i've been to Ikea several times before but never to shop for furniture and large stuff and whatnot. It is so chaotic!
i had to go round and round several times cause the items i wanted--in the color i wanted--were out of stock. no wonder since half of Athens shops at the place. It was so crowded i could hardly breathe. Still, i find it a good bargain. Things are *cheap* there, for real!
i also managed to assemble two of my three bookcases on my own, without (much) help from dad. haha, i'm the master carpenter now!!




work, of course.
i enjoy it less and less and feel more and more like a woman going to the gallows every morning. it's not the work per se, it's the people there. i hate them, enough of them to ruin my day sometimes. I wish they vanished into thin air and i never have to see them again. Four of them in particular.
i'm counting down the days till the new IT systems are in place and we're gonna get transferred due to vacancies. front-desk customer services is getting really appealing by now.



some good stuff on the upside!
i went for a bicycle ride with my friend Efi last Monday. Athens was empty since it was still Easter holiday (orthodox easter that is) and i had a blast. i haven't ridden a bike since highschool and it was so much fun. i was worried to death someone might run me over as we pedalled down the avenues but i enjoyed myself tremendously when we got to the pedestrian walkways. we rode all over the historical center and it was such a fine day that i felt my heart light as a feather. it was one of the best days of these few years.

the next day i found i couldn't sit very comfortably and i had gotten sunburned to boot. ah well~


I downloaded the Ergo Proxy batch over this past week and i was quite annoyed at the sluggish speed (~maaan, i already got a dozen other torrents on hold~). but boy, oh, boy, was it worth it! I gulped it down in two chunks this weekend and i was completely blown away.
Dark postapocalyptic scifi with a twist never looked so delicious. Complex plot (food for thought here, not a shoot-em-up crapper), amazing character development (i just fell in love with them all), awesome color palette (quite literally dark, i had to tune up my contrast for this one) and mood (+the opening is pure win)...the list goes on. It reminded me of Blade Runner more than anything so if you're into this genre (or a fantastic story) don't miss it.

I was knocked down with a persistent little bug this week. i left the office earlier on monday on account of my nose running like it was on steroids and my throat aching like it had some barbwire stuffed in it. when i returned home i looked at myself in the mirror and realised i could easily pass for a vampire with those bloody eyes and chalk-pale face.
i burrowed into my bed with a barrelful of tea available and some dry cornflakes and did not leave the house till thursday, stuffed with antibiotics.



my sister came for a shopping trip on Friday and i walked my ass off, though i wasn't really well i gave in to temptation. due to the new flat my leisure/funstuff shopping budget has been bloodily reduced in size. still, we came upon a discount offer and i bought two blouses: one for the office and one for my free time. it's white with a pattern of evil orange cats on it. Hell yeah! Jigoku Nekos!! gotta have!

now, it was my first time checking out the new fashions and i have this to say on it:
a)those huge round sunglasses are barf material. fer cryin out loud, you look like some space alien fly lady! most trash-classy.
b)i spied a lot of checkboard pattern blouses and skirts. they suck. they are like wearing tableclothes.
c)peep-toe shoes. i think they're disgusting as well as dangerous. i keep imagining some sharp thing will get stuck in my big exposed toe if i make the mistake of wearing this suckalicious contraption.



these last few days the temperature skyrocketed to just below 30 oC. most people in this country are rejoicing. i am not. i *hate* summer. even more so when i have no money for vacation this year. i wish i lived in London or better yet, somewhere in the deeeeeep north. Siberia might suit me now i come to think of it.
people often tell me i am a cranky bitch for hating summer. i beg to differ, it is summer in Athens that sucks. here's why:
a)this city is dirty, it is ugly and it's full of concrete. add +20oC to it and it is horrid beyond belief.
b)with +5 million people's worth of sewage going straight into the sea it is no wonder i don't want to go for a swim. i am not a bacteria cultivation ground.
c)i am no wild nightlife fan. i couldn't care less about any snobby, snotty venue where snobby, snotty people just stand with drinks in their hands and glazed looks on their faces while trying to sound witty and (hope to) score some bimbo/jackass.
d)returning from work under the glaring sun of 40oC is not a fun experience.
e)i dislike sunblock cream even more than i dislike tanning. the "bronze goddess" look is plain fugly imo. it's like someone fried you in places. i hate standing before the mirror and seeing a patchwork skin. i prefer my unsexy northern vampiric paleness thankyouverymuch.


Hmm, the new season is underway and i am pleased to see some interesting shows. Still early to tell but here's what i liked best:
1.xxxHolic2
2.Amatsuki
3.Itazurana Kiss
4.Druaga no To

i am also eagerly awaiting the "Blade of the Immortal" anime

Oi, i feel busted. this past week i've been a busy bee painting the walls of my new flat in the colors of this journal plus some pink and blue (to come). now, my flat is so tiny it could almost be in Tokyo (wouldn't i like that ) but there's still too much work involved. i must've inhaled so much toxicity i feel like i've been working in some underground mine and turned purple myself...

Still, i love color so i want it everywhere!
i just can't understand why people would want to live in a white house (no pun intended ). in my opinion white walls belong to mental institutions. i'd go crazy if i had to live in a white box.


ye gods, this week was such a drag in work. there was too little to do and i was positively melting in boredom. i couldn't even sketch for the boredom sucked my brain dry and i was flapping like a dying fish on my desk. at times like these the lack of teh internetz at work is becoming an almost physical pain.

the negative energy that my enemies emit became almost solid. i just noticed they all sit in a line. i'll call it the Line Of Evil. step beyond it at your own risk. spooky! nevertheless, my Karma Reactor(tm) is doing good work coz my ex-best-friend is getting transfered. i'm toying with the idea of asking for a transfer myself. working in direct customer service doesn't sound half so bad now...

still, i had a surprise coming on Friday when i got saddled with the dirty work of some campaign we got running. Da Boss-erina showed me some stuff i never seen before and the novelty of it got my eye twinkling. At least it is not more of the same-ol'-same-ol' bore. they even gave me a barcode scanner. i felt like a cosplaying Trekkie with that space gun in my hand going "blip, blip" when i scanned the barcodes. i was tempted to play James Bond with it but as usual my coworkers in the office got no humor besides football-and-sex jokes so there...


Waiting for the new anime season to begin i noticed there's some interesting batch torrents floating about. though i said i wouldn't overload my lappy with big chunks i pulled the whomping 8 GB batch of Gintama.
Gintama is a comedy about the end of the samurai era but instead of Americans ending the national isolationistic policy we got...aliens! besides tickling the funnybone with its WTF?! situations, parody one-liners and jokes, Gintama also has a sweetly silly but touching side. the female characters are *not* decorative bimbos (empty-headed, token female lead Misa is the reason why i hated Death Note in the end. i mean, what the hell, there's the world's smartest guys and the only girl in there is a shitty paris-hilton-model).
Anywayz, moving on...Gintama's characters are all likeable (even those we don't see often) and some of the voice acting is so good it makes me laugh just to hear them talk. More often than not i got a problem with leading characters but not so here: i absolutely adore (anti)hero Gin. in many ways he reminds me of GTO's Onizuka but besides being very funny he scores extra points by having: a) a sword b)silver hair, both of which add to the appeal factor (aka "Sesshomaru eye candy")


After some pretty lukewarm seasons there's some good stuff on the horizon. Here's what the Neko will be watching this season:
1.xxxHolic2
2.Toshokan Sensou
3.Itazurana Kiss
4. Angelique
as well as some others on trial basis. and i am waiting for a decent Code Geass batch to see if i move on to season 2.

first off, i'm not a theatre person really. i much prefer going to the movies and all that widescreen extravaganza than going to the theatre. (also, must be because greek productions are suckalicious & expensive most of the time but that's a whole other story)
therefore, when i heard about a play a coworker of mine worked volunteer on i was not really thrilled but i maced two more friends into coming and dragged them along.
well, the play--all by volunteers and free to boot!--which was called "Teahouse" was too funny! It supposedly took place in post-war Japan and the actors spoke--some really floozy--japanese. since me and my friends can speak it we had some additional laugh points when we didn't get their lines.
by general consensus the play was awesome and if you happen to be in Athens till April i recommend it to you >>[link]


i just finished the "Seirei no Moribito" anime and i got to say it's definitely one of my top five. Awesomeness abounds in this anime: seamless animation and artwork (heartbreakingly beautiful backgrounds and landscapes and the characters' moves are so lifelike its like a movie), amazingly well-thought story and detailed world, strong (female) lead and a total eclipse of barbie fanservice, characters likeable to the extreme (even the bad guys) and a satisfying closure. and to think i downloaded this batch out of pure boredom after i was done with Twelve Kingdoms. Much as i liked 12Kokki this was way better. there was never a dull moment for me here.
All of you who have not seen this i command thee to downloadeth it, on the double!

plus: i did some wikipedia-ing and i found that this anime is the animation of the 1st of a series of ten (10!) books--not manga, real books --continuing the story. i almost swooned! teh bookz must be MINE! (even though they're only in japanese )

no, this is not a tribute to the utterly defunct Britney. It's a tribute to stupidity (which might be the same in the self-destructing way), mine especially. why is it i keep sticking my foot in my mouth? i just can't seem to SHUT the F*CK up! ye gods, i hate how much of a babbler i am. i wish i could stitch my big fat mouth shut for once.
whether i get violently happy or down-in-the-mud depressed i always have to announce it to the world. *knocks head against wall* ugh, stupid.
obviously this time it was a more serious matter than your average gossip-line. i may have actually given my enemies at work the ultimate weapon to do away with me on the max level. was i thinking? probably not, my head seems to have been drained of its essence.
okay, i swear this has to change! i am so through with talking about things with unrelated people. behold, i am taking the silent vow!


...but at least Lappy made it out of Intensive Care. PC still looks whoozy there and does strange stuff but i think it'll make it through the next Lost season. and damn, already, i just paid the antivirus subscription. As if its internal problems weren't enough, there'd been power outages yesterday. what, is the world set on frying my pc? sheesh!