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In Brussels' airport while waiting for my flight to Athens, I had a chance to chat with a handsome Greek gentleman. He reviewed my top-10-things-to-do-in-Athens list, and gave me more practical and more detailed advices.
A digression. He was doing his PhD in psychology in UK, with a research focus on lie detecting for forensic purpose. Due to my long held interest in psychology, he instantly intrigued me. I asked for some elaboration on this topic. The first point he made was to "ignore body language completely". He said according to research, the correct prediction based on body language was no more than 50%, i.e. a random guess. The hype of deciphering people based on body language was pretty much a US FBI product. I was glad to learn all these as I personally did not believe body language analysis based on my own experience. When I asked how to detect lies, he said to ask many open questions and to see if that person elaborates and if the details make sense. That instantly reminded me of one of my favorite movies "the lives of the others" where an East German secret policeman used a similar scheme to interrogate people, but with torture. He laughed and said that's definitely his favorite movie too. But in UK, the evidence collected through such kind of inhuman interrogation would not be admitted in courts. He then asked about my PhD research and my current job. I answered with carefully organized details :-P. Later he mentioned that he used to major in dentistry and actually practiced for a while, and decided that's not for him, then he started from scratch in psychology. Fascinating.
In Brussels' airport while waiting for my flight to Athens, I had a chance to chat with a handsome Greek gentleman. He reviewed my top-10-things-to-do-in-Athens list, and gave me more practical and more detailed advices.
A digression. He was doing his PhD in psychology in UK, with a research focus on lie detecting for forensic purpose. Due to my long held interest in psychology, he instantly intrigued me. I asked for some elaboration on this topic. The first point he made was to "ignore body language completely". He said according to research, the correct prediction based on body language was no more than 50%, i.e. a random guess. The hype of deciphering people based on body language was pretty much a US FBI product. I was glad to learn all these as I personally did not believe body language analysis based on my own experience. When I asked how to detect lies, he said to ask many open questions and to see if that person elaborates and if the details make sense. That instantly reminded me of one of my favorite movies "the lives of the others" where an East German secret policeman used a similar scheme to interrogate people, but with torture. He laughed and said that's definitely his favorite movie too. But in UK, the evidence collected through such kind of inhuman interrogation would not be admitted in courts. He then asked about my PhD research and my current job. I answered with carefully organized details :-P. Later he mentioned that he used to major in dentistry and actually practiced for a while, and decided that's not for him, then he started from scratch in psychology. Fascinating.
He mentioned to me that Aegean airline offers good meals. That turned out to be true. Meal on the flight was quite Greek and delicious : pasta with octopus, hummus with coarse texture (the most delicious hummus I had had), and the dessert was a Greek special sweet made from sesame with coca.
It was a short flight of 3 hours from Brussels to Athens. I was busy writing my blog so did not even notice it before I arrived. Read about the scoundrel taxi drivers in Athens, also got that "rumor" confirmed by the new friend I made as well as some airport staff, and it was past midnight in Athens time, I dared not to take a taxi from the airport to the city center. The Metro was also closed at that late hour. So I opted to take a bus to city center and then to take a taxi to my lodging place - Athena's friend offered us a newly decorated apartment in the center of Athens.
With all my curiosity about and admiration for mythical Greek civilization and splendid Greek culture, I did not want to close my eyes for one second on the bus, even though that was already past 1 am local time. I was amused when I saw so many mathematical symbols, sigma, lambda, theta, epsilon..., were part of the store names - "now we know where math was from". However, what I saw along the streets were less than glamourous - it looked like some corny suburban towns in China. At the beginning I thought that was only in the remote areas, but when I got off in the city center, nothing looked like a modern city, nor a historical city. Hmm...
Even though the taxi ride was short, I guess I could call the driver a scoundrel. Anyway, it was late at night, and he was kind of old, I did not want to argue but to treat it as a charity.
Athena was already in Athens and she was kindly waiting for my arrival. Her friend George, who provided lodging for us, was a wealthy ship-owner. Even though I knew that was a spare apartment of his, my imagination about the condition of the building definately had gone beyond what I saw. It was an old-looking apartment building. The elevator seemed like from last millenium. One would have to open the elevator door like opening a house door by literally pulling the knob. And it ran with a huge noise. The interior of the apartment itself was well decorated very recently and nothing that we would complain about. So, what kind of city is Athens? I was wondering before I passed out in bed...
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