Sunday, May 28, 2006

Post running

I'm back home from an unmercifully hot Athens, after a week of conferen- cing, networking and eating enormous quantities of food, more than I'm likely to experience ever again. A greek colleague tells me that not finishing everything on the plate is a major insult to the chef, the restaurant staff and to greek hospitality in general. Since I'm quite a petite mangeuse, I must have offended many souls this past week, sorry for that!

Interestingly, I sometimes got a couple of raised eye brows as an answer when mentioning my nationality to other conference goers and locals in Athens. And when the guys and girls at restaurants try to lure me into their particular restaurant by addressing me in - what they think - my mother tongue, they never get it right. I counted seven different options as to where my home base is (one being China), and no one got it right. But my action scheme immediately after closing my apartment door with all the luggage and tax free bags in my arms uncovers my nationality quite well though. I did the following in a chronological order. 1) I fired up the sauna 2) I fired up my computer and internet connection 3) I put some heavy metal on 4) I enjoyed some dark bread with shrimp mixture on top.

I'm quite eager to start studying the proceedings of the 2 conferences closer as there were many really interesting past and on going studies presented but that's out of the question today as I definitely need the rest. I ran 10 K at a running event this afternoon and after adding that to walking one week around Athens in quite new shoes, my legs are punishing me with aching, soar knees. So nope, this day is devoted to lying comfortably in the couch watching television and playing games.

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