[the unbearable lightness of being - by Nik Ainley]

You know you're getting old when your all your own friends are talking about being old too. When everyone starts getting tired at midnight. When going out on a week night is taboo because we've got work the next morning. When there's more talk about good old days than making new good old days.Well I'm here to protest getting old! Live free, be creative, and make things happen! I love the feeling when you set out to do something and acheive your desires. But I feel the most impressed with life when the most unexpected things happen through serendipity. Those fortuitous string of events that bring together great memories and bonds between people. The only way to make these things happen is to do it yourself! Go out into the world and bring value to yourself and others. The most valueable treasures are those from the heart and soul.

Cheers to the nights our souls take our bodies for a joy ride!
Condemn the days of stinted growth and fruitless responsibility!

I did some meditation for the first time in a long time tonight and cleared my head of the craziness swirling around up there. You know, it felt great to just get away from all the crap that feeds our hunger for doing something day and night. It's always been either online, tv, going out, cell phone, eating, playing games or reading. Life seemed like it was going nonstop, addicted to things that eat up our time, and crashing when I get tired. If you haven't taken your mini-vacation from constant action, you should definitely make you get away ASAP!

Anyways, I realized today that my lifestyle and my outlook towards life is very different than just 6 months ago. It feels like college life is a distant memory and now it's the 9 - 5, living for the weekend, what is my purpose in life, life. I remember the old me used to love going out with everyone and anyone and doing anything at any time of the day. If anyone called, I'd be down to go. These days, the phone doesn't ring from random friends. I've fallen away from society and settled into my niche. I can just feel the way I talk is slower and less spontaneous. But the spark isn't gone, it wants to get out and be reinvigorated. But I don't want to go back to being irresponsible and blow my money away either. Where is the balance to become the rock star young professional? On one side, I want to work towards a successful steady future and on the other side I want to party, road trip, and flow around everywhere with everyone. What do I have to offer the world? What did I have to offer the world? Einstein once said "One knows from daily life that one exists for other people." I am all for the people. I want to contribute to many and those intimately around me to improve and help them in their own goals and aspirations. The power of generosity is a full circle theory. Pay it forward! We all end up better if we help each other out.

College life was living for the 24 hours/7 days a week lifestyle. Any time was a good time to do something. You tell me now you wanna go out on a Wednesday? Are you CRAZY? Well it's not that bad, but my bed time is latest 1am. Thanks or else I can't play with you anymore. Exams and cramming? I'm willing to swap a few hours a week of photo copying or creating mundane excel worksheets for all college finals. I remember cramming in ARC was actually fun before an exam. Chillin in a room full of your friends, messing around when you should be doing work, and taking stog breaks all night AND passing the exam anyway. I've decided whole heartedly that my future is in starting my own business. I'm garnering the materials and experience for that today for what may be something big on my own in the future. I think it's gotta include getting back to my people. The people I loved being around and just goofing off because all this growing up isn't fun unless you can take a few suckas down with you too. See you all around soon.

GREECE, BABY!

[our hotel, our home for 5 days]

I've never been too good with this updating and time stuff... But finally I have some time to show you my pictures and tell the stories from my trip to Greece. My travel companions were Alice, Ali, Grace, Pong, and Kris. The 6 of us on a journey to party hard and be hardcore tourists. We walked near and far, through thick and thin, and after 5 days, I can confidently say we have conquered all of the city of Athens. Here is our story:

DAY 1 - FRIDAY

Let's start by talking about the airport and our flight. After we had met up at Pong's house and were graciously driven by close friends and relatives. Thank you whoever you were! =P At the airport, if some of you haven't been there, there is a haven for all international flyers. This place is called THE DUTY FREE SHOP. An amazing place where all things sold are not only tax free but also MUCH MUCH CHEAPER! Hallujah. Especially alcohol, cigarettes, and cologne. I browse through their selection of whisky and choose Woodfood Reserve Bourbon for only 20 bucks. It's a good deal. I decide this would be good to drink and have a good time on the plane. Lo and behold, after serving up glasses for the guys on the plane, on my second cup, the stewardest comes by and asks me what I'm drinking. Thinking I'm in trouble, I answer, "oh nothing." She asks to see my cup and tells me she needs to "confiscate this cup of alcohol" and I tell her it's fine. Not thinking straight, right after our exchange, she snaps, "where did you get this." I pull the bag out and say "oh from here." Next thing I know she tells me she has to confiscate that too. BITCH!!! Then she gives her dumbass speech on how if I would like to buy alcohol from the plane, she would be able to serve. DOUBLE BITCH!!! At least I got to pick it back up after we landed in Milan. Whore. When we arrive in Milan, the 4 guys want to go have a stog and the girls want to go shopping. So we head our separate ways thinking we can just meet back in the shops area because the guards said it'd be ok and it was ok in Newark Airport. When we go outside, we see puny cars in Milan, especially the Smart Car. The thing is a joke, we think we can pick it up later just the 4 of us guys when we're buzzed with beer muscles of course. After our little breather, we head back to the gate where the girls were and get sent all over the place because we did not have tickets to enter that certain gate. Thinking we're fucked with no cell phones or any way of communicating to our friends, we plead with the guards and eventually Ali convinces one of the more fluent English speakers to let him in to get the others. All is swell. After that debacle, we grab a slice of real airport Italian pizza and pasta. Tastes a little different. Then we fly to Greece and meet up with our limo driver, Dan. A cool guy who was born and used to live in NYC. He gives us a few pointers about Greece and a pleasant ride to our hotel. Pong and I walk around the block to scope out some of the stores and restaurants and I make a friend at God's Restaurant. We finally get checked into the hotel and decide to eat at the restaurant next to God's Restaurant called Vitro. I must say, we must have been lucky to get the best restaruant in Greece on the first try. They gave us the best hospitality, the famous Greek hospitality. Every other restaurant afterwards didn't compare. We later found out it was featured in the New York Times as well as other highly accredited review resources. Then we pregame at the hotel and go to a party in Montersaki at this place called Soul. This is where I don't remember the rest of the night...

DAY 2 - SATURDAY

We wake up a little late this day at around 1pm. Alice, our all knowing tour guide, brings us to the Acropolis only to find that the path to the Parthenon is closed on Saturdays. So we walk around to another side and find a hill and climb it, well Ali and I climb the hill while the other 4 walked the path because they're weak sauce. At the top of the hill we could see almost all of Athens. I'm looking out and I hear some music and look down into an area and ask Alice what is it over there. She tells me it's probably the market. I say we should walk there from here. What a retard idea that actually worked. We go down the hill, sometimes running dangerously through steep dirt paths, pass pot smokers by the trees, through broken fences, between some shady alleyways and finally onto a main road to the markets. We do some shopping and eat at a restaurant in Alice's Time Out Athens book. The food was salty except the Oxtail pasta. That was the damn diggity. After lunch we walk around and find a Cathedral and realize it's probably the Greek Saturday Mass. We walk in and find a crazy old lady in a green sweater hounding any person who does something "wrong" to her. Like walk too close to the chain links blocking us from the red carpet or if someone walks through the main doors instead of the side doors. After we felt uncomfortable not knowing a thing the people were saying in the Cathedral we left for the hotel to take a nap. This was also the first time we rode the Metro system in Greece, which is based on the trust system. That is something that would never fly in New York City. So we bought our tickets and soon found they don't do anything but stamp a date and time and you walk on to the subways without anyone checking, EVER. Fun times in the Metro. For dinner we go to Tavern Strofi. I had a kid with origans and potatoes for the first time. It was very tender and delicious. Otherwise, the food was kind of salty too. We pregame at the hotel and then head out to party at a club called Envy or NV. The music was bumping, the people were dancing, and then we decide to WALK home from the club through the shady empty streets of Athens, dangers unknown to us could have been behind any corner but we arrived home safely. All in all, it was a good night.

DAY 3 - SUNDAY

Me and Ali wake everyone up at 7am to start our hardcore tourist day. We all stumble into the restaurant in the hotel and have breakfast, they have funky tasting orange juice. Then we head to the city market again to shop. We take the train to the Parliment building and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for the hourly changing of the guards. At the Parliment building there are hundreds of pigeons hanging out by the guards. Me and Ali try fucking with them by walking slowly into the middle and then do a quick and loud high five and start yelling. You know what happened? Nothing, the birds aren't afraid of humans. Stupid animals. I tried kicking one but they're still just a little smarter than that. Afterwards, we headed to the National Gardens next door. This is where I found my new friend, a dog!!! He was a good little boy, I named him Scotty and then he became my loyal companion for the rest of the day. We walked to the Temple of Zeus, walked up to the Acropolis and up to the Parthenon but it started to rain so after 15 minutes we headed back down. Dogs were not allowed up the path to the Parthenon and to my surprise, after I told Scotty to stay, I found him still at the gates waiting for us. I tried feeding him a few times and every time he refused the food I fed him. At the last cafe, he found a cat and ran away. How typical, stupid dog. We took a nap at the hotel and then went to Kolonaki to eat dinner at an Italian restaurant. They had fucked up apple pie with ice cream there and I knew it. The Lycabettus Mountain was right up the street from the restaurant and we trekked up many steps to the lift station and took it up right in time (the things are real slow). When we arrive at the top, the view was breath taking. You can see all of Athens and more from there. We spend time in awe of the spectacular view and then decide to walk down the mammoth of a mountain at night, with no lights. We ended up in some shady ass street opening and walk our way down to the train station. We get back to the hotel and people were not in the mood to go back out UNTILLLL I hypnotized them. It was good times speaking in slow low tones giving them energy to come out to party and have fun. This lead us to have one of the best and cheapest drinking nights EVER. We go to the "SOHO" of Greece and walk around looking for lounges and bars to drink at. We hit up a chill place called Cosmopolis where we were greeted by a gigantically tall waitress. As we were leaving, we get attacked my gypsies trying to sell roses. Scary stuff. We yell and push them away and head to our next bar. I don't know what it was called but they were playing American hip hop music so we decide to head in. Kids were partying like frat boys there and we decide this is pretty cool. The bartender was insane, riding bar stools like bulls and wiling out for every round of shots. We all get rounds of Ouzo (the main Greek liquor) and some of the people mingle with our crowd. We find out they are from Ohio on Spring Break also and next thing we know there are rounds androunds of Ouzo and Rocky (the bartender's own concoction) for FREE. It turned out to be a pretty wild night and we all went home happy to have gone out.

DAY 4 - MONDAY

This time no one wants to wake up and I go eat breakfast with everyone in my pajamas and get funny stares from the other tourists. After breakfast, we finally climb up to the Parthenon on the Acropolis. The thing we've seen everyday and every night from every part of the city. Let me tell you, the thing is humongous when you get up to it. I have no idea how the Greeks did it back in the day. I told Alice that they had millions of slaves back in the day and they built the pillers by sliding the piller disks under each one by lifting the whole thing. She might have believed me, or not. =P We then proceed to take a monster walk to Ancient Agora. This was a temple area where lots of statues and buildings layed. Then we went back to Kolonaki to shop and eat at YO! Sushi. It was really cool because they had the sushi on the rotating tracks. We then took a nap and then headed out for the shady areas of the Pairas port town. All the seediest people live there trying to lure you into their restaurants. We got hurried into a restaurant after getting out of our taxis and had that bad feeling until we found a nice relaxing seafood restaurant with decent prices. One bad thing, salty ass stuffed squid. Otherwise, the calamari and other seafood was delicious. This night we didn't party because we were all tired and just passed out early.

DAY 5 - TUESDAY

Our last day before leaving for home. We take a late breakfast and go to Monterisaki to shop at the markets again and this time buy all our souvenirs. We go to the first shop on the hill and they give us 50% off on all their items and buy a few things from there. We move onto other shops and realize that first shop is the best in the whole market and buy almost everything they sell. They loved us at that shop, especially the old little lady who had the biggest smile in the world. We went back to the SOHO of Greece to go see an art gallery but found it was closed. Not to be discouraged, we were all looking forward to our last meal in Athens at our favorite restaurant, Vitro! Not failing us, the meal was just as good as the first one. We bid our hosts good bye and decided to spend our last night smoking Cuban cigars, drinking wine and whisky, and recaping our trip.

 

THAT'S ALL FOLKS!