecture and the gondolas, I have to say, what I'm really excited about is getting to go to a Prada store and a Diesel store IN Italy! They MUST be better!

Summer

This has been a very busy summer, marked most notably by the recent departure of our dear friends who planned, saved, packed and moved to Paris. Seems like pretty much until they left this past wednesday, I've spent the summer thus far just working or spending time with them, not accepting that I'd soon have to find other things to do with my weekends. With my mind so occupied with work and their goings-on it sort of dawned on me that I have not only not blogged in over a month, but I have also not really paid much mind to my own upcoming holiday - back to Greece.

I got my first passport when I was 11 months old and was immediately whisked away to Greece to visit my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. For most of my childhood my parents, brother and I would return to Greece and spend the entire summer. I'd come home several shades darker and barely able to speak English. As I got busier with my schooling, the trips became fewer and further between with a couple of 5 year gaps when money was tight. Since I finished university I have been very diligent on returning to Greece every other summer for 2-3 weeks. It's an expensive trip and with only 3 weeks of paid holiday time per year, it's difficult to do much more than that. Last year was supposed to be a "Greece Year", having been last in '04 during the Olympics, however with a complete renovation of our kitchen which turned into an 8 month ordeal and major construction project, well broke we stayed put.

This year we were dead set on going and purchased tickets several months back for September. With as crazy as the summer has been and as far out as Semptember seems to feel in the Spring, I've just not had the time to think about our trip. Until now. My wife and I will be flying out on the 31st of August and will stay until the 18th of September, which although shorter than the 3 months I'd spend as a boy, will undoubtedly wash away the stresses of the last 3 months of my adulthood.

When we fly into Greece what I like best is that first burst of pure heat that hits your face when you exit the airport, not unlike opening your preheated oven. Then we board a tiny little plane and fly to Limnos where we arrive a mere 30 minutes later. As a child we did this trip via boat as it was much more economical but at this point in my life I'd rather pay 3 times as much and save myself the 8 miserable hours on the ferry.

Our days on Limnos usually consist of the same things that we've done for the last 30+ years. Wake up, drink a frappe, walk down Myrina's high street down to the harbor. Hit some shops, watch some kids fishing, watch a ferry boat come in or leave, then walk back. A wonderful and healthy mid-day meal is usually followed up by another quiet stroll which is different that the morning walk due to the fact that 90% of the residents are enjoying a nice siesta by that point. All the walking then just makes us want to go for a swim at one of the beautiful local beaches, or maybe we'll take drive to another part of the island to a more obscure beach. Perfect.

That's a snapshot of what's to come. I like that as the years pass, people move or die, stores and restaurants come and go, but Limnos never loses it's charm or compromises it's soul. That's what I love about it so much. As we fly over Paris in a few weeks I'll longingly peer down from above with a touch of sadness in missing our friends but knowing that it will all be washed away by the cool meditteranean in but a matter of hours! That and our December trip to Paris will be here in no time.

1000th visitor...Revealed!

Well, my 1000th visitor has clicked their way into Simon Chase history! And the winner in the select a blog post topic is........Misplaced in the Midwest! Ironically, Misplaced had already recently tagged me to post 10 things about myself, which as you can see, I've only written through #4 so far. If Misplaced would like, he can still select a topic for me, otherwise I'll just wrap up the last 6 things. Here's to 2000!

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10 Things About Me

I was officially "tagged" last week by my friend Misplaced. Aside from gaining loads of notoriety and a fat pay-day, being tagged also gives me the opportunity to share a bit about myself, rather than my usual whining, raving or judging of something, someplace or someone. Time to turn the Hubble around and focus it back on myself and the 10 interesting (and not so interesting) things about me.

Sadly, even in such a simple writing assignment as this, I have been racking my brain about how to arrange or arrive at these 10 things. After spending much time considering things about my past, my present and my future, many of my fondest memories and experiences seem to have often been set in New York City. With that then, I give you my 10 New York stories.


1. My first visit to NY I was about 3 years old. We were living in Ithaca, NY at the time where my dad was working on his PhD, and we had come down for a visit to the big city. As young as I was, I have no actual recollection of that particular trip, but what I do have are a handful of photographs from then which fortunately captured what my tiny little mind couldn't. One such picture was of my brother (who was about 9 then) down at Battery Park with the Statue of Liberty situated just behind him. Sure there is an iconic symbolism to the immigrant boy standing next to Lady Liberty but this provided a more interesting juxtaposition being a family of immigrant academics in the 1970s as opposed to a family of laborers in the 1870s. The thing that gets me about this picture though is that cradled in my brother's arms is a stuffed Hamburgler doll from McDonald's. There's all sorts of irony there, I mean he's standing in front of the global symbol of freedom holding a figure from the most globally recognized brand on the planet and it's sadly not even Ronald McDonald he's holding! It's the Hamburgler! The outcast! Actually, this picture ultimately makes me feel guilty to this day. My brother loved his Hamburgler doll and like all things that older siblings outgrow, Hamburgler eventually became mine. I too loved the Hamburgler doll....until I somehow lost him. My brother was far beyond doll age by that point, but I could tell he was sad when I told him. That made me even sadder.

Ok, I have to get to the point on these quicker or else I'll have to do my 10 things over 10 days!

2. I went on a school trip to NY with the art club when I was 14. That was my first time I had been back since I was 3 and yet even with no real recollection I felt such a connections that to this day I feel almost more at home in NY that I do in any other city in the world. Anyway, I spent the entirety of my teen years as a leather jacket and combat boot clad angst ridden punk rock art kid. My walkman constantly blaring Black Flag, The Exploited, The Misfits, GBH or the Sex Pistols. This trip felt like I had been brought to my punk mecca. More shops catering to my kind than I could ever dream! I was on this trip with like 15 other kids and 1 lazy chaperone who could give a shit what we did for the 4 days we were there. At 14 that is some sweet liberty indeed. The most memorable of the things that we did that trip involved a failed hair dying incident. My friends and I had purchased a fire engine red hair dye by Manic Panic and we were all prepared to set our locks ablaze. This worked for most of us, except I have black hair and it was very short at that point (as I was leaning a bit more mod then). Anyway, imagine a small hotel room with 6 kids all trying to use a very messy and vibrant red dye that wasn't quite working as planned. Needless to say we soiled many a hotel towel. What's one to do with such towels? They'll never get clean! Well, the answer was right in front of us providing a splendid view down Lexington Avenue. "Quick, throw them out the window! All of them!" We did, then waited until the cleaning ladies came around and we stole a batch of fresh ones from the cart when she wasn't looking, replenished the recently jettisoned sets and all was well. My dye job didn't go quite as smoothly, leaving me with red splotches on my scalp that looked like eczema for like 3 weeks or so. Lesson learned! Funnier even was when we left the hotel later that night and we ended up seeing all the towels strewn across the street, they almost looked like the aftermath of a horrific accident scene with the red dye bleeding into the wet, snowy pavement.

3. During that same trip a couple of my friends, Greg and Rich and I, decided to take a stroll down to Times Square to see if we couldn't catch a nudie film! Back in the mid-eighties you could still do that there. So we wandered down and around the area in what one could consider the "Off Broadway" of adult film and ended up at a theater called The Regent which was playing a film called The Casting Couch, starring the one and only Ron Jeremy. We walked up to the ticket booth where within the glass pod sat a disheveled looking older guy and in a very Simpson's-like moment, he asked if we were 18. To which we replied in unison a resounding YES. "That'll be 5 bucks" he said. We paid and made our way in. Walking into the lobby and then into the theater was not at all what I expected. I had imagined that this was going to be no different than if we had decided to see like Return of the Jedi or something. You know, there'd be pimply faced teens selling popcorn and M&Ms. I wouldn't expect families per se, but maybe several couples and groups of friends. Well, what we really saw was what looked more like the set of Escape From New York, which is another 80s classic. The place was a wreck, stuff turned over, garbage everywhere and that was just in the lobby. Oh yeah, and no popcorn. So we made our way into the theater and tried to find seats in the crowd. As our eyes adjusted, we realized that the seats weren't actually full of people, it was more occupied by row with hobo after hobo and several bags of their stuff. Puzzled, we walked down the central aisle to find a clear row, stepped around the projector (there was not a proper film projector, but rather a vcr connected to a projector and set on a stool in the aisle strategically aimed at the screen) and found some seats. As we went to sit we realized that none of the seats had cushions on them anymore so we had to just sit on the metal part that was remaining. Anyway, having settled into our metal seats, we began watching Ron Jeremy interview young starlets and giving them their "big shot" to be in his upcumming feature film. Likely story. We noticed that in the row in front of us there was a guy near the wall who kept lighting up every couple of minutes or so. After a bit, he leans back towards me being the closest and asks "hey dude, you wanna buy some crack?" I sort of freaked out so I leaned over to my friends and asked them "uh...guys, do you want to buy some crack?" They looked at me sort of stunned too so I just turned back to our hobo friend and kindly declined, "no thanks mister, we're good". I couldn't recall the protocol from my Emily Post etiquette book on what to do in a situation like that, so I just had to go with my gut.

At this point I will post these 3 and continue with 4, 5 & 6 in the next day or 2.

1000th visitor

As of tonight, I am 19 visitors away from 1000! With that milestone on my horizon, I'd like to dangle a carrot to the eventual lucky visitor with the chance at a fabulous doorprize. Drumroll please............The 1000th visitor will get to decide what my next blog topic should be!

Actually, I was tagged a few days ago and I'm still a bit behind on posting the 10 things about me post, so let's say it'll be the next one after that (assuming it doesn't take 2 weeks to get to 1000).