Author: Jason D. Rowley
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On Visiting Oxford: a Pilgrimage
I’ve been up to a lot since I posted my piece on dog walking. I’ve since been to Istanbul and Rome, and my brain’s been a little slow to process everything it and I’ve experienced. On this last leg of my journey, in London, I decided to visit Oxford yesterday to avoid Underground and street…
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How to get in great shape, get a comprehensive education from the world’s best institutions, make friends, and earn almost $75k… All in less than a year!!!
Lately, I’ve been asked “What are you going to [when you are] out of college?” The answer to this question is “Probably something in finance, and venture capital or PE in particular.” Then I follow this up by an explanation that I’d probably get out of that pretty quickly, you know, because it’s kind of…
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On Greek Religious Holidays
I was looking through my notes I took observing Greek culture. Here’s one of them, taken down on my iPhone in a furious stream of consciousness—which retrospectively sounds a little like early Richard Powers. Let the nominative phrases unfold. ————— In lieu of a tour of ancient Mystra, the stronghold of Turks and Communists, we…
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On Greece and Mental Health
One marker of a country’s civility is how it treats its criminals and its mentally ill. I realized that Greece is 50+ years behind America in these respects today. Like something out of Yates, here I was in the inanity of urban quasi-splendor, eating dolmades off china with three old women, while a severely delayed…
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On Unplugging, Flypaper, and Facebook
I realized that I have a love-hate relationship with technology. On the one hand, I love it that my iPad allows me to maintain an art journal, compose on the fly, or on the bus, or something like that. That finding wifi connections in Athens and Sparta has been so difficult has been something of…
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Day 3, A Visit to Ancient Sparta and Leonidas
What I didn’t get photos of was being hit up for money by a group of Gypsies. We were in a car, and weren’t allowed past until we paid their requested €25 toll. This was avoided by driving very slowly through their human roadblock, and they easily dispersed at 5 miles per hour.
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Day 3, Tripi: On the Food of the Gods
I came to Greece to see my family’s roots. And if that old platitude is correct, and we are indeed what we eat, I believe I come from pretty good stock. I’ve been amazed at how different Greek food is from Americanized “Greek” food. It’s really “clean” feeling, and I have yet to discern whether…
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Day 3, Sparta: Jason Goes to Church
This morning I went to the church my grandparents went to when they were kids. According to my grandmother, it hasn’t changed a bit. Excepting the lighting and the primitive sound system, I believe her. A stuccoed building with the traditional church-y front entrance and little bell tower on top and its exterior belies the…
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Day 2, Athens: Lessons From Athenian Nightlife
1.) Young Greek people adhere to the “Jersey Shore” school of sartorialism. 1a.) See also: obscene sunglasses, tight white pants on both sexes, greasy hair, impeccably well-landscaped eyebrows, and hideous paisley “going out” shirts. 1b.) However, the scruffiness and rectilinearity of men’s faces peg them as European, as opposed to vulgar Italian-American faces still bearing…
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Day 2, Athens Bus Terminal: Scenes from the Age of Austerity
Bus terminals are generally filthy places. There’s usually no incentive to “keep up appearances” of cleanliness or courteousness. This is the first foreign feeling place I’ve so far visited in Europe; the rest are some variation on the homogeneity of America’s tourist destinations: shops that stock the same trinkets, drinks, and packaged foodstuffs. I know…