Entries from March 2008 ↓

Three months passed by so quickly, and it’s time for me to, yet again, move. It has been a very busy three months for me, but it’s definitely unique compared to Reading, UK. All the problems with language, food, assignments have all passed now. Several issues are still with me:

• I haven’t submitted one assignment (from Reading!) yet
• I still haven’t secured any accommodation in Madrid, Spain, yet
• Probably I will experience excess baggage for the first time, ie: I think my luggage is overweight!

But before I go to Madrid, Spain, to continue this journey, my next stop will be Rome, Italy. I will spend several days there to relax (and to finish my assignment!)

So, see you when I see you.
Yia sas!

Greece is recovering from yet another national strike. Like the previous strike I posted before, but in a much greater scale. Last Thursday was the big day when the Greek parliament, despite all the strike, decided to pass the new law which will make a great negative effect on the Greek workers’ retirement fund scheme.

Here, in Thessaloniki, I also experienced the effects of the strike. The garbage collectors stopped working at least for two weeks. Garbage litter-ally (pun intended) piled up everywhere, making me remember about the garbage problem Bandung had last year. Also, we had several blackouts, allegedly connected with the strike. I don’t often use bus, but my friends said that buses were scarce, even one of them had to walk to campus for the first time. The students’ cafeteria closed one day and the other day they are serving the food while they were having electricity blackout. We had an unplanned semi-buffet for that day. Usually, we were given a tray with all the food in it over a window, like a (parking) ticket booth. But then, they arranged the food in an empty space of the cafeteria and we were given an empty tray so that we can take the dishes we want.

After the parliament still decided to pass the law, it seems that the workers started to work again. Yesterday, most of the piling garbage were collected, and since Friday we haven’t had any electricity blackout. I hope that everything will return back to normal. It’s my final week in Thessaloniki and it’s also my exam week. Wish me luck!

As you may aware, there has been some news that the Vatican is adding more mortal sins to Christianity. According to Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, this is done to prevent people from losing the notion of sin, and to stress that If people do not confess regularly, they risk slowing their spiritual rhythm. The new more-modernised and more-social sins include:

• Environmental pollution
• Genetic manipulation
• Accumulating excessive wealth
• Inflicting poverty
• Drug trafficking and consumption
• Morally debatable experiments
• Violation of fundamental rights of human nature

The original seven deadly sins are:

• Pride
• Envy
• Gluttony
• Lust
• Anger
• Greed
• Sloth

It can be seen that the new list try to target more specifically on what human can do only recently, where technology and money drive most of the human life.

Recently, a BBC report also mentioned about “progressive” muslim women in America. The report certainly put emphasises on how Muslim women in the states try to do more active role in practising Islam in their daily lives. But it also described the practises of putting the five prayers as secondary priority (while “remembering” God everyday gets higher priority), translating Quran (Islam’s Holy Book) in an unusual way, and allowing women to lead prayers, as “progressive Islam.” I certainly don’t have any problem with Muslim women to have a bigger and more active roles in the society, but the tendency of the news that somehow called, what I think, more observant Muslims as “traditionalists” make me a little bit uncomfortable.

I’ll admit and really stress that I’m not that religious, but this journey made me feel that I have to hold on to something in order not to lose my identity. I found that one of the things to hold on to, is my religion.

I don’t want to put my religious practise at the centre stage. What I want to do is ask these questions:

• Do you think religions need to be “modernised”?
• Don’t they have some general values that always be relevant?
• Should we behave in such a way to be not considered as old-fashioned/fundamentalists/traditionalists including changing the way we practise our religions?

To end this post I’m going to tell you that in the last several weeks, my door was knocked several times by young Greek man and woman. My conversations with them, which lasted around 15 minutes, are probably the longest ones I have with any Greek. They gave me pamphlets about their believes. They are Jehovah Witness’ Christians, and we’re discussing about religions at the footstep of my door. The guy invited me to have a coffee with him tomorrow at noon.

Meet Shrek and, ehm, his girlfriend.

The carnival week has just started here in Greece. People wear masks or costumes and celebrate. On Thursday afternoon, they have what is called Tsiknopempti (Τσικνοπέμπτης, literally Burnt Thursday, it is Greek equivalent of Fat Tuesday) where people had massive barbecue to prepare for the carnival. Unfortunately, I don’t have any picture for the barbecue. The word Carnival itself has Latin origin which means saying good bye to meat (carni = meat, vale = good bye; remember carnivore?).

The origin of Greek carnival tradition can also be traced back to Ancient Greek tradition. They said that it was for honouring the God of Wine, Dionysus. That’s why the Greek Orthodox church, the majority, seemed not too happy with the celebration. Nonetheless, old and young people were celebrating on Thursday night. The carnival is also related to Easter and one of my professors said that for forty days before Easter the Greek (at least the religious ones) fast by not eating meat or drinking alcohol. Continue reading →