Game of Thrones

This is the TV show I am watching these days. It is quite entertaining and keeps you engaged for the whole 1 hour that each episode lasts. I am not the most experienced tv-show viewer but actors seem good, the production is very rich and the director has done quite decent job since each episode has a good pace without becoming tiring.

Here, I have to admit that I haven't read the books and probably I will never read them in the future. As a person that one day wants to become a writer am thinking why someone selects a subject like that to write. In other words what someone expresses by writing something like that? For god's shake I am not an elitist and am not trying to pretend I am but I am trying to understand the rational behind this choice. Furthermore, why the author selects to write 7 books on this particular subject. I have already expressed my opinion for the show but in my mind a simple tv-scenario (or movie scenario) would had been more than enough. Ok now that I express my questions let me explain myself:

The writing of the book should have a purpose, a higher goal, that is much higher than just entertain the reader; especially in the form that Game of Thrones does. Moreover, I wonder why someone writes a book on that subject when the history of the world is full of such stories. You don't have to think and create something from scratch but just open a history book. I can bring into my mind a vast number of emperors that had the same or even worse ending than King Robert in the show. The Roman history, the Byzantine history, the history of the Western world initially with the long feuds between the families of the big landholders and then the emerged emperors of western civilization. In all the previous cases conspiracy, assassinations and all the good stuff was something very common.

The point I want to make in this post is: Why we get all excited about this show (me including)? We know that in environments such as the one in the "Game of Thrones" crazy things happen; so no surprise. We also now that great power comes with slother; so again no surprise. We know that people in order to hold or conquer something that brings them or it will bring them great power, such as a throne in show's case, are cruel and take extreme actions; again nothing new. Then the other question is why someone writes 4,5,6,7 books about something like that? is not original, is not new, does not teach something after all and by writing so many books you most probably repeat yourself. Although, here comes the surprise: something that common has such a great success. I wonder if this is the real lesson I have to keep or if this is another good reason to get really depressed.

( To be fair, games of thrones is just an example. Twilight, Harry Potter in my mind are similar cases and could also work as demo-fields in order to express my questions)

A Happy Biker The life without a car

When I first arrived in US, I had a very traumatic experience while I was trying to find an apartment to stay. I was used to much smaller distances, the ones we have in Greece, and it was quite a shocking experience the fact that I had to walk so much. Thinking that period now, I guess I was too stressed since I wasn't speaking the language so well and this constant feeling of insecurity was always there and was distorting things. In the end I managed to find an apartment but my conclusion was that without a car I might die in US. I guess I can be such a drama queen sometimes.

I bought a nice new car and I still have it. It is a nice Honda Fit quite small for the US standarts but I was and still am very happy to drive it.

The purpose of this post however, is not to talk about my car, or the awful experience of apartment hunting but to write down my experiences from my first week of bike commuting to school. Of course the point is the future me to see how much I changed the last two years and from "without a car I will die" to commuting by biking to work. Therefore, this is just a checkpoint-post.

My commute is pretty brief; it is around 3 miles. The route from house to university is easier since the road is slightly downhill. When commuting from home to school I develop an average speed of 19mph and the time I spend to cover this distance is around 9.5 minutes. On the way back from school usually am kind of tired from work so my average speed is lower, around 15mph, and I cover the distance in around 12 minutes. Some things I have already noticed this first week of biking is that MD drivers don't like bikers that much and can be aggressive sometimes when they are passing next to you. A second note is that MD is not Switzerland therefore, there are no dedicated lanes for bikers in the most streets. The quality of the asfalt is not great but is not terrible either; however, I fear that the area around the university will cause many flat tire situations in the future.

My bike is the white Bianchi Vigorelli that I have posted here. It has a frame made of steel and a carbon fork, it wears the 2011 Shimano 105 and probably its name will be Charlie or Maverick. My helmet is the red-black helmet of the picture. Interesting fact the name (given from the company, Giro) of the helmet is Ionos and probably comes from the greek word "ιονός" which means sign but with a twist of mysticism.

He's haunted by the memory of a lost paradise

In his youth or a dream, he can't be precise.

This is a post about the sorrow that a single picture can cause. A faded picture, on a computer screen brings on the surface memories that were considered well buried in the darkest abyss of his soul. He said he was free from her spell but a single picture was enough to understand the value of his statement. He well understood that he's chained forever to a world that departed; for world that he wasn't enough.

He convinced himself that time passes and the river rolls. He built his castle on the notion of untouchable man with a huge ego; he valued himself really high and kept him far away from the rest of the mortals. He has done it in the past, he has seen some of his literature heroes doing it. He wanted to keep his life in control but his effort it's not enough. He is talking to the river of the lost love and dedication about the girl. His blood has frozen, his knees have trembled and given way in the moment; his heart has weakened at the moment of truth. He is talking to the river of lost love and dedication about the girl and he silently replies sorrow's invitation. There're a tear in his eyes, that blinds his sight. There's a song on the background but the silence speaks so much louder than music and words for promises broken.

Initium est salutis notitia peccati

Coming back from Greece I'm rather disappointed than anything else. Sure the weather is nice and the country is still beautiful. However, this economic collapse has affected everybody. People are unhappy and they don't feel safe anymore; many of them go to the central square of Athens to protest and communicate their fears with fellow citizens.

I had the chance to talk extensively with one of them. This girl is called Ioli, which is such a beautiful name, she was a journalist, 25 years old, quite educated in the social sense and to my opinion an active citizen. Ioli, this 25 years old girl is 7 or 8 months without a job. Right now she is at a point in her life that she is not able to pay her rent and she decided to work as waitress in order to survive. I consider it quite depressing that young people have to do something totally different from what they studied just to be able to survive.

Ioli is very angry. Ioli is depressed. Ioli shouts at the central square. Everything seems burned around her and all her generation in complete despair.

In these kind of situations that someone hits rock bottom there is always some sort of optimism that its source is the fact that its situation cannot become any worse. Hope is a very strong drive for everyone and I totally respect its power. However, I wonder if that is the case for the young Ioli and its generation. My pessimism comes from the fact that Ioli was blaming the older generations or the politicians for the problems that she is now facing. But wait a minute who are these people? Are they any foreigners that have invaded the country and have done everything to cause harm ? No, we are the same people, we share the same culture, more or less the same believes and blaming each other can't do any good to the current situation.

I think the major problem of modern Greece has to do with responsibility and who will take the blame. It's kind of absurd that this country that has this great past which full of very risky decisions now is full of people that they want to defer anything for later, and what preserves their sanity is having someone else to blame for their own shortcomings. I think that's the point we are mistaken; we have failed to recognize the problem. We are the problem; and I know this is the hardest thing to get and accept but only when we manage to accept that truth will find a way to swim towards the surface again. We are responsible, we created this situation, we need to take action, to get educated, not to steal ourselves or our children; it's dead hard but it's so true.

The knowledge of sin is the beginning of salvation after all

this time of the year: Overview

So this is the time of the year; a circle ends and another is about to begin. Classes are over and the whole academic year just came to an end. This time tomorrow I will be flying to happiness or in other words I will be flying back to my country. I will meet my family, my friends, my ex-girlfriends, my ex-ex girlfriends and whoever wants to see me. I feel quite excited because I think I deserve this trip. I believe that it's a good time to write about this year. This time I will do it publicly for the purpose of this blog (see the title).

Hm, let's start; my plan is to cover so from the summer of 2010 to the current one. The last year review as I can see in my notes ended to the time that I was leaving for Spain. OK I guess that's a good point to start. In this first post, I will just cover the highlights of the year; however, I will write down my thoughts about individual important events in following posts.

Spain: I was the first three months of the last summer; it wasn't a very fruitfull experience. I was working on this big European ISP trying to do some research. The collaboration with the people there wasn't easy neither exciting. I didn't like I was there in the first place because I wanted to spend the summer in MD with my back-then dream-girl. As you can see there was a love story running in the background. I remember how miserable I was during my time in Spain. I was waiting the time to pass and return back and meet her. The project I did there it was ridiculous, it didn't seem to have strong motivation and the people here wanted to apply patches just to make it look better. The idea wasn't bad but it really wasn't something that was working. I am writing all these because I had the feeling that it was a really bad project; however, after some months it got accepted in a really big networking conference without my name in the author list but more about that later.

After the end of the summer the academic year started with high hopes and tones of excitment about a new beginning and a fresh start; it was like the summer of 2009 but this time I knew the ropes and I had a girlfriend. However, this strong feeling of optimism didn't really lead somewhere. After three months, I had no girlfriend, I was with new advisor and for the first time I felt that I'm close to depression. How I reached from the high excitment to the rock bottom point(of this year) It is something that will write in a later post. As sneak preview I can write that research is hard, life in school is harder, and dealing with those two and your life is sometimes very tricky.