Returns

Met who I could in Athens, including some former students, mostly from my advanced class.  I also dropped out to the school to say hello.  The school receptionist very nicely asked me if I wanted to pop my head in to one of the classes to see some more pupils of mine and one of the teachers.  I agreed, and was invited in to sit in the class for a while.   

Just to explain a little bit about how the system worked in the school I was teaching in – I was the native language speaker, and took each class (approximately half the classes in the school – the other native speaker had the other half) once a week for an hour, or two hours for exam classes, to work on their communication skills (speaking and writing).  They had the rest of their classes with a Greek teacher who would do grammar and various other fun things with them, the theory being that native speakers cannot teach grammar (a theory 100% accurate in this case).  This meant that I had more students than any of the Greek teachers (in excess of one hundred names and faces), and come report time, had to write an account of their progress and speak to a parent for each and every one of them.  By Christmas I had still been struggling to remember student’s names when I had them sitting in front of me in a classroom, never mind being able to give an accurate description of what they were doing, and I also had not realised that I should be taking notes of their grades until half way through the first semester, so I didn’t even have those to rely on.  For the most part meeting the parents wasn’t too bad, because I always met them with my Greek counter-part, who usually chattered away to them first allowing me to catch key words of the conversation such as ‘grammatiki’ (grammar) or ‘lexikos’ (vocabulary), which would then allow me to make it look like I knew what I was talking about, spouting out things like:

“Well, George’s work is quite good, but he needs to focus on his grammar.” [Parent and Greek teacher nod]  “He also needs to focus on his vocabulary as he has been having problems in that area.” [Parent and Greek teacher nod once again in agreement] 

Now, sometimes I’d leave it there, but other times I’d feel things were going really well and I’d get carried away and decide to add something of my own, such as:

“...but he also needs to pay more attention in class…” [Parent and teacher’s eyes widen, teacher turns head to look at me, amazed, and tells me she’s never had that problem with George] So I’d back-peddle rapidly with something like, “…but what child doesn’t need to pay more attention, haha.”

Now, the teacher giving the lesson I dropped in on the other day was the one I hated doing parent-teacher meetings with (the most), because he always let me say what I thought first, before he gave his report.  I never thought that he did it purposefully to upset me or make me uncomfortable.  However, that all changed this week when, once he had me sitting in the class he asked me if I could remember the students in the class – and I did recognise most of them – and then went on to ask if I could remember their names.  Which I couldn’t.  So the kids all looked disappointed, I looked like a twat, and he sat at the top of the class with a big smile on his face.  He is, as the Greeks would say, a giant malaka.

In other news, the other volunteers travelling from Athens managed to coordinate ourselves, and get out to Kefalonia with only minor complications with buses, ferries and camping.   But we got here, and are now already five days in.  I’ve been out snorkelling in the evening three times now, and have seen four turtles, one of which was a green turtle, which doesn’t really belong in these waters, but seems quite happily lost, and he’s nice to see, so it’s alright.

The first tracks and nest were discovered this morning, which is terrific as it means that night shifts will begin tonight, and I’m first up.  Exciting times.

Outbound – Destination Greece

Selected the option to permanently delete my Facebook account at 00:01 last night, and have been told that I have fourteen days to change my mind before my profile is gone forever.  For a while I thought that it would mean that I’d still be able to use my profile for two weeks and would remain visible online, which would have been awkward as I’d already announced to the world that I wouldn’t be there anymore, but as it is I can only get into the account if I say that I didn’t really mean it.

But I do mean it.  I really do.

The only thing is that I had an unsent reply to a message someone had sent me open in another window that I’d forgotten about.  But I’m not sure that really mattered either because I think all my messages should vanish once I’m no longer on Facebook anyway, so there’s a chance they’d never have got it anyway.

But in other news, I’ve also left the country.  Typing this on my flight from Dublin to Athens where I’m spending just over twenty-four hours, before going back to Kefalonia for the month of June to volunteer once again with the Katelios Group on the south of the island.  Spent June 2009 patrolling the beach and trying to make it as inviting as possible for nesting loggerhead sea-turtles (or careta-caretas for those of you more comfortable with Latin names), and enjoyed it so much that I’m on my way back for a second helping of turtle fun.  A big part of the attraction is the daily kicking down of sandcastles, which can put off, obstruct or otherwise deter our easily-spooked shelled friends from coming onto the beach and laying their eggs.

The plan, as it stands, is to arrive in Athens this evening, spend tomorrow visiting my old place of work, meeting a few of my former students for coffee or lunch, in the afternoon, as well as another batch of them in the evening, and then hopefully catching some old friends for dinner.  That last bit is uncertain as I haven’t really heard from many of them in a while – mostly due to poor organisation on my part.  I’m also going to be meeting up with some first-time volunteers that will be arriving in Athens tomorrow over various times of the day, and I’ll be more or less leading the team down to Kefalonia on Thursday.  I imagine that they already think I’m a bit strange, seeing as I had been organising everything through a group Facebook message and have now disappeared from that two days ahead of our first rendez-vous in Athens.  I did warn them I’d be disconnecting, but their first impressions still probably aren’t that good.  I’d already set and announced the date for the shut-down when I was only planning to make my own way down and before realising there were more people coming the same way, though, and postponing it would have been perceived as showing a lack of resolve, I think.  But I can definitely see if the roles were reversed and one of the people that I was going to be spending the next month with displayed symptoms of being a little bit outlandish from the outset, that I’d be more than a little bit worried.  I’ll have to make up for it by being extra-sound.

At some stage during the time I’ll be in the capital I also hope to pick up something from the juggling shop that I can learn in my spare time on the island.  Thinking something like poi (you know those balls on the ropes that street artists spin around their heads, usually whilst aflame – the balls that is, not the street artists), or devil sticks or possibly another diabolo, as I lost my last one, but I was getting pretty good at that before leaving it somewhere in France.  Not good enough to make a living street-performing, perhaps, but enough to be able to do some pretty nifty tricks, if I do say so.

After a month on Kefalonia turtle-monitoring, early in the morning of the first of July I’ll be back standing on the side of the road with my thumb out, making a start on my journey home.  I’m confident that I’ll be able hitchhike home in the two weeks I’ve given myself, although this has been met by scepticism by family and some friends.  But we’ll see.  I could probably do it in less time, but I’m planning on dropping in on various friends in Germany, Holland and Belgium each of which whom will be treated to an evening of my company.  If they can stick an entire evening.  I’ve also pencilled in a stop in Kosovo, for the simple reason that Google Maps wouldn’t allow me to plan my trip through there, they either want me to travel to the west of it, or to the east of it, through Bulgaria and all the way around Serbia, which has made me want to see Pristina.   Excluding Kosovo, though, Google Maps claims that the distance from Kefalonia to Ireland, via Corfu, Stuttgart, Kaiserslautern, Hamburg, Texel and Brussels (and possibly Paris, which I think I threw in for the craic) can be driven in just under two days.  Forty-six hours or something like that.  I don’t know if that’s non-stop driving, or if it includes rest stops, but I call that very doable in a two week time frame.  So long if I get picked up.  

If I’m still standing beside the road in Greece by the second week I’ll reconsider my options.

Saying Goodbye - Start Spreadin' the News

This'll only be a short one, which I realise is slightly anticlimactic (don't know what you were expecting), but I'm packing for the next adventure so it's the best I can do at the moment I'm afraid.  More to come.

When I decided to set up an event for leaving Facebook it was not intended as an attention seeking exercise - at least not consciously, but perhaps it has reflected some subconscious issues that I will need to deal with later - but I have enjoyed hearing from all of you, especially those of you that I hadn't had any contact with in ages, and it's been nice taking over a lot of your newsfeeds for the last few weeks, but I'm going to release them to you once again.

I'm going to leave the page open until midnight tonight because I've been getting a lot of last minute messages from people giving me alternate contact details - thanks to everyone that has been on to me so far, and to those that have said that they're attending this event, and thus possibly been plagued by notifications.  Not sure if the people who declined the invite did so to take their stand with Facebook, didn't really like me (not really entertaining that notion), or just didn't understand what the whole thing was about.

Not expecting a mass migration from Facebook as result of my leaving (although if I have inspired you to delete or suspend your account, please let me know) but if people start to think a bit about their use of Facebook and their privacy settings I don't think it will be in vain.

Hopefully see you guys in the real world.

As for me, I'm off to Greece tomorrow more on this in the next post.  Watch this space.

A Withdrawal from the Social Media Giant.

I really do not like tabloids.  I find their huge-headlines with 'clever' word-plays irritating in the extreme, and I find their stories are more geared towards creating scandal than informing people of actual facts.  Nor do I like their preoccupation with the lives of celebrities.  Updates about Uma Thurman's cellulite or 'Brangelina's' latest falling out do not interest me in the slightest, nor does the carry-on of any member of the Royal Family.  Pippa Middleton?  Don't care.  By the same reckoning, I have a particular loathing for media that focuses solely on celebs - Hello; National Enquirer; Nosey-Parker (the last one not being a publication that I'm aware of yet, but perhaps someday).

It dawned on me for the first time recently that one of the reasons that social media, particularly Facebook, makes me so uncomfortable is that it has become something of a living tabloid and gossip rag, giving me free and easy access into the lives of most of my friends, many of whom may only be acquaintances that I never would really talk to but who can now freely browse my information - that is, if they found me interesting enough to do so, which I would doubt, but then again any of them could also revel in reading about the cast of TOWIE or Eastenders, so who knows.

Of course Facebook has its advantages.  Being able to easily find people that you've lost touch with over the years: friends from school; the boy who lived next door to you before you moved house when you were six; that girl you thought was hot but never had the balls to talk to in person.  There's also the photo-tagging and sharing facilities, and then of course you can add a location and tell people exactly where you were when you were doing something, which is great free advertisement for the business that you're signing into as well as making it easy to remember for yourself and others.

All great.

However...

I'm not entirely sure what the actual figures are, but let's say for the sake of argument that one in ten people is a weirdo (I'm sure most will probably agree that the actual figure is much higher) and that one in even fifty or even a hundred is a complete psychopath or potentially violent stalker (again I suspect this is a very modest figure).  Now consider that there are 901 million active users on Facebook (Facebook Newsroom - Key Facts).  That's potentially 90.1 million oddballs and 9.01 million dangerous characters out there.

Now think about how many friends you have.  Just a random and not very scientific look to see how many Facebook friends people I know have has revealed something between one hundred and three hundred and fifty to be about average.  That's somewhere between ten and thirty-five loo-lahs and something like one to three mental cases that you're potentially friends with.  Now maybe you can say that you have carefully screened, and can vouch for, all three hundred of your friends, but I remain sceptical.

And so I'm deleting my FB account.  And I've made such a huge deal about it now that to come back to it at any stage would make me look like a right tosser, so I don't think I will.  Originally somebody told me that it wasn't possible to permanently delete one's account, and so I spent a long time deleting tags in photos and constructed an elaborate plan which entailed the creation of a new email account to use for Facebook, followed by setting the password of both my new email and my Facebook account to a twelve digit number that I would then destroy and thus be forever unable to access either the new email or my Facebook.  But then the other day someone with a brain told me that one can permanently delete their account, so that makes life a lot easier, but it will feel like less of a victory.

To be honest, though, none of the reasons listed above are my main grounds for leaving.  In truth I'm more sick of finding myself scrolling through my newsfeed, looking at semi-entertaining videos and photos and reading about what people had for lunch, instead of getting stuff done in the real world.  I also feel that I need to work on my social skills for meeting real people.  I'd much rather take my leave of a pack of 901 million anyway - one less weirdo to worry about for those of you remaining.

Evidently I don't have a problem with sharing what I'm doing or thinking, as I am still going to be continuing to throw it all out here.  It will still be drivel, and probably no more entertaining than a Facebook update, but it'll take more effort to write (which is good for me) and only the genuinely interested, incurably curious, or terminally bored will be reading what I have to say.   Particularly after this entry.

Old Habits...

Hmm, well, it probably comes as no surprise to anyone to discover that I haven't been as good at updating my blog as I intended.  After only two weeks of adhering (just about) to my goal of at least one post a week, I got waylaid, distracted and lets be honest, rather lazy.  So I'm going to try to make up the three weeks I've missed with a few extra posts over the next few weeks, and hopefully I'll be more disciplined about it.

As for the Krav Maga...haha...yes, right, well then, do you remember how I've mentioned before that I always seem to get demotivated with martial arts classes very soon after joining up?  Well, I left a few minutes late for my second KMG class the following week, and for the duration of the drive in (an hour, by the way) I was debating whether or not I was bothered to go or not, but kept telling myself that I had to push myself with it, and keep it up for a little while longer to give it a fair go.  Parked the car, and was walking towards the hall where it's held when I reached a part of the path where I could see in through the window.  The class was already in full swing, with about ten huge hairy fellas standing in a circle practising kicks.  The nice, reasonably sized beginner I was paired with the week before wasn't there and I think I probably stood there for a minute wrestling with my conscience before deciding that I didn't really want to get sent through a wall by a guy three or four times my size.  And that was the end of that.  Now, I mean no disrespect to the big hairy guys - they're not the kind of lads you want to go around upsetting anyway - I'm sure that they are decent blokes and I really should have given them and the whole thing more of a chance, but what can you do, my mind had been made up.

In other news I've begun a ten-week Irish Sign Language course, just to keep me learning something.  A good few people have asked why I'm doing it, but it's just something I've wanted to understand better for a long time now, and I enjoy the one hour and fifteen minute lesson on a Saturday afternoon.  The only thing is that, just like with my school and college work in days of yore, I just don't seem to be able to motivate myself to do the study for it the rest of the week, and end up trying to cram it on Saturday morning.

So, it would seem that this leopard hasn't successfully re-spotted itself yet.  However, on the baby steps front I have been managing a bit better, as after clearing out my room of nearly all junk and rubbish at the start of January, I have succeeded in keeping it tidy since then, making an effort not to leave clothes and letters and all the useless bits of paper that always seem accumulate in my pockets lying on the dresser or bed or floor, but rather sending each to its proper place when I'm finished with it.  A small victory for Discipline in an otherwise one-sided battle against Chaos.

Krav Maga, first impressions...

As promised I headed to my first Krav Maga training on Monday, and after only one session I already find myself having second thoughts about the whole thing.  I will try to persevere with it for a while longer, though.

Like I said before, I tend to quickly lose interest in martial arts once I actually start them, so this time I tried to identify my problem.  Part of it is that I don't seem to like starting out as a beginner in a group with more experienced members.  Not sure if this is not wanting to look like a tool, or some sort of inferiority complex, but it's something I'm going to have to work around.

I did get paired up with the only other beginner, which helped, and we both spent the lesson practising attacks our trainer taught us on each other, one person holding a big cushion-shield-thing while the other directed blows and kicks at it.  During our first exercise - kicks to the knee - another member came up and introduced himself, which was friendly, and then launched into what I thought to be an over-vigorous attack on his partner's shield.  Now, maybe I imagined it, but it did remind me that I really hate all that alpha-male macho rubbish.

Not to get bogged down on the negative, though, the guy I was paired with seemed alright, and the trainer came over on a regular basis to help us out, taking time to answer questions and correct our moves if we were making a balls of it.  It's also a martial art for real life, rather than being set for tournaments, one of the main ideas being to subdue an attacker asap, while regularly scanning your surroundings in case one of his/her mates comes at you with a bottle, for example.  This, I agree, is a sound approach, but my only concern would be in a situation where the police become involved, as the counter-attacks we learn to put an aggressor down seem so frenzied and aggressive that a witness arriving on the scene could easily believe the assailant to be the victim, and vice versa.

The trainer also mentioned something along the lines of 'letting the anger out' during your attack.  I wasn't too happy about it, to be honest, as I would think that the ultimate goal of learning a martial art would be to eliminate rage and have total control of your actions so that in the event of a confrontation you don't keep pummelling a guy's face when he has ceased to be a threat, and so the battle fog doesn't clear to find you standing over a lifeless, faceless body.  But that's just me.

The last thing that irked me just a bit was other members joking and being all pally-pally with the trainer when he's trying to explain something, or telling us what to do next.  The training is a lot less formal than other forms of martial arts that I know of - come and go as you please, no bowing to a photo of the guy who created the discipline at the beginning and end of each training - but no apparent code of conduct either. I know, clubs are meant to be fun, and it's great that the instructor is a nice guy but there is a time to mess around, and it's not when he's trying to address the whole group, even if you are super funny.  Well, maybe I'll change my mind when someone super funny gives it a go, but for now that's where I stand.

A New Year, with all the new goals that go with it - Step one

Only going to write a quick one today, because I have work in a bit, but I'm already a day behind in my resolution to write at least one blog a week.  I will try harder in future.

Anyway, my goal for 2012 is an overall improvement of myself.  In general.  Now I know what you're thinking, and yes, I did have to spend quite a bit of time in a very critical analysis of my life and personality, but eventually I did manage to isolate and identify some minor flaws which I won't bore you by listing.  Sufficed to say that I'll have plenty to keep me going for the next year, or at least until the world ceases to exist in December.

One of the first steps that will be taken to make me a better person will be to learn some sort of self defence.  My old skill of being able to run faster than most would-be aggressors (or, at the very least, other potential victims, which works just effectively) has suffered since breaking my leg, so while I work on my sprinting, I think being able to suppress any attack would be beneficial.  Not that I have a tendency to attract violence, but it's still good to know.

The only problem is that any other time I've taken self defence classes, I have started off enthusiastically, but very quickly lost interest.  I'm not sure if it's because I'm not instantly a kung fu master,  I don't like doing the same routines, or because I don't enjoy being paired up and thrown around by a sweaty man.  It's probably a mixture of all of these but it's something that I'm going to try to get over when I start Krav Maga tomorrow.

That's all for now.