Showing posts with label life as i see it. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life as i see it. Show all posts

Friday 10 October 2014

Roundabouts in Greece, a real tragedy.

Is it just me or has Greece really missed the whole idea of the roundabout as a safe way to keep traffic flowing without the frustration of traffic lights.

Now follows a rant but this really needs to be addressed before a major death toll is caused by these relatively simple junctions.


There seems to be a prevailing belief here, prevailing but by no mean unanimous, that drivers on the roundabout should give way to those entering in accordance with the give way to the right law that applies generally on the highway. Thing is though, that if priority is given to those entering but not to those trying to exit a roundabout will quickly fill with no one having the right to leave. This often happens and while it is frustrating it is nowhere as dangerous as those who feel they can attack a roundabout at full throttle expecting those on it to make way for them. Just think, you are 2 or 3 metres from an entrance to the roundabout and someone 50 metres away will boot it with no concept that you may not give way to their righteous path. 

The other matter is the usual belief that any road with more than one lane is there expressly for parking. Watch this to see the calamitous results of a coach using the junction to drop off passengers, or go for a sandwich.  
Watch this: 
Thanks to David Woodhead

This is an American video showing how to use a roundabout from the wrong side of the road perspective:


I know that roundabouts are not common-place in the States but the concept is the same.

An Irish video, simply cause is sounds nice. 


I found plans for a double roundabout in Athens.... mercy!

Rant over. Share this to everyone you know in Greece, natives and ex-pats alike.  
  

Monday 8 September 2014

Why Optimism Sucks


Optimism is the new dogma. You can’t turn these days without some cheesy-grinned motivator telling us all to turn that frown upside-down and look at the positives.


Keep calm and suck it up
Keep calm and suck it up!
 Pessimists, we are told, die young and lead less fulfilling lives. All your clouds must have silver linings and you glass must be half-full. If we are to believe some of the gurus, an optimistic outlook even brings success. They tell us that optimism makes us better leaders, cures cancer and makes us sexier. Rhonda Byrne, in her book The Secret tells us that just believing and wishing for good things will cause the whole Universe to realign toward their manifestation. And God help you if you don’t. Let me tell you now, ladies and gentlemen, optimism is bullshit.
Twitshot

A while ago, I watched a documentary in which a soldier was asked about his experiences during a 9-month hostage situation (I have spent ages trying to find it again but as yet nothing). The one comment that stuck in my mind was that it was always the optimists that broke first. They were always the first ones to look for a rope and a chair. This confused me, after all, everyone knows that looking on the bright side is the only way to be. Well, I’ve been thinking about that comment for some time and realised that it makes perfect sense.

Optimism is exhausting, you begin each day in the belief that everything is going to be hunky dory and it invariably isn't. Someone is always throwing banana peels at your feet and you are bound to come up against someone whose idea of things going well is things going wrong for you. Think about it, you want a pay-raise so you go into your boss and ask for more money. Now, his idea of a good day is to address flagging profits which is eating into his bonus or margins. Who is going to have a great day?

So what are we to do, give up? No! Well yes. I propose a new approach and I call it Constructive Pessimism. Under the rules of Constructive Pessimism you are not to assume that your day will have any success, you will assume that, as Murphy’s law so wisely states, what can go wrong, will go wrong. Now, I can already hear you jeering and you have every right to do so but hear me out.

Spot the optimist
Begin your day with a list and start with the weather, are there any clouds? It’s going to rain, take an umbrella or rain-mac. How do you get to work? Bus, car, train? There will be delays, leave early. You are already prepared. Optimists will tell you that each mishap is a lesson; bollocks! Having a raincoat is a lesson learned, being on time and keeping your job is a lesson learned. 

Optimistic spin on disaster is sign of a slow learner.


You have a big business meeting, the board will hate your proposals. What will they hate? How can you counter their objections and what will you do when they turn you down flat.
You have to budget a project. What will it cost? Wrong! It will cost much more. Sell it to the optimists at the lower amount but keep some aside for the hitches.

Optimists may help you but pessimism will save you.     

Experts tell us that pessimists suffer with stress that leads to neurosis and heart problems. They tell us that optimists take risks and succeed more. Well, I’ll tell you that the belief that every silver lining has a cloud will mean that you always have a brolly and a glass half-empty will lead you to a tap for a refill. Constructive Pessimism will keep adrenaline levels high making you more aware and ready to deal with life’s slings and arrows.

At the end of an optimistic day you will count the lessons learned and resign yourself to the good of the big picture. At the end of a pessimistic day you will be able to lock your door and count the things that didn't go tits-up, not to mention being glad you had that brolly with you.

Optimism sucks the life out of you, believing in the good nature of the universe is like willing your stocks to stop falling. The Universe does not know who you are and definitely has no great plans for you. 

Coming to terms with that may make you feel insignificant but it will put you back in the game.

             



Thursday 28 August 2014

Naked life


Naked life
Life without walls

Just picture your neighbourhood without walls, your neighbours walking around around in their underwear, drinking their morning coffee in plain view of all before they manage to get their face to sit straight. The warm familiarity of a warm hand down the front of your trousers while watching TV or that moment when the bile rises in repugnance of a spiteful comment from your dear spouse. Our lives depend on walls. Without walls when would we pick our noses or break joyous wind.  But this is exactly the experience that camping gives us and I have to admit, it is a very pleasant one.  


As a Brit, I have always viewed camping as an exercise in resilience. I remember shivering
Camping in Britain
kingdom of rain
throughout the night as a small child, fear stoked by campfire ghost stories; the sounds of nature morphed by the imagination into ghouls and monsters. Waking up with a raging hangover in a puddle after a stormy night at a festival as a teen.  Camping in Britain is a badge of honour, a rite of passage to fill the heart of any Victorian explorer or even Baden-Powell himself.

Then, I tried camping in Greece. Camping in Greece is not an SAS survival course; it is an exercise in prolonged nudity. Not just the fact that you spend most of your time in your trunks or bikini but  that people set up complete roaded suburbs from canvas and string, it is true open-plan living.  The result is taste of life without walls. The barbeque indicates the kitchen, a piece of string the laundry room.
What really started to make an impression on me, though was how a life without walls can be quite liberating. Stripping life back to basics is 5star living on 1star expenses, your every need is fulfilled because you don’t have any. The most taxing dilemma of the day is whether to make the trek down to the beach or sit and read a book in the hammock. The most arduous task is lighting the barbeque for dinner.

Your neighbours are all very semi-clad and this seems to make them more open to a good morning and a friendly chat. The lack of boundaries makes open visits so much easier and we enjoyed meeting people that we may not have otherwise spoken to on a hotel break. We shared food and drinks with them without fear of encroaching or interference.
The whole experience got me thinking what my own neighbourhood would be like without walls. Would we be a little more considerate without our doors to close, a little more charitable if we saw what was on other people’s plates.

naked camping
life al fresco
Then there is the matter of vanity; you would think that being naked all day would make you very self-conscious but quite the opposite is true. When the illusion of perfection is no longer made possible by push-up bras or baggy shirts, people look more human, more flawed and less intimidating. We tend to imagine what we cannot see and we tend not to imagine the worst. That said, you do become more in-tune with your own body and are more likely to pass on another sausage from the grill when you feel your tummy starting to protrude. One of my neighbours was a young guy with a fantastically chiselled physique but seeing his mealtimes served from a carefully prepared Tupperware box helped me appreciate that nothing comes for nothing. I personally found people less pretentious and more attractive for it.               

Taking some of the pretence from life might help many to feel less inadequate and more happy with reality. The walls that protect us from prying eyes also allow us to become more influenced by illusions from the popular media than by the people we live around. Reality becomes what we think everyone else is doing.


I can thoroughly recommend a couple of weeks under canvas each year, without push-up, lycra or baggy trousers. It would help to realign our notion of reality and view others in a more human light, not to mention redressing the illusions foisted upon us by the photoshopped media stars.      




From Under Dark Clouds

The Century of DIY