The Title of This Blog

I once had a blog entitled The Title of This Blog, just so I could say "The title of this blog is The Title of This Blog." Clever, yes, but not terribly descriptive.

So I thought long and hard about the title of this one. Jason's Big Fat Greek Blog? too obvious, and has probably been done to death. One friend suggested The Oracle at Chania, as a spinoff on the famous Oracle at Delphi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_of_Delphi), but I decided against it as I am not feeling terribly oracular.

Then I learned that the original labyrinth was built by Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. So there's a nice Cretan tie-in, plus it's descriptive of my thought processes! Now if I can just find my Ariadne to help me.

The Deepak Chopra Project?

I just learned there's a game called "The Deepak Chopra Project." I haven't heard anything about it, but I'm guessing that it's like Railroad Tycoon for Gurus:

You have sold 1,000 tickets to people, by telling them that they don't have to die unless they want to. At $1,000 each, you just earned $1,000,000! Congratulations!

And so on.

Exercise update, and other stuff

The yoga studio was the coolest its ever been tonight. I almost want my money back: I mean, what is the point if I'm not dizzy and nauseous and on the brink of passing out? Well, now I know the spot to avoid...I don't think it was that cool everywhere. I still think I got a pretty good workout, despite not feeling all woozy afterwards.

My sister and neice have offered some more gift ideas, but I'm not going to say what they were, in case certain Cretans (not Cretins!!!) are reading this blog. You know who you are. ;-) Which reminds me: I need to figure out how to swap in a Greek keyboard on this laptop.

This is my last week at work, and I'm trying to perform a final brain dump for the guys I've been training for the past few months. I hope they do ok! Although part of me hopes they don't do too well. There's a fine line between "Jason sure did a good job of training you!" and "You're picking this up way faster than Jason did--I guess we won't be needing him anymore!" In any event, they keep saying that they don't know how they're going to survive after I leave, and that feels nice. I keep surprising myself with the stuff I know. Was it Donald Rumsfeld who said there are known unknowns, and unknown unknowns? Well it turns out that there are also unknown knowns. Who knew?

OK, signing off for the night. I feel like I need to do a better job of keeping this interesting!

First Post!

Wow. I'm leaving in a week. I'm super excited!

Trying not to stress about what I might forget to bring: Calmer friends say: "Got your passport? Good, then you're set."

I spent the last weekend picking up a few gifts. I hope this doesn't scare my gracious hosts: "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts," and all that. But the way I see it, they're way more Greek than I am, so should be no problem.

Meanwhile, 50% of my tuition has been received by Lexis, the language school I'll be attending while I'm there. Class doesn't start until Sept 19th, so I get to spend the time up until then hanging out with my cousins. They're gonna take me to the Samariá Gorge my first weekend there! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samari%C3%A1_Gorge

On the home front, I've been exercising like crazy. I have concluded that I simply cannot afford to go a day without exercising; and the bonus is I'm getting in better shape! Yesterday I went running on a route that has lots of steep hills, and normally I have to walk at least one of them, but not yesterday. Thursday night will be my last hike before the trip: I've been doing Mt Si once a week for a while now -- it's a hoot after dark, and if it's foggy it is really spooky.

Once I'm on Crete, I'm hoping to do lots of hiking in the White Mountains (Λευκά Όρη). I'll post pix.