Sunday, July 23, 2006

Last Thursday I was helping my precious nephew research the history of AFL (Australian Football League). Nothing unusual about that but the homework was for “Greek School”. A warm, fuzzy, multicultural glow buzzed. A few pointers on the inner workings of Google and he was out of the stalls and racing into research mania. Content discernment is not yet part of my nephew’s intellectual repertoire, so we discussed the relative merits of some of the sites he found. We finally decided on a piece. We ctrl+ceed, opened a word document and then closed the loop with ctrl+v.

What we had copied and pasted was written in English but we needed it in English. There in lay the rub. I let him ponder the tenacity of his formative Greek. As a teacher, my training taught me to give others the space to learn and that a little pain is always experienced when learning is about to appear. So when ‘that’ face of angst appeared I let him sit in it for awhile till he said, ‘Do you think we can translate it online?” Good question, beloved nephew. We then www-you-ed ourselves to babelfish.com. I gave him a brief tour of the site and how to use the tools. Easy (well as easy as the thorny road of online translations go).

Then I asked him if he knew the story of Babel. He didn’t, so I told him my version of it. 1. A one languaged humanity built a tower to reach the sky because in their hearts they felt that they were like God. 2. God thought this a humanly arrogance and smote them down by confusing their language and making everybody speak a different language. Since then my imaginings have been full of biblical stories. An odd preoccupation for a cynical and lapsed Greek Orthodox.

My nephew is of Greek and Assyrian decent. He currently has an aunt and uncle ‘holidaying’ in Lebanon. Images of desperate, bewildered fleeing people smear our screens in relentless ‘news updates’. I ring my sister often for news and it is the same “they are still there” and we wonder if they know of the severity of the crisis.

In a hall of emotional mirrors where I see everything and nothing at the same time, helplessness moves in and settles in the bones. It sucks greedily on the marrow till it threatens to vaporize my already fragile equilibrium. As an antidote I take a Google pill and look up the meaning of the word.

Helplessness: powerlessness revealed by an inability to act; the state of needing help from something; feeling of being unable to manage. Then I look up the tangential suggestion “learned helplessness”.

Learned helplessness: A tendency to be a passive learner who depends on others for decisions and guidance; A condition in which a person attempts to establish and maintain contact with another by adopting a helpless, powerless stance; with repeated exposure to inescapable aversive events, the person or animal learns that escape is impossible. In subsequent circumstances where escape or avoidance is possible, no attempt is made. The principle has been applied to understanding the origins of depression; a term initially used in experimental psychology, is a description of the effect of inescapable negative reinforcement (such as electrical shock) on animal (and by extension, human) behavior.

As a lay linguist I believe we can unravel many psychological quandaries by etymological explorations. I also believe in describing and addressing a malaise of my psyche and soul, I need to mesh, mash, meld as many definitions of a term as I can in order to get as close as is humanly possible to the essence of an essentially wordless state.

As a young feisty Greek-Australian-Feminist woman I had the passion, stamina and chutzpah (naivety?) to be intimately involved in what I saw as my part in changing the world. I was man-handled by the constabulary (and subsequently thrown back in the crowd like a minnow, I have the picture that appeared in London’s Newsweek to prove it), made my Greek immigrant relatives despair at my ‘dangerous’ & ‘useless’ antics (did they know something I didn’t know?). Today at the age of 45 I look back at that young woman and wonder where she got the courage, the passion and the sheer energy to stand up to seemingly omnipotent power-moguls. Although I still turn up to march on the streets, I turn up less and less. Is this a problem of middle-age or of world malaise? Has the bloodlust of the world cast babel-like shards of anarchy? Is this world cannibalism necessary to anoint a future peace with the blood of innocents?

“You have to be the change you want to see” said Mahatma Ghandi. If this is so, Gods of all persuasion please help us all to find “?????insert nameless something here????”.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Finally back on Australian terra firma. Apologies to those who expected eye witness, hot off the press news about my travels and travails but alas twas not to be. In Sweden things where frenetic with the Stockholm Challenge and then in Greece a shortage of access prevented me quite successfully from posting to the blog.

Needless to say, I am in serious denial about being back. My body has rebelled in sympathy and become riddled with some flu-ey type thing that has sufficiently impeded any acceptance that I am back and that I will soon have to grapple with the everyday reality of making a living and having a life. I must give Melbourne credit though. Although it is winter, Melbourne is still capable of turning up the sun dial even though temperatures are on the icy end of the scale.

From my vantage point I look out over my neighbour’s leafless fig tree. It still holds fruit. In the distance and over the fence a lemon and orange tree are doing a fine job of simultaneously soaking up the sun’s morning rays while reflecting back impossibly saturated orange and yellows. It seems we can only find romance in foreign places but I look at this country, my country and feel blessed to have such bounty and beauty just at the edge of my vision.

The story of my journey will now be told through pictures that I will gradually put up (emphasis on the gradual). I have learnt something the Greek’s place a high value on and that is pacing: the slower the pace the more you see. I hope I can harness that wisdom in this frenetic-obsessed culture.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

delirious jet lagged greetings to all..…I have had trouble emailing, so bear with me dear ones while I sort it out (thanks Stacey for your emails and yes Yvette I have received your posts and emails)…I have established a new email address which you can email me at while I’m away… toulakarayannis@yahoo.com so give that a go and maybe we can have more luck and then I can tell you the one on one sordid details of this journey!!!

despite my pre-departure trepidation of the flight, it was (dare I say it) pleasant…one thing about being a born again pessimist-stroke-grumpy-old woman, is that when good things happen they feel like manor from heaven…on the first leg of the journey to Kuala Lumpur I sat next to a woman who traveled to certain places in the world praying for world peace and healing…great workI think but she lost me when she started to talk about how we were all born with original sin…she moved to another seat very soon after... I think she realized that I wasn’t going to buy it readily…her move meant that I got 2 seats to myself…now that was mighty Christian of her…

from KL to Amsterdam I sat next to a man who lived in Canberra and was traveling to Geneva to work for the United Nations…I asked him what he did at the United Nations and said that he was trying to save the world…I told him he wasn’t doing a very good job and that he should try harder…despite my comment he, unlike my earlier companion did not move seats…we chatted for hours and it dawned on me that I have not been that still just talking leisurely with someone for what seemed like years…I loved it…I loved the company, I loved the challenge of the content which ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous, I loved the generosity and openness of spirit but most of all I loved the kindness of a stranger…it only occurred to us that we hadn’t even exchanged names till we were disembarking…it left me strangely full and peaceful…

I arrived in Stockholm to the sunny greetings of my friends and Stockholm Challenge organizers Ulla and Earl…what a luxury to be picked up at an airport after an infinite flight…one thing Ulla and Earl are not is shy and retiring, so a marathon yabba-yabba fest ensued…from a quite pyjama clad existence in a sedate Eastern suburb of Melbourne to a manic Swedish trialogue (no dialogue, just three very fiery talkers)…they managed to engage me long enough to go to bed at the same time as the Swedish natives, at which I was rather cocky about, only to find myself awake several hours later in a brightly lit room…it was 5am in the morning and then remembered that Sweden is now moving towards it summer midnight sun phase where there are more light hours than dark…odd phenomenon for this Grecian antipodean…

...today I accompanied Ulla and Earl to their day long round of meetings with a Swedish events management company, students working on the Stockholm Challenge, organizers from the City of Stockholm and then a visit to an entrepreneur colleague of Ulla’s…we are now home and all catching up with some form of computer work…we’re a happening, hip and wired lot up here…but now the real effects of jet lag settle over me like a surreal veil…I zoom in and out of reality…(mind you those who know me would say that has nothing to do with jet lag!)…so now this tired and grumpy old gal will weave her way to a vacant bed and slumber till I can slumber no more…

Remember to use my new traveling email address if you want to email…toulakarayannis@yahoo.com ...can I also encourage the technically more adventurers amongst you to register with Skype, so we can chat directly for free!!!! You can register at http://www.skype.com/helloagain.html I just called my mother on her landline (this costs little) and she sounded incredibly clear…so please try it and see if we can talk directly to each other…like I said Skype to Skype calls are free…now that’s a great price…when you register let me now and I’ll add you to my contacts list and you vice-versa…

So for now my lovelies I bid you adieu till next we meet/speak…

god love your reading bits
xxxtoul@

Saturday, April 29, 2006

'Tis the eve of my departure and the mind numbing details of travel trivia overwhelm me. My beloved friend Yvette, kindly visited this afternoon to make tea and supervise the mini makeover sessions that are part of every girl's pre-departure ritual. Now I enter my usual obsessive compulsive disorder period where I check, re-ckeck and check that I've re-cheked all items that need to be checked. Can't wait for the time when we can insert a software program into our ears to take care of this maddness.

Am I getting too old for all this international travel? Staying home and becoming a grumpy old woman sounds so much more enticing. ...and to think I'm about to leave just when Big Brother starts. Anyone feel like taping 5 weeks worth please???

Thursday, April 27, 2006

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative." Oscar Wilde
Welcome...

I am about to head of to the stunning climes of Stockholm to participate as a juror in the Stockholm Challenge Conference and awards ceremony (click here to visit the site and click here to see my profile) .

The pre-journey pandemonium of packing is in full flight. Anticipation and adrenalin charges every waking and sleeping moment but the thought of glorious Sweden tempers the panic. I harbour the wish of most travellers which is 'just get me there'. But I am also aware that to wish time away is to wish life away, so I pull my head in and return to this glorious sunny Melbourne moment.