Introducing myself bringing a sea breeze from Greece

[amiridis]

Hi,

My name is Petros and I live in Greece. I am a programmer. I was an employee for 8 years and Steve made me leave my company and start my own business.

Steve, you did this by inspiring me through your articles. No way I could find new opportunities while being an employee. Thank you for that.

There are many things Steve says I cannot fully understand. It must be because I am not a native English speaker or maybe I am a bit slow . I hope these forums help me understand better.

Greetings to you all, and I hope we get to know each other better over time.

Cheers!

[Redhatlady]

kalimera

I have just joined today. I was telling someone two days ago that I have to date fulfilled all my life's ambitions, my last one, being to go to Greece. I thought it was a wonderful Country. I have been three times now.

You live in a wonderful country. When I was in Greece the first time I bought a kombola and I treasure it.

I will love hearing from a Greek person. You have so much spiritual histrory there.

redhatlady

[amiridis]

Kalimera Redhatlady,

Nice to hear you liked Greece. Maybe our history has the element of spirituality... but this is lost these days.

Many of us Greeks, believe that because our ancient history was so full of wonderful things... the whole world should respect us. This is a huge problem, because if you want respect you should earn it by your current actions. In my mind, I cannot think of something we do these days to earn this respect.

I don't want you to spoil the image you like to have about Greece and it is perfectly all right to recall the positive things our ancestors taught us.

I want to be different than the majority in my country and try to lead by example. Maybe I can find Greeks that think in a similar way.

I think if I gradually improve myself, I can make Greek people open their minds and start improving too.

I have one example: If you come in Greece and you are a pedestrian, you will notice in a while that Greek drivers don't know you exist. Even if there is a pedestrian crossing without traffic lights, you must first wait and make sure no car is passing and then cross the road. 99 out of 100 drivers will not stop for you to cross the road. I started doing this. I stop whenever I see pedestrians waiting to get across. In the beginning, the cars behind me would start honking at me. After three years, I notice a change in the behavior of drivers... a slow change but a noticeable change. More drivers respect the pedestrians. We are not there 100%, but the change is encouraging. Maybe it is because the elders are dying and the younger drivers have a different education. I like to believe that the more people see a certain behavior in the road coming from other drivers, the more they want to follow that behavior.

Oops, I got carried away...

Cheers,
Petros

[Redhatlady]

What a lovely open post. Yes I see that respect has to be earned when one has a home in a country where there is strong tradition. On the other hand I went on a guided walk about tour and the guide told us that Greeks are a Proud people and one could see that his face and manner showed this. Maybe respect for ones past has also to be respect for ones present.(life) Have I understood you correctly on this?

The French have the lovely phrase Au Revoir - till we meet again. We in the UK informally say ta-ta (bye) for now. How do you say till we meet again in Greek and how does it look like written in Greek.

[amiridis]

Well, I don't know how to make big statements using English, so I am just going to say that we need to relax a little bit (we Greeks) and start thinking how we can improve ourselves.

We have a phrase that means exactly "Till we meet again": It's "Eis to epaneidhn". And it looks like this in Greek:



This is the formal way to say it and we don't use it much these days. The informal way is "Tha ta poyme" or "Ta leme":



So... ta leme.

[Redhatlady]

kalispera,

you are doing well in English just as you are. Lovely to hear from you. Do you live in a bit city or village may I ask? Do you have like minded friends near your home? I live in a small town, twenty miles from a city. Transport is not especially good though where I live so distance is a big thing. I have no like minded friends near my home. That is why I like the Internet.

Ta leme.

[amiridis]

Kalimera,

Thank you for your nice comments about my English knowledge. It's an area I always try to improve. It is the only foreign language I have ever learned.

I live in Thessaloníki the second biggest city in Greece. It is the second capital of Greece. I don't know if the notion "second capital" exists in other countries too. I also don't know what its practical meaning is. Maybe it is just an honorary title.

Thessaloníki may be the second biggest city, but its population is "slightly" less than the first one. Athens has about 4-5 million residents and Thessaloníki about 1-1.5 million.

I just have one like minded friend that I can meet in person here in my city. He is interesting because although native Greek, he is very different and more open minded than the majority. He helped me years ago wake up and start questioning the things I was taught in school. I thank him for that. Maybe I was going to wake up anyway, but I know he helped me do it earlier. I know this because when I was shaken by his views, I resisted in the beginning. I had gone through various stages from being angry, in denial, skeptical etc. until I finally started to reexamine everything again.

Internet is the best for these things because you can talk with so many people from different countries and cultures and learn useful things. Nevertheless, meeting in person with like minded people would also be great.

Cheers

[Redhatlady]

Kalimera

When I was younger I went to Church a lot and went to a school where Christianity was the only teaching. I learnt that St paul wrote letters to Christians in the Early Church but had no idea where any of the places were. I never imagined that I would ever have the chance to travel out of England. I did not know that St Paul wrote to people in Greece then. I forgot about it all but when I started looking to visit Greece - Eureka - there was Corinth and Thessalonica and Ephesus. (Ephesus perhaps is now part of Turkey possibly? Geography still not that good see)

Yes we do have second largest, third largest etc cities in England. London though perhaps is more that THE largest city, it is for me very different and unique from the second/third etc cities. Why? Not sure - Royalty connection, nearest to major airports, history,and so on. I am sure those who are on this site and live in the other cities will disagree!