Alexander Chalkidis

Category: DAILY LIFE

  • The case for a pyjama phone

    The case for a pyjama phone

    Maybe you will call it something else in the future. But I know you need it. I have used a pyjama phone from the first time I swapped up my mobile phone. That previous model seemed fine up until yesterday, it did the same stuff more or less, maybe a bit slower.

    1. Are you worried about your battery? You haven’t decided if it should stay on the charger all night or not, maybe you want it to stop at 80% charge, whatever you like. Get home, switch off your main phone and plug it in to exactly the level you think best. In the meantime….
    2. …relax. Your pyjama phone has only the apps you need at home. Only what you choose to use, the rest can wait. It has to wait, you haven’t even installed it. Instant recallibration.
    3. Take a load of your main phone. A whole lot of apps are only useful when you are home. Why carry them around all day and weigh down your main phone (and your brain) with them? Numerous chat apps or social media I only have on my pyjama phone. If you message me on Viber I won’t see it until I get home. TikTok is not something I need to be seeing all day.
    4. Test and play with stuff you aren’t sure about. That app you read about (on your pyjama phone at night, on that news app you wouldn’t install on your main phone) and are curious? Just try it out.

    There are a lot of uses for a pyjama phone. But the main objective is to create a “safe place”, a calm place, you are not going to switch off all phones completely like they say you should, so at least have a phone which is automatically set up to be closer to whatever you want to feel like doing at home.

  • Censorship, Greek style

    With oligarchy, a few power took power and so all poets lived in fear.  It became impossible to openly make fun of anyone, they could take you to court.  Eupolis criticized Alcibiades in his work “Batpae” and decided to drown him in the sea.

    This created even more fear in poets as “Baptae” means “Bathers”.

     

  • Extreme party games

    Some people in Thrace hang themselves as a game during drinking parties.  They make a noose above a stone that is easily overturned if you stand on it.   The noose is at just the right height.   Then, a person is chosen by drawing a lot and he has to get on the stone.  He is allowed only a small knife as he gets up on the stone and puts his head in the noose.  Then someone from the party moves the stone so he has to quickly cut the rope or die.  If he is not quick, he dies and is left hanging there.  His death is considered quite amusing.

     

    Wise men at dinner – Athenaeus.

     

  • Bad to the bone

    In places like Sparta women are treated badly.  This means that half the population lives without happiness.

    Rhetoric – Aristotle

  • Coin in the mouth

    We know that the dead had to have a coin in their mouth to pay for their trip to the Underworld.  What we forget is that in the 5th century it was also customary for living people to keep coins in their mouth!  Was it because their clothes were not very practical and had no pockets?