Cretan Chronicles

We have boarded the ferry from Iraklio to Piraeas. All cabins were booked, we are put on a waiting list (in case of cancellations) but we are in position 32, not a big chance to actually get a cabin. No problem, we’ll find a place to stretch our limbs.
In the mean time we’ve started of on a reasonably good foot by feeding ourselves in the restaurant of the ferry: veal, tsoutsoukakia, horta, and blue cheese, washed down with some dry red wine. Could be worse. We’re heading for the bar for a sleeping cap and then hit the sack.

I am sitting here in parko Georgiadou in the centre of Iraklio, a frappé in front of me, latin music floating in from behind, painstakingly composing this post on the small iPhone keyboard while keeping a worried eye on my battery indicator. It went from 61% to 47% in the last 10 minutes.
This is my first real post to my weblog on the iPhone. If it works well I will use this to blog our vacation in Argolida next week.

[Edit] Rrrrrrright! A few observations are in order here. Apparently — with Wordpress for iPhone — photos can only be added at the end of a post, so I won’t be able to include captions per photo or surround photos with relevant text. Since iPhone does not know what cut-and-paste is, I also won’t be able to edit my posts by going directly to the administrative interface of my weblog on the iPhone. Moreover, there seems to be a problem with the theme that I use, or with one of the plugins, such that the formatting of all the tidbits that follow a post are totally messed up if a photo is the last element in the post. I will manually edit all these post to look a bit better when we get back from vacation, but for the time being I can only be sorry to leave you with this mess.
[Edit some more] I fixed the formatting problem with the stuff trailing the last photo. At least that looks better now.

In about a week’s time we will pack some essentials into a couple of small rucksacks, take the ferry from Iráklio to Piraeás and set off on a discovery of a part of Greece that I have wanted to (re-)visit for a long time: Argolida, the name itself sounds like a symphony. It was in the summer of 1970 when my high school organized a trip to Greece that I first saw the open air theatre of Epidavros, the Lions’ Gate of Mycenae and the archaeological site in Tiryns. I have very little if any visual memories of those places after all those years. The asclepieion at Epidavros was the most celebrated healing center of the Classical world, the place where ill people went in the hope of being cured. Yvonne has a natural interest in such places.

When Tom sent me Henry Miller’s “The Colossus of Maroussi” as a gift, I devoured it from cover to cover in one night. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the sequel to my previous article iPhone 3G lands in Greece, describing my first experiences with the iPhone 3G in Greece. Disclaimer: this is not a product review, I don’t even try to pretend to give you a balanced report of the iPhone 3G. That has been done many times, and there are numerous sites where you can find those reviews. 

Arriving at home with my new toy, I immediately connected it to my iMac over the USB interface. I thought I would be have to charge the battery, but that turned out to be unnecessary. iTunes started up automatically and invited me first to register. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday at 16:49 I got an e-mail message in my inbox from Vodafone, the chosen carrier for the iPhone in Greece. This was “an advanced warning” announcing that the next day, August 22nd, they would officially start selling the iPhone 3G all over Greece. Advanced indeed. To be sure that I wouldn’t be making the trip to the city center for nothing, I called them at their principal location in Iraklio, asking for confirmation that they had indeed iPhones in stock and to inquire about the tariff plans and price for the device. That was around 19:00 (shops stay open until 21:00 on Thursdays).

A friendly lady confirmed that they had indeed “a number of iPhones” in stock, but she didn’t know about prices. That would be made public on the day of the launch, the next day. Huh? I checked Vodafone’s website regularly from then on, hoping to find more specifics about the program. The last time I checked was at 01:05 in the morning, and nothing had changed yet. Read the rest of this entry »

The English language version of Kathimerini had this to say this morning:

I would be the first to say that road improvements are important what with the growing number of cars on our roads every year. But at the same time I can’t help asking myself the drivers on the Cretan roads: Read the rest of this entry »

For the last couple of weeks my log files showed some funny referrals from what turned out to be a Microsoft IP address. Each time a single search term would lead to my site, apparently from the Microsoft search.live.com site. Search terms included: money, crete, about, greece, uncategorized, harddisk, stress etc… My site doesn’t even rank for some of those terms. The full referral URL takes the form of http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=greece&form=QBHP (substitute “greece” for any other single word search term). Read the rest of this entry »

You might have heard of Lively, the virtual world launched last week by Google. I decided to leave another shore and start a new career as a Cretan kafeníon owner there. Come by and have a chat if you want. For the moment you need a Windows based system, Macs and Linux are not allowed entrance yet. Read the rest of this entry »

With all the focus on water lately, I forgot to mention that we are going to make a major improvement to my working conditions. I decided to forgo the Royal Enfield motorbike for the moment and spend some money on a decent air condition for the bedroom/office. Stupidly enough we went shopping for one of those last Saturday and bought what I think is a decent model, a Toshiba RAS-10 GK Series, for those who know these things. It’s a so called “split type”, which can be used to cool and heat. Read the rest of this entry »