Convalesco

Truth is, I’ve received such an overflow of information and different aspects, of an admittedly complicated matter, that I can’t quite form an opinion on my own. Worst thing for me, as a citizen, is that I can’t even judge the current government administration on the matter. Except from the review process and the probably faked deficit¹ in order to appear positive to Greeks and Europeans alike when they will announce the end-year deficit at 9-10% of the GDP.

I feel that this entire game the is being played by Germany, France and this strange and weird uncontrolled “thing” called “The Markets”. What and who is “The Markets”. Well, these evil markets are mostly Banks, financial institutions and huge capital holders like George Soros Warren Buffet and other hedge funds². And speculating is what they do for a living, is it good for Greece? Sure not. But speculators are the result, not the cause.

So in this huge mess and this variety of opinion from so called “specialists” and “important” economists that gets it wrong every time, probably because macro-economics are not exactly what they should, or for whatever other reason – I don’t really care – the song remains the same. No one knows really nothing.

The feeling I get, is that several totally different forces, unknown to each other, get involved and the result is a total mess. There not only financial issues concerning the matter of the Greek crisis. Supposedly, speculators attack on the Euro made this a European Union crisis and rumors say that if Greece collapses Spain, Portugal and Italy are next. But they have a different political approach which can face these issues with much bigger success.

So far so good. In Greece we were in desperate need of regulation. Someone has to regulate the state. It’s turning to a new kind of government, it’s not communism it’s “State-o-cracy”. The ones that survive are the extremely capable – we don’t have much of these in Greece – the ones who’s business is involved somehow with the state and the direct or indirect state-employees, which are in huge numbers and who’s power controls the government more than any European could imagine. Most of the strikes about these new regulations coming from Brussels to regulate the unsustainable social-economic, distorted I may add, model are powered by the same people that receives unreal salaries working for the state, in a job with no risk, rush, pressure. Of course they don’t deserve this salary.

So all this makes it impossible for me to judge the current situation. Thank God I’m good for know. I know that our faith as a nation is not on our hands anymore – if it ever were – but now, I will stop judging, I’ll just take a sit and watch. I’ll have a clue when this entire thing gets on a railway, only time can tell.

1. No, I can not believe that it went from 6 to 12% overnight. [↩]
2. Here you can read more at the WSJ about the € crisis link [↩]

Two days I went for the first ride of the season. I wanted to buy a new board, although my current one is acceptable (I guess) since 2008. I always wanted the Burton 2008/09 Custom ICS model but since I found none in Blue-tomato’s online store the last season, I’ve lost every hope of getting that specific design.

However, I’ve found a 1.56 cm Burton Custom at Amazom.co.uk on-line store! I didn’t think of it twice and on Saturday, before going to mountain Falakro I ordered the board + bindings. I’ll post some pictures as soon as I get them! I can’t wait to ride a new board… I’m riding my old Oxygen board since 2002. Although I own the board 7 years or so, I started getting seriously interested in snowboarding after 2007 trip to Grindelwald.

Last year I start working at some simple “jibbing” exercises. The thing is that, at my level, I can easily get up and down on every single snow-track I’ve been. However it’s not funny, not even close getting up and down. Maybe for people in Austria/Italy/Swiss it’s fine… With these huge tracks all over their (amazing) Alpine mountains, but it’s not like that where I live.

So, when you own a snowboard and not a boring pair of Ski’s, first thing you can go out of the track for some powder. But again there’s nothing that hits my adrenaline so high as a couple of twists, turns and jumps!

This years first ride went really great. It seems that last season was not so far and I hold up to my improvements. When you start trying ground tricks with the snowboard, you realise after a while that your stability on the board along with the ability to absorb small shakes increases exponentially.

However, as with all things, if you want to do them correctly, there’s the “right way” order to learn things. So when you feel really comfortable with your front foot and your rear foot, and you’re able to stop in every way and go up and down to a black-level track, you are ready to try shifting feet. You don’t have to change your stance, you just have to learn how to ride with your “behind” foot in front. It’s almost a need, in order to do ground correctly. It helps enormously because when you do a trick you can’t always tell if you’re gonna need to ground the board with your “correct” foot in front or behind… It’s the most common problem most snowboarders that try jumps or small 180′s face.

I can’t wait for next weekend to ride on the snow again. Thank God we have two mountains near by, so I may go to Bansko for the weekend… Bigger mountain more interesting tracks and (probably) better snow. If it’s not possible, I’ll stick to Falakro.