Like anything on the web you never remember how you come across a link. Web surfing is very much like the thought process that goes on inside the brain. If you just sit there and start thinking about something you find yourself jumping from one idea to another and something in one thought triggers the brain to jump to something totally different. These various trains of thought flow from one memory link to another, much like the internet. In the end you find yourself thinking "aha"! Rarely do you backtrack your mind and analyze what each individual thought combined ended up to that aha moment.
Mike Spanakis is such a link like many others I come across that puts my life in focus and highlights parts of my past that I sometimes forget were even there. Mike is just a kid living in Greece on the island of Crete. To anyone else it's a curiosity but to me it's a mirror. I lived in Greece for eight years. I remember doing all those things he mentions on his website, going to the beach, checking out tourists, partying, going to school with all my wacky freinds... Like him, I was born in another country and always had to read another language (in may case english) so I wouldn't forget it. I spent my last two years in Greece on that same island, Crete, studying electronics at a technical college about a 2 hour drive from where Mike lives. Those were some of the most fun times in my life. If I could go back and visit myself and tell myself something it would be this: "stay where you are".
Well, I'm here now and can't go back, that's how it is. I'm happy with the way things are now. I couldn't have imagined back then that I would now have 2 beautiful children that i would sacrifice anything for.
I miss Greece very much.