When I leave the office

Almost every day when I leave the office, I walk to my closest tube station to take the train back home. In order to do that I pass through a small corridor, walk down some stairs and across the road afterwards to the entrance of the station. However, very close to the bottom of the stairs, most days of the year, there is the same homeless person waiting for people like me and asks for money. The problem I have with him is the fact that if you don’t give him money he sometimes gets abusive and starts calling you names.

I don’t think I’ve ever given him money. And since I found out he can be offensive, I don’t think I’ll give him money in the future, ever. I prefer buying ‘Big Issue’ sometimes or donating to organisations directly than giving money to people on the street like that. I’m not sure if that’s not the right thing to do, but I believe that money donated in proper organised charities are better spent than giving money to people on the street. I don’t know if there are lots of homeless people that don’t seek the help of charities and they can’t be reached. However, I’ll stand by what I think is best.

I’ve noticed though that since the end of the Olympics, lots of homeless people have returned to the streets of the city centre. Even the offensive guy was gone for a short while during August and early September, but now he’s back. It doesn’t affect me that he calls me sometimes names, probably an outcome of his hatred towards society or ‘privileged’ people with a job, a roof over them and a hot meal. On the contrary, instead of feeling annoyed or offended I feel content, thankful of the things in my life.

Various Friday thoughts

I’m turning my blog into a weekly thing, but that’s not that such a bad thing, I assume. I’ve been having a terrible busy week, working all day and not really wanting to sit on my computer the few evenings I spent at home.

Last week ended with a bang since last Saturday was my name day! Most of you probably don’t even know what that is. In a nutshell, some Orthodox people are named after a Saint, Martyr etc. When it is that Saint’s day, everybody named after him or her celebrate! For example, everybody called George celebrates his name day on the 23rd of April, according to the Christian Orthodox calendar. It’s a bit like second class birthday. When younger if lucky, you might get presents or a party. When older, like me, it’s a nice opportunity to go out, meet friends etc. Not like we really need an excuse to go for drinks and food, but anyway.

 I got BALLOONS for my name day. :-)

in the background you can see some of the silly things I have on my dresser.

My Christian name is Nikitas, hence my name day last Saturday. It was Nikitas’ day. I don’t think he was a fully qualified Saint but a Martyr, but anyway. I didn’t go to the Church (I haven’t been in one for some time) but I took ‘JJ’ during the day for a shopping spree. I hadn’t done that in a long time too. We bought various stuff, from kitchenware to clothes, shoes etc. I didn’t go a lot over budget but I did buy some things that weren’t really necessities and charged my credit card. That’s a worry for another day though. I wanted to have some fun with my boy and we did. The day included shopping in the very busy area around Oxford Circus, lunch in Soho, coffee in Covent Garden and ended with dinner at a Lebanese restaurant and watching ‘Dredd 3D’ in the local cinema.

That was the only movie available at that time of the night. Overall, it wasn’t that bad (if you have low expectations). The plot is not that extraordinary and the story has some serious gaps in it. The acting of Dredd is not that great, although I liked his sidekick and the baddy. But for a Coca-Cola drinking with huge box of popcorn and 3D glasses with nice visual aids type of movie its fine.  
 

Decorations in a jeans' store

The rest of the week was also a bit eventful. There are lots of things happening at work at the moment, some of which kept me up during a couple of nights. But I really don’t want to go into that. They’re not bad things per se but there are lots of challenging /stressful / interesting things happening at the same time and I have lots of balls to juggle.

One of the things I bought

On the other hand, we spent one evening of the week with some South African friends of JJ and another with some Chinese friends of mine from university. Both groups of friends were visiting London at the same time and going out with them meant going for drinks and dinner on a school night that ended a bit late. However, I happily found out that my Chinese friends are getting married next year and we’re invited to a wedding in China! That would be so amazing! I haven’t been to the Far East and attending a wedding there would be so interesting! That trip needs some planning since I’d love to visit other places in or outside China with the opportunity of the wedding.  

I’ll probably try to keep this weekend a bit quiet. We have a Greek friend of mine staying for work at our place for a month, starting the following weekend, and it would be nice to just rest on our own in the house, not doing much. It’s supposed to be raining on Sunday anyway and I want to cook some nice homely food, tidy up my wardrobe and give some clothes to charity.

Have a great weekend!

The older I get

Watching stand-up comedy on the television at the evening is something that I usually do. It’s fun to watch (most of the times) and there is no plot to have to keep up with. I generally prefer British comedians, since the events or people they comment upon are more familiar, but sometimes I choose American ones. Recently I watched Wanda Sykes in Netflix. It wasn’t probably a very recent one, but that doesn’t really matter. I found some of the stuff she said or rather the way she said them very funny.

One of the things she said is ‘the older I get, the less I care about things’. She added that the amount of times she says ‘I don’t give a fuck’ has increased the last years!  I found this comment very true. I remember from my youth worrying so much more about things, trivial things that used to keep me up at night. One of my very early childhood stories was about the period before I first started school. My mother keeps saying to me that I couldn’t stop worrying, even crying, about what I’ll face there for weeks before I started. Yes, maybe I was a mummy’s boy since then, I don’t know…

Of course I still worry about things now. However I believe I have a better perspective over matters or I simply grew a tougher skin. I don’t care that much about what other people say or think about me and even if something out of the ordinary happens, I’m sure that it will ease of or be forgotten over time. I don’t know if being gay made me grow that tougher skin, or simple growing up. Of course I do have my sensitive side, but I think it evolved over time to be affected by different things.

I’m not sure why I brought up this subject now, but ‘oh,well’…

Have a great weekend!