Citizens of the world

I'm not an Athenian, not a Greek, but I'm a citizen of the world

I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

This quote from an ambiguous ancient source (credited to Socrates but more likely uttered by Diogenis) has quite a wide range of interpretations.

To me it means that you are neither bound by nor entitled to your “national heritage”. Some attributes you acquire without choice or much thought. If you subtract those attributes from yourself (not permanently; you may wish to claim them back), you are free to discover your own self, make your choices and contributions to humanity. There is no better way to achieve this than by travelling…

A formal dinner at McDonalds, henceforth the “McFormal”

So my girlfriend really likes McDonalds. I try to discourage her from eating there whenever I can so this was the perfect scenario for  surprise! I despise Valentine’s day like the next person so I thought it would be hilarious to have a formal dinner at McD’s! (our home town -Cambridge,UK- is all about “formal dinners”)

This was the setup: I told my girlfriend to meet me outside a nearby fancy Italian restaurant. I went to McD’s 15min earlier with a friend (thanks Michele!!) and asked the manager if I could set up a formal table. They laughingly agreed, but “no flames in the candles in case the fire alarm goes off”, fair enough. So we set the table in front of a bunch of lol-ing teenagers, getting reactions like “omg! this is soooo cute”, “can I take a picture??”, “we should ask them to dim the lights!!”, “we’ll sing a song for you!”. I told my friend to wait at the table and go order as soon as he sees us coming in.

So I went outside to meet my girlfriend nearby and asked her to close her eyes (at this point her suspicions of something “fishy” going on came true..). I gave her a couple of swirls for disorientation (she knows the location of McD’s quite well) and guided her to the entrance. She opened her eyes, laughed, and said “aw, what a great idea!”. So we went inside the restaurant and I wondered out loud, “where should we sit, where should we sit… Oh! This looks like a nice one!” and pointed to the set table. She was completely speechless. After the first wave of omgs, she wondered how we would get food. At that point, my friend arrived with our orders, which he placed on our nice crockery and then wished us a good evening. We filled our fancy glasses with sprite and coke and had an awesome meal among giggling passer-bys…

McValentines

A “mangas” went out for a stroll

mangas

Mangas (Greek: μάγκας [ˈma(ŋ)ɡas]) is the name of a social group in the counterculture of pre-WWI Greece. Mangas was a label for men belonging to the working class, behaving in a particularly arrogant/presumptuous way, and dressing with a very typical vesture composed of a woolen hat, a jacket (they usually wore only one of its sleeves), a tight belt (used as a knife case), stripe pants, and pointy shoes. Other features of their appearance were their long moustache, their bead chaplets, and their idiosyncratic manneristic limp-walking…