Ebb tide here, flood tide there
The big news here in Greece recently has involved a borderline-insane radical fringe party that saw an upswing in popularity, overestimated the leeway it gave them to play fast and loose with the accepted norms of society, and are currently in several flavors of deep trouble.
Sounds weird and foreign, doesn't it?
When your sarcasm detectors have stopped beeping, you might be a bit surprised to know that the last big protest in Athens was actually a multilateral show of opposition to the clowns in the Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) party, who have fomented an atmosphere of anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner violence, appropriated a lot of the imagery of the Nazis (who, if you'll pardon a historical detour, actually invaded and occupied this country within the living memory of a lot of people living here, and did a lot of the same sort of stuff that got their higher-ups hanged at Nuremberg - check that, some of the stuff they did here in Greece actually did get 'em hanged at Nuremberg), and ... where was I? Oh yeah, anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner, anti-people-who-don't-like-Golden-Dawn. That last category's there because it includes a popular Greek rapper who got stabbed to death on the streets of Athens by a vocal Golden Dawn supporter, which proved to be a bridge too far for the sane caucus of the Greek Parliament, which these days can't seem to come to substantial agreement on anything.
When I say that the behavior of Congress in Washington is baffling to my co-workers here in Athens, you've got to understand this is coming from people who are intimately familiar with dysfunctional legislative organizations. And like it or not, stuff that goes down in Washington is news in Athens; the shutdown was on the front page of at least one major paper here.
On a more personal note, things have actually quieted down to a great degree. Like I said, the last screaming protest to hit my neighborhood was intended to tell the Golden Dawn crazies to put a sock in it; there are general strikes on tap for November, but I don't know how much impact they're going to have. In the office, there was a shuffling around of desks and such to accommodate new hires (oh yeah, we've got new hires, so things aren't all bad), so I got shunted to one side. To an office of my own.
With a window (albeit on an airshaft, but still).
And a door.
A solid door.
Most of the time, I leave it open, so as not to isolate myself, but there are still times when people get loud enough to cross the obnoxiousness threshold (about 90 dB on the iPod's sound meter), and I can close the door to give myself a bit of noise buffer. It makes life a little more livable.
All's quiet on the home front, too. Had a series of little incidents last month - my washing machine kind of exploded when I threw a bath mat into it to wash, not realizing that whatever non-grip stuff it had on its bottom surface would slough off and completely clog the works. So I had to get a replacement. And it wasn't properly installed - more to the point, there was a piece locking the shock-absorbers of the clothing drum in place, that was supposed to be removed before operation but wasn't, so when I ran it, all the vibrations were transmitted to the full machine, which would kind of dance. Until the time I started a wash cycle and the thing vibrated about half a foot to the right and completely blocked the bathroom door. Which led to the window on the bathroom door being broken out to allow passage in to shove the washing machine back into position.
It's fixed now. The washing machine, that is. The door window still needs replacement.
And somehow it's already almost time to plan my Christmas/New Year's trip to New York to see the family. Have to see how that works out.
PS: as the native English language speaker on staff, sometimes it's a little frustrating when I'm dealing with areas where the rules are fuzzy, or depend on where the speaker comes from or lives. Ah well. It's a living, I suppose.
This entry is cross-posted from http://bktheirregular.dreamwidth.org/581887.html. Feel free to comment here, or on Dreamwidth using OpenID (
comments).
Sounds weird and foreign, doesn't it?
When your sarcasm detectors have stopped beeping, you might be a bit surprised to know that the last big protest in Athens was actually a multilateral show of opposition to the clowns in the Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) party, who have fomented an atmosphere of anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner violence, appropriated a lot of the imagery of the Nazis (who, if you'll pardon a historical detour, actually invaded and occupied this country within the living memory of a lot of people living here, and did a lot of the same sort of stuff that got their higher-ups hanged at Nuremberg - check that, some of the stuff they did here in Greece actually did get 'em hanged at Nuremberg), and ... where was I? Oh yeah, anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner, anti-people-who-don't-like-Golden-Dawn. That last category's there because it includes a popular Greek rapper who got stabbed to death on the streets of Athens by a vocal Golden Dawn supporter, which proved to be a bridge too far for the sane caucus of the Greek Parliament, which these days can't seem to come to substantial agreement on anything.
When I say that the behavior of Congress in Washington is baffling to my co-workers here in Athens, you've got to understand this is coming from people who are intimately familiar with dysfunctional legislative organizations. And like it or not, stuff that goes down in Washington is news in Athens; the shutdown was on the front page of at least one major paper here.
On a more personal note, things have actually quieted down to a great degree. Like I said, the last screaming protest to hit my neighborhood was intended to tell the Golden Dawn crazies to put a sock in it; there are general strikes on tap for November, but I don't know how much impact they're going to have. In the office, there was a shuffling around of desks and such to accommodate new hires (oh yeah, we've got new hires, so things aren't all bad), so I got shunted to one side. To an office of my own.
With a window (albeit on an airshaft, but still).
And a door.
A solid door.
Most of the time, I leave it open, so as not to isolate myself, but there are still times when people get loud enough to cross the obnoxiousness threshold (about 90 dB on the iPod's sound meter), and I can close the door to give myself a bit of noise buffer. It makes life a little more livable.
All's quiet on the home front, too. Had a series of little incidents last month - my washing machine kind of exploded when I threw a bath mat into it to wash, not realizing that whatever non-grip stuff it had on its bottom surface would slough off and completely clog the works. So I had to get a replacement. And it wasn't properly installed - more to the point, there was a piece locking the shock-absorbers of the clothing drum in place, that was supposed to be removed before operation but wasn't, so when I ran it, all the vibrations were transmitted to the full machine, which would kind of dance. Until the time I started a wash cycle and the thing vibrated about half a foot to the right and completely blocked the bathroom door. Which led to the window on the bathroom door being broken out to allow passage in to shove the washing machine back into position.
It's fixed now. The washing machine, that is. The door window still needs replacement.
And somehow it's already almost time to plan my Christmas/New Year's trip to New York to see the family. Have to see how that works out.
PS: as the native English language speaker on staff, sometimes it's a little frustrating when I'm dealing with areas where the rules are fuzzy, or depend on where the speaker comes from or lives. Ah well. It's a living, I suppose.
This entry is cross-posted from http://bktheirregular.dreamwidth.org/581887.html. Feel free to comment here, or on Dreamwidth using OpenID (
comments).