Still shopping

Continuing our shopping expedition on Rhodes last Friday… After the surreal experience of Jumbo, we had another fairly odd one on the way back to town as our driver rattled off his list of things he didn’t like about the people who ripped him off one lunchtime. We booked him to collect us later and dropped off our shopping at the Plaza Hotel where we stopped for a drink while we planned the next shopping assault. The list, written on two Post It notes, wasn’t too complicated, a visit to Zara, try and find a cable to link the DVD machine to the Smart TV (still not organised that, but I am sure I have such a lead in the house somewhere), look for inspiration, and buy a Christmas gift for Godson #2 which involved a visit to the basement of the Hondas Centre.

That done and a new coat bought for Neil, we had lunch at a café/bar in Mandraki called Jaspers. It was still warm enough to eat outside as long as jackets were zipped up, and we decided on a simple chicken dish. Well, fairly simple: massive chicken breast halved and filled with a mayonnaise and asparagus spears, dripping in BBQ sauce and coming with a bowl of fries (€12.50 each – not the fries, the whole dish). That was more than enough to refuel us before heading back to the Plaza to settle in and wait for the boat.

As an aside, you may be interested to know that the indoor smoking ban has returned to Greece, and this time it looks like it’s here to stay. Special officers have been sent to islands to train the police (on how to identify people with a lit cigarette in their hands, I guess), inspections are being made, and fines are being handed out to both proprietors and smokers who disobey. I was reminded of the time the husband was in hospital, and I was sitting out in the ward waiting room with a local lady who was smoking beneath the ‘No Smoking’ sign. “We Greeks don’t like being told what to do,” she explained, puffing away. Not quite as unsettling as seeing the orthopaedic surgeon coming from ‘backstage’ in his bloodied greens with a fag hanging out of his mouth, but that was several years ago now. Even locally, there’s no smoking in the bars which isn’t so much of an issue in the summer, but the sight of local friends hanging out of the Rainbow doorway while there’s an AEK match on the TV inside will take some getting used to.

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Mumbo Jumbo

I’m all shopped out now, an hour or so in Jumbo does that for you. It was a fun day if you don’t mind hideous music and the smell of plastic. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Jumbo in Rhodes (or anywhere, I expect), but it’s something of a culture shock after Symi. Maybe that should be a ‘lack of culture’ shock, I don’t know, but it’s certainly a useful if startling place to visit. The idea is to pop in for a couple of Christmas things, pick up some sensibles for the house and then pop out again. Er, yeah, well, it never quite works like that. You end up driving a trolley around an obstacle course starting with children’s toys and ending with a free for all in the confection department, and by then, your trolley is piled high with unmissable bargains and all kinds of things you didn’t know you needed until you saw them and realised you could no longer manage without.

I’m not being entirely serious, of course, we found all manner of things we had on a list and more besides. I was very impressed with the aisle widths. At some moments, even when entering a chicane in household goods, there was enough space for the trolley to get through, albeit only an extra couple of milometers either side. I realised that someone had the job of measuring and checking the aisle width all the way around the thousands of square feet that make up the place to ensure there was — breath in — just enough room to squeeze through. I was also rather impressed with the car accessory department. I found myself wondering why I was attracted to the rubber footwell mats until I realised the smell of the material was making me high, and I had to move on because the display of windscreen sun shields was reflecting the Christmas lights and tripping me out.

All this was accompanied by some of the worst Christmas music you could imagine, which also added to the fun. Among the chart-topping, heart-stopping, Japanese torture playing obtrusively from above, we had  Jumbo’s own ‘carols’, a wayward version of ‘Favourite Things’ sung in Greek with slightly altered melody to, I assume, avoid copyright infringement, and the song I titled “How many times can we get in rhymes, artistry forsaking for making the baking while taking the…” Whatever. It was one of the best displays I’ve heard of how not to write a song, or at least, if you do, how to write a song to show everyone else how not to overdo your internal rhymes for the sake of having them in there. They had even managed to find a series of rhymes for ‘happy’, one of which was ‘crappy’ and I couldn’t have agreed more. Still, it was a laugh, but I can’t help feeling so sorry for the people that have to work in it all day.

Anyway, the bulk of the Christmas tat shopping done (along with some very useful things for the kitchen that I’d forgotten we didn’t own and wondered how we had lived so long without), and we took a taxi back to town to visit other shops. The taxi was driven by a sit-com character who has a Romanian stripper for a wife, another girl on the side and a dislike of certain islanders because he once visited and was ripped off for two plates of chips, a salad and some rubbery calamari. (€130.00, allegedly, and I’m not mentioning names.) Still, I learnt a few new swearwords and booked him back to pick us up later for the boat. But that’s another story.

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Morning

Rhodes today. Back to the blog on Monday. Here’s a couple of shots of yesterday morning.

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Symi Books For Christmas?

As we are now approaching Christmas, I thought it was time for some blatant advertising. I know many loyal readers and Symi Dreamers have some or all of my Symi books already, but if you haven’t, or if you know someone who might like to know more about the island, how about a copy of Symi 85600 to get you started?

This book is a collection of notes, emails and other thoughts from when we first moved to the island 17 years ago. This book is followed by Carry On Up The Kali Strata which is a collection of articles (with photos) I wrote for The Symi Visitor newspaper back in the day, plus a few other stories and anecdotes.

The third in chronological order is Village View, a collection of blog posts from 2013 that takes you through a whole year on the island.

The forth, a mix of Symi stories, more about how we came to be here and other travel tales from my past, is Symi, Stuff & Nonsense.

As well as those four factual books, you might like to delve into a novel, and my first was Jason and the Sargonauts. This is a comedy-mystery set on Symi a few years ago and also in the past. There’s a lot of fact in it, manly around the WWII sections, and the rest is based on the classic Argonauts tale, except my Argonauts are on a SARGO holiday for the over 60s. Then, if you want something darker and scarier, The Judas Inheritance is the novel on which the film The 13^th was based. Again, there’s some Symi history in there – though the island of the story is not called Symi, and the rest is pure, horror fantasy.

And, while you are considering who on your gift list might like one or more of those, I shall get back to writing my other stories. If you head to my Amazon author page, you can find all my books listed, a mix of comedy/satire, thriller and a couple of horrors. There, that’s your shopping for the day all sorted, and all books are available in paperback from various Amazon outlets, though the links given here are for Amazon UK. If you want them for your own Kindle library, they are also on Kindle and in Kindle Unlimited if you want to put them on your to-read list. Meanwhile, here on Symi, it’s clear and cold and very crisp, and we’re putting plans in motion to have a day in Rhodes on Friday which is currently the easiest day for the boat as it’s a ‘late’ one, I mean, at 08.10 in the morning rather than 05.05 or 06.05 as it is on Monday and Wednesday.

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Kotsovolos GR

Chilly mornings, clear skies, calm seas but grey, we’re definitely falling into winter over here on Symi. As you know, for me, that means a lot of time at the computer typing away, the occasional foray to the supermarket, far too much television and sofa-surfing and not enough walking, but hey, that’s how it goes. I was growing increasingly concerned about my computer. It’s five years old and does really well, but of late, it’s started switching on its fan every few minutes, and I worry that perhaps that’s about to ‘go.’ I did some research over the weekend to try and find out why it’s doing this and found all kinds of alarming possibilities. Checking into things further, I discovered that the fan comes on when the CPU usage goes up past 60% or thereabouts and set about discovering what is causing this.

After investigation, I deleted several small programmes that were not needed, things left over from software I no longer use or even have installed. For example, I changed my make of keyboard from Logitech to Microsoft, but there are still its and pieces of Logitech running in the background for no reason. I also found out my anti-virus, Microsoft and other things were running continuous checks and updates, and so on, so I took back control of them. Anyway, the fan still runs off and on all the time, and once I’m tuned into that sound, I worry each time it happens and can’t stop hearing it. And the machine is getting on a bit now, so I finally decided it was time to buy a new one.

I use a company called Kotsovolos, which, I guess, is a bit like Dixons and other electrical stores. I’ve bought washing machines and televisions from them over the years, the prices are good, the goods last, and delivery is free. I ordered a new laptop on Sunday morning and on Monday received a text telling me the order had been received. Later in the day, I had another one telling me it would be ready for dispatch on 5^th and would be on its way then. That’s one of the good things about the company, they keep you informed. I hope the laptop I am using now lasts until the new one arrives, which I expect to happen within the next two weeks. The TV we bought recently only took two weeks to arrive, as did the cooker a couple of years ago, so fingers crossed, everything will stay working until the new one is here and set up. Now, that’s something which will take a day out of my schedule as I have programmes to find, sites and services to reconnect to, email clients to set up and so on, but it will be worth it.

As you can see from this no-news post, there’s not a lot else to talk about, and the images I’ve posted up have nothing to do with the subject of this post and are there to break up the text. I suppose what I set out to say was, if you’re in Greece and need new electrical goods and your local sores are limited (though they will always order things in for you), then Kotsovolos is a safe bet, and their prices are good, there are sales for this and that most of the time and not just on certain days of the year. Of course, the proof of the pudding (read laptop) will be in the eating, and hopefully in the meantime, this current loyal machine will not be overheating. If it does and the thing goes down, you’ll know because I will suddenly go offline and there will be no…

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