A good friend of mine requested I write about fear, stress and anxiety. Well, first he asked me to write about love, goals and dreams, and when I stopped snorking and saying “ewww!” he switched over to the bleaker topics. Since he was so kind to offer a less mushy alternative, I will oblige.

Not exactly sure what J-man had in mind with the request, but I am going to assume I am somehow going to share a sort of ‘how I manage the Troublesome Trio’ rather than a ‘guess what freaks me out’ post. Because that would be kind of useless and what if one of you blurkers is a psychopath who is waiting for me to confess my fear of dustbunnies and begins mailing me packages of them? Could happen.

Beginning with fear. I guess that one is pretty simple My rule is – live fearlessly. That isn’t to say I don’t ever feel fear. For all the sweet superhero nicknames and no-so-sweet robot ones I’ve been given over the years, I assure you I’m all human. And that means I have all the perks and crap that comes with the territory. I just try not to let them get in the way of doing things that I should or want to do. Yes I know the argument that humans have evolved to feel fear for a reason – that it keeps us safe from harmful things. But I think most of us nowadays tend to be controlled by fear and survival has nothing to do with it. We’re frightened of failure, embarrassment, letting others down, disapproval, poverty, discomfort…and we let those fears keep us from living much of a life. We stay in our comfort zones, where nothing is scary.

It’s kind of hard to get out of there though, especially if you’re prone to anxiety – which I have been most of my life. It helps to walk through your fears. What is the worst that can happen? You fail? Big deal – at least you tried. You took a risk and were bold. To me the other option of not trying has a guaranteed worse result – it makes me a gutless pansy who lets fear rule them. But what if you try and fail but, to top it off, you made a fool of yourself? Well, humility is a lesson worth learning. Or what if you hurt yourself? Every hardship borne with patience wipes away sins and makes you stronger. What if you become crippled? That may be the one thing that makes you truly learn to appreciate your life. And the supposed worse-case scenario - what if you die? Conveniently, I believe your time is written and there’s an afterlife, so there’s no point in worrying. You can’t delay or speed up your death either way – it will simply come.

To me the only scary thing is the loss of faith. Because at the end of the day, the only thing that actually has any value or permanence is how you measure up in the eyes of God. All the pains of this life are temporary – as are its joys. But the next life, well that’s forever. And the one opinion or judgment you should worry about is that of your Creator – Him you owe everything and He has all power. So that is the only thing I would really bother worrying about and making a conscious effort to avoid. And thankfully, loss of faith is ENTIRELY in my own hands. No one can take my faith from me. It lives in my heart and my mind, both of which are out of reach of prying hands. No matter what state my life, my body, or my world, I can always have my faith provided I choose it.

So once you realize that there is really little to be afraid of in life, you can then work towards managing stress and anxiety – which are sort of the starting points and fuel for paralyzing fear.

I find managing stress harder than dealing with fear. Fear is more potent and immediate – it’s an emotional dynamo that you can’t help but notice. I also find it easier to counter – if you’re scared of say skydiving, one second’s application of will and you’ll have thrown yourself out of the plane and conquered your fear. But stress is a slow burn that builds. You don’t always realize it’s there till it’s picked up some momentum and then it’s hard to put out. Keeping the stress down is a daily challenge for me, living in a crazy city, working as a journalist, being the second in command at my magazine and trying to be a responsible member of my family. It’s not easy. My ongoing battle with migraines, insomnia and ulcers testifies to the challenge it poses to me to this day.

It may help to think of stress as being of two kinds – the kind you can’t help, and the kind you can. The kind you can’t help is part of life – your writer misses his deadline, an interviewee cancels, your boss makes you the whipping boy for something that was his fault. Those things are going to upset you. You’d be a machine if they didn’t. But you can’t let them have any more of your time and energy than they are due. Feel your pain or indignation, and then get over it. Chances are none of those stressors are so dire that they should ruin your day or even more than an hour of it. If you’re still pissed or worried about something that happened hours later, that’s probably unnecessary. Go for a run, or hang out with someone who makes you laugh, or listen to some music. Let it go.

The reason why sometimes it’s good to have a time limit on stress is because you have to be careful not to let your reaction roll into stress you CAN help. I do what I can, when I can, and then I force myself to let it go. You can only try, you can’t control everything. Once you’ve done your best, you have complete permission to release your stress. Some of us develop this bad habit of actually stewing in our stress. We hold to all the pain and uncertainty – worrying perhaps that if we don’t force ourselves to feel the misery, then something bad will happen. It doesn’t really. There is no point in being miserable in advance. Either stuff will happen, or it won’t – regardless of how happy or unhappy you are beforehand.

Anxiety is another side of the stress you CAN help, but I think it’s less outward and more inward in origin. The s*** needn’t hit the fan for one to become anxious. It’s nearly all preemptive or overreactive. Anxiety is some kind of psychological quirk that some of us develop after years of relentless stress. You become shell-shocked in a way, but instead of always diving for the foxholes when you hear a bang, you turn minute things into portents of upcoming disaster. You spend way too much of your time trying to spot things before they happen, as if you seeing a tragedy coming would force it turn around and walk the other way. It is like the stress you CAN help, except you’re not just wallowing in misery, you’re actively trying to piece things together to predict its arrival. And obviously if you go through life trying to see crap everywhere, it’s going to stress you out. Your anxiety levels build, your heart rate is constantly accelerated, your body gets exhausted from the overactive production of adrenaline, and you burn out. It’s not helpful.

Again though, it’s hard to get a hold on. The best thing to do is to slowly wean yourself off of it. When you find yourself slipping into anxiety, try and redirect yourself. Remind yourself that you’ve been wrong with your predictions most of the time in the past. And even if you are right, go over the list of the feared possible outcome and remember how each can be a boon, not just a bane. If you don’t consciously unwind yourself, the anxiety only builds and it takes less and less to freak you out. You have to make sure it doesn’t rack up.

And to help manage all three, I make sure every day includes some detoxing. I pray, which reminds me of my priorities, the good in my life, and drops my heart-rate to resting levels. I exercise, which is a positive outlet for frustration or anger. I write, which is a good stock taking and outlet for thoughts I maybe wasn’t addressing. I try to make sure every day has something I find useful in it – I like to cook and do things for my friends.

I know it sounds like a whole lot of work but in the end, it’s one of those things that’s worth the effort. Life is too short to be miserable. And J-man, if I can do it, so can you. :)

When I am properly old and mouldy, I think I will be quite grateful I managed to keep this blog on life-support all these years. It may be the only thing I’ll have that passes for a recording of my existence. I expect my memory is going to just be a pile of dust by then. It’s already pretty bad today - stands to reason it would be even dimmer decades down the line. Your mind is like a forest – paths you tread and retread are easy to find, their imprint strong and sound. If you refuse to go back down those paths, weeds will grow, the forest will crowd in, and you’ll lose the thread.

Which is what I do. I don’t dwell on the past. It’s done. Boxed and put away. You can’t go back to it so why bother agonizing over it. And to needlessly recall it, is just that – agony. Either memories are pleasant or unpleasant but I find remembering either variety to be nearly equally painful. The pleasant memories always make me a bit sad, for times gone, friends misplaced, lives altered. Nostalgia is a bitch. And unpleasant ones, well, they weren’t much fun the first time round, can’t expect them to have improved with age. I think I do enough experiencing and analysing – in near microscopic focus - in the present. Once something is dissected, processed and understood, it’s filed away for near perpetuity.

It’s great I suppose, for being able to focus on the now. I don’t consciously carry emotional baggage probably because I’ve dropped it in that metaphorical mind forest and it’s been over-grown and lost. It seems to me that to live with one foot in the past and the other in the future would make for some very inefficient and awkward walking. I know I need to keep going forward, so I’ve sited the target, squared my shoulders, and steamed ahead. Leaving the past behind. Focussing on the present. This I can work with. Now is changeable. Yesterday is definitely not and tomorrow is just a hope. But I can try for today.

But yes, along the way, I forget things. Kind of happens you have whole swathes of your life you don’t seem to ever talk about, stories that you don’t tell, experiences you won’t relive. Generally, I can seem to pull them up when prompted – but many, like my first meeting with UDM/Insurance Guy – I think I’ve lost forever. Which is worrisome. I didn’t realize the permanent cost of this odd coping mechanism I’ve developed. I hoped those memories would be there if I wanted or needed them, but I’m beginning to worry that I don’t even remember what it is that I’ve forgotten. Damn.

Ah well, as long as I manage to forget THAT I have forgotten, maybe I’ll reach that oft-mentioned state of ignorant bliss.

And if not, well there’s always the blog.

(be afraid, be very afraid)

I often suspect that the people in my life privy to all the madness that it contains must think I am either cursed or a compulsive liar. Really, so much insanity happens that sometimes even I can't help but think: “WHAT?! BRAIN, IF THIS IS ANOTHER DUMB DREAM I AM SO GETTING YOU LOBOTOMIZED!” But, sadly, my latest weirdness was pure reality. No need for embroidery or fantasy.

It happened at yet another fancy press to-do at a swank hotel. My boss had dragged me along, trying me out as the new brand ambassador for the company. Yes, I clean up well and talk pretty, but dude, I’m not sure I want to be charming and well behaved full time. He didn’t ask my opinion though. Boo.

After the typical mind-numbing session on something or another where people argue about things no one really has any will or authority to change, I ducked out and headed for the media room to refresh my caffeine charge for the next bout of boredom. I was standing at one of those tall tables, drinking tea and reading over my notes when I realized someone was talking to me. I looked up and there was a smiley yellow-haired gentleman in that typical shabby suit jacket that seems to be standard of Arab journalists. “Sorry, what was that?” I asked. Smiley Blonde Arab Guy must have said something about the session or the weather. It was so dull and trite I didn’t even spare a single memory neuron recording it. Of course the next question was the usual one I get – where are you from? And thus began the typical game of 20 questions I seem to always be subjected to. What do I do? How long have I been in the UAE? Do I like it here? Why did I leave the US? Is my family here too? Who do I live with? Blahblahblah.

I kept trying to get back to my notes and had probably finally given SBAG the message that I was busy when I heard ANOTHER “Hi!” I looked up and found a pop-eyed desi gentleman on my left, smiling a slightly quizzical smile. Sigh, another would-be networker I thought, and stuck my hand out for a shake and introduction. “Hi, I’m Owl with That Magazine.” He shook my hand and kept giving me this odd look. “You don’t remember me do you?” he finally said. "Oh, sorry, no." I’ve been a journalist out here for four years now, and have met and forgotten more people than I’ll ever be able to count. “I read your writings,” he offered. “You write about society and life in a way that is so inspiring! I am always waiting for them.” Huh? I write for a business magazine. There’s nothing about society or life in there – just economic junk. “Hmm… are you sure you haven’t got me confused with someone else? I write pretty dry analysis and things.” He gave me that quizzical smile again. “Oh no, I remember you. You have your picture next to your writings. Very small. But I remember. You have some UK-Pakistan connection, no?” Now it was my turn to look quizzical. My picture? We never run my picture. “I’m from the US not the UK. Are you quite certain it’s me you’ve been reading.” “Oh definitely!” he spluttered. “I remember something you wrote about Kashmir…” And then it hit me. “You mean my column, in the newspaper – two years ago?” “Yes yes! Your writings! You truly inspire me. So inspirational. You find a way to get to the core of the matter. I only read few few of your writings, but I am still inspired.” The guy obviously had some issues with past and present tense but at least now I knew what he was talking about – he liked my column. Past tense.

All the while, the SBAG stood there, smiling patiently. When Unblinking Desi Man stopped to sip his tea, he would jump in. “So what do you think of Obama? He is from your city, no?” Another standard question, which got my standard politically correct and shallow response. I’d just finished my sentence when UDM cut in again. “So you don’t remember me yet?” he asked, leaning close perhaps to jog my memory of his face. “Oh, no, I’m sorry. What was it we interacted about? You’re in PR I see, was it for a story about the company you represent?” He seemed not to recall. “Could be, I have had different different jobs in UAE,” he answered, taking out a pile of business cards from his pocket, fanning them out on the table. “See all these journalists I meet – BBC, CNN, if you want I can help you get a better job. Basically I am journalist myself as well though I am in PR now. Before I was with insurance magazine.” And that is when the lightbulb in my head began to flicker to life. An insurance magazine. That sounded familiar. But I still couldn’t think of how I’d know someone working for that kind of title and why we’d have interacted.

UDM quickly moved on and started asking me how my life was going, and what I was up to, and why I didn’t have a column any more. Meh. I was in the middle of going through the push-button answers when SMAG, who was still standing there, smiling to himself, held up my business card, read my full name out, and piped up: “So you are Pathan?” “Yes.” “What does that mean?” Wait, you’re asking me what being Pathan meant? What kind of question is that and what kind of journalist are you?! I am so not giving you a lesson in Central and Sub-Continental history and anthropology. “It’s an ethnicity,” I shrugged and went back to my tea.

Realizing maybe he hadn’t asked the easiest question, SMAG tried again. “So, are your rings Pakistani rings?” Wha? I looked down at my hands and saw the usual three funky silver rings that I’ve picked up in my travels here and there. The idea that they would be Pakistani, and what that would even mean, never occurred to me before. “No, they’re just rings.” “No significance?” “No significance.” “You don’t like gold?” “No, I prefer silver.” Wow dude, you are so great with the asking of awkward personal questions that are also totally irrelevant. Such a credit to your newspaper you are.

But before I could even take another sip of the tea I desperately needed, UDM goes: “So what is the significance of your rings?” *blinkblink* Uh, dude, if you turn your head a fraction to your right, do you not see and HEAR the gentleman beside you who asked the SAME DAMN QUESTION TWO SECONDS AGO?! But alas, one does not always get to say what they’re thinking, so I just answered “Like I said, no significance.” Not taking the hint, he carried on – “They are not… engagement rings, or marriage rings?” Um, have you ever SEEN an engagement/wedding ring worn on the thumb, middle finger or shaped like intertwined leaves going up and down the right-hand ring finger? “No, they’re just rings. No meaning behind them,” I answered. At this point, the light bulb over my head got a little brighter. Insurance magazine AND marriage questions…this seemed oddly familiar.

Again awkward pause. I’m used to people chit-chatting with me to pass the time, but this had been exceptionally weird and I wanted out. I start packing my bag up when SBAG asks “Do you want to be opera?” Huh? “I’m sorry, what?” “Opera opera! You know!” I just shook my head and smiled confusedly, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” Here UDM decides to finally acknowledge the man who’s been less than a foot away from him and says “He means to say you’re very very pretty.” *jaw drop* “I don’t think that it was he meant at all,” I stuttered, and turned back to SBAG. “You mean Oprah?” His smile got even wider “YES! You want to be like Oprah? On TV?” Hahaha, um, no. "Never aspired to be on TV, especially not as a talkshow host." “But you could be,” he opined. Er, thanks? And if that wasn’t random enough, he then asks: “You have seen the aquarium?” Now I am seriously beginning to wonder if someone had spiked my tea, or if this is just a bizarre dream. Aquarium? What? “In the hotel, there is BIG aquarium. You have not see it?” “Oh, no, I’m working so I’ve been in the seminars.” Having allowed SBAG the undeserved privilidge of two questions in a row, now UDM jumps in “Oh yes. It is beautiful. Would you like to go for a walk with me? I will show it to you.” Er, NO. “Um, thanks, but I really have to get going. I’m on the clock here.” UDM looked shattered, but I was not having any more of this. I’d been stuck in this insanity sandwich for the past ten minutes and now I had to get out.

I’d finished my tea and crammed all my things back in my bag and was looking down, trying to remember where I needed to be next, when UDM takes it all to a whole new level of weird. “Your hands, they are…” and at this point, I kid you not, makes some weird inhaling-of-breath-slurping-type-sound before adding “…sensitive. Just by looking at them I can see you are such a sensitive person. So sensitive, tsssssssss,” making that sound again and that weird facial expression some desis do when they’re talking about either something really cute like a baby or something they want to eat. I think I stood there in total shock for about two seconds before I bolted “Uh, I think I see my boss. Gotta run. Bye!”

0_0

What the hell. Seriously, WHAT THE HELL?! How on earth does this kinda crazy crap keep happening to me? And this time – in stereo?! Do I have some kind of gravitational pull that attracts weirdoes? Is there a note on my back that says something like “Single white female lunatic seeks like-minded psychopath?” Is my deodorant the olfactory equivalent of weirdo love potion?

And you know what – I did finally place the guy. Apparently, I’d bumped into him at a press event about three years ago, when he was working with an insurance magazine, and afterwards he’d kept asking a colleague of mine who knew him if I’d consider him for marriage. Shock of shocks, I must not have responded positively to the inquiries.

Sigh. You can’t make this stuff up. You wouldn’t want to.

Toot gya…

We have a saying down in Studio 420 (the place where me and the roomie live). It is toot gya - which means: “it broke.” We take any opportunity to sing out this little two-word catch-all – i.e. when I have burned my toast. When Hem hurt her back (much to the great chagrin of a visiting aunty, who thought our constant joking about Hem’s pain very wrong). And sometimes, when one just feels… broken. Today I am in that last boat.

Toot gya

Not sure exactly what, except that something did. And not sure exactly how, except that it has. Last night, when I climbed into bed at the very ambitious hour of midnight, it was as if all the questions and criticism that I’d been avoiding suddenly swelled to a pitch even the most stubborn denial could not mute. Ah, typical. There is a reason, afterall, why I’m the Owl - lifelong insomnia fuelled mainly by a misbehaving brain that refuses to shut off. I’d put off thinking about some things for too long, it seemed, and there was a queue of impatient issues jostling for my attention, now ready to burst through my wilful block like overflow at a dam.

First of course, there was the now traditional nightly downer of – I have work tomorrow. My job has begun to really get to me. Too much pressure, little help, lots of conflicting messages and no rewards in an industry that is very rapidly bottoming out. Fun times. I can feel my anxiety levels ratcheting up each week as directives change midstream, available resources are slashed further and more assignments get shoved onto my plate.

Then there’s the news. Pakistan is in SUCH a mess. I know it tends to be but lately it seems especially bad. Doesn’t help that Stupidface Zardari says the country is fighting for survival. He blames the ‘extremist elements’ – I blame him and his ilk of self-serving bastids. People have been pushed to extremes because they've been failed by the system. And now he’s resorting to violence to stem violence? Good luck with that. Seems to me like he’s just putting a match to a powder keg.

And then there’s just me. I seem to have drifted from a life of conscious effort and improvement into one of wasteful selfishness. I do nothing of any real value whatsoever. I work. Big whoop. I have to feed myself, that I’d have a job is a given. I work as a journalist. That *could* mean something. But it doesn’t. I’m a business journalist in a publication that pushes no envelopes. I used to be a fairly ok friend, but I’m sucking at that lately too. I am impatient, rude and remote. Dunno how Hem puts up with it. And as a daughter/sister/relation – I am AWOL. To top it off my creativity is at an all time low, and worse than that, so is my deen.

I understand sometimes stuff is just going to be crap. Things take turns being broken, as it were. And often fixing them is not in my control. I can only control my reactions to the circumstances – how I deal, what I do. Which is why I kind of usually have a couple different things I like to focus on to keep myself productive and occupied. When one is blocked, I shift my attention to another - fitness instead of work, family instead of friends, etc. Lately though, as you can see, I’m sucking on all fronts.

Toot gya

Which only leaves one thing to do – action. Get back to what matters. Cut my losses where I must. Try to be better. My life, afterall, is only what I will make of it. If I don’t fix it, no one else will.

Forgive me munchkins. It has been.... a WEEK since my last update. (this sounds like a confession but hey, lets run with it.) Once again, I have been busy getting up to mischief. As I am wont to do. But let me begin with Greece - another work trip crammed into my chaotic schedule.

You would think three days of being hosted in Athens would be a cakewalk of the most leisurely order. But of course, if this blog is anything to go by, I turn the mediocre into the mad and fittingly, the trip was a comedy of errors. It was sponsored by a low-budget airline (in future, avoid such obvious portents of cheapness) and the tourism boards of source and destination.

It began well. Our departure flight was an hour late to get off the ground. And they boarded us BEFORE the damned pre-take-off press conference. Which is pretty funny. Invite the media to drum up publicity for your flight, make them stand around for about two hours while you fancy up your stage and gather your speakers, and just before the conference kicks off, board them on a plane. Genius!

The flight itself was cool. I got sat beside an interesting journalist from one of our competitor magazines - Liz. There is something about fratrenizing with the enemy that I find fun so we got on like a house on fire. On my other side was a hilariously tactless young Indian journalist who took a call from her parents and told them, in Hindi, which unbeknown to her I speak: “No mama, there’s no one around to talk to. Just a bunch of goras. Blah. I know. Oh well.” Gora means ‘whitey.’ I laughed quietly at that, wondering when to hit her with my very obvious non-goraness. (note: later when we got to talking – in Hindi - and I reminded her of the gaffe and told her I was not a gora she said: “You still are, cuz Americans are white. No wait, you guys have Africans too. Okie, well, I dunno.” *pout*)

When we landed, there was another press conference. Which we ALSO missed. Because it was right inside the landing gate and only VIPs had clearance to by-pass immigration and go into the terminal. All of the senior delegates on the flightwere discretely ushered through while we grubby journalist-folk were herded like confused sheep to passport processing. By the time we got through, the press conference was over. Again. No love lost. Press conferences are boring.

Onwards to the hotel then, which was actually a swank place. But then again, I really only ever want a bed to sleep in and the makings of tea/coffee in my room. Also, I greatly appreciate a chocolate on my pillow. There’s no time for anything else anyways. Weird that I’ve been put up in 5-star hotels around the world and never been in a spa, gym, pool or whatever else they have. One day mebbe.

And true to tradition, we had only enough time to relax for a bit before were told to get ready for the Gala Dinner. No ordinary dinner... a GALA one. Ooh. But beyond the fact that it was a gala event, we weren’t told anything else about it. That’s fairly standard in press trips – the schedules are all subject to change and very random. You just go with the flow. Which we did. And you could tell the group was used to the vagueness. Some of the journalists changed into ‘evening attire.’ Others did ‘smart casual.’ One was even in formal ‘national dress’. I just showed up in my usual work stuff – skirt, blouse, boots and matching hijab. Unless you tell me to rock out, I won’t. I’ve learnt my lesson the hard way, showing up in formals when others are in jeans.

What did the Gala Dinner turn out to be about? The debut of….our destination city. Hello Greece, this is the UAE. UAE, this is Greece. Yes, they flew down a contingent of Emirates-based journalists to tell them about… the place they came from. Ok, fine, we weren’t the only guests at the event. In fact it was full up with fairly important looking people, but it was still pretty funny to us. When they ran the promo advert for a particular emirate I lived in for over a year – I actually didn’t recognize it as the place I once called home. They had glammed up the place so well, glossing over the entire actual CORE of the city, and showed us the little corners of niceness in what is otherwise a fairly gritty place, populated of course by gorgeous actors instead of locals. They definitely got their money’s worth from the ad makers.

And the crowning silliness? One of the guys in our group, who ALSO calls the UAE home, ended up winning one of the special prizes passed out at the dinner, which was - a TRIP TO THE EMIRATES. I kid you not. I wish I’d taken a picture of the look on his face when they called his number. “But I live there!” Too bad. Go home! After mind-numbing hours of polite clapping and boring speeches, we wandered back to the hotel and called it a night.

The next day bright and early we went up to the Acropolis. That was actually pretty awesome. I’ve seen pictures of the place all my life and it was weird to actually be standing there, in the midst of the ruins in all their pagan glory. I didn’t realize how much effort was taken in keeping the ancient structures upright though. The Parthenon had an entire exoskeleton of scaffolding and bracing holding it together and all of the structures were cordoned off to help delay further degradation. They were still beautiful though, but I wished we’d gone at a less busy time. The place was swarming with field trips and tour groups and I could barely hear our guide most of the time. Eventually we all spread to explore. I wandered off on my own to poke about while the rest of the group – a mix of journalists and travel agents/tour operators from the UAE - stayed together to take cheesy group pictures in random places. Meh.

The Acropolis, by the way, is a lawyer’s wonderland, the ground so uneven and slick. If it was in the US – the most litigious place on earth – they would have paved that ancient cliff over and installed grips and banisters to prevent we wobbly Amreekans from face-planting. At the Acropolis, though, I guess you are at the mercy of the gods.

After a nice long walk in the ruins I accidentally ran back into the rest of the group at a picture point opposite the Parthenon. As I stood there, patiently waiting for them to get done with their group pic shenanigans – some people had OBVIOUSLY been hitting the mini-bar early that morning – one of them spotted me and said “Oh, Miss Owl. Why don’t get your picture in front of the Parthenon” and grabbed the camera from my hands. Awrighty. I sat down on the bench, hoping to get it over with in a hurry, but seconds before the pic was snapped, one of the other fellows in the group, a gentleman I’d not even been introduced to, plunked himself down on the four inches of bench on my right amd said “Yes, with me!” Before I could even think of a response, the picture was clicked. My confusion and his intrusion has been memorialized in digital glory on my Facebook wall. We look like such a happy couple, no? ;)

We eventually got the group back onto the bus and went on to our next event – ‘hotel inspections.’ Now I’ve been a journalist for a while and done my share of press trips but I’d never seen this term on my itinerary. Turns out, the organisers had neglected to realize that travel/tour operators would be interested in seeing different things than journalists. But as the real focus of the trip was selling Athens as a holiday destination, the five or so of us from the media were dragged along for the ride.

Ride though, is a bit of an exaggeration. It was more like a long, painful, dull, stupid march. We were bussed around Athens and showed a range of 3 and 3.5 star hotels, where empty rooms were displayed with much flourish and we were told things like thread count on sheets and square feet per room. Meh? I found it all kind of funny and just hung back and giggled at the other journalist’s mounting irritation and the weird questions the tour operators asked (how many children can you fit in the room? How old is the toilet?). Eventually the trip organiser realised he was about to have a bloody revolt on his hands, and after five ‘hotel inspections’, called it a day. We then had the rest of the late afternoon to do as we wished. Liz and I immediately set off to explore Athens on foot.

Finally, some local color! I love getting lost in new places. Or rather, I hope I love it, because I do it often enough. Apparently tromping superhuman distances across an unknown urban landscape is a tradition for me (D.C, Portland, New York, Philly, Sana’a, Salem, Muzaffarabad, San Juan, San Francisco, Toronto, Boston, Sharjah, Dubai, Gainesville, Atlanta, Moscow, Hamburg, Hadramaut). I saw lots of bits of antiquity in random places. You can’t sneeze in Athens without finding a ruin it seems. In one hotel I ‘investigated’ there was actually a huge section of their basement glassed off where they’d found some ancient building while doing their remodelling. Bonus?

The best part of our wandering was finding the Ancient Agora, where there was the reconstructed Stoa of Attalos (the original mall), Temple of Hephastios (a miniature Parthenon you can get closer to), and the Holy Apostles Solaki. Spread out over a few blocks, the site of the ancient market place was an oasis of quiet right beside the lively Plaka and its flea market and cafes. We spent a good hour or so just wandering through its again unpaved and rather rough grounds, where Athenian doggies lazed beside broken pillars and forgotten foundations.

After getting our fill of history (complete with goofy pics beside famous Greek statues. What, me immature? Never!), we moved back to the ‘edgy’ part of town, as my companion put it - Monastiraki. History is cool, but one of the best parts about travelling is just getting lost in a crowd and seeing how the people in a new city live, dress, talk and eat. We meandered through the thin cobblestone roads and ducked into out-of-the-way gift stores, randomly placed between headshops. Funny how the counter-culture culture is about the same everywhere. I swear I’ve seen the exact batik-gauze-tops and block-print skirts in Berkley, Picadilly Circus and Karama Market in Dubai. The flea market, though sadly closed, had amazing graffiti on its shuttered stalls which was as beautiful to me as the Greek marbles I’d made silly pictures with in the Stoa and I greatly annoyed the traditionalist Liz with my incessant photo snapping.

And what *were* the people of Athens like? Like people everywhere else - good and bad. Mainly very polite and chill. Though I have to say, VERY starey. As in, I have NEVER been so stared at in all my life. At first we thought it was just because the two of us – Liz and I – were just apparently obviously foreign. She was very Anglo with her pale, thin, blonde hair and pink skin and me with my constantly out of time and place boho-chic stylings. But then she wandered off for a bit and came back and said “Um, I think it’s just you.” Liz had watched me go through crowds and saw heads turn and follow like the parting of the Red Sea. Turns out channelling gypsy Turk, in Greece, may be about the worse combo of styles you can do.

But ah well, I’m kind of used to be an odd man out and really, if you’re going to shout things at me, if they’re not in a language I understand, I am free to assume they’re perfectly complimentary. (Yes, this IS a lovely belt I'm wearing THANK YOU for pointing it out!) So maybe the Greeks are just EVER so friendly. :) And I am just too stunning for words. Haha, er. Anyways, no one was ever threatening. The constant attention was just slightly unnerving for a girl who’s used to be a little more innocuous.

Also unnerving was when I discovered that my beloved edgy part of town, rife with subversive madness, was also once the Muslim quarter. One of the stores was called Into The Old Mosque, so I stopped and looked around, wondering what that meant. I looked up and sure enough, the building looming overhead had the telltale domed roof that mark so many Muslim houses of worship. It was now a museum and a rather derelict one at that. Just a sad relic of Greece’s 400 years of history as part of the Ottoman empire.

As afternoon passed into early evening, we moved on to downtown, past Athens’ Marks and Spencer’s (kindly pointed out ot us earlier by our tour guide, in case of, I dunno, underwear emergencies for our two Brits?) and all the other boring branded shops I see all over the world. We found our way to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and watched the ceremony while trying very hard to maintain a straight face. Liz was very deadpan, quietly cracking jokes under her breath while I stood there holding in laughs, tears running down my face, trying not to disrespect the ceremony. I thought the changing of the guard I saw in Moscow was funny, with the goosesteps and all. But imagine that, being done by men in pleated dresses and pompommed shoes. Exactly.

Eventually it got dark and we hadn’t eaten in a while and our feet were beginning to hurt so we began to eye the cafes. They were staffed by boisterous waiters whose jobs it seemed was to harass/invite passing people into their premises. I’m sure the lines sound find in Greek, but what we heard in English sometimes was so absurdly sketchy sounding. “Hello miss? Are you looking for someone? You want to check out my item?” My eyes went round and my jaw dropped at that, but Liz pushed me along “Owl, he’s asking if we want to read the menu. Quit looking so shocked.” Egad do things NOT translate well! The other maitre d's spouted similarly dodgy invites and we just kept walking till we found a place that had less-shock inducing staff.

By the time we walked back to our hotel, it was 10 pm and we’d been on our feet for something like 6 hours. I had just enough life in me to shower and pray before I conked out in the blissfully dark hotel room’s lovely bed.

The next day we were to head out early for a four hour drive to the Oracle of Delphi up in the nearby hills. But early is easier said than done when the rest of the group had apparently been out clubbing till about 3 in the morning. One guy was still missing by departure time, only discovered when I did my own headcount and announced he’d not been seen and someone should call his room. Sure enough, he was in bed. Ah me. He was roused and we finally hit the road 45 minutes late.

After a long drive through the low hills that border Athens we reached Delphi. The Oracle was beautiful and strangely remote seeming despite being awash with tourists and their squawking multi-lingual tour guides. It was difficult to believe that thousands of years ago people had gone there to get guidance from their ‘gods.’ It was said that the oracle actually was likely to be high on fumes issuing forth from geological chimneys in the hills, which made her babble. The ‘priests’ interpreted her ravings for the benefit of those who came to seek guidance. Well, nothing divine or communicative about it now.

Shortly after we started our tour it began to rain, a light drizzle dropping the temperature to 9 C. Dressed as I was in my usual Dubai duds with a tiered cotton skirt, peasant blouse with a massive leather belt round my waist and soft ankle boots, I decided to power walk up the summit to stay warm, and went through my own tour in fast-forward. I’m sure I looked a strange sight tearing through the ruins in my Amish Pirate Wench get-up. The closest thing to a ghost of Delphi any of the tourists would ever see. :D

After a long drive back into Athens, we were taken straight to the airport, to wait the next four hours for our, of course, late flight out. It ended as it began, a charming comedy of errors. Ah well, it least it wasn’t a Greek tragedy.