Travel (II) - Europe 6 - Athens Day 1 & 2

Like many others, I had been carrying notions about Greece since very young age.  The history, culture, art, philosophy, and science that Greeks created has been enormous influence on Western civilization.  Greece had always been mystical and magical in my mind, deeply worshipped, despite its recent near-bankrupt financial status.  And this trip to Greece was, in a way, a pilgrimage to me.

Athens, named after the goddess of wisdom, a one-time powerful city state that cultivated many superstars such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and the modern day cosmopolitan capital that hosted 2004 Olympics, no doubt had always been the crown jewel in my fervently brewed Greece dream.

Athens’ golden age, the pinnacle of the classical era, came after the Persian Empire was repulsed at the battles of Salamis and Plataea (480–479 BC). The city has passed through many hands and cast off myriad invaders from Sparta to Philip II of Macedon, the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and, most recently, the Ottoman Empire. In 1834 Athens superseded Nafplio as the capital of independent Greece. 

Poof! - unfortunately, my Athens dream popped right there, right during my 1.5 day visit from April 19th to 20th.

Having decided to put behind the non-impressive experience that I had the night before, April 19th morning, I set out in search for the mystery in Athens with high spirit and curious mind.  The Greek gentleman that I met in Brussels airport suggested me to walk from Thissio metro station to Monastiraki station, where locates the Acropolis, as "it is very beautiful".   Looking at my "cartoon"-version of the subway map that I printed out from internet, Petralona station, close to where I stayed, is equally distant from Thissio as Thissio from Monastiraki.  "What's the difference to walk two stops if walking one is quite easy", so I thought.  Well, it turned out to be a big mistake as Petralona to Thissio is way, way longer.   However, I was glad that I took the walk so I could see more, although what I saw was disappointing : residential areas look old, dusty, and the worst of it was the ubiquitous graffitis.

There was restaurant row on the side of the road from Thissio to Monastiraki, as well as street vendors  selling souvenirs, collective coins, and accessories.  Supposedly I walked through "the Plaka" to reach Parthenon.  It's said to be the oldest neighborhood in Athens.  If I was not mistakenly taking a different route, I really did not see much special in that neighborhood besides souvenir shops and restaurants, and graffitis everywhere again!

It's said it's impossible not to trip over an ancient column walking around.  That's true.  There were quite a few archeological sites on the way to the Acropolis.  The small ones do not offer much besides a few stand alone columns and remains that barely above the ground.  Other major archeological sites are definitely worth the time, such as the Ancient Agora and Theatre of Dionysious.

Even if you do not care about archeology, do not care about what ancient Greeks contributed to the human civilization, and you do nothing else on your visit to Athens, the Acropolis is one site you have to visit.

The Acropolis, a landmark visible from many parts of the modern city, is the original site of Athens, a limestone plateau supporting the Parthenon, the all-marble temple dedicated to the goddess Athena Parthenos (literally virgin Athens). In the same section is the Erechtheion with its six stone Karyatides maidens holding one side of the temple (four of the originals are in the Museum of the Acropolis and the one stolen by Lord Elgin is on display at the British Museum).  

In late 1600s, the Parthenon was severely damaged by an ammunition explosion.  Today we can only see the outer columns left and scaffolds set up for the repair project.  Despite that, it's still an awe-inspiring place.

Then I had lunch in one of the restaurants at the bottom of the Acropolis.  It's still a bit chilly although the weather was brilliant, and the seating was mostly outdoors.  What's fantastic was that they all provided heating equipment : a tall shiny metal device with fire on the top.  Cozy and comfortable, I enjoyed my first authentic Greek meal : moussaka, one stuffed tomato, one stuffed pepper, and pistachio milk shake.  That was delicious. Pigeons and sparrows wandered around for food.  Quite a few kids were playing musical instrument for money.

In the afternoon, I strolled around in the central market and Monastiraki Flea Market.  Both of them are simply souvenir markets.  When I was hesitating if I should buy a fridge magnet, I noticed one with the picture of Alexander the Great, and "Athens" on the top, his name at the bottom.  So I jokingly asked the shop owner, a gentleman at his 60s, "isn't Alexander the Great a Macedonian?"  Before he could make any comments, I suddenly noticed sitting right next to me an old lady was closing a book and started talking to me - she looked very dry, flesh decayed with aging, deeply chizeled wrinkles, withered mouth, and so the jaw seemed protrusive.  She obviously was the intellectual one in the family.  The next half an hour or so, she educated me passionately, with her right fist constantly pounding against her left palm, how Macedonia, Albania, Istanbul etc etc all belonged to Greece but were stolen by other people.  How these days Germany wants to take Santorini for the bailout they provided.  "As long as God sides with us, we'll get them back".  She was quite confident.  I then asked what went wrong these days.  She was angry with the corrupted government.

Next day my plan was to visit the National Archaeological Museum, which is said to be one of the greatest museums in the world.  However, after spending some time running errands, and wasted time on unknown disrupted metro service, I did not have enough time for that before I had to go back and catch the ferry boat to Santorini.  Instead, I spent some time in Syntagma, the very center of Athens - I tried hard to find the possibility to dissipate my disappointment about the city.  However, after walking across about 50 blocks, my disappointment only got exacerbated.  It's still dusty, polluted, full of graffitis, and seemed a bit messy.  If anything about the city infrastructure that's worth praising, it's probably the subway.  At least it's clean and reasonably well connected, if ignoring the disrupted service.  (Later I learned that most part of the green line had stopped running for more than a year because some archeological stuff was found during some construction project.  But then there had not been any followup and the service had not resumed after so long)

I then went back to the Acropolis area and visited every single archaeological site that I missed the day before due to early close and that I did not plan to see in hope to save time for something else better.

While I was waiting for the metro in Monastiraki station,  I exchanged a few words with an Australian old couple.  The old lady whispered to my ear : "the city is terrible".  I wish things could be different.

Take nothing for granted

"When the first beam of sunshine strikes on African grassland every morning, all animals will wake up and strive to run its fastest to survive : predators have to outrun preys to hunt for life, and preys have to outrun predators to escape death... " I told Jeff that I would begin an article like this, when I found it perplexing that some Americans furiously resist globalization because, for one, cheap Chinese labors take "their" jobs.  "Why do Americans think that they deserve a better life than their Chinese peers if they cannot produce more at a lower cost?" I felt a bit angry.  As a privileged and spoiled species, humans often forget that all beings have to fight and compete for a living, or using the civilized wording, work hard for a living.  Survival is not supposed to be easy for anybody, any species.  Living only on what ancestors created can be a short-term privilege for humans, but surely a slow suicide after all.

Just finished watching a documentary on DVD "Nature's most amazing events" by Discovery Channel.  Most amazing and touching, indeed.  It includes three episodes : The Great Melt, The Great Salmon Run, and The Great Migration.  The first in Arctic, second in Northern Pacific (British Columbia and Alaska), and the last in East Africa.

East Africa, Serengeti, the short-grass plains attract 3 million of grazing animals to migrate in December and out in May.  This herd of grazers, such as wildebeest, zebra, antelope, often stretching 25 miles long, travels for more than 1000 miles, following the rumbling storms to find fertile grassland to feed and calve.  During their journey, there are lurking threats everywhere from top predators such as lions, cheetah, crocodiles, who pretty much rely on the herd to survive and raise cubs.

You think it's cool to be a lion, no?  You'll be surprised that the king of animals actually suffers most and the survival rate of cubs is very low.  The movie followed the fortune of an Ndutu pride (i.e. a group of lions) for seven months from the dry season to the most prosperous one.  It is in fact appalling to witness the conditions those cubs were in during a dry season when there were few preys around. They were little more than skin and bones, waiting on the bare ground ravaged by fire and scorched by sun.  They got mange, and their skins were falling apart.  Some of them were limping.  There seemed to be little chance for them to survive.  The litter of 7 cubs dwindled to only 4, and then 2 in the end.  It was shocking.  And then they all disappeared.  When eventually the lioness and the surviving cubs marched into the horizon on the again-green grassland near the herd, I felt the triumphant excitement too, resonating the feeling of the cameraman - yes, they survived an eventful year of sickness, drought, fire, and volcanic eruption

At an equally stunning scale, every May to July, half a billion salmon will return home in British Columbia and Alaska, even Cali, after 4 years in sea, to lay eggs in fresh waters 2000 miles away!  I never imagined laying eggs would be a big deal for fishes.  Now I am filled with admiration.  Their journey is no less dramatic and arduous than described in one of the four greatest ancient Chinese literature "Journey to the West".  Long distance travel, upstream swimming, clearing the falls (like human jumping over a 4-story building); when it's too dry they get stuck in shallow water or stuck in a pool without able to move forward and, in turn, plague; when there's too much rain they have to battle strong torrents; as their kidney and other organs adjust to sudden change of water, they stop eating and even drinking., so they are eventually killed by the very water that draw them home, after swimming up stream and spawn; not to mention a full spectrum of coastal predators relying on Salmon Run to survive : grizzly bears, wolves, bald-headed eagles, steller sea lions, killer whales, salmon sharks, so on and so forth.  In the end the toll of this long journey is that for a thousand hatched, only 4 make it back to home.

A digression : why Pacific salmon take this epic run still remains a mystery.  Atlantic salmon come back to spawn every year and do not die after that.  Also how they find way home is largely unclear.  Only recently scientists found small particles of Iron in their brain, which are like compass and help it steer the magnetic lines of earth, showing them exactly where to go.

Salmon have to take such an ordeal to reproduce, well, it's definitely not easy for a grizzly bear to make it through either : half of the grizzly cubs do not even survive the first year.  Every year the grizzly will be hungry for more than half of the year, either hibernating or feeding on grass and berries.  By the end of the hunger, its head appears funnily sadly too big and body too small.

Every summer the Arctic will welcome many migrants who come to feed and reproduce, most of which travel more than 600 miles one way, such as Narwhal whales (a.k.a. the arctic unicorn, named after its strange spiral tusk, the most secretive and elusive animals in the world's oceans), Beluga whales, sea birds such as guillemot, etc.  Also there are locals such as polar bears and polar foxes.  The challenges that polar bears facing are well known.  Even for polar foxes, often 2 out of 8 cubs will get fatten enough from the abundance that a short summer can offer to survive the winter.

These are fascinating stories to learn.  What's more, I was reminded once again that nothing should be taken for granted, including survival.  One may argue that it's their instinct, nothing lofty.  True.  Food, shelter, survival, and reproduction are just an instinct.  But since when we lost our very basic instinct, and got reduced to a bitter and sour and cynic whiner?

Shan't we be quixotic?

Yesterday afternoon I was browsing videos on internet, in hope to understand the dismal economic situations, and bumped into this video clip from Bloomberg news.  It'd be just a normal one out of the hundreds, had I not noticed (perhaps only my own imagination?) the unnecessary and unprofessional, tricky smile on Margaret Brennan's face, 4:00 into the video, when Ron Paul was first mentioned.  Then Ron Paul's photo/video were pulled in.  Suddenly for the first time I connected Ron Paul with the image of Don Quixote, and Margret, one of the hottest and popular female news anchors in NYC, with the Duke and Duchess in Cervantes' fictional work, the arrogant high class who exploited Don Quixote's delusion for their own entertainment and cared little about their own honor.


I then came to realize that I could not be the first person to see this connection for Ron Paul, so I googled.  Right, I was far from being the first.  Media referred to his being "Quixotic" often in a somewhat derogatory manner; while some of Ron Paul's supporters proudly claimed that's a badge of honor, and they made a video out of Ron Paul's pictures with "the impossible dream", the song from the movie "Man of La Mancha".  


I absolutely love the term "quixotic" and proudly adore "quixotic" Ron Paul. 


Don Quixote was delusional.  But I doubt this mad man's story would have become one of the greatest literary fictions if the whole point is just that Quixote was delusional.  It is more the message than the man.  Honor, pursuit of dreams, protection of the weak, romance, justice, performing good deeds, persistence... Well, some Dukes and Duchess might not have interest in really learning what it is all about.  So be it.


Ron Paul is not delusional.  He is a brilliant human being who understands the real crisis this nation faces, and he sticks with his purely principled stance, albeit unpopular, being a sturdy flag for his followers.  


Do I agree with him on everything?  Still learning and debating myself, I cannot answer yet.  But I definitely like his views on issues such as sound money, non-aggressive foreign policy, free trade, etc.  But these aside, what I adore him most is his integrity and his being "quixotic".


He never minded casting the only one dissident vote in Congress.  He does not pick where and when and to whom he applies his philosophies.  He is utmost consistent.  He has been devoting to what he believes in, active on the front line fending off arrows and bullets to get the messages across.  BTW, he was a great medical doctor too having helped many in his community.


With such qualities, even if that person stands on the opposite side to myself, I will still respect him.


Before knowing of Ron Paul, I did not realize that I am actually a romantic heroic character too.  What is life to us?  A good education, then a decent salary, a spouse, a house, a couple of kids, and some vacations?  Is that all?  Might be, for some; might not be, for many others.  I adore people who do "silly" things to pursue passions, to chase after dreams - "silly" in forsaking the tangible comfort and/or pleasure.  Ron Paul is an excellent example.


I'd like to conclude with the lyrics of  "the Impossible Dream".  May we all be courageous, be true to ourselves, and living without regret - only so can we say it with a peaceful smile that "I lived" in the death bed.


It is the mission of each true knight...
His duty... nay, his privilege!
To dream the impossible dream,
To fight the unbeatable foe,
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go;
To right the unrightable wrong.

To love, pure and chaste, from afar,
To try, when your arms are too weary,
To reach the unreachable star!

This is my Quest to follow that star,
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far,
To fight for the right
Without question or pause,
To be willing to march into hell
For a heavenly cause!

And I know, if I'll only be true
To this glorious Quest,
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest.

And the world will be better for this,
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach the unreachable stars!

Bridesmaids, a worthy movie

Watched the movie this Monday.  It's not your typical comedy, definitely not a typical chick-flick.


Laughed, almost knocked out;  shed tears, touched by the friendship; tired, after such emotional roller coaster; and chewed it over when relaxed.


It's directed by the same person who did "40 year old virgin", "knocked up", and "superbad".  All very funny movies, but I think this movie being the most realistic and having the best substance, yet the fun came in totally unspoiled.


We probably all have acquaintances in life somewhat resembling Annie, Helen, and other ladies in the movie.


Annie, the protagonist, was failing everything in life : "I am in my 30s, I am 40,000 in debt, living with a weirdo (roommate)", in a non committal relationship although she was longing for a real one, lost her job, no friend, car accident, had to move back to live with her mother which was what she disliked.


With sympathy, I think she largely created the whole situation herself.


She had a job but she sabotaged it with her negative attitude.  She could have a good, honest relationship where she would be understood, respected, cherished, and her passion would be supported, but she was after the gorgeous guy despite being mistreated, and she was pretending like "I am ok, everything is ok" in the relationship.  She had a car accident which she could have avoided by simply having the taillights fixed, instead of blaming busy schedule, nemesis, and unfair life.


"Where there is a pathetic person there are scornful characters", as Chinese saying goes.  If one does not help oneself, does not put a lid on one's destructive emotions, one is doomed to misery even she/he if is a royal princess/prince.


Life knocks us around, which happens to everybody and is ok.  The difference is some get up and fight, and others give up and blame the world.  And that's the moment that separates the pros from the amateurs and the winner from the loser.  When Megan, the biggest and toughest bridesmaid, pushed Annie to fight back as Annie's dwelling miserably at her "bottom" in life, tears came in earnest for me.


And we surely see Helen's around as well.  They maintain a perfect facade (always well-kept looks, the most polite smile, socially adept), they are snobbish, yet with a fearful inside.  Eager for friendship, but do not know how other than trying to "buy" it with the ample resource they have : money and power.  To be honest, I still kind of liked Helen in the movie - good looks do have an advantage on me :-P, and she was not really doing much harm to anybody except being annoying in usurping Annie's duties as the maid of honor.


Other characters are interesting too such as the frustrated wife and mother who sees Lillian's wedding as an escape.  One interesting side aspect is how the movie depicts kids - it's definitely discouraging population growth. :)


I like this type of movies : funny on the surface, and have some substance for me to take away as well, just like my favorite movie "the groundhog day", which, by the way, still remains my favorite so far.

From what Jim Rogers talks about China and India

* Related post : China vs India : who has a better chance for economic growth

In the article Jim Rogers Talks About Inflation, China, Commodities, Unrest and India, Jim Rogers was enthusiastic about China boom as ever, while being pessimistic about India :

Q. What do you make of India?

A (Jim Rogers). I am not optimistic. I’m short India, as a matter of fact. I can go on and on about the shortcomings of India and how people don’t understand India, but the one fact is that India now has now a 90% debt to GDP ratio, which, for some reason, the bulls either don’t know or ignore. As you probably know, the studies show that when a country gets to 90% to GDP it’s very difficult to grow very rapidly because everything you’re doing is paying off the debts of the past. So no matter how productive and dynamic you are, you’ve still got a big burden. So for that and all the other reasons, I’m less optimistic about India then most people. It’s a phenomenal country to visit, but boy, it’s tough to do business there. Even for Indians, it’s tough to do business there.

India's high debt/GDP ratio came as a surprise for me, and Jim certainly has a good point on that.

What might surprise many is that he found tough to do business in India, not only tough for himself, but also for Indians.  And he did not mention this problem when speaking of China.  The ironic thing is that Indian constitution declares that India is a democracy and that instantly convinces many westerners (for example many of my western friends) that it's easier to do business in India than in China, as democracy equals rule of law, doesn't it.  Does it really?

Well, Jim Rogers' comments are really not surprising for me.  I've heard Indians talking about the lack of rule of law in India.  I am still not in a position to make this call due to my lack of research.  However, I know how not difficult to start business in Shanghai as I worked on starting up a company there.  I remember about 10 years ago before I came to US, Pudong (the east part of Shanghai, the newly developed hi-tech industrial area) promised a simple registration procedure for start-ups which would take no more than 2 weeks.  Things might be more complicated for foreigners, due to currency exchange issue and potentially local industry protectionism too, and one would have to find a Chinese partner.

China is surely facing sundry challenges as well, among which corruption seems particularly a pain in the neck.  Corruption no doubt indicates weak rule of law.  When being limited by a regulation, a Chinese is more likely to endeavor to circumvent it than to try to create the necessary conditions to conform to it.  Well, China is certainly not alone when it comes to having a culture of corruption.  A few months ago I heard on a radio show about an interesting study on "cultures of corruption" (table on page 20) of how likely foreign diplomats, grouped by nations, are to pay parking tickets in NYC, thousands of miles' away from home.  In terms of average unpaid violation per diplomat per year from 1997-2002, China ranks 65 out of 146 nations studied, and India is slightly better, 79.

In my old "China vs India" post, I already mentioned that whether democracy necessarily helps economic development is debatable.  Hans Hoppe's book - democracy the god that failed - claims that democracies can be a worse form of government because people will elect those who will redistribute the wealth and make the country impossible to do business. (Thanks Jeff for the reference)

On a different note, India does not seem to have the most harmonious relationship among people : different languages, religious divide, and legacy caste system.  This could be worrisome and even get escalated to be a political risk.