• by XpatAthens
  • Thursday, 05 February 2015
In the News...

Apparently this crisis is over. And apparently the whole thing was one giant mistake made by the ‘troika’. And apparently the US government is secretly monitoring every kilobyte of data that leaves our computers. And apparently everyone is shooting everyone over there too. Apparently the world’s largest crocodile was found in someone’s backyard in Thailand. Oh, and apparently it’s going to rain in Athens this week – in June!

Not sure what to believe these days. Not sure if I should believe anything – or maybe everything? I turned on the TV news this week – unusually - and found the same ‘talking heads’, yelling about the same hot issues, shaking their fingers at the same names and throwing around familiar accusations. Even the good news sounds like bad news.

I’m not a TV news watcher - I tend to get my news from a ‘carefully selected’ and ‘broad range’ (or so I like to think) set of online news feeds. I scan the major headlines in the morning, and click on those that are interesting.

What I love the most are those social media sites that share and highlight the good news, the positive stuff, the happy little details of this or that group, or this or that initiative, that are going on everywhere (everywhere!) around Greece. XpatAthens, GoodChannel, ReThink Athens, Startup Greece, Human Grid, The Collective – the list goes on and on...

I imagine I am not alone in admitting that I am decidedly tired of hearing bad news, and have chosen instead to increase my daily dose of good news. After all, if even the ‘good’ mainstream news sounds like bad news, then what difference does it make that I know all about it? As it turns out, there is more than enough really fantastic news out there to keep us occupied for every one of those post-breakfast, pre-workday minutes we spend clicking around for information…

But I do wonder about the rain in the forecast. Maybe I’ll see what my smartphone has to say…

Until next week,

Jack

In this weekly space, keep up with ‘Jack’ as he navigates daily life in Athens… Anecdotes, stories, hits & misses, the good, the bad and, well, the rest…