Who said you can't travel back in time?

Before the end of the month I need to empty the tiny studio I have been renting the last couple of years, and since my flight to London-USA is not before the 14th of April, I'll need to spend two weeks at my parents' place (hush! Don't even dare laugh at this 33-34-year-old who is going back to his parents' place! Only for a couple of weeks I say! Didn't you read what I just wrote?!) My parents will need to do the dirty job of putting up with me for two weeks, and with all my stuff all this time that I'll be gone. Problem is, they don't live in a villa, they own a modest typical Greek middle-low class apartment, where space IS an issue. So, getting -finally- somewhere with this paragraph, I meant to say that yesterday I went to their place for lunch, and got to spend a good two hours going through my ooooold room's drawers, drawers full of stuff I left behind the holy day I finally moved out of my parents place, four years ago. I found stuff I hadn't seen for a really long time, stuff I hadn't laid my eyes on for 10, 15, even 20 years, stuff from my childhood I had no idea my parents had kept all these years. First I saw some ridiculous red shorts I was wearing as a member of an amateurs' football team during my teen years (from all colours, my team HAD TO wear red, γαμώ την τύχη μου... -that's me cursing in Greek, don't mind me...). That's when the time-travel began... I found ridiculous old t-shirts, even more ridiculous old swimming suits, "ancient" notebooks with details about the girl I was secretly in love with ever since I was 10 and until I turned 19, a scarf my grandmother had knitted for me in the colours of my favourite team (black and white), and sparing you more of my memories diarrhea, soon I forgot that my goal was "throw away as much as possible so my parents can make room for my new stuff", and I just embarked on a really sweet journey back in time... That was nice... And deep down I was not surprised that my parents had kept all that stuff. They love their only kid almost... pathologically, I cough they cough, I smile they smile, I'm happy they're happy, I'm depressed they're depressed, I live they live, and every single time I travel to risky (safety-wise) places, I try to remind myself that I need to get back home one piece, or else my parents will just stop breathing, because they won't have much of a reason to go on living without me. I sound melodramatic and you're definitely thinking I'm exaggerating, but... you don't know my parents...
Of course, my needy eyes had to see another sign confirming how right I am in not trying to find a new job, but fleeing to Latin America on a long trip... As I was going through the drawers, I found a 2005 National Geographic Traveler magazine I had no idea I had kept. Page 93, "Enter Our 17th Annual Photo Contest, WIN a trip to GUATEMALA", accompanied by a close-up picture of the cutest ever 5-year-old Guatemalan little girl. From all the National Geographic Traveler magazine issues I got via mail, I kept THIS one. And from all the places the magazine could be sending the winner of its photo contest to, it had to be Guatemala, the country I chose to learn Spanish at. A sign indeed? As I wrote a couple of days ago, probably not. Still, it drew a big smile on my face...

How can a doctor smoking preach you about not smoking?!

On a totally different note, this morning I had to fill in the papers for my unemployment benefit. I'm a journalist (well, technically, I was, as I am not working anywhere at the moment), we journalists have our own insurance organization, and we get our unemployment benefit from a totally different "pocket" than the rest of the unemployed people in Greece. Can you believe I had to fill in five different papers, writing my name, date of birth, blah-blah-blah, in ALL five papers?! Talking about bureaucracy at its best, which is an irony, because journalists in Greece keep telling the government off for being so bureaucratic, for asking someone a dozen papers to get a job done, "while everything could be taken care of with one single paper, having less people mingling, saving time and peace of mind", as you'll hear high-profile TV news people say. And yet, we, ourselves, make our own people fill in half a dozen papers repeating the very same things over and over again... It's like having a doctor telling you, all serious and pompous, how stupid smoking is, while at the same time he is llllloving the feeling of holding a cigarette in his hand... Whatever... I'm getting an unemployment benefit, and if I had to fill in not half a dozen but a full dozen of papers, I would still smile and do it. Yes, I'd do pretty much anything for money that would help me make my upcoming trip last as long as possible... Hm... Why do I suddenly feel like a whore?! (No offence to sex-workers, really).