Happy birthday to me

Οι αρκετοί e-pals μου (μη Έλληνες, όλοι τους), μου έχουν φάει τα αυτιά να αρχίσω να γράφω και στα Αγγλικά για να καταλαβαίνουν κι αυτοί οι δύσμοιροι τι γράφω, οπότε για σήμερα τουλάχιστον, ‘το γυρίζω’…

Since A) today is my birthday, B) some people, especially 30 somethings, tend to get moody on their birthday, and C) this blog is all about my upcoming trip to India, I decided to have as topic of the day, this one: the joys of seeing the glass half full, instead of half empty! (Yep, an optimist I am indeed, as well as a positive thinker by nature –I wish to believe). Last night I was thinking about how I feel now that I am… officially 31. I gave it some thought, I brought in mind who I was and where I was ten years ago, and believe it or not, I came to the conclusion that being 31… well, ROCKS! For a series of reasons… To name only one, today I have the luxury to make myself little ‘gifts’ that ten years ago I couldn’t even dream of. Which brings me to my soon to begin trip to India and how my “I prefer seeing the glass half full rather than half empty” mentality was tested repeatedly these last weeks/months. Beforehand, I’m clearing out that no test was really hard, the idea of canceling my plan did NOT cross my mind at any point. It’s just that every now and then, ‘issues’ came up, ‘issues’ I had to deal with, and it was up to me to do so thinking positively, or getting pissed. For a start, the guys from the Indian embassy at Athens informed me that they didn’t accept mail visa applications (unlike the Syrians or the Australians, among others), which meant that I had to make the 500km (that’s 310 miles for our fellow Americans) trip to Athens, ‘waste’ two days off from work (days I was planning on spending at India), plus, spend money I was hoping to save for the trip. Instead of getting pissed, I looked at the bright side of it, and a brrrright side there was for sure, since I seized the opportunity to spend 24 great hours with my uncles in Athens, who had invited me over a zillion times, but I was never that much of a good nephew to… honour them with a visit. Plus, I got to make a short sightseeing around Athens, which I loved. I bought a 24 hours metro/tram/trolley/bus ticket and boy, did I use it or DID I USE IT?... (especially using the metro system -non existent in my own city, Thessaloniki- made me feel so nice that I must have looked to other passengers like a happy-happy puppy swinging its tail…)

Then, there was the big ‘health’ issue. This is going to be my 38^th trip abroad (bragging?! I?! Naaaaa... Oh well, maybe just a liiittle), but up to now I never needed any vaccines before traveling somewhere, I never had to talk to a doctor, I never had to consider taking pills to protect me from certain diseases while on a trip. I didn’t jump out of excitement hearing that it would be wise to have a needle stuck on my arms five times before taking the flight to Mumbai, and hell no, I was anything but thrilled reading about the possible side-effects of Lariam, the anti-malaria pills I’m taking before, during, AND after the trip, but, on the other hand, talking to doctors, reading, searching, cross-checking info (helloooo, journalist writing these lines, what did you expect?), was damn interesting. I learned things, things I wouldn’t have learned if it wasn’t for my commitment to make this trip to India, no matter what.

I’m trying to keep all my posts relatively short, so I’ll wrap this one up with one last ‘test’ I had to take, possibly the most pleasant of all, for a languages’ freak like My Highness… Every time I visit a new country, I do my… homework and learn some basic expressions. Hungarian, Hebrew and Arabic had been the biggest challenges up to now, but doing the same preparation for a trip to India makes learning 20 key phrases in… Hebrew for example, look like piece of cake. “Is Hindi THAT more difficult than Hebrew?” This is NOT the question… The thing is that Hindi may be, indeed, the closest India has to a ‘national language’, but if you are traveling to several different States in the south and you are vain enough to want to impress the locals (my case), you learn every single key phrase in Hindi AND Telugu (Andhra Pradesh) AND Tamil (Tamil Nadu) AND Kannada (Karnataka) (tired? There is more…) AND Malayalam (Kerala) AND Konkani (Goa) (patience, just one left) AND Marathi (Maharashtra), in other words, in every single MAIN language of the States you are visiting. “What a pain…”, someone could say. “Why bother?...” What a question! Because this is part of the fun when preparing for a trip!! “What a geek…”

Bottom line: I haven't stepped my feet on Indian soil yet, but this trip has already taught me heaps of stuff, plus, has given me lots of reasons to get excited about. All it took was a good dose of positive thinking...