All dogs go to heaven

The rain was slowly falling down on my head as I was walking back home from work. I was in the final stretch at huvudsta, in that beautiful straight long road that is full of winter leaves and yellow colors now. I just wanted to go sleep and escape from the real world once more. Why? As I said fellow babies, I cannot seem to catch a break. But it's going to be alright. If anything, never give up, never surrender.

I was afraid to sleep. The other day after I dropped Nikoleta, who is a friend that just arrived in Stockholm and the poor thing gets stressed so easily, I went to have a beer with Amanda. The moment I was about to get out of the subway a girl around her 27's fell down on the last step of the stairway and her leg broke in an awkward angle. It was horrific. I held her hand while she was crying and left when the paramedics came. The clash of bone and sinew sent shivering chills down my spine.

Be well in doggie heaven...

Wicky died yesterday. Wicky was the most gentle, beautiful Belgian Shepherd dog of all time. She had bone cancer and she went to dog heaven. I learned about it when I was at work and I cried in the subway, I cried in the apartment too. Every time she saw me, she would drag her old 10 year old body towards me, lie down on the floor, lift her back leg up and wait for me to scratch her belly. Every time I was in the kitchen, she would come sit next to me and look with those patient beautiful eyes that sucked you inside to have a piece of cheese. And some other times, she would climb on top of me and hug me like a human being. I would hug her back and love her with everything I had. Goodbye Wicky.

Other than that my dreams are weird as usual. Nightmares or just plain weird. I do not understand them, but I have ceased trying to. I remember an abandoned train stop that was being constructed and me walking with two friends, Yiannis and Kostas. We met a kid and his father who also happened to be Greek. His name was Andreas.

The dream shifted to my car being slowly losing pieces. In the end only the skeleton was left. I went into a Greek place to buy souvlaki and ended up fighting with someone. I shouted so hard he went under the table. I bought a Coke for 50 cents. Bargain I tell you.

Today I ended up speaking to Lionel Messi and being in a massive conference with my cyborg suit. I remember dogs and sadness. In the end I helped a fat guy in an abandoned endless slope and we teleported away. Turns out some guys from Poland wanted to know more about me and my suit. Apparently in my dream I can speak perfect polish too. I woke up. Alone. The rain still hammers the house like a sledgehammer and I am inside, tucked inside my blanket, writing these words, waiting for the next best thing.

Goodbye Wicky. I will see you in dog heaven.

Accurate thinking, slander, cristiano ronaldo and juju power

I was reading today my usual book about success and how to attain it. I was in the chapter that required you to master the art of accurate thinking.

It mostly involves creative thought, that can slowly flourish as you gain experience and learn from other successful people. It also has to do with processing information to valuable and worthless, relevant and irrelevant. You can break down everything like this and support it with facts and logic, so you always have a better judgement than most people instead of acting rationally and expecting sheer like or hunches to propel you to success.

Then i came home, fired up my favorite troll-comment ridden website, Goal.com and started reading the football news on the build up to the highly anticipated World Cup 2014 in Brazil that starts in less than a week.

Behold on the first page, on the A-list "Breaking" news:

"I am behind Ronaldo injury problems, claims witch doctor".

Don't mess with dem juju powers?

Oh yes. Let's throw some quotes from the Witch Doctor from Ghana:

“I am very serious about it. Last week, I went around looking for four dogs and I got them to be used in manufacturing a special spirit called ‘Kahwiri Kapam’.

“I said it four months ago that I will work on Cristiano Ronaldo and rule him out of the World Cup or at least prevent him from playing against Ghana and the best thing I can do is to keep him out though injury.

I really liked the part about the four dogs and using them to manufacture....oh wait? What the...? What did he do to those poor souls? He did not specify it.

With the power of cuteness, i urge you to cause CR7...TENDONITIS!

Which brings me back to the latest entry in my book. Accurate thinking. Can you believe that there are actually people that think this is true? It reminds me when Ronaldo snubbed Paris Hilton and she allegedly hired a witch doctor to injure him for months.

So how do we tackle this? Let's break it down to facts, plausible, myths, logical and illogical.

Mythbusting

• 4 dogs and a ritual cause simultaneous injuries to Cristiano Ronaldo.
• It can go from one area to another, first his thighs, then his leg, etc etc.
• The doctor cannot force him out entirely from the World Cup, only injure him.

Plausible explanations

• He has played 57 games from the start of the 2013/2014 season and around 60 games for the last 3 seasons in all competitions for club and country.
• No man is a machine. People get injured even if they have the best overall fitness, like Ronaldo does. People like Messi, Ibrahimovic, leg breaks, Ribery, the consecutive games have taken their toll on them.
• He had a minor injury but his thirst for winning prevailed, wanting to play every game he could. He aggravated that injury and the result is this.
• Would this fraud doctor come out and say that he was working to injure Ronaldo for the past 4 months if he was healthy?
• Why didn't he use his voodoo to make Ghana perform better and overcome Portugal, hell win the World Cup?
• Clear use of Ronaldo's name for fame and attention.
• Crappy journalism as every article about the 2 best players in the world attracts massive attention and readers.

These are some of the reasons that one could find. Don't get me wrong, i think spirituality and faith can make a person perform great tasks and find superhuman strength to make it through difficulties. But even if that was true, what horrible person wishes plague and injury to another human? Who wouldn't want to see Ronaldo or Zlatan perform in Brazil? You have to read the comments below the article, people wishing death and decay, calling each other names, talking about monkeys and bananas, racistic comments, quotes from the Quran that seem to protect from any evil urging you to convert to Islam, people saying the witch doctor should cure his face first, that he looks like Marcelo's or Adebayor's father...

I will follow up with a small personal memory from November 2012 when i broke up with my girlfriend after 5 years.

I learned that she did some immoral things that i am not going to name, that shook the foundations of our relationship. The emotional hit and trauma was so hard i broke down and ended for a few days in the hospital, losing 16 pounds in 21 days. I could not see that this relationship was ending or that it had no future. I made up incredible scenarios in my head, tried to formulate plots and ways to travel in one day 500km to see her and make things right, then come back, wasting money and going nowhere in the end. I slandered and i lied. A lot. It destroyed my chances. She even told me after that if i had no such attitude after we broke up that we may have had a chance again. Now it's for the best, but i could have acted so much differently. I hope you get my point.

Stop slandering your fellow man. I am by all means a Messi fan but i respect Ronaldo and i wish both of them the best. I am lucky to witness players of such quality in the same generation. You will never achieve success if you slander, offend and destroy instead of seeking to build.

Build upon kindness and honesty, it might set you back in your beginning, but keep faith, work towards your chief aim in life and you shall be rewarded in the future. Remember the law of increasing returns? Do not change your principles just because you have enemies or people badmouthing you. When you do something good or great, enemies and rumours sprout like mushrooms and they circulate fast like a virus. A woman a met last week said "You slander me? You admire me".

That's it for now. Oh and humbalaaaa, humbalaaa, humbalaaaa!

"Someone call for de docter?"

You only love twice

He just got off the bus stop at Ag. Varvaras church in Thessaloniki. A cold shiver went down his spine. There was an old lady with skin withered and beaten by age and hardship and a boy around 10 years old, wearing a black t-shirt, yellow pants and brown shoes.

"The fashion police is deffo going to get him" he giggled inside. 

It was a shitty joke, but good enough to calm his growing nerves. Trembling with anticipation he looked around to see her. Nowhere to be found. Suddenly he thought, will i recognise her? Even though they had a video call more than once every single day for the past 2 months the anxiety crept in, forcing him unable to think clearly.

20 million Euros per year and Messi can't buy a decent costume.

He sat down on the outskirts of the church, on a brick stand waiting. A sudden gaze on the right. Walking, no gliding, could see into her soul. He was in for a hell of a ride of love, passion and pain. Looked into her eyes, she was equally anxious, looking, searching. Her hair were dark brown, moving like silk in the smooth breeze of the atmosphere.

Blue jeens, black shoes and his soon to be favorite blouse, yellow with green and a big green knot on the back. She reminded him of a butterfly, placcidly moving around, ignoring danger, flying from flower to flower.

Equally beautiful in his mind.

He hid behind another person, fat enough to need two seatbelts to manage to strap on. Watching her every move below his elbows. She grew impatient, and he was stunned to make the approach. She finally picked up her phone and called him. Funny how she was 20 feet away.

"Eee, hey!", he replies.

"Hhhey! I am waiting by the church, where are you?", she replies.

"I am at the church too, i can't see you!", he tries to deceive here to regain his composure.

They tilt their heads forward, both at the same time. Their gaze meets. An awkward moment is followed by some giggling and some laughter. She sits there waiting for him. He tries to walk as cool as he can, probably looking like an idiot, like those drunk people that pretend everything's cool and they walk in 8's.

Not like this but it was funny enough to include.

They kiss on each cheek, he can smell her hair and her perfume. She always wore Nina Richie or Escada. Immediately he starts his jokes, past experiences from last week, before he did the unthinkable and travelled 1000 km's just to meet a person he had never seen upclose, with no friends to support him for a whole week. He just crashed at the Holiday Inn Hotel in Thessaloniki and went out to find her.

More jokes, getting the banter and the rapport going. He even did his hydraulic dance for her. And he has no idea how to dance. Tension is building, but he is too scared to make a move. After all she is the first girl he ever felt so powerfully attracted to.

There is nothing like first love. You have never had any of those feelings before. Your brain and your existence thinks that nobody ever has felt this way before about anyone. It creates profound emotions in us, marked by the experiences we share with that person that manages to steal your heart for the very first time. Memories of that person will never fade through time an space. They are carved into your brain and your heart like those pictures you could take instantly with those old Polaroid cameras. They are blurry and black in the start, but once the image and the details appear, they stay there forever. At that time you are not thinking of the possibility that you may break up because first love is filled with the optimism that you will both be together for ever. That love can forge a bond stronger than the foundations of the earth, enough to last forever.

Maybe next time it will be my lucky one.