Monday 30 June 2014

Very lost in translation

It is all in the tongue

A language often defines a people, provides a common identity and is a link to its history. Few people are more proud of their language and its place in history than the Greeks. Greece is a wonderful place. A place of sun, of food, it's fragrant and noisy, and of course regrettably for its visitors, it has the Greek language. Greek is just a step in the long linguistic journey of an earlier Indo-European language but it is an important one. It is the one that has shaped our alphabet, given us the beginning of Western literature, the first written New Testament and made lasting and wide reaching contributions to most of our everyday language. It has also caused untold misery to many who have tried to learn it. It is where I find myself now.

Learning a language provides you with the key to bumble through most of the everyday tasks needed. It also allows you to finally pick through just the veneer, seeing and understanding much more about your host country, such as small conveniences in getting by when shopping, suffering through inconveniences in family situations and some things that you should just never have asked about in the first place.


On the surface

Greece is a place that overloads the senses. Viewed in a romantic light, it would be the kind of place you would like to disappear to. Do a Shirley Valentine or even just let the clear light and blue sky wash over you daily in a carefree simplified existence. it is what crossed my mind on my earlier visits here. Less simple but no less romantic in the old fashioned sense at least would be to rob a bank, hide out, get a new identity and settle down in Greece. It would seem the perfect place to go on the lam, just blend in. You would be excused for thinking so, for it is a place of splendid disorganisation. The state is a creaking bureaucracy where not much helpful gets done and the police seem genuinely indifferent to the law so long as they can get a coffee and smoke a cigarette in peace. So much so that if you have the misfortune of getting apprehended, you can escape from a high security prison yard by a helicopter. Twice.  Does it not sound just perfect? It has all the complimentary stirrings of heat, passion and an inert bureaucracy that It should have been the idyllic land of the Ronnie Biggs-es and Casablana-esque type films. But it never happened.

The reason it never was is unfortunately the language of the Greeks. A writer who settled in Athens for some years, neatly described the uphill task of learning Greek; when his brother settled in Madrid he was asked for his paseporte at the airport, when he arrived in Athens he was asked for his  διαβατήριο (diabitirio). No guess as to which brother learnt the local language first. (The writer then went on to write the very hilarious and steeped in reality "How to Learn Greek in 25 Years".) Greek a language that is unyielding to the outsider. Even if you do manage to speak it, it is very rare that you will sound like a Greek. Whether you are mute, on the run, eloping, engaged in an illicit affair or just visiting it's impossible to go unnoticed. Greek women after a certain age make it their life's work to know everyone else's business. It is because of them that Greece has some of the lowest crime statistics in Europe. No CCTV surveillance system can ever compare with the alert and ever watchful elderly ladies on their balconies.


Pass the burnt toast please

One of the consequences of living in a foreign country and not being able to speak the language fluently is that many facets of life wash over me in a wave of white noise. I can get around though, make polite conversation when buying a coffee.I can generally do about most of the things a recently escaped mental patient could do, with attracting the same amount of attention. What I really do wish though is that I could follow or join in family arguments - because no one argues like the Greeks. Any foreigner married to a Greek will find family arguments mystifying, tense and exotic. So quickly do arguments escalate that comprehension is soon lost. Even if the argument begins with something as minor as burnt toast, within seconds it will escalate to something that you can only conclude must contain a murder and accusations of who had slept with the postman. Just being nearby to an everyday argument  is electrifying. You do not even need to know what the subject of such a heated exchange was. Anglo-Saxons don't argue with such vehemence unless they have a broken beer bottle in one hand or if someone did sleep with the postman.

Are you the postman?



Please feel free to argue..

Arguing in Greece is about as common as the English commenting on the weather. It happens all the time. A major flaw in most Greek language guides is that they do not have a 'How to Argue' section placed just after the 'Common Greetings and Farewells' to be found in chapter 1. Anybody is allowed to join in other people's arguments without even having the slightest idea of who the parties involved are or what they are arguing about. In fact they are encouraged to.

If you have any desire to learn how to argue properly, the next time you are in Greece you should skip a trip to the beach and hang around any road intersection. Traffic accidents are a truly wonderful sight to behold in Greece, because everyone gets involved, even the old lady who saw it all from her balcony and is now breathlessly shuffling across the street in her nightgown towards the gathering crowd. The only condition of participation is that you enter the fray shouting and gesticulating loudly. It is oddly appreciated, because at the root of it all, Greeks love company and the noisier the better. It is also felt that the noisier you are the more you know. Fortunately, Greek driving is rather conducive to accidents and so this enjoyable pastime of enjoining other people's arguments is never infrequent. In fact I think that this is the main reason that all Greek cafés face their chairs out onto the road. 



Scusi, no habla Ellenika...

Apart from much of daily life passing you by when you do not speak a language fluently, there are definitely advantages to it. It is important that the learner of a language is aware of this and does not readily get discouraged. Perhaps the greatest advantage is that you able to selectively choose what you pay attention to. Or at least pretend to. This is an invaluable tool when dealing with awkward mother-in-laws. Even when I do gain some level of respectable fluency I will keep it a closely guarded secret from my awkward mother-in-law.

In fact, the best defence is to feign complete incomprehension when cornered with a Greek mother-in-law. They are to be treated with the utmost care and are generally considered by Greek married men to be slightly less deadly than a mother bear and her cub. For the non-speaker it is the same ploy as rolling over and playing dead. The idea is that they will grow weary of pestering an idiot that cannot speak and eventually leave you alone. It is also about the only way you will escape a to-do list longer than your forearm and just because that can't help themselves, a parting gift of some well-meant criticism. You know the old adage, Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me - except when from my Greek mother-in-law? Well there you go. In fact this should be Chapter 3: When its best to know nothing, after Chapter 2: How to Argue Like a Local.


Shouting heads...

Greek television is another source of endless education and entertainment. But I fear it falls into the mother-in-law category and it is best for your sake that you don't know what is going on. It follows much the same vein as does a traffic accident in Greece. Routinely 6-8 pundits are featured on a single screen, all shouting at the same time. No viewer is ever any the wiser after these sorts of shows, but most importantly, a noisy gathering took place.

Initially I took an interest in Greek politics as a source of information and understanding of my new host country and it spurred me on to learn the language. Greek politicians are adored by atheists and believers in equal measure. They are proof for the former who feel vindicated that there can be no god because why would and sentient being create anything so abysmal and for the latter are sign that there is still much much work to be done. The news and politics have at times filled me with such dismay that I have no longer wanted to learn the language. Ignorance is sometimes bliss. If you are in any way at all curious to experience what a developing stomach ulcer feels like, then turn on your television to the news.





To contrails or not to contrails...

Greece is a wonderful place. A place of sun, food, smells, noise, meddlesome mother-in-laws, awful driving and conspiracy theories. Most countries will have their share of conspiracies and crop-circle chasers, but Greece seems inordinately blessed with theirs They range from the fantastic: Greek is an alien language because it is to complicated to be created by humans. As a long suffer of Greek I am starting to come round to this one. However, there are those that scoff at the alien link but still agree on the superior genetic coding of your average Greek greengrocer. So fantastic and intriguing is that it seems to come straight out of Ron L. Hubbard's world. This is a larger than marginal group. The previous Health Minister used to promote and sell a range of books (whilst his other job of being an MP) exclaiming the virtues of a superior culture and race. Why he is employed with the business of government is a true mystery. Superior beings probably do not need a health service which unfortunately is rapidly where Greece is headed.

Less fantastic but with a strong grip nonetheless on the majority is astrology. Astrologists are not confined as newspaper margin fillers next to the comic section or a tasty summer salad recipe. These specialists hold sway on mainstream television programmes. Never mind that the country is staunchly Orthodox, but it seems a union that can be tolerated happily. Previously, when my wife interviewed for a role that she felt didn't go well, her mother confidently proclaimed that of course it did because her star sign proclaimed so. But then again on the same day she also met a tall dark stranger and found some money which kind of infringed on the schedule for Sagittarians and Cancerians. Unfortunately she got the role, which means I can't get to say I told you so to my mother-in-law. But then again I am a Gemini which is generally felt as an incompatible choice for her daughter. I guess she is also waiting to say 'I told you so' one day. Oh well. For a country with such in ingrained mistrust of any sort of authority I would have expected a greater degree of scepticism here.
Whereas Greek politics put me off learning the language, this is an area that potentially can offer unending amusement.


FIN...

My path to fluency will undoubtedly be a long one, but I look forward to the day when I can partake noisily in arguments at traffic accidents or comment on how oddly accurate their horoscope was. At the moment though, my understood version of what a speaker or writer is trying to convey to me is often wildly divergent. It is sometimes a more interesting yet inaccurate version but it is why I always suspect the postman. All in all, Greece is a wonderful place, a place of sun, food, smells and noise. For now I am starting to realise that some things are just better left not understood. 

Saturday 14 June 2014

Never underestimate the power of laziness




A question of balance.

  
Time. There just isn't enough of it. So, I'll make this a short post. Nothing drives this fact home quite to the hilt as does a Monday morning. It is when the fluffy free notion of time hardens like a rock, when life seems to be its most bleak and coffee its bitterest. These mornings trigger the dark moments of inner reflection when you realise that something has to give in order to get back some of that fluffy free goodness.


We have all have these moments. Mine at the moment is the end of the school year rush. It is a time for assessment, report writing (12,000 words thank you very much), wrapping up the loose ends and if it were not for the endless box ticking, more time would be spent reflecting on whether you had gotten each child where you wanted them to be. Time, when teaching is like watching a Slinky spring going down stairs. It is compact and then then stretches out and then compacts again as it is pulled together ad then so on and so on. At the moment it is crunch time.

So chances are that on some Monday morning commute, you have grimly pondered where the ideal balance in life is, that point where the load of work is acceptable to the amount of free time. We like to think of it as that mystical point of equilibrium, of Ying and Yang, being bent over a barrel and having breakfast in bed. The reality is though that unless you are a Windsor Sax-Coburg-Gothe or a Greek member of parliament you will have to find some way to balance drudgery and dollars. 

To keep your balance, you must keep moving, at least so goes Albert Einstein's quote of life being rather like riding a bicycle. Stop and you'll fall over. Useful, true and accessibly inspiring enough that it often makes an appearance on the hallowed walls of Facebook users on those bleak Monday mornings when reading on the loo.
 Like most of us who have reached the stage of life where quite possibly we have lived half, or fairly near to half of our life or at least not counting on that lorry taking us out on the way to work. That fluffy-goodness-type of time really is of the essence and we just don't seem to have enough of it. The only way to make it all worth it is to achieve that something called Life Balance. But the point is that balance or equilibrium is infinitesimally fleeting, and just like riding a bicycle without fairy wheels it is just a series of averted falls. 


Inbuilt into this notion of life balance and ultimately time-management is that we just want to be lazy. It is in our DNA. It is the cornerstone of our evolution and is the banner of our progress. Laziness defines progress as we are always looking for an easier way to get things done and have always done so: making tools, sewing skins together, agriculture and gunpowder are just a few short cuts we have accomplished on the way to making life easier. Just about every great thing we have as a species has that hint of laziness in it. 

Ever since that fateful Tuesday (it usually was a Tuesday after a bleak Monday) millennia back in our nomadic drive when Tzork decided he had enough of the constant roaming for game and seeds to eat. He really wanted to spend more time his heavy brow-ed wife and child. He couldn't really have more than one kid because two was a real drag. In his quest to have more of a life balance he struck upon the idea to plant a few seeds and settle down. Most likely it was his wife's idea but then it is His-tory isn't it?  What could be better? He had come across a short-cut, the very first #lifehack. No walking around chasing unpleasantly bristly animals, just sitting and watching seeds grow. There now, for the first time time he could watch his cute large fore-headed heirs play down by the stream, and his equally hairy better half return with fresh berries from the nearby thicket. This was I am sure he though the secret to life. This trail quitter changed everything. Agriculture had arrived and allowed more time to guarantee a food source, breed and argue about how to decorate the dwelling with your wife who now had time for a pleasurable new hobby - nagging. This hastened the development of fermenting grain. 

Now that we are older, there always comes a point when you wonder whether it is really all worth it. All jobs will have that unavoidable grind to them. Tzrok found it out pretty quickly I am sure. Mondays will feel like Mondays do and Fridays like Fridays. Of course we do like to challenge ourselves in between Monday and Friday or at least we said we did during that interview, where we made some largely fatuous statement about where we saw ourselves in 5 years time. Inevitably, though we try to chip away at the work side of the deal, trying to get better or faster, or find more effective ways to do the same work in less time. Commendably of course, but it always does point to the idea that if given a choice, at least the most trustworthy and human of us would like more time to just do less wok.


Time management is temporary, and is eventually unsustainable

It took me several years to figure this out. I had had enough of spinning plates and trying to manage my time. I knew that I had to change how I viewed myself through my job, and also the benefits it afforded me. I left finance and chose to do something that I loved and had value. I hoped the rest would sort itself out.  A change of careers created the new balance that I sought. But despite that, the time has come to make more changes. I don't want to leave teaching by any means, but I want slightly different things, a little more of that and less of this. I know full well that my life will change immeasurably in the coming months and well...whatever balance I am striving to achieve will fall hopelessly out of whack. 



Cutting the dead wood and what have I done for me lately?

The biggest change to be made is how you view yourself through your job. If you love it, great, but if you are in for the wrong reasons you will always resent the time you will inevitably feel later as being misspent. 



  • Make a Not to Do List . I am not sure who said, this most probably my wife: with the exception of children, dogs and potted plants, most things will continue just fine left unattended for periods of time.
  • What you don't do determines what you can do
  • Be German about your time - get to the point. This applies to meetings, planning your day, phone calls etc. 
  • Spin less plates and let little bad things happen. Linked to the first point  - spin what you need to spin. 
  • Perhaps this is my favourite and this is borrowed from Tim Ferris - If you don't have time - you do not have priorities
  • Get rid of your TV or only watch what things that are genuinely interested in


The overall gist is to get rid of the trivial and unnecessary time consuming things that just do not help. 


No one likes a smug athlete... 

Athletes, especially triathletes love to explain how they manage their time, cramming in all the hours for training amongst work and family commitments. The embodiment of commitment. Somehow they just do it. The truth is though, they just give something up in order to pursue what they love. That giving up of things happens unconsciously. Pretty soon, after work drinks become less frequent and you only schedule to meet friends late on a Saturday afternoon after you have ridden, eaten and napped. Eventually you don't even meet those friends any more. Small changes that if you look at them are binary in their simplicity. The key to understanding this in hindsight is that the deadwood is cut away from doing something that is useful to what they love.