Keep on dreaming...

You wait for a whole week. When the time comes, your heart starts beating a little faster. It is a combination of excitement, anxiety and stress. You get dressed, of course wearing your lucky pants, lucky shirt, lucky shoes. You avoid wearing your watch because last time you had it on, things didn’t go as planned, so it is now considered bad luck.

You get in your car and start driving. It is a 30 minute drive but on the way you have to make two stops to pick up the compatriots. On the way there, there is a little bit of excitement, smile, jokes in the car. You arrive and you leave the car at the closest possible spot. You take out your card, show it on the entrance and you enter the stadium.

You look around you. The people you used to see 7-8 years ago are still there. Others have more white hair, others have less hair, others have wrinkles. The fellow long-haired fan that you were once eating peanuts with on a game back in 1999 is still there. His hair is longer but he is becoming a victim of time too. Some others that used to be there, are not there any more. Call it disappointment, call it aging, call it anger. They have chosen not to.

You sit on your chair and start discussing with the people around you. They know you. They don’t know your name, but they know your face and they know you are a regular. The first appearance of the team in the stadium fills your heart with pride. An unexplainable feeling of pleasure and delight invades your body. With your loudest voice, you support the team.

The game starts. You forget everything. You get paralyzed on your seat but at the same time, you also get carried away by the crowd and everything is to blame. During half time, your team is not doing very well but you still have the strength to applause the players. The 15 minute interval gives you some time to reconsider things, rediscover your lost chances. The appearance of the team in the field brings back the emotions of the first appearance. Pride, delight, pleasure.
The game is over. Once again all you see around you is the same people, speechless, with sad emotions covering their face. Some others choose the road of yelling to the players. Everybody though looks older. But not 90 minutes older..much older than that.

The ride back in the car is speechless, emotionless. No mood for jokes, no smiley faces. You drop the compatriots at their house and you set the date for next week. Same routine, same thing, same feelings. Only everybody gets older…

This is what happens every week when Salamina plays…

Test

This is a test post. As you will have noticed, I have changed the web address of my blog. Just want to make sure that the subscribers receive e-mail notifications when I update the blog.

Moments

Time: Saturday morning ~ 10am
Location: Starbucks in the Mall of Cyprus

1. A little kid dances in the middle of Starbucks and with her maneuvers makes it to the cashier. She grabs a lollipop, looks around and makes sure that her parents are not watching. She opens it and starts eating (no transaction involved). She returns to her parents with a guilty look. They don’t even question.

2. A mum with her 5-6 year old daughter are enjoying their coffee for the last 25 minutes on the table in front of us. The mum talks on the phone continuously without paying attention to her kid.

3. The same little girl as in (1) above stares at a little boy. The little boy stares back. The girl falls over her chair and on the ground. Her lollipop has the same luck. She grabs it from the floor and starts eating again.

4. I return the Cafe Latte because they forgot to add the coffee in it and just gave us hot milk. The barista promises a new one. I stay there waiting only to hear the other barista say “What should I do with this? Throw it away?”

5. The guy next to us is enjoying his Saturday morning coffee while deeply concentrated reading the Saturday morning paper.

6. The two little kids are taking advantage of some free wireless internet surfing the web with their laptop.

7. A lot of people are sitting on the Starbucks seating area outside, so that they can smoke a cigarette.

I take my last sip of coffee, throw away all my trash and walk out. Another coffee, another Saturday.

On my knees

As the sun descended, I could barely keep walking. Fatigue has invaded me. I was not sure if I was physically or mentally tired; or both.

They had promised me that my destination was not far away. And once I got there, everything would be easier. I believed them and trusted them.

Meanwhile I had stopped looking for other destinations because I wanted the ONE. The one that would make me happier in the long term, but the more and more I did not find it, the more I believed that I shouldn't have taken this road. Regrets were messing now with fatigue, invading the few brain cells that remained. I had already fallen down a few times, but some angels picked me up and told me to go on. There was no time to lose. I was thinking of falling again, taking a break, a long one until who knows, maybe until the destination found me.

I reached deep inside my bag. Below my plastic bottle of water, there was another one. A big glass bottle with a brownish liquid that was half-full…or half-empty. I poured some of it in my plastic glass, took a sip and saw the label on the bottle. "Johnie Walker".

So, I kept walking.

A typical weekday

I wake up, take a shower, get ready, grab my bread with jam which was prepared with my grandma and off to work.

Once every now and then, I forget my laptop, so after yelling at myself, I go back and get it.

The office from work is about 5 minutes walking..2.30 minutes driving. It takes so long because people park their cars outside their houses, so a two lane street becomes one, so if you are unlucky enough and find other cars in the way you have to wait. Yet, like a true Cypriot I always take the car to work. I still don't seem to understand why, when 14 months ago in London, I used to walk at least 2km a day to get to the bus station so I can get to work…with a bad back and a laptop on it.

I turn on the computer and I check my e-mails, greek and Cyprus sports news and figure out what I have to do for the day.

I make my coffee around 9.15-9.30. I drink it hot, with two spoons of Nescafe and a little milk.

I take my lunch break from 2 to 2.45. Grandmas food is always delicious.

Back to work until 5pm with another coffee keeping me up and going.

Usually I am back home at 5.15. Very rarely I might stay in until 9pm to supervise interviews.

Depending on my mood, I either lay on the bed or get ready for the gym. Depending on the day, there is either Bodypump or Bodybalance.

Dinner depends on the mood again. If it is towards the end of the week, Molly and I usually grab something from outside. If it is Monday we usually eat home.

The night plans again depend on the day and if there is soccer or not. Usually if I am bored home and have nothing to do, I will probably walk over to Marios and Efi's to talk with them a little bit about our day and other random staff. The strange fact here is that I usually walk to Marios and Efi despite the fact that walking time is the same as the office.

The day usually ends with me reading two chapters of my latest James Patterson book. This one is interesting but because of the lack of free time, I am not reading it too quickly. I have three in the pipeline now and I need to get on them.

Sleep around 12 or 1,