Ε, και λοιπόν?

http://and-so-what.blogspot.com/

Ο Diki ξεκίνησε το δικό του μπλογκ πριν μερικές μέρες. Ήλθε στο Λος Άντζελες πριν 4 χρόνια, είδε για 2 χρόνια και απήλθε αμέσως μόλις πήρε το Master του. Εγώ τον πέτυχα μόνο για ένα χρόνο, αλλά κάναμε μια σχετική παρέα. Είναι ξεχωριστός τύπος, και το γράψιμό του είναι περιεκτικό και φλογερό, και θέλει χρόνο. Όπως λέει και ο ίδιος δεν είναι τυπικός έλληνας, αλλά ένας πολίτης του κόσμου αντ'αυτού (άσχετα αν πιστεύει ότι η γη είναι επίπεδη - ή έτσι υποστηρίζει στους άλλους).

Είναι ωραία να διαβάζεις μπλογκ ατόμων που γνωρίζεις, διότι μαθαίνεις πάντα μια διαφορετική σκοπιά του εαυτού τους η οποία δεν είναι πάντα προφανής. Όταν ξεκίνησα να γράφω πριν 1.5 χρόνο περίπου ήμουν μόνος. Τώρα, είναι κοντά στα 10 τα μπλογκ από έλληνες φίλους που ξέρω προσωπικά (με την εξαίρεση του adamo). Σιγά σιγά θα μπούνε και άλλοι στι ρεύμα...

Καλή συνέχεια Diki!

Theory and Practice

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; In practice, there is.

- Chuck Reid

Miami & The Bahamas: Miami

A wise man once said to me: "When a girl thinks that she is pretty, you bring her to Miami".


How many times have you walked around, or been in someplace, and realized that here are no beautiful girls around? Don't you sometimes wonder where are all the hot women going? Why don't you see them? For years this phenomenon of temporal and spatial absence of hot girls has puzzled me; however I need wonder no more: I found them. I found them all. When they are missing, it's because they have come to Miami Beach!







Miami Beach is a small island off the coast of Miami. It's southern part, named South Beach, has now become the most popular spot anywhere in the United States for nightlife, replacing both New York City and Los Angeles. In this small region of land where everything is 20-30 minutes walking distance away, there are about 150 nightclubs most of which close at 5am.

Why are the girls so good in South Beach? There are a few simple reasons.









First, the weather. The temperatures even in the winter are in the upper 20 degrees celcious, and very ofther above 30 degrees. Considering the fact that the amount of clothing worn is inversely proportional to the temperature, this guarantees hot appeareances year-round.

Second, the girls are attracted by the nightlife. They like music, they like to dance, they like to drink.

Third, the girls are attracted by the beach. South Beach is home of the best beach in the US (apart from Hawaii), and the girls like that.





Fourth, it's the attitude. The place and the atmosphere urges you to dress better, dress less, prepare yourself nicely. Once this started, the standards increased, and so did the competition. Maybe it's like NBA: when there are so many good teams, even the crappy teams will do their best to improve an show better. In the same way, women that are not extremely beautiful naturally, they will dress and behave in such a way that makes them look a whole lot better than they really are... It took me a while to notice it carefully, but it is true.




All of South Beach is like a big party, a huge greek island. There are people everywhere, there are eateries, there are traffic jammed cars and limos, and there is the beach and the sea and the stars and the moon. Every single night of the week there are people (lots of people!) in the streets until 5-6am. It's tough to get into the clubs though if you are an outsider; you have to dress perfectly, have girls with you, wait for a few hours, and finally bribe the doorman to get inside. As you realize we didn't stand a chance as we were a group of 6 guys in a student budget wearing crazy colored shirts!

Here are some more pictures from our adventures there.


Clevelander: One of the few spots on Southe Beach that there is no doorman: free entrance for everyone, and that guarantees people around the clock.


This is another corner of Ocean Drive, during the day:


One of the most famous pictures of the trip:
If someone didn't know, it looks as if I am grabbing Stavro's balls fully. Well, I didn't. I just placed my hand in front of him, and from a distance it looked like that.


One of my favorite moments: surfing the net in an internet cafe
The difference between Miami and LA is that in South Beach you can work while having 2 beautiful girls in front of you rather than the standard conbination of Indian/Chinese labmates.


In the same internet cafe we found some scarfs hanged on the wall:
If you look closely, you may find something familiar...


Downtown Miami is exactly opposit eof South Beach, and much like any other american city (apart from New York). Mostly dead after hours. We found a nice corner near the docks, at 2am the night before we left for the Bahamas and tried to take one of our "artistic" pictures:


When we reserved a car, we asked for a mini SUV. Despite our unluckyness, they didn't have one, so they gave us a $40,000 luxury SUV:
The car was huge, but the 4 hour drive to the Florida Keys felt like nothing.


On our way to Key West (the southest key/island) we passed through the "True Lies Bridge". If you have ever seen the movie, you may remember the action scene towards the end (which by the way is my favorite action scene ever): while they drive their vans with the nuclear weapons inside them on the bridge, two Hurrier aircrafts blow up two parts of the bridge with missilles so that they cut them off and trap them. On our way there we were joking: "I hope they have fixed the bridge by now", "How are we going to cross", "Beware of the missiles" etc. When we got to that point, to our amazement, we saw this:



and this:
There were exactly 2 points in the bridge missing...

I was stoned. I looked it up online and they say that the missiles were added digitally and the explosions of the bridge were done in a smaller model they made. Rajay said that hey bought the bridge (there is a newer bridge in parallel to it of course that we re driving) and blew it up just for the movie. I don't know what to believe, is anyone knows for sure let me know!

"The opposite of love...

... is not hate. It is indiffference."

Τάδε έφη Bree Van De Kamp, σε ένα πρόσφατο Desperate Housewives. I couldn't agree more.

Miami & The Bahamas: Airport Fun

I always want to plan to go to an airport as early as possible, in case something goes wrong on the way (in the simplest case, traffic or forget the wallet). In this trip I had Stavros who is also a similar attitude guy. So we decided to leave at 5am in order to catch the 8am flight, while we should need no more that 20 minutes to get to the airport from our homes. On the way though we had to pick up our 2 more friends on the trip, Dimitris and Ilias.

Our home locations are marked on this map. Stavros is at 1, and he should picck me up at 5am from 2, then pick up Dimitris at 5:15 from 3, pick up Ilias at 5:30 at 4, and then head for the airport (5) where we should be checking in around 6 WCS (Worst Case Scenario). Αμ δε!

In fact everything started of very well. Stavros was at my place at 4:55, we picked up Dimitris at 5:10 and we were at Ilias' place at 5:25. Then the problems started.

Rule #1: Wake up on the alarm!
Apparently Ilias oveslept a little bit. By the time we were there he had just woke up, so he needed and extra 15 minutes to prepare. He was ready around 5:45.

Rule #2: Get a small bag!
While the rest of us had brought small bags that did not have to be checked in (hence we didn't have to wait before and after the flights - huge advantage) Stavros for some reason thought that the huge bag he had would be alright. As soon as I saw it I knew it wouldn't fit though. So we decide to go back to Stavro's home and get the smaller bag he had to put his stuff inside instead. So from 4 instead of going to 5, we headed back to 1. From 1 it is actually faster to get to 5 using the 110 freeway because it has carpool lanes ( fast lanes for more than 1 persons per vehicle). So I was relieved.

Rule #3: Get all your stuff!
Around 5:55 and while we were on the 10 freeway west towards 1, Ilias realizes that he has forgotten his passport in his home! From all the items he could have forgotten, he forgot the most important one. So inevitably after we went to 1, we would have to return to 4 to get the passport! At this point we started sweating a bit... could we make it on time? What if something else went wrong?

At 6am we reached Stavros' place at 1. He needed 15 seconds to jump out of the car, rush inside his house, get the smaller bag and return to the car (we didn't care switching the clothes between the bags at the time). at 6:03 we were back at the 10 freeway east towards Ilias' house at 4.

At 6:20 Ilias went up to his apartment to get this items. Meanwhile downstairs the 3 of us left rushed to switch Stavros' clothes from from one bag to the the smaller one to save time. Fortunately everything fit nicely inside the small bag.

As soon as Ilias came ddone we rushed towards the airport. We had to leave the car to a long term parking facility and then get the shuttle to arrive at the terminals. That happened around 7am.

The biggest problem was yet to come though. As I was stepping off the shuttle/bus I look for my luggage and it was nowhere to be seen... I checked every place in the shuttle, everyone had the luggage except for me... 1 hour before departure...

I'm screwed.... where is my bag? Did I forget it home? No, I put it in the car... I also put it in the shuttle.... so where is it now.... Wait! The big fat guy with the hawaian shirt.... he got off the bus earlier than us.... the only guy that got off earlier... he must have picked my bag by accident... Which terminal was it.... I think terminal 3, Alaska Airlines.... I think that's right...

I ask the rest of the company to move ahead without me... it reminded me of scenes in movies about war, where a guy stays behind to take care of a last mission... "Go ahead without me... I'll be fine"...

We would need about 5 minutes to get around with the shuttle to the previous terminal in these 5 minutes all kinds of thoughts crossed my mind:

He has my bag... I will run as soon as I get tio the teminal inside and try to find him... maybe he is still at check in.... does he know that he has an extra bag? What if he has checked inj and he is past security already? I will never find him! Do I have anything important in that bag? Well, clothes, soaps, shoes... thank god the important items are on my... passport, I-20, camera... so it's not that bad, I'll just buy a few clothes when we get to Miami...

Immediately when the bus stopped, I jumped off it running to the terminal... and then , in the worst time imaginable, were everything was doomed and just 45 minutes before I was to fly cross-country, after all these incidents that went wrong in the past 2 hours, finally, there was a silver lining! The hawaian shirt guy realized his mistake and he was waiting for me at the entrance to the terminal. I saw him right away, got my bag and ran back to the shuttle and off to my own terminal...

Rule #4: God bless the internet
Thank god most airlines now in the US they have this online check in option. You log on the night before, submit your flight information and you can check in from home, while you print the boarding pass in the printer. So I had the boarding pass ready in my pocket, and no luggage to check, so I headed straight for the departure gate.

I finally stepped into the airplane 15 minutes before departure, and I exhaled a humongus amount of air as I sat into my seat.

Just 15 minutes before departure! I anyhting else had went wrong on that morning, I would have missed the flight. If there was traffic, I would have missed the flight. If there was an accident, I would have missed the flight. If any of us had forgotten anything else behind, I would have missed the flight.

Next time think twice before arranging when to leave home to catch a plane...