residuous activities inducing zealous actions meaning nothing
April 26th, 2008 — Culture, Erasmus Mundus, Madrid ES, Reading UK, Study, Thessaloniki GR
In this NeBCC international programme, I’ve been in to several groups for doing group assignments or labs. I could identify several specific issues I encountered in becoming members of these groups, namely:
March 30th, 2008 — Erasmus Mundus, Thessaloniki GR, Travel
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:
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!
March 26th, 2008 — Current Events, Erasmus Mundus, Politics, Thessaloniki GR
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!
March 16th, 2008 — Current Events, Islam, Religion, Thessaloniki GR
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:
The original seven deadly sins are:
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:
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.
March 2nd, 2008 — Current Events, Friends, Pictures, Thessaloniki GR
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 →
February 24th, 2008 — TV Shows, Thessaloniki GR
Yes this is another rant about me delaying things. Definitely unhealthy. I’m a little bit jealous about someone who managed to finish things. While we are in similar conditions, I am already on my second semester and haven’t improved much.
I even made my own personal record. I made a 3-paged paper in only around 8 hours! I had two weeks to finish that assignment and I did it on the last day. This semester, I have two group assignments so far and I became the bottleneck in both. Another group assignment is due in the middle of next month. My individual assignment will due in next week. I will have another class (and most likely another assignment) next week. I still have to think about what to do for dissertation (6-month-project master thesis), and where I will actually do it. Reading or Madrid are more interesting than Thessaloniki. But for Reading, it’s quite hard to find a professor to become a supervisor since most of their expertise are network (due to the name of the course) and I’m quite new in this network thingy.
And I’m now watching the new series Knight Rider. So far it’s cool enough even it’s quite bland. I can almost taste the smell of Smallville (in the season four or five, where everything feels like it is repeated over and over again). The acting is mediocre, but the familiar revamped bum-bada-bada-bum theme sound is nostalgic and refreshing at the same time. The new series predominantly feature more candy eye in terms of special effect to show-off the new KITT (rebranded as Knight Industries Three Thousand). The bullet-proof feature and the ability to switch appearance (color and model morphing plus the famous license plate switch–now morph) boasted by the car now look more realistic and the car itself does look cool and modern (it’s a new Ford Mustang).
There are subtleties that the show is more directed at a liberal-minded audience. Firstly, the main protagonist (the son of the original Michael Knight) is first depicted as losing faith in monogamous relationship (and shown to prefer threesome) although he had deep connection with the daughter of KITT’s creator. Second, the main female FBI agent is hinted to be a homosexual (or is it just me?). And lastly, the show had a premiere on the Playboy mansion. But worry not, no vulgar or explicit scenes shown on the 80 minutes pilot episode. Moreover, I believe that these sexual hints are not to be emphasised more on the next episodes. If you are going to watch this episode, watch out for a very special cameo near the end!
Now Boost me!
February 14th, 2008 — Current Events, Environment, Pictures, Thessaloniki GR
Today, (Wednesday, 13/02/2008), Greece is on general strike. The strike will last for the whole day, crippling the whole nation, as buses, trains, and airplanes were shut down. Schools are closed and hospitals are only dealing with emergency cases. Almost all public services, even news agencies join the strike. From the news, I know that the workers are demanding a better pension in their retirement system.
Continue reading →
February 12th, 2008 — Environment, Erasmus Mundus, Language, Thessaloniki GR, Travel
Tonight, while I was having my dinner in the university cafeteria (Greek students have lunch and dinner for free), I saw a man reading a French newspaper. After I finished my potatoes (my first serving) and beans (second serving, we can have as many food as we can, I’ve seen a guy had 4 servings!), finally I managed to say “Excusez-moi, Monsieur, vous etes francais?”
It turned out that he is a Moroccan. When we exchanged few words, I kept using “Ne” (Ναι), which is “yes” in Greek, instead of “Oui”. (Sigh) I must practice my French again.
Basically, we agreed that living in Greece is very difficult mainly because of the language. I told him that I am an Indonesian student and just arrived one month ago. He told me that he came to the cafeteria because the food is free (they don’t even check who you are, I can see a lot of people who I think most definitely not student). We talked for just a brief moment.
What amazes me is that, minutes before I finished my dinner and spoke to the Moroccan in French (and mistakenly used a Greek word), I listened to a learning Spanish podcast (from CoffeeBreakSpanish) taught in English with a heavy Scottish accent. So how’s that for an international environment?
(And I can still remember my IELTS teacher told me that I am too old to learn a new language)
February 11th, 2008 — Erasmus Mundus, Reading UK, Study, Thessaloniki GR
One of my teacher mentioned that he would like us to somehow measure the area of a triangle. Not any triangle, but a special triangle, the one whose points are from the countries of each members of our assignment groups. So far, I had already three group assignments, the group arrangement for one was decided by the lecturers and the other two were decided by the students ourselves.
Continue reading →
January 13th, 2008 — Islam, Pictures, Thessaloniki GR, food
Beware: this post is not for the faint-hearted since it contains graphic contents. Continue at your own risk. Continue reading →