Baxil [bakh-HEEL'], n.
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Below are the 12 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Baxil" journal:
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02:20 am
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Sharing and caring
I saw a license plate on my way to work today that, had I not been driving a vehicle, would have made me stand up and cheer.
There were no bumper stickers or other meaning clues on the tan minivan. Just a simple California plate: "ANESTE".
And I was immediately struck by the subtlety and the power of the message. Now that, I thought, is pitch-perfect evangelism.
* * *
( On responsible evangelism, and the context of the plate )
Current Location: ~journal
Current Music: Sting, "Fragile"
Tags: draconity, greece, struh won niarb ym
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04:35 am
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6,500 miles away, but close to home
I got a nasty shock earlier this week when I arrived at the office and caught up on the weekend's news -- to find out about an explosion in Athens on Monday:
 ATHENS, Greece -- A bomb shattered windows in Athens' central Syntagma Square early Monday, injuring two people, police said.
Police said the bomb was apparently hidden in a container on the back of a motorcycle. It exploded shortly after an Athens newspaper received two phone calls warning of such an attack, they said.
The caller said the nearby National Economy Ministry, which was not damaged, was the intended target.
(Photo at right: Thanassis Stavrakis/Associated Press. Police cordon off and examine the scene.)
This appears to have been an incident of domestic terrorism rather than the Muslim variety so popular as an American boogeyman these days ... but that really doesn't do anything to change the fact that the explosion was only two blocks -- and two months -- away from a hotel that I stayed in.
 I passed what is now a crime scene several times during my walks through the city. It was, in fact, directly on my route to the Internet cafe from which I wrote this post.
Since my late-trip pictures of Athens are all on my parents' camera -- mine having run out of memory card space -- I'm relying here on Google Earth to give some idea of the scene. Syntagma Square proper is the clump of trees and white marble in the upper right. The photo above was shot approximately at the arrow, pointing down the street to the west; the bomb was thus (presumably) at the building catticorner to the square itself. The circled building at the bottom is the Olympic Palace Hotel (our room was facing east onto Filellinon street). The previously mentioned Internet cafe is right about at the top edge of the picture, facing the square.
(Incidentally, if they'd aimed just a stone's throw north, the bombers could have taken out one of the only McDonald's in Greece. As it was, apparently the boom shattered windows for a block or more, so fast-food workers still had some cleanup to do.)
It's important to understand that there was a symbolic significance to this bomb well beyond "Hey, we can set off an explosion in the capital." Syntagma Square is arguably the heart of modern Athens.
While tourists may think of the Parthenon (on the Acropolis -- a hill important in ancient times that towers several hundred feet above the rest of the city), the Plaka (the shopping district at the Acropolis' base), or the Olympic stadiums constructed for the 2004 games, many will end up at Syntagma anyway, as it's centrally located, ringed by upscale hotels and within walking distance of the Plaka. Natives, on the other hand, will recognize it as the square across the street from the Parliament building (not quite visible at top right of map), making it roughly the Greek equivalent of Washington, D.C.'s National Mall and of comparable value as a political protest point. Syntagma's also a major transit hub, with blocks of bus stops and a subway station ringing the major Amalias street. I can confirm from a sleepless night in the hotel room that Filellinon street is a solid wall of traffic nearly 24-7.
So had the terror group been aiming for casualties or shock value, rather than trying to make some symbolic statement, this bomb could have been significantly worse than it was.
A Greek newspaper reports that the bomb was timed to go off at 6:05 a.m.. This is the first clue -- and a significant one -- that it was a symbolic bomb. In most cultures, 6 a.m. is a pretty desolate time, but for Greece, a nation of night owls, this is doubly so. Non-tourist night life often doesn't get hopping until around midnight; 2 a.m. can be at least as lively as sunset in student areas or gathering places. It starts getting quiet around 3 or 4. At 6 a.m., everyone has staggered to bed and is trying to ignore the sunrise. The only people up are some die-hard taxi drivers trying to squeeze cash out of the officially sanctioned high-fare hours (the 6-8 hours when buses and subways are shut down) and the poor saps on night shifts. (If that doesn't convince you, do recall the bomb also struck in the tourist off-season, was a block from the transit centers, and was phoned in to a newspaper before it exploded.)
At that point, the story sort of sinks into Greek politics, and I'm hardly an authority on the history of the various radical groups involved. Instead, I find myself wondering about a trivial and slightly morbid question.
Just a block away, the Evzones guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the base of the Parliament building. (Do click through to that link and admire the pictures, by the way. They give some idea of the soldiers' ludicrously overblown movement style, which I can't do justice to in words. It would not surprise me one whit to learn they were one of the inspirations for the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch. Also find more background, and a picture of their pom-pom clown-like shoes, here.) They change on the hour, every hour, with two soldiers standing stone-still in front of the tomb 24 hours a day, every day.
So, at 6:05 a.m., two soldiers drilled for months or years in the art of standing motionless were just starting their ceremonial shift ... and approximately a block away, a bomb goes off, shattering glass and eliciting the screams of the wounded and frightened.
... What did they do?
And if they moved, did they catch hell for it from their commanding officer later?
Current Mood:  a'ight
Current Music: Indigo Girls, "Love's Recovery"
Tags: greece
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09:33 pm
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The travel excitement of others
And you guys think I have impressive travel stories.*
My folks went on to Rome without me after we parted ways in Greece -- I didn't have the vacation time to continue the trip, unfortunately. So how's it going for them? My sister just mentioned in her blog that the three of them basically stumbled straight into a police-student confrontation [registration required at link; use bugmenot] over university reforms. Then the showdown turned violent.
Sounds like they escaped injury; Sarah apparently got some footage of the events.
Meanwhile, back here in the midst of the grind, I'm fighting through a cold. I'm virtually certain I picked it up on the plane on my way home. The last two days here at work have been pretty miserable, although getting slowly better.
(Don't be fooled by the immense Baycon post. That was about 4/5 written already, and I merely had to tidy it up and copy and paste it. Other than that, I've been pretty much useless since getting back.)
--
* Alright -- this might or might not actually be true. It's intended as a rhetorical device to set up the post.
Current Mood:  sick
Current Music: The Waybacks, "Last Date"
Tags: greece
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09:04 pm
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Back safe. Jet lag sucks. (n/t)
.
Current Mood:  braaaaains.
Tags: greece
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10:52 am
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On the way home
Using a little internet kiosk at the Heathrow airport. Changed my last 30 euros into £ at the duty-free store bybuying some chocolatefor Kady. (keyboard sucks, pz excuse typing.) so that I could have some change fora quick lunch.
Got about 7 £ in coins. OMG. How do you lot understand them? The pound and 20-pence coins are the samesize, te 50p and the 2p are both the same huge size (but 50p is anoctagon), the smallest coin is the 5p, there's no rhyme or reason to it, even worse tha nthe US system.
Keybord REALLy sucks. Will fix in post-production.
See you all in some 10 hrs.
Current Mood:  rushed
Current Music: airport sounds
Tags: greece
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07:36 am
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Greece: Heading home
The photo card's full (and a CD of photos from the previous card besides), the souvenirs for ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kadyg are all bought (though no vaguely or overtly obscene statuary), the authentic locally made Greek fisherman's cap is finally on my head (less than 12 hours before I'm going to hit the airport), and the taxi arrives at something like 5:00. In the morning. Before the sunshine.
Today was a very renewing day -- after the hurry of the guided ruins tour and the seething chaos of the Plaka (the district below the Acropolis' hill, full of billions of shops, restaurants, hawkers, street merchants, and a blocks-long flea market), I said screw it all, grabbed everyone who felt like following (that would be Mom), and took a city bus out to Voulas, a tiny little suburb of Athens in much the same way that Napa is a suburb of San Francisco. Which happens to be notable for being on the ocean. So we paid our way into the public beaches -- 4 euros, or about nine times the one-way bus fare -- and I got to go swimming in the Mediterranean. Which was a lovely experience, mouth full of salt water notwithstanding. It was comfortably warm, even despite the steady wind, and the motion of the waves pulled me along like a dance, stepping and swaying against the currents, arms floating to caress the ocean's surface or cut through a swell. I haven't been in an ocean for several years now and it was quite a worthwhile reintroduction.
There have been high points and low points of the trip. Good restaurants and bad -- I don't think I'm ever going to find a Greek restaurant to measure up to the first day's dinner, Taverna i Dafni, which was a mixed blessing because all of the rest of the trip's food felt sort of inadequate in comparison. Good values and bad -- a few items where bartering produced a price low beyond my expectations (the new Greek fisherman's hat ended up costing 8 euros, about $10, and would have been $30 back in the states), a few rip-offs (the lousy 50-euro meal), a few financial frustrations (a 10-euro commission on changing $100 of traveler's checks into euros at one place. Ouch). I got to see the Greek streets and the Greek countryside and get a glimpse into 2500-year-old history. Everything has been new and often a little intimidating and there's still an entire country's worth of it out there that I couldn't possibly have seen in the time I had and there's still an entire world's worth of countries I'll probably never get the chance to visit. It's been broadening. It's been humbling. If I come back I'm definitely going to take the time to properly learn the language first.
I also had my first glass of ouzo tonight. That shit hits you like a block of marble.
Once I can get back, I'll try to get the rest of the photos online as expediently as possible. (Anyone got any suggestions for a good Mac OS X program, hopefully freeware/shareware, for photo gallery/thumbnail work? Something like what I did here is perfectly sufficient.) There's also, so far, 26 pages of paper diary to type up, and that's only through day 4 of 9. (I fell pretty far behind on the through-the-country tour, because they kept us busy the entire damn time.)
See you all soon.
Tags: greece
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06:47 am
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Greece: Further impressions, and (F)AQ
The last three days have been a whirlwind tour through the Peloponnese and southern/central Mainland Greece. ( Further updateage; general impressions )
My brain's sort of scattered at the moment, and I'm talking to Kady in the background thanks to the wonders of AIM Express, so instead of trying to segue this line of thought into all of the other places I wanted to go, I'll just turn it into a FAQ. Well, an AQ, since I've only got one person to ask me questions. But feel free to pose other questions in comments, although I won't get to answer them until I get to another Internet cafe and have more free time.
( Your questions answered )
Current Mood:  Greece-y
Current Music: Random Internet Cafe sounds
Tags: greece
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12:47 pm
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Fifteen-minute stopover in Olympos
Fifteen-minute stopover in Olympos -- saw the ruins of the ancient Olympics site, came back to town for lunch. Stumbled on Net cafe. Have about five minutes to get to the bus so can't say more yet. Finally got some watch batteries and photos on CD -- have about 150 from today/yesterday.
Seeing a far different Greece from in Athens.
Hope you're all well. Try to catch up maybe tonight or more likely back in Athens on about Thursday.
Tags: greece
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11:04 am
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Greece: No real update today.
Using my precious precious online time to upload pics instead of write. Besides, today we just went to the National Archaeological Museum. It was worthwhile, but ... it was a museum, you know? There were lots of old things. I took many pictures and there's not really much I could say that wouldn't sound like any trip to any museum anywhere. Besides, we were there for like 7 hours and there are just so MANY artifacts that I think I hit the "antiquities fatigue" stage.
As a teaser, some gryphon heads from the museum at tlands. No time to organize the pics today though. Try not to hammer the raw archive -- I'm just using it as storage so I can clear out my (single) memory card.
Hoping I can call kadyg when I get back to the hotel. Missing her.
Early tomorrow morning, embark on four-day tour around the country. Unsure as to whether Internet access will be reliably available outside of Athens; may not be checking in for a while.
Current Mood: Greece-y
Current Music: more random U.S. pop - Internet cafe music
Tags: greece
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02:17 pm
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Athens: Chemists, taverns, and the Lost Disneyland
Back at the Internet cafe. Typing is a little more comfortable for me, and a little more immediate, than writing out pages and pages of notes in my book; so I'm bouncing back and forth, and this post will substitute in large part for my Day 3 notes (day 1 was the flight over the Atlantic, day 2 was the flight to Greece and last night's misadventure).
It's worth the few euros I'm paying to get at least this little minimal connection with you all. The tourist effect is starting to kick in and right at the moment I'm feeling really lonely for a place where I know the customs and words instead of having to decipher them one by one. At home, I am told, Ocras is meowing pitifully because Bax is gone, and I'm feeling much the same right now. Minus the meowing. I still have the (probably paranoid and not fully justified, given that I have Greek blood and dress in a fairly European style) sense that I stick out as a tourist like a sore thumb, and slightly better that than to be a crazy meowing tourist.
Technical note: Since I only have Internet cafe access and it's really hard to find a Telnet/ssh client, I'm stuck with webmail probably for the duration of the trip. To get a message to me, please e-mail baxildragon at gmail. (.com) Can't guarantee I'll see all LJ comments due to not getting notification e-mails, won't have time to read anyone else's journal.
( Still in Athens, Greece; out with parents and a walk in the park )
Current Mood: Greece-y!
Current Music: "Don't Dream It's Over," Internet cafe music
Tags: greece
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11:22 pm
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Live update from Athens
I'm checked into the hotel in Athens, Greece and I've found an Internet cafe -- so here I am, sipping an "mpanana" [translit of Greek for banana] "amita" (I think means juice or juice-drink, or may be a brand name; not really clear from the context).
( First impressions: The wrong side of town; maybe not-so-wrong )
Current Mood:  Greecey!
Current Music: Foo Fighters?, Internet Cafe's music
Tags: greece
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04:27 am
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As brief as possible of an update on my life
With my limited net access lately -- and focus on little teensy weensy things like the move and, well, all of the below -- I really haven't been able to type out proper updates on everything that's been going on with my life.
The short answer is: Everything. This is the year it all happens.
First and most importantly. As I explained the last time I summed up, kadyg and I are now engaged. It was a long post and it was a while ago, though, so it's worth saying again. This factors into my future plans, but I'm getting ahead of myself slightly. (I'm also debt-free, which factors into my future plans, but now I'm really getting ahead of myself.)
With that commitment having been penned in to the life calendar, the two of us promptly decided to go out and find a place to move into together. (This wasn't because we weren't already living together; it was because the place we were in was getting too expensive for comfort.) Voila: A month or two of my life sucked down the moving hole.
I've just about had time to catch my breath from that. So, now, naturally, it's time to fling myself off into some mad, whirlwind undertaking that will suck up my life entirely for a while.
( The next five months of my life: Travel, NaNo, marriage, training )
Current Mood:  needing sleep
Current Music: Chicago soundtrack, "We Both Reached For The Gun"
Tags: greece, misc life updates, wedding
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