And Now, the end is near

Indeed, we did it our way. You might have read about us (here). And we mentioned that in life we did it the way we liked. Not necessary the outrageous but not exactly the conventional either.

When we started this blog just over three years ago, we were full of energy churning out a post every alternate day. In fact, you might have read about us scheduling posts ahead – sometimes months ahead… (including this post). Yep, that was the amount of energy and commitment we put into this.

But you know situations change.

And just like how fashion trends come and go, new fads and attractions come up. So the new focus in our lives is to concentrate on the last hurrah to accelerate our quest to be financially independent. We had touched on this subject on occasion, but it gets more ‘urgent’ as one hurtles towards the sixth decade of their lives. Yeah, cost of living is going to be higher and career cycles shorter. Time to sharpen those claws and go hunting. And strengthen the streams of income we have outside of having to labour away everyday.

But we are not stopping our writings. You might have read our earlier post that we do an enormous amount of it. Just that ~98% are not shared. Because we are also too cheap to buy space with wordpress to load all of our precious writings and pictures. Plus now that we have a renewed focus, our energies are channelled in another direction.

So it’s not really goodbye as the picture below might suggest, but farewell. Hopefully some the words in our past posts do not fade away for you.

 

Our private writings

We have written previously that this blog contains but a fraction of our private writings. Since the late 90s we had been writing about each of our travel journeys. In those early days we actually printed them out and bound them into volumes. Don’t believe us?

Heheh… well here’s proof:

You see, first we have a large collection of books. Then we have our own ‘publications’. Not that you will see them on the shelves of the nearby bookstore anytime soon though. Heheh. The only thing is that as time went by the volumes got thicker and the number of years included in each became less.

Why?

Because each story got lengthier. The transition was made from film to digital (remember this post?) and we started to dig deeper into the destinations that we touched, such as the food we ate etc… you get the picture (no pun intended)… Today we have completed three volumes that exceed 1500 pages. Volume 4 is on the way and probably due by 2021. Only folks who physically visit our home get to read these volumes and the corresponding beautiful photo albums Suan produce.

Coincidentally the name of our private volumes are the same as the recently concluded newsletter. Recently we have started a new monthly circular aptly named “New Horizons”. But it is privately circulated and not published.

As social media continues to evolve, we are beginning to witness the rise of private groups and networks that are not public. Are you catching on to that too?

Jewels of the Aegean

Do you know why the Aegean sea is named as such? You know the translation into Chinese is 爱琴海. Though the middle character is actually a word for a musical instrument (the zither), when pronounced it sould like the ‘sea of love’ in mandarin. Heheh… hey, we probably aren’t the only ones playing around with words and pronounciation on the web.

Depending on who you ask, you might get different views on how the sea got its name. Never matter, for the common thing all would agree is that the islands that dot it are exceedingly beautiful.

For the feature image of the post we were troubled. Should we use one of Santorini? Which probably have been posted and shared by others millions² of times. How about the Mykonos windmills or Pelican mascot? Hah. Anyway the default came back to Santorini where we spent so little time that we were peeled away from the island by other cruisers from our boat ship. Reluctantly we must add.

But of course not every thing is about that beautiful island with beautiful domes of blue and beautiful views of the caldera plus beautiful food matched with beautiful weather. Stop it. Ok.

We only touched 5 islands during the weeklong cruise (read here about it). There are many we had read about from the posts of other bloggers. They are all wonderful and with 2000+ of them, might take a lifetime to explore them all. How many of them have you touched so far?

Heartlands of Greece

After our herculanean olympian effort to visit the home of the games, it was time to move on. Heheh. Yep, could not help it. Sorry. But you see, how can be pass up on the chance to create a little spin out of it? We had crossed over the tiny strait that separate the pelopponese peninsula from the greek mainland (here).

For the next stop we made was to have our fortunes told. Yep, seers were all powerful intermediaries to the gods (they still are today?). Information. What you don’t know you cannot use. And what better information than about the future? Imagine a seer tells you which stock will skyrocket in price in the next week. What would you do?

Pause for a thought here.

Ok, don’t tell us for only you need to know. For where we headed next is a place for those in search of solitude could find solace. Well north towards the northern frontier of the country is home to previously isolated communities of hermit monks. That isolation was broken many years back as tourism and roads made access to their clifftop abodes easily accessible.

They say you need to be hoisted up to the clifftop monastery in a basket. That would be quite neat wouldn’t it be an experience? Alas, the reality is more conventional methods were used, such as a gas guzzling metallic horse… read all about it here.

The place which launched 1000 ships

Heheh. A little spin with the title of this post (here). Now we all know of the face that launched a thousand ships. But do you know of the place that initiated this? Who was the mastermind that managed to convinced, cajoled or threathened the ancient greeks into amassing an armada to sail across the Aegean?

Today’s post is not about the fight at Troy, since the movie would have told you an abbreviated and sensationalized version of history.

We want to show you what remains of the place from which a man exuded his influence and power to command such an effort. And this place is Mycenea. Today if you visit the city you will might need an umbrella. For when we went there were literally no shade worthy of name on the plateau of an ancient city. And the blazing sun might turn you into a sundried piece of tomato if you are not careful. Sunscreen recommended.

But probably that’s because we were there in August (yeah) during high summer. Serve us right. Right? We had blazed across from Athens (here) and the stop here was however brief… for we were on an olympian quest to get to the site of the original games. One so important to the ancient greeks that war could be put on hold for it!

Unfortunately there weren’t any nymphs to light the torch for us while we were there, though we did march into the stadium in style. Did you know how the greeks raced with it came to track and field? Care to guess? Or you would read up for the answer in the link here.

Cradle of ancient democracy?

Democracy.

Do you know the meaning of it? Now if one troughs the web for definitions, one would surely come up with some variances. But for simplistic purpose we shall assume that this means representational governance. One in which members of society each have an equal vote to select representatives for themselves be at at municipal, county or national level.

Were the ancient greeks the only ones who practiced this form of governance? If one delves into the antiquities, one might know that even in tribal era leaders were selected. How that evolved into hereditary forms of leadership is another topic. So no, it is not novel to the greeks in our opinion. What do you think?

But today our post is not to debate whether there was democracy in ancient Greece, but to bring back a reminisce of our time spent in one of the most famous city democracies of ancient times – Athens, the city of the goddess Athena (read all about it here). Now she was a god of many things, from wisdom to justice and war plus a whole lot of others… It might have inspired Athens to vie for supremacy amongst the other cities, sometimes winning other times being in the shadows.

Because it has been through so much, you can imagine the amount of sights one can touch while in the city. Why even when they were tunneling for the subway they found so much in the form of relics. Today in some stations you can literally walk pass a gallery of antiquities staring out at you.

Have you been to Athens?