Surprisingly, there is not a word in English for suffering something that hasn’t happened yet. One of my favorite phrases is “don’t suffer future pain” which is both good Buddhist and Stoic advice…..and here I am mourning leaving Crete while I am still here.
In the marina I step out every morning and admire the mountains to my left and the sea behind me. In September I appreciate the sunrise as well as the nightly beautiful sunset. I can go and have a beer overlooking a local beach where I know the owner and he will being me an ice-cold draft without me asking. I walk to the grocery store, and usually do a nice walk around the main port of the town which is more sea and more mountains. It is a very nice walk disturbed only by the masses of tourists.
I really look forward to seeing my family and friends.
I don’t drive here much, but I do love the local tradition of ignoring Stop signs. How Cretans treat Stop signs is a metaphor for Cretan life. There are rules but most things are ok as long as you are not bothering anybody. A bit of cultural anarchy. BUT if there are flashing lights around the Stop sign you must Stop. And we do not go through Red traffic lights. (I’ve been tempted but the locals always obey the lights.) There are Stop signs before every round-about, which makes no sense and of course everyone ignores. I think these were posted because of an EU directive, and everyone is silently giving the finger to the EU when they ignore them.
I have prepared for boat for winter. I changed the oil/filters in the engine and the generator and now after doing it several times I don’t make much of a mess. I also fixed the front toilet. The upper-exit pipe was clogged with a crystal (calcium sulfate dihydrate) that forms from urine and sea-water mixing. I’ll spare you the details, but after I was finished (it was a brutal job) I was very interested in making sure it didn’t happen again. Most people suggest putting vinegar in the toilet once a week.
So I asked my friend “ChatGPT model 4o1-preview” which is the new ‘advanced’ OpenAI AI/LLM version that knows math, physics and chemistry. This is not the ‘full’ advanced model which is hidden because they are still checking to see how dangerous it will be. (i.e. wives poisoning husbands, people building bombs, etc.) In any case I asked it how much vinegar should I use to dissolve a weeks worth of buildup in a sailboat saltwater toilet……and it told me not to bother with vinegar! It said that vinegar is not that much more of a solvent than regular water (not seawater) so if you flush the toilet with regular water weekly it would help a lot.
It understood what I was asking and why, and told me to do something different than I was asking. I think most people are underestimating the effect these tools will have on the world.
In a few days I will be leaving this little paradise nestled between the mountains and the sea with wonderful fresh produce, affordable delicious beer, lovely light inexpensive wine, and free-for all parking…. to the land of very red ripe-looking tasteless tomatoes, beer and wine taxed so much that a working person can barely afford a drink, and parking police swarming like hornets at a picnic.
A Cretan visiting Toronto might say they were visiting a Puritan tinged Police State….but I do miss the multi-cultural food.
Wish me luck.
Adventures on Spruzzo 