Looking back at Greece

So (as you noticed) I blew off writing over Ramadan, the entire month of August. Stayed in town for Eid Al-Fitr and had my bedroom painted black and charcoal resulting in a back crisis (mine) and a self-shattered window (that's another blog entry). And then the post-summer, post-Ramadan, post-Eid crush ensued when everything is urgent and happening at once. We are just emerging from that steamroll and there's another Eid holiday starting in 2 weeks. I am considering 4 nights on a plantation with aryuvedic treatments and a tiger preserve in Kerala - - drawing straws for rubber, coffee or cardamom in a few days. Christmas postcard should rock (again).

So the last time I tapped out the latest drivel, I was in the Cyclades, marveling at the food, landscape, mythology, centuries of civilized life in the antique world.... my day trip back to Athens was an epic fiasco. It began with my request for the "speed" ferry boat back to the capital, with every intention of arriving with several hours to go at the Acropolis park b/c the new Acropolis Museum was closed on a Monday. That would give me 2 hours to see the museum the next morning before having to leave for an afternoon flight back to the Gulf. The "speed" boat was a turtle - a two hour journey took more than three with no apparent need for an explanation or apology. My "business" class seat was at the front of that cabin, where the a/c was not working. I had boarded the ferry from the right side (I know there's a proper marine term for that) and about 45 minutes before arrival, an announcement was made asking if there were any doctors onboard. By then I had given up the "comfort" of my business class seat in the sauna and was moving towards the door where in a short while several hundred passengers would be clamoring to retrieve their bags in the luggage hull en route to disembarking. The sick passenger was right in front of that door.

We finally pull up to the docks at Piraeus and the movement on the side of the ferry with the sick passenger is prohibited to allow for the ambulance that needs to collect him. They've turned the little a/c that was working completely off by now. This is when I feel particularly American. I want a/c. I want ice. I want a freezing cold Coke. An announcement with an apology in English would be civilized but I've lost all perspective by now and no one is allowed to get their bags and get off this vessel until the ambulance pulls away with the passenger. I finally get to my bag and roll it and another heavy tote I am trying to balance on it out onto the scorching pavement where there are no cabs. Taxi strike. The obscenities in my head are endless and unfiltered. Where exactly is the blankety blank blank subway and how am I going to cross the 6 lanes of midday traffic to the entrance, figure out how to buy a ticket and figure out what stop I am supposed to get off when my iPhone is almost out of juice???

I manage into the station and figure out the ticket. I have the address to the hotel and guess the station by reference to the Acropolis Museum, where I know I am staying a few blocks away for one night. I transfer lines and then emerge to more sweltering heat next to the Museum. I call the hotel and ask them to send a porter but alas, this is Greece and the country is on a taxi strike so I have clearly lost my mind in assuming that a porter is going to fetch an American tourist from the escalator of the subway as a concession for not being able to procure public transport at the port to their door. I get the walking instructions to the hotel from the subway stop and keep dragging my bags in the heat. The streets are marked in Greek, not Latin letters but I know the transliteration of my street and recognize many of the letters. I get to the bottom of a long hill, having approached and then passed the Acropolis on the hill on my right and I know something is wrong. I approach the park ranger kiosk and ask them about the address and they point me back up the hill. I am almost in tears. And I am NOT taking the rocks out of the bag thatI brought back from Paros. I already screwed up my shoulder in Japan dragging this same bloody bag on/off 3 trains and a ferry each way to Naoshima in February and I am NOT going to succumb to a taxi strike, 100 degree heat and a lack of preparedness.

I drag my sorry self back up the hill, angling for shade and a level sidewalk until I get to the street where I was supposed to turn but the sign is missing. I finally get to the hotel and get myself into a shower, where I return to civilization and plan a night out in Plaka. On my way back from dinner, I see a couple that are surely American, rolling their bags in the same direction of my hotel. I ask them if they are going there and sure enough, they are also dealing with the taxi strike having just gotten off the ferry from Naxos, the island next to where I was the previous two weeks. I give them the business card for gorgeous taverna (Psara's) where I have just finished eating my last Greek dinner and insist they try it.

The next morning, I watch the sun rise on the Acropolis from my window and enter the park as it opens, before the morass of humanity arrives by the busload. Here are some snaps of my last adventures in Atticus:

Hadrian's Arch and the ruins of the Temple of Olympian Zeus beyond it, and both of them the next morning from Acropolis Hill.




As one climbs up Acropolis Hill, one of the first sites is the Dionysos Theatre. The theater in ancient Greek culture began around 550 and 220 BC in the city of Athens, the political center of Greece at that time. Originally used to celebrate the festival of Dionysus, it was expanded and was exported to colonies around Athens to promote cultural identity in Greece.


This is the Erechtheum on the north side of the flat summit of the hill, built about 420 BC which housed earlier cults. This is the south view with six maiden figures (caryatids) supporting the roof. These are actually concrete replacements with five of the original caryatids in Acropolis Museum and the sixth in the British Museum. Due to the saga of the turtle ferry and the taxi strike, there was no time to see the original caryatids in Athens but on a recent business trip to London, I got close one of the ladies that Lord Elgin brought to the UK in 1816 and wondered what it was doing so far from home:


Here are some details from the other side of the Erechtheum (back on the Acropolis):







This is the Temple of Athena Nike, originally built in the 6th century BC but destroyed by the Persians in 48o BC. The reconstruction on the original footprint of the temple was erected between 447-406 BC.

Here are some snaps of the Parthenon, which is visibly in the midst of restoration:


I enjoyed an amazing day trip to the ancient island of Delos and then an afternoon in Mykonos before I left the Cyclades. Delos was outrageous and I have too many photos to upload and explain....if you are truly interested, pls Google it b/c so many other enthusiasts have uploaded their images online and gone to painstaking detail to describe every monument and ruin. It's fascinating and I can't imagine spending time in the Cyclades and not seeing Delos. By the time we pulled into the Mykonos harbour, my camera battery was toast so I only captured a few snaps:

And these were shot late in the afternoon in a nearby Byzantine village of Lefkes in Paros the next day:


I'll be back. I hope the austerity measures have had a positive impact by then.

The Aegean

Day 4 in the sleepy village of Drios on the island of Paros. Another 10 days to go and the sun is hot, unrelenting and I seem to be the only one hiding under a big hat and avoiding the midday exposure. There is a preoccupation with the sun amongst the local nationals that dates back for millennia – it’s in their DNA. Haven’t seen one dermatology clinic, which speaks to the ambivalence towards the UVA & UVB threat. Found the one yoga teacher in these parts as well as the beach with the stand-up paddle surfboards. May have to sign up for the octopus boat trip, which I imagine goes out deep into the Aegean and catches these creatures...stay tuned.

I am staying in the south end of the island – bucolic villages with long stretches of land facing Ios and Naxos. There is a chic harbor village in the north, Naoussa, that looks out toward Mykonos. I’ll just post a bunch of photos.


This is the view from my balcony overlooking lime trees and Ios in the distance:

This is Naoussa. Note the panacea to the world’s woes (or the maybe the Greek approach to their financial crisis) on the chalkboard.

And (Day 5) - not to be missed in these beautiful waters, yours truly found a Stand Up Paddle surfboard rental.

Greece

At 30,000-something feet on my way to Athens and a series of mishaps have occurred such that I am superstitiously hoping that the nonsense is behind me. A late night in the office trying to tie things up before escaping for 16 days to the Cyclades and as luck would have it, when I descended the elevator to the sub-basement #2 level where my parking space is allocated, I was the last car on that level and surely the other two levels. Once I ascended to sub-basement #1, I saw the security door down and got out of my Jeep with the a/c still running to re-enter the building and take the elevator up one flight to alert Security that the security door needed to be opened to let me out. Except for the fact that the cleaning crew had taken all three elevators out of service, my plan was fine. So I climbed back into the Jeep and started laying on the horn. Which no one heard and/or acknowledged much less bothered to check the security cameras to notice my predicament. I thought about the colleagues that lived nearby and who might not mind getting in their car to drive to the office to tell the Security team on duty that I was trapped in the basement. I called my direct-report assuming she wouldn’t be too inconvenienced seeing as how I asked her to go to the South of France on my behalf for a business trip that would have wrecked the front end of my long-anticipated trip to Greece. She was on the other side of town having her nails done and couldn’t get there for at least an hour. So I called someone else, who didn’t mind and drove over. After 20+ minutes stuck in the basement and dumbfounded with the certainty of death in the likelihood of a fire, I emerged and wondered if I could send the vacationing CEO an email about my plight while imagining what the lawyers might do in the US if this idiocy had taken place there.

So, typical of a 4:45am wake-up for the airport, I couldn’t sleep after finally getting packed and leaving my orchids with the neighbors for them to tend in my absence. In typical 5am zombie-form at the airport, I checked into my flight and as I thought about charging my iPhone on my laptop, I realized that I left the charger to the laptop plugged into its socket in my bedroom. So I did the only thing available at the hour….I called my driver who had just dropped me and asked him to come back to the airport. Clinging to a double macchiatto with one bag checked onto Athens, I met him at the same curb and gave him my house key and told him to enter my apt, go to my bedroom and take the cord out of the wall and bring it to me. If he got caught in traffic and the flight was called, at least I could board the plane and buy another cord in Athens but it would be less expensive to pay him for a 2nd trip to the airport than to find an Apple store on arrival 8 hours later. So, in usual reliable form, he turned up 25 minutes later with the cord.

This is also the man to whom I entrusted my Jeep a few months ago to have it inspected. I couldn’t face the lines, the bureaucracy and the tedium of having my Jeep inspected so I gave him the keys and asked him to do it. The Jeep failed b/c of an expired bulb in one of the taillights I had not noticed so he went to the Jeep dealership and faithfully bought the factory-specific bulb and then took it back for inspection the next day, when it passed. I am finally learning that in this part of the world, there is a man you can pay to get just about anything done.

The heavy narrative and dearth of visuals is over. The Lumix point-and-shoot camera I bought in Cairo last June to replace my original Lumix after it was stolen (with photos still on the card of dawn at the pyramids of Giza) at a conference, died on one of the winter desert excursions. It must have been a dud and sold into the black market. Note to self- do not buy electronic equipment in countries with anemic GDP and crumbling authoritarian governance. So I am armed with a 3rd Lumix (16 mega-pixels).

I picked up the 3rd Lumix in Dubai Duty-Free on my way back to the home sandbox, minutes before picking up a few cold Perrier bottles in the lounge to drop into my work bag to keep 2 kilos of prosciutto, pancetta and Serrano ham cold for the next few hours of transit; it’s not haram in some of the Arab Gulf countries. Ironically, once though Immigration and going through the arrival x-rays at the home airport, the local attendant had me pull out the Perrier bottles from my bag. He could not read the labels and asked his colleague at the next machine if the Perrier was alcohol. She assured her colleague that they weren’t and waved me and the illicit meat through to the arrival luggage belts.

P.S. Arrived to Athens a few hours after tapping the above to a taxi strike. I emerged from the subway at a central Athens stop and met these Roman market ruins as I was told to board the back of a motorbike and shoved my bags onto it to zip through narrow streets and corners to my host's home, at the foot of the Acropolis.





After eating a divine Greek meal at a taverna 10m from her front door, we strolled around Athens as the sun set before leaving for the Pireas Port for the 4-hour ferry ride to the Cyclades. Enjoy.

Traffic Department

Sometime in January I remember going through an intersection and the traffic camera flash went off. I didn’t think I caused it so I didn’t bother to do anything about it. One must monitor these things b/c if traffic violations are not settled within a year, one can be denied access to an outbound flight at the airport without notice until the infraction is settled. I logged into the Ministry of the Interior web site with my Resident Permit # and discovered I had 7 points and a fine logged against my ID for about USD 1650. I have no idea what I did but knew I had to get it off my record.

So I called the fixer I used when I obtained my driver’s license and gave him my plate #. He called me the next day and told me that I had run a red light at a specific roundabout. He asked if I had been pulled over and issued a citation as the nature of the offense indicated that this should have happened and it didn’t. He told me that the police officer that issued the ticket was the former bodyguard of the Sheikh that runs the Traffic Dept, whom I met briefly when I obtained my license 18 months ago. I was told to turn up before 7am at the Traffic Dept and we would try to get it waived.

I have a new colleague from Lebanon. She goes through a lot of bureaucratic and administrative hell to obtain entry visas to other countries and to just get official stuff done due to the fact that she hails from a country without a government. She needed to obtain her license and was trying to get driving school waived and came along with me to face our respective driving fates.

I pulled up to the office at 6:30 when we planned to meet so as to go together. I watched the bus unload the tea ladies for another day of service in the office. It was surreal to watch them all enter the building wearing exactly the same thing – black trousers, white long-sleeved shirts and black vest – typical service penguin uniform. They were all petite in height and in varying degrees of body type. But they all had long hair and most of them were still putting the finishing touches on their hair look for the day and fiddling with their mobile phones as they entered the revolving glass door one at a time. Having to deal with my ambiguous albeit expensive traffic violation at 7am with the Sheikh did not seem too onerous given juxtaposed with the fate of these dozens of ladies.

My colleague showed up and we made our way to the Traffic Dept. We were shown into a ground floor office while others waited in the hot sun to be admitted to the same room. I wasn’t sufficiently caffeinated but remembered the Sheikh being on the 2nd floor last time and now we were in a large room with chairs lined along the perimeter of the room as if we were in a majlis. In the center was a small desk with men hovering around a seated man at a desk. I went up to the desk and the seated man knew who I was before I said anything. I was stunned but relieved that in the spectrum of predicaments one might face in these situations, I didn’t have to say anything to get the wheels of infraction elimination moving. The seated man had a nice smile and was very friendly as he confirmed that I was there about a moving violation without my saying anything and he told me to sit down in one of the big chairs for 15 minutes. I asked him if the Sheikh was around and he smiled bigger and said he was the Sheikh, much to my horror. I told him that his new office was a nice improvement over the little one upstairs and thanked him for his kind attention.
He signed my colleague’s license application but she was still stuck going to the same driving school I went to as a formality. He gave some instructions to another man, who ten minutes later handed me a slip of paper with my record that had the moving violation removed but a parking ticket to settle. It was not an inexpensive day once I took care of that and renewed my car’s registration. I went to the office after dropping my colleague off at what seemed a much more crowded driving school than I remembered. I was in the office before 8am and had moved bureaucratic mountains with a phone call and a smile...would that the rest of my existence could be a comparable cakewalk.

My colleague had quite a tale to tell once our preferred taxi driver picked her up from driving school and brought her to the office. The driving school was chaotic. She didn’t know the traffic signs for the verbal test but it didn’t matter. She got in the car and did a quick run around the parking lot and got in a third line requiring payment in the sequence of “completing local driving education” and neither her credit or her debit card would work despite more than sufficient funds available. She had paid cash for the other two payments but now this last one was bigger and the system wasn’t connecting to her bank account and without paying, she’d have to come back. The line was getting longer behind her and there was no ATM on the premises to bypass the machines. A Lebanese man within her proximity also trying to obtain his license saw what was going on and he paid her last bill. She was relieved to have a savior in that moment and took his card to make arrangements later to reimburse him. She came to the office flustered but overwhelmingly relieved.

The next day, my colleague brought a nice box of chocolates and called our taxi driver to ask him to deliver it and the cash to the Lebanese savior at the driving school. Since he was going in the direction of the dry cleaner, she also gave him her claim ticket. I overheard the instructions and reached for my dry cleaning claim tickets. He was gone for an hour and called me when he was at the office door with two armfuls of my dry cleaning, one item for my colleague and a BIGGER box of chocolate from the same confectioner for her from Mr. Driving School Savior. We could not stop laughing.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

If you're all about the photos, skip this one. Epic culture clash week survived by yours truly; this place is Industrial Psychology Nirvana.

The week started off poorly with the news that a dear high school friend has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. It always seems like a live a hugely long plane ride away from home but when something like lands in the email inbox, one has to suppress the reactive impulse to board a flight immediately which then prompts an holistic and somewhat existential audit of the reasons one is here and how much longer to ride the wave. Ironically, I had asked my friend to send me the ingredients and measurements for a stovetop chocolate pudding - I could remember the ingredients and preparation but not the measurements....I made a cookbook for her daughters a few years ago and knew a copy of this recipe was in it because her youngest inhales the pudding as if it were chocolate milk (and I've actually served it with a straw to her and her cousin). My friend cheerfully replied within 24 hours with the requested information and then dropped the bomb. I'll always remember that email at every suggestion of chocolate pudding for as many days as I have left.

Back here...there is an organizational culture of "us versus them" that maintains a constant simmer and occasionally reaches a temporary boil. The phrase "time is money" is an affront to this culture but as an ex-patriot, you are expected to deliver results as if you were in the west. As in any professional setting where there is a large share of ex-patriots mixing with indigenous local talent that has been socialized and educated in vastly different ways, the propensity for culture clash is significant. As a westerner, one must remember that my local colleagues are usually from very large families. If there is only one wife, there are usually at least 5-6 siblings with which my colleague has been competing for the father's attention, approval, support and blessings. If the family is affluent and the father can afford to provide for a second wife in the same manner as the first, then my colleague is probably still competing for attention with 5-6 siblings from his/her mother and ultimately trying to seek the same attention, approval, support and blessings from a father that must divide his time equally across his wives. Imagine if my colleague's father has three wives. What this means is that my colleague spends a lot of time throughout childhood and the formative years moving "laterally" to align with siblings, cousins, etc to be viewed favorably by the father and elders of the extended family b/c there is such a small chance of receiving individual attention. That's why this patriarchal society and culture are never about the individual but rather the collective and inherently the honor of the family. Flies totally against a merit-based value system premised on independence instilled in the west. Welcome to the labyrinth where N*O*T*H*I*N*G is navigationally linear. Moving laterally is counter-intuitive to a westerner when time is money.

A lack of communication between myself and a peer resulted in some wounded egos that personally left me wondering what the hell I am doing here, especially now that the daytime temperatures exceed 100-degrees Farenheit and will climb steadily to an oppressive peak of about 125 by mid-July when an odious humidity from the Indian Ocean monsoon season blows this way before relenting slightly in August. Suffice it to say that the other party apologized with a HUGE basket of haute chocolate, which was an enormous relief given that he is a local and I am the hired overseas help. I am optimistic that his generous apology will go a long way in actually aligning our efforts on our complicated and stressful project. I've been told that this gesture is most unusual for a local male so I am pretty sure I was right but that doesn't mean what it means in the west.

Another colleague took a long weekend where they sell prosciutto. Since it's not sold in this country and forbidden by the local religion, of course, I want it. Every time I travel abroad I order bacon and prosciutto because I can, not because I must have it. So my colleague clandestinely brought some back for me and because I was so distracted with the other matters that surfaced last week, I didn't blink when she placed it in our small refrigerator in the office for me to take home. The next day, another office mate who is a steadfast follower of the faith informed me that she had the tea lady remove it from our fridge and place it in the tea kitchen. Apparently, this could get me in deeper _ _ _ _ than I have ever imagined. My offended office mate is currently stuck in Dubai for the 2nd day waiting to board a flight to Baghdad that won't clear. To cheer her, I emailed her that I have had the fridge defrosted and wiped down with bleach to atone for my lack of judgment. This is serious stuff here. I need to constantly remember that if something is haram that means that it is not to be messed with...in any way.

An interview with a Brit exploring a senior role with us and visiting the region for that purpose prompted explicit thought on the stay/go matter. Having arrived in early September 2009, I experienced my first Christmas here by hosting a dinner (see "Pearl of the Desert" entry) that required a purchase of Pernod to make a salmon and fennel main course. I have another recipe calling for Pernod and made it recently, observing that the Pernod is almost half gone and I thought about the possibility of having to replenish it....will I still be here when the Pernod runs out? Is the Pernod an indicator of how much time I have left here? The candidate asked me if I planned to learn Arabic. I replied that of course I would love to but an exhausting job made it a challenge to squeeze it in and one has to calculate the return on that investment...how many years do I plan to work in countries where Arabic is the primary language? It's a commitment. So I dodged the question by talking about the Pernod. Don't know if he was amused or baffled. At least he enjoyed the Yemeni restaurant I chose and the food I ordered for the table.

I follow the news not only with the NYT online but through various podcasts downloaded off the iTunes store. I always listen to The New Yorker's "Political Scene" and this week's podcast is called "Political Sex Scandals." It will not download surely b/c the word "sex" is in the title so I will not hear the latest on Anthony Weiner and his tawdry albeit non-criminal behavior. Hypocrisy? Does the name David Vitter mean anything? The resignations of Newt's campaign manager and half-dozen senior staff inspired a much-needed huge smile.

Happy summer.

Arabian Winter

With the temperate weather of the winter lamentably behind us, I will share some of the weekend fun had in the dunes with visiting family, friends, and colleagues. In February, my sister's sister-in-law was in the Emirates for a conference and routed the return trip with a weekend visit to me. With a 9am Friday morning arrival, there was little else to do but indulge in a huge brunch at noon and take a dinner desert excursion.

My first taste of these standard excursions was early in my arrival to the region on the first night of Eid Al Fitr in 2009 (see blogpost "Toasting Eid in the Desert"). At that time, one of my colleagues had us do the now-famous "jump shot," into which which I coerced my sister-in-law and her colleagues into compliant submission. The initial response to this exercise is patented...the "subjects" mumble something unintelligible and the body language is one of reluctance lacking enthusiasm. Once a few shots are snapped and images are reviewed, the enthusiasm factor rockets and everyone wants to do it again and again until the perfect shot is snapped. Below see some distinguished US Attorneys and judges perfecting the jump shot:








As the triathlete of the crowd, my sister-in-law was naturally the best jumper!





The standard excursion goes to a location near the Saudi border and a local driver wearing traditional dress picks up the group in town near a supermarket. We ran into the market to ensure we had our soft beverages of choice in his cooler and set off for our adventure. About 40 minutes into the drive, there is a standard stop where the tires have to be deflated to about half because now the driving is in the desert and this is how the tire can "grab" the dune angles. A good driver will take the face of a dune on its side and then slide down the dune as if hydroplaning. And if full entertainment value has been factored, the Beastie Boys are blaring and it's a bit of a show. It was definitely a show to this crowd! Here's one of the camels on display at the tire letdown spot:



Once the sun set, we enjoyed a traditional dinner of lamb, chicken and beef kebabs, cardamom-scented rice, hummus, and bread baked over fire in this camp:



And dusk in the desert is always magical...



Consultants from Europe were invited into my convertible Jeep for a self-guided excursion into the desert with two other local ex-pat colleagues in March, where the jump shot was again met with anemic enthusiasm. Within moments, there was an insatiable need to "perfect" the shot irrespective of the effort required.







And, of course, the cyclist in the group took the jump shot to new heights of expression and excellence:



On this trip we encountered the desert hyacinth in situ, which looked much like a succulent. These flowers dot the landscape where they have self-germinated the winter prior and aren't easy to find.





Once the temporary foreigners cleared out, the resident foreigners headed into the desert regularly on the weekend afternoon to catch sunset from a different vantage point, start a fire (to keep unwanted critters away), and make dinner. There's always something new to see or experience. Here are some snaps of various spots and the "chef" among us, checking the marinated tuna with a headlamp to ensure a rare result in a dune surrounded by basalt and jasper deposited by a river that disappeared a couple million years ago.