October 13, 2025 • 31 mins
Baby Needs New Shoes! But seriosly, I went to a casino. So fun. Also, how does a people pleaser navigate the streets of Athens on a motorbike? What recent change at the Acropolis in Greece could enhance your visit? How grueling is the apartment hunting process in Berlin? Listen to another lovely episode
Link for BlackJack Counting Cards Video mentioned:
https://youtu.be/exO0paRESbU
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:06):
Hi, hello and welcome to yet another expert.
This is episode 72. How are you doing?
How am I doing? How is anyone doing on this
beautiful Monday, October 13th where I am recording?
It is an unusually sunny day in Berlin and all the leaves have
turned yellow. This is one of the enjoyable
(00:29):
things of this time of the year,how the leaves turn yellow and
fall on the ground. It's just a a last gift for your
eyes before everything turns black and white.
But we were having a conversation recently with some
friends and I got reminded of two stories.
So here they are. I'm not proud of them.
(00:56):
Two stories about people pleasing.
I used to be a people pleaser. I still am a people pleaser.
It's so great to get joy giving to other people.
It's connected with how you feelvalue about yourself and how you
were raised and all of those things I talked to my therapist
about. But at the end of the day, just
(01:16):
know that I am a people pleaser and I have been one for many
years now. It's much better, but it's still
there. So story #1 I am driving my
motorbike in Athens. Now imagine it's July,
everything is so hot it's burning.
Of course I'm wearing a helmet. Some Greeks don't do so the
(01:39):
temperature is quite high. Now if you're driving, you get
nice air in. Even if it's warm air, it's
still OK. It's not so unbearable.
However, when you stop at the traffic lights, this is when it
can. It can get a bit difficult.
So in Greece we do lane splitting, I think it's called
in English. The motorbikes drive between the
(02:01):
cars. This is how it is, this is how
it happens. I know it's not the same in
other countries, but just just deal with it.
So when there is a traffic stop,the cars always make enough
distance so the bikes can come and they can arrive at the start
of the traffic light. So everyone keeps good distances
left and right. So there I am with my motorbike.
(02:23):
There is a red traffic light ahead and as I am approaching
there are some nice trees on that street creating a good good
shadow. So I make it about one car
before the traffic light and again I'm driving between the
cars that are now stationary. So I'm just cruising between the
(02:44):
stopped lines of cars and as I stop I am about 10 meters away
from the traffic light, enjoyingthe shadow, and there is a car
that hasn't left enough space for the bike to go through.
Which is fine because I'm very close to the traffic light
anyways, and because the shadow of the tree does not cover that
(03:05):
front part of the traffic light.Now in Greece people usually
don't care if they're cutting you off, they will just wait
until the traffic light is greenand just start over.
But this person realized that their car is blocking this small
pathway for the motorbikes and immediately he turns the wheel
(03:26):
and makes an opening for me and says, hey, you can pass now I
didn't want to pass because thatwould land me exactly in the
boiling sun, still having to wait for the red traffic light.
But that gesture of this driver just making space for me.
I felt inside of me that this issuch a nice thing to do, that
(03:48):
this person should be rewarded by feeling good for making way
for the motorbike. And so, against my will and in
the expense of my well-being, I moved forward with my motorbike
to the space he kindly made for me in the hot sun.
(04:08):
And I stayed there, sweating andboiling just to give this person
a sense of pleasure for having done the good thing.
So this is 1. I still remember it because what
happened in my brain when I obliged to take this kind
offering, even though for me it wasn't nice at all, just to give
(04:29):
him the pleasure. So there there is one and then I
remember the second one. So here's the second story.
Same setup again, driving a motorbike.
There is a traffic light and I am between the cars and there is
some cars are still arriving at the traffic light.
So not all the cars around me are stationary.
(04:51):
So there are cars left and rightand as I wait there, I suddenly
feel immense pressure on my right foot and I turn around and
there is an actual car stepping on my foot.
Now, if a few things happen there, first of all, I am
shocked because it's not as painful as I would have thought.
(05:15):
I still feel a lot of pressure, but somehow it is distributed
uniformly around the front part of my foot.
So I'm a bit like, oh, wow, nothing is breaking.
I just feel, you know, a shit ton of pressure.
On the other hand, I realized that the person driving this
car, well, let's step back. Like when you look down and
(05:37):
there is the will of a car on your foot, what do you do?
I think anyone else would have shouted or screamed or just made
a fuss about the situation. Because again, in Greece, the
motorbikes drive between the cars.
So in the traffic light, when it's red, cars left and right
make space and the bikes go in the middle.
(05:58):
It's a standard thing. So to have someone just slowly
make a stop at the red traffic light while stepping on my foot
is not something that happens. I look inside to see the driver,
and there is this really young girl that has both hands on the
wheel and is looking terrified of of life, of everything.
(06:20):
And then I realize that this carhas the sign in the back that
this is a new driver. And yeah, I don't know how many
times this woman had driven, butI could see that she's not
really confident at all. Now all this time her wheel is
on my foot. But I'm thinking because I had
female driver friends that got their driver's license at 18
(06:44):
after school. And then they tried to drive in
Athens and they had a few bad experiences with people shouting
at them, people honking, people being aggressive because Athens
is an aggressive place for driving around.
And that shocked them so much that then they stopped driving.
And, you know, it slowly snowballs.
(07:05):
So then if you let it go, it lets you go as well.
And then time passes and then you just don't drive anymore.
So I have three friends, three close friends.
They all went through exactly the same, got the driver's
license, got bullied, stopped driving, and then their
boyfriends drive or something like this.
But I hate that. So I wanted to empower that,
(07:25):
that girl. And so I decided in that place,
but I'm not going to say anything and I'm going to, I'm
going to wait it out because twothings would happen if I told
her, imagine a knock on her window and I say, hey, you're
stepping, you're on my foot, your car is on my foot.
She would freak the fuck out. She would probably panic.
(07:46):
I don't know how she would reacton the driving side of things.
But then she would also be devastated.
Even if I did it in the kindest of ways, that's not the nice
thing if you are in your first time of driving.
It would traumatize you. And so I silently waited on the
red traffic light until it got green and she drove the car away
(08:10):
from my foot. Now I almost saw I.
I wonder if she realized when the car started again that there
was a tiny, tiny bump from the wheel getting off my foot.
I am not sure. What I know is that I didn't
break any of my fingers and yeah, it wasn't as bad as I
thought on my foot. And this is the second story of
(08:33):
people pleasing on the road. 2 extreme examples of taking a
personal hit just to not make someone else sad.
Was it the right decision? I would still say yes to this
day. The people I shared this story
at 2:00 AM eating McDonald's in Lisbon.
Thought opposite but still enjoyed listening to them and I
(08:56):
hope you enjoyed listening to them as well.
Thanks for tuning in to another weekly episode.
This one will be more random than usual.
It will have less news. So if you're here for the news
and the click bait titles, then it won't have so much of that.
Because I took a week off, I am in a vacation mood, which is
(09:19):
really not a vacation. I'm still in Berlin.
I'm still in the house, I just took a week to manage to relax.
I have 20 days off to take and the year comes to an end pretty
soon so I decided this is a goodtiming.
So nothing else is changing in my day-to-day.
Still babysitting together with my partner, but trying to slow
(09:42):
down the rhythm and enjoy the little moments.
We said it. Joy is resistance and I'm trying
to resist. Now here's the thing that
happened last week. I was in Lisbon with work and
you know, it was a 2-3 days travel.
The first day, when the normal program finished, some people
went to a rooftop bar. They invited other people over.
(10:05):
I was just too tired from the travelling.
I was longing for my bed, so I didn't join.
Now the next day, there was again an invitation for one of
those rooftop bars in one of thehotels.
And even though I was tired, I said, you know what, you don't
get a lot of chances to bond with people socially, let's do
it. So I say yes, I hope on the bus.
(10:27):
We go at that hotel and turns out that the rooftop bar had a
private event. So there we were, a group of
10-15 people stranded not knowing what to do.
And this is when someone broughtthe idea.
Hey everyone, there's actually acasino 5 minutes walking from
(10:47):
here that does have a bar and wecould have a drink there.
Now I am 33 years old and I've never been to a casino.
I've never been to a casino, noteven 1.
I don't know a small one, one ofthese disgusting one on the
streets. I haven't been to a big one to a
small 10 casino. Now do I want to go to a casino?
(11:09):
I am dying to go to a casino. This has been a wild dream of
mine. Never did too much to pursue it.
I knew that time would come at some point and guess what?
The time was coming in that night.
Others were also interested. So we went to a casino and let
me tell you my experience. First of all, there was police
(11:30):
outside of the casino. I was wondering if there was
some robbery or whatever, but nothing was going on.
There were three police people stationed outside of the casino,
which gave me a bit of, you know, Greek vibes.
Why are taxpayer money paying for police to be standing
outside a private institution, but I don't mess with the police
(11:50):
in foreign countries? I just went in, gave my bag,
gave my stuff and off I was. Now the casino had an
interesting identification system.
It was almost the same one as the airport.
You need your passport. It was taking a photo of you.
But I did everything and before we knew it, we were now the
first floor of the casino was full of slot machines.
(12:14):
The thing where you press buttons and things spin around
or you pull down the lever and things spin around.
It was filled with these types of machines and nothing else.
It was just hundreds of slot machines.
And let me tell you, that was the most depressing part of the
casino. You know what people are
(12:36):
playing? The slot machines.
If you imagine a casino, who do you imagine in the slot
machines? It's exactly what you imagine it
was. Pensioners, old people, some old
couples as well. There was an old couple and they
were just eyes at the screen, not even moving, and they were
just hitting those buttons. Everyone was like hypnotized,
(12:58):
aimlessly hitting the buttons, losing money after money after
money. I'm telling you, it looked like
a Black Mirror episode because everyone was also so silent.
No one was talking. Everyone was just staring at the
spinning things and just clicking and clicking and
clicking. And some of them had also this
(13:19):
very serious look, like if you remove the slot machine and you
put a computer in front of that face, you would be sure that
this person is doing very serious work.
They know exactly what they're doing.
They're typing the last details on that spreadsheet or finishing
a presentation. They had this type of look while
they were in front of an arcade machine showing a Greek gods
(13:44):
spinning things like swords and Dragons and bones to mats, three
in a row, which is a very strongcontrast.
And this is another thing I didn't know about these
machines. I was imagining just Vegas.
You need to get 777. Yeah, you can have a little bit
of design, maybe some coins or something like this.
(14:04):
But these machines, they all look like arcade games, like the
arcade games I was playing when I was 12 years old taking the
ferry from Piros to Icaria. And they have this horrible
design like the the the design is like they are designed for
pre puberty 13 year olds. They have sexy girls, they have
(14:26):
ancient Greek themes, they have Dragons, they have samurais.
So it was the most bizarre thing, this 70 year old man
playing a slots machines with Dragons and samurais and secret
portions. Because at the end of the day,
it doesn't matter what the design of the slot machine
shows, we just need to keep hitting the button, slowly
(14:48):
losing your money until you hit big.
So I tried to play one of those before we moved on.
I didn't understand what was happening.
I put €5 in and this is another trick it does.
When you give it money, it doesn't show you you have €5 and
then you play through those euros it converts.
You put €5 and it converts the €5 into credits.
(15:11):
But it's not that €5 is 5 credits or 500 credits or
something. That makes sense. €5 was
something like 250 credits. So the connection between
credits and money gets jammed. You don't always know how much
you have in or out, and you keepspinning things and pressing the
button. Your credits go slowly down,
(15:33):
down, down. Maybe once they go up, but then
they go down, down, down again until you have nothing.
So my slot machine experience, Iwon 36 long pause cents, $0.36
was my winnings. It gave me a special piece of
paper that said it. I took a photo with that, even
(15:53):
though no photos were allowed, and then we finally decided to
leave the depressing floor, sucking money out of the
pensioners away and go upstairs.I was just thinking of all the
little grandkids or nephews or the youth that could be taking
that money from the pensioners and giving them a smile, giving
(16:14):
them that dopamine that they're chasing from the machine.
If they just gave pocket money around I think they would still
get it. But anyway, depressing floor out
we go upstairs and on the 1st floor are the tables.
And this is what the real casinois for me.
They were tables, they had poker, they had blackjack, they
(16:35):
had a third thing that I don't know what it is but it was full
of Chinese people all around that table.
They were having a blast and this is where I decided to put
some more money in and get 2 chips to play some blackjack.
It's chip was €10 so you know, not a huge investment, but we
(16:55):
sat down on a table and I've never played blackjack in a real
table before. I've played with some friends at
Christmas or something and that's it.
So I had the time of my life. I was with another friend's last
colleague there and let me tell you the the the table was more
joyful than I thought. I thought that everyone would be
(17:17):
super serious because it's a casino, but the in blackjack,
everyone plays against the dealer.
So you are in a in a full on table or everyone tries to win.
The person that is dealing the cards, the casino person.
So there was this solidarity. We're all against this guy.
This guy is lucky. We're losing our money.
(17:37):
Should I do this? Should I do that?
Another funny thing was, you know, casinos take things
seriously. They're full of cameras, they're
full of bouncers, they're full of people that try to see if
anyone is cheating. And in in blackjack, you can
actually cheat. There is this card, card
counting, if you're not familiarwith it, in blackjack, you need
(17:58):
to get as close to 21 as possible.
They give you cards and if you get more than 21, then you're
burned, you lose. If you get 21, that's a
blackjack and you draw cards andthe dealer draws cards and
whoever is closest to 21 wins. Now there is a way that you can
count the cards that have already passed and calculate the
(18:20):
possibility of getting closer to21 or not.
This is a complex thing and in order to do it, they have teams
of people who know the game and they do signals to each other
when it's a good time. You don't always win, but it
raises your chances and you knowin the casino, the casino always
wins at the end of the day. But if you manage to play with
(18:40):
something like this, then you have better chances than the
casino. Long story short, because we
went with a big group and we hadquite a few people that were
there just to observe and have fun and have a drink and not
play. Our table was very busy and our
friends, they were, you know, giving their advice or they were
(19:01):
getting excited when we won or sad when we lost.
And I noticed that quickly the dealer made a signal and the two
extra people showed up behind the table and observed us for
like 5 or 10 minutes. And these are the checkers.
These are the people that were checking whether we have some
sort of secret system that we are creating a distraction where
(19:24):
someone else is notifying the person counting the cards if
they have a good count. Well, none of that was there.
And the checkers didn't stay more than 5 minutes because they
could very quickly see that we're just two people that know
nothing and are just losing while our friends are watching.
But I was interested to observe that there is a YouTube channel
(19:45):
of a professional card counter. He plays blackjack with a group
of four or five people professionally, which means
every now and then they travel to a different casino and they
have this system of counting thecards and trying to signal each
other when to bet big and they have spreadsheets and they track
their earnings over time. I don't know why I ended up
(20:10):
watching some of these videos inthe past, but if you want to see
any of that they are really wellmade videos.
You can search on YouTube card counting team hits casino and
you will see that they also havedisguises like you can put a wig
on. Because technically a casino is
a private business, right? They can deny you entrance, but
(20:31):
it's not against the law to playthe odds against the casino.
So what these groups do, they goto a place with a couple of
casinos and they try to see how long it will take until they
figure out that they are card counting and kick them out.
So sometimes they can play for acouple of hours before they are
pushed out. Sometimes they enter the casino
(20:53):
and they immediately can recognize through software that
it's them and they kick them out.
And if my story of the casino was underwhelming, then if you
watch those videos, you will definitely get some excitement.
But to close it off, the casino was a very interesting place.
Everyone working there was a mixture of extremely friendly or
extremely hostile, which means that they are dealing with all
(21:16):
sorts of people. I guess the floor of all the
slots machines is the most depressing thing I've seen in a
while. I was still having a good time
because I was there only for onenight, but damn it, all of these
old people in the machines, if you could plug a cable to all of
them and feed it into a machine,it would feed desperation and
sadness it felt. There are so many lights in that
(21:37):
floor, like so many neon lights from all the different slot
machines that it almost feels like a factory of sucking the
life out of the old people. And by life, I also mean money.
So that part depressing. Thank you very much.
Not going to stay here. First floor with the tables,
much more fun. People are losing, but at least
(21:59):
they're having fun. You know, if you're going to be
losing your money, have a drink,socialize a bit, Blame the
dealer, all of you, instead of being alone pressing that little
button and you should lose with the chances you see in front of
you with the cards, not lose by the chances that a a closed off
machine is having. How do you know it's it's
(22:19):
rigged? Trusting an algorithm that the
casino made that is going to give you money.
Bananas. That's bananas.
And the drinks were not for freebecause I heard in other casinos
they give you drinks so you keepon playing.
Well, not in that one. Enough people were playing
without drinking. Would I go again?
Absolutely. I would play some blackjack
(22:40):
again. I only lost €20.
That's not even the price of a of a cocktail.
OK, two cocktails in the rooftopbar of the hotel, probably 1
cocktail. So I would totally do it.
I wouldn't take my kids savings to go, but I would have a drink
with a friend and do some money on blackjack.
That table was, I guess I shouldsay here, never gamble.
(23:03):
It's not good. It's addictive.
It can cost your fortune, life and misery.
So here's a disclaimer, but let's wrap it up here.
There was this one slot machine with ancient Greek gods and
goddesses just showing a lot of muscle and boobs and all of
these things, which reminded me of the only piece of news I will
(23:23):
give you this week, which is that the Acropolis in Greece has
a new update. So in the Acropolis hill, you
have the Parthenon, the big temple, right?
Well, that temple has had scaffolding around it for the
last 200 years. One way or another, the monument
(23:44):
has had scaffolding around for restoration.
Well, no more visitors can enjoysomething not seen in decades,
an unobstructed scaffolding freeview of the Parthenon temple.
It is happening. So if you want to see the 500 BC
template, you can now enjoy the Parthenon without any
(24:06):
scaffolding. My note on the Greek government
would be, how about now you maybe fix the elevator because
if you don't know there is an elevator to take you to the
monument because it's a very steep hill, you need to go up.
It's definitely not accessible. So just a few years ago, they
made an elevator. However, that elevator is broken
(24:31):
more times than it works. It's extremely slow and it's
extremely tiny. If they knew about all of this
and they could have made a bigger one, but they didn't and
now the person needs to maintainthis elevator every week.
So if you are a person in accessibility needs, you still
(24:51):
might not get to enjoy it. It's a coin toss if you'll make
it or not. And one more thing I want to
tell you is that the tickets to go see the Parthenon, up until
one year ago, you could pre buy your ticket but it did not have
a time slot. So you were buying the ticket
and then you would queue up withthousands of people that bought
(25:15):
a ticket because no one goes at noon.
If it's too hot, everyone goes in the morning or everyone goes
for the sunset. And what a great thing to
showcase as a country, having one of the most impressive,
unique monuments in the entire world.
Probably the reason why your only product, tourism, is
(25:38):
bringing all these people. Why do people come to Greece?
The food, the sea, the ancient history, right?
So it's in the top three. You go to Greece, you need to go
see the Parthenon and you don't have a working elevator for it
and you don't have a ticketing system that someone can
respectfully enjoy the monument.But hey, no more scaffolding
(25:59):
around the monument. So this is a beginning.
If you are visiting Greece, try to get tickets with a time slot
and make sure to visit the Acropolis Museum because that's
one of the few things in Greece that will make you think we are
a modern European civilized country respecting its past.
Now in other news, we are apartment hunting in Berlin, the
(26:24):
toughest of sports. It's the Iron Man of the modern
world. You need to do obstacle races,
You need to do different kinds of sports.
You need to swim, you need to dance, you need to jump, You
need to run. You need to sweat.
It is by far one of the most complex projects I've had to
(26:46):
manage. But for apartment handling in
Berlin, you need to go in by allmeans.
Did you manage to get a viewing?We bring the baby.
We even trained the baby to laugh.
We're having a viewing. We trained the baby to charm the
homeowners, to raise our chances.
We look at the owners beforehand.
Who are they? What are they?
(27:06):
Are they fashionable? Are they photographer?
Are they architects? How should we disguise
ourselves? What is the social camouflage we
need to do? What chameleon must we become
for them to feel relatable to usand increase our chances?
How can I casually drop the factthat I have my own Greek olive
(27:29):
oil from our own trees? And that could be something they
get to enjoy as well. But they are asking for
everything. Just the amount of documentation
that today apartment handling inBerlin is requiring is more than
asking for a mortgage in a bank.40 pages of documents including
(27:49):
salaries, pay slips, work contracts, credit checks,
verification from the current landlord that we are good
people, and all sorts of other things.
At the end of the day, I would give them, I would give them our
own child. I don't know what they want to
give us an apartment at this point.
(28:11):
We're using services, networks, friends of friends,
advertisement this podcast, you name it.
If you find me a four room apt, I can reward you with half of
the monthly rent as your payment.
How does that sound? There are different types of
owners. We had people that give us a
(28:32):
slot, a time slot where we can visit the apartment and have a
normal conversation with them. Now another genius person I had
the joy to be part of their process did the following.
He said. To everyone that has applied for
this apartment, come see it on Monday from 2:00 PM to 2:30.
(28:56):
No one else will be allowed at any other time.
And we went there and there werelike 100 people to see the
apartment. I've never felt so insignificant
in my life. I also felt very competitive.
It was like we are in some sort of twisted Mr. Beast video where
(29:16):
we all need to contest for a chance to win the great
privilege of having to pay an enormous rent to have an
apartment. But so we did it.
We tried to cast the charm, but I don't know who got that
apartment. But that was crazy.
So kudos to the landlords that actually give one to one slots.
(29:38):
So good luck to us. Things are progressing.
We're having viewings. We have a really good system in
trying to secure. We are the first to apply in
different apartments. I cannot share more details on
that. If someone wants, you can DM me,
but that has significantly increased our chances in getting
some viewings. Why am I sharing all of that?
(29:59):
I don't know. I guess this episode of the
podcast is more of my personal diary.
Sometimes it's more of the news,sometimes it's more of a diary.
And this is it for today. A little tour from Lisbon's
casinos to Greece, unscaffolded Parthenon, sprinkled with some
(30:22):
news of the relentless apartmenthunting squid games of Berlin,
and topped up with two stories of people pleasing.
What is your most extreme example of people pleasing?
What would your story be if you were in that 2:00 AM McDonald's
conversation in Lisbon like I was?
(30:43):
I'll let you go with this one. I hope you're doing well.
I sincerely thank you for tuningin for another week and I will
see you on the next week. If you enjoy this podcast, click
like, share and subscribe. And as I said on the beginning
of November, I will share an episode where I was interviewed
(31:07):
by another podcast. It will be a deep dive into some
areas of my life, so if that is of any interest, hang in there
and I will share all that information on the next podcast.
Until then, Ciao.
Hi, hello and welcome to yet another expert.
This is episode 72. How are you doing?
How am I doing? How is anyone doing on this
beautiful Monday, October 13th where I am recording?
It is an unusually sunny day in Berlin and all the leaves have
turned yellow. This is one of the enjoyable
(00:29):
things of this time of the year,how the leaves turn yellow and
fall on the ground. It's just a a last gift for your
eyes before everything turns black and white.
But we were having a conversation recently with some
friends and I got reminded of two stories.
So here they are. I'm not proud of them.
(00:56):
Two stories about people pleasing.
I used to be a people pleaser. I still am a people pleaser.
It's so great to get joy giving to other people.
It's connected with how you feelvalue about yourself and how you
were raised and all of those things I talked to my therapist
about. But at the end of the day, just
(01:16):
know that I am a people pleaser and I have been one for many
years now. It's much better, but it's still
there. So story #1 I am driving my
motorbike in Athens. Now imagine it's July,
everything is so hot it's burning.
Of course I'm wearing a helmet. Some Greeks don't do so the
(01:39):
temperature is quite high. Now if you're driving, you get
nice air in. Even if it's warm air, it's
still OK. It's not so unbearable.
However, when you stop at the traffic lights, this is when it
can. It can get a bit difficult.
So in Greece we do lane splitting, I think it's called
in English. The motorbikes drive between the
(02:01):
cars. This is how it is, this is how
it happens. I know it's not the same in
other countries, but just just deal with it.
So when there is a traffic stop,the cars always make enough
distance so the bikes can come and they can arrive at the start
of the traffic light. So everyone keeps good distances
left and right. So there I am with my motorbike.
(02:23):
There is a red traffic light ahead and as I am approaching
there are some nice trees on that street creating a good good
shadow. So I make it about one car
before the traffic light and again I'm driving between the
cars that are now stationary. So I'm just cruising between the
(02:44):
stopped lines of cars and as I stop I am about 10 meters away
from the traffic light, enjoyingthe shadow, and there is a car
that hasn't left enough space for the bike to go through.
Which is fine because I'm very close to the traffic light
anyways, and because the shadow of the tree does not cover that
(03:05):
front part of the traffic light.Now in Greece people usually
don't care if they're cutting you off, they will just wait
until the traffic light is greenand just start over.
But this person realized that their car is blocking this small
pathway for the motorbikes and immediately he turns the wheel
(03:26):
and makes an opening for me and says, hey, you can pass now I
didn't want to pass because thatwould land me exactly in the
boiling sun, still having to wait for the red traffic light.
But that gesture of this driver just making space for me.
I felt inside of me that this issuch a nice thing to do, that
(03:48):
this person should be rewarded by feeling good for making way
for the motorbike. And so, against my will and in
the expense of my well-being, I moved forward with my motorbike
to the space he kindly made for me in the hot sun.
(04:08):
And I stayed there, sweating andboiling just to give this person
a sense of pleasure for having done the good thing.
So this is 1. I still remember it because what
happened in my brain when I obliged to take this kind
offering, even though for me it wasn't nice at all, just to give
(04:29):
him the pleasure. So there there is one and then I
remember the second one. So here's the second story.
Same setup again, driving a motorbike.
There is a traffic light and I am between the cars and there is
some cars are still arriving at the traffic light.
So not all the cars around me are stationary.
(04:51):
So there are cars left and rightand as I wait there, I suddenly
feel immense pressure on my right foot and I turn around and
there is an actual car stepping on my foot.
Now, if a few things happen there, first of all, I am
shocked because it's not as painful as I would have thought.
(05:15):
I still feel a lot of pressure, but somehow it is distributed
uniformly around the front part of my foot.
So I'm a bit like, oh, wow, nothing is breaking.
I just feel, you know, a shit ton of pressure.
On the other hand, I realized that the person driving this
car, well, let's step back. Like when you look down and
(05:37):
there is the will of a car on your foot, what do you do?
I think anyone else would have shouted or screamed or just made
a fuss about the situation. Because again, in Greece, the
motorbikes drive between the cars.
So in the traffic light, when it's red, cars left and right
make space and the bikes go in the middle.
(05:58):
It's a standard thing. So to have someone just slowly
make a stop at the red traffic light while stepping on my foot
is not something that happens. I look inside to see the driver,
and there is this really young girl that has both hands on the
wheel and is looking terrified of of life, of everything.
(06:20):
And then I realize that this carhas the sign in the back that
this is a new driver. And yeah, I don't know how many
times this woman had driven, butI could see that she's not
really confident at all. Now all this time her wheel is
on my foot. But I'm thinking because I had
female driver friends that got their driver's license at 18
(06:44):
after school. And then they tried to drive in
Athens and they had a few bad experiences with people shouting
at them, people honking, people being aggressive because Athens
is an aggressive place for driving around.
And that shocked them so much that then they stopped driving.
And, you know, it slowly snowballs.
(07:05):
So then if you let it go, it lets you go as well.
And then time passes and then you just don't drive anymore.
So I have three friends, three close friends.
They all went through exactly the same, got the driver's
license, got bullied, stopped driving, and then their
boyfriends drive or something like this.
But I hate that. So I wanted to empower that,
(07:25):
that girl. And so I decided in that place,
but I'm not going to say anything and I'm going to, I'm
going to wait it out because twothings would happen if I told
her, imagine a knock on her window and I say, hey, you're
stepping, you're on my foot, your car is on my foot.
She would freak the fuck out. She would probably panic.
(07:46):
I don't know how she would reacton the driving side of things.
But then she would also be devastated.
Even if I did it in the kindest of ways, that's not the nice
thing if you are in your first time of driving.
It would traumatize you. And so I silently waited on the
red traffic light until it got green and she drove the car away
(08:10):
from my foot. Now I almost saw I.
I wonder if she realized when the car started again that there
was a tiny, tiny bump from the wheel getting off my foot.
I am not sure. What I know is that I didn't
break any of my fingers and yeah, it wasn't as bad as I
thought on my foot. And this is the second story of
(08:33):
people pleasing on the road. 2 extreme examples of taking a
personal hit just to not make someone else sad.
Was it the right decision? I would still say yes to this
day. The people I shared this story
at 2:00 AM eating McDonald's in Lisbon.
Thought opposite but still enjoyed listening to them and I
(08:56):
hope you enjoyed listening to them as well.
Thanks for tuning in to another weekly episode.
This one will be more random than usual.
It will have less news. So if you're here for the news
and the click bait titles, then it won't have so much of that.
Because I took a week off, I am in a vacation mood, which is
(09:19):
really not a vacation. I'm still in Berlin.
I'm still in the house, I just took a week to manage to relax.
I have 20 days off to take and the year comes to an end pretty
soon so I decided this is a goodtiming.
So nothing else is changing in my day-to-day.
Still babysitting together with my partner, but trying to slow
(09:42):
down the rhythm and enjoy the little moments.
We said it. Joy is resistance and I'm trying
to resist. Now here's the thing that
happened last week. I was in Lisbon with work and
you know, it was a 2-3 days travel.
The first day, when the normal program finished, some people
went to a rooftop bar. They invited other people over.
(10:05):
I was just too tired from the travelling.
I was longing for my bed, so I didn't join.
Now the next day, there was again an invitation for one of
those rooftop bars in one of thehotels.
And even though I was tired, I said, you know what, you don't
get a lot of chances to bond with people socially, let's do
it. So I say yes, I hope on the bus.
(10:27):
We go at that hotel and turns out that the rooftop bar had a
private event. So there we were, a group of
10-15 people stranded not knowing what to do.
And this is when someone broughtthe idea.
Hey everyone, there's actually acasino 5 minutes walking from
(10:47):
here that does have a bar and wecould have a drink there.
Now I am 33 years old and I've never been to a casino.
I've never been to a casino, noteven 1.
I don't know a small one, one ofthese disgusting one on the
streets. I haven't been to a big one to a
small 10 casino. Now do I want to go to a casino?
(11:09):
I am dying to go to a casino. This has been a wild dream of
mine. Never did too much to pursue it.
I knew that time would come at some point and guess what?
The time was coming in that night.
Others were also interested. So we went to a casino and let
me tell you my experience. First of all, there was police
(11:30):
outside of the casino. I was wondering if there was
some robbery or whatever, but nothing was going on.
There were three police people stationed outside of the casino,
which gave me a bit of, you know, Greek vibes.
Why are taxpayer money paying for police to be standing
outside a private institution, but I don't mess with the police
(11:50):
in foreign countries? I just went in, gave my bag,
gave my stuff and off I was. Now the casino had an
interesting identification system.
It was almost the same one as the airport.
You need your passport. It was taking a photo of you.
But I did everything and before we knew it, we were now the
first floor of the casino was full of slot machines.
(12:14):
The thing where you press buttons and things spin around
or you pull down the lever and things spin around.
It was filled with these types of machines and nothing else.
It was just hundreds of slot machines.
And let me tell you, that was the most depressing part of the
casino. You know what people are
(12:36):
playing? The slot machines.
If you imagine a casino, who do you imagine in the slot
machines? It's exactly what you imagine it
was. Pensioners, old people, some old
couples as well. There was an old couple and they
were just eyes at the screen, not even moving, and they were
just hitting those buttons. Everyone was like hypnotized,
(12:58):
aimlessly hitting the buttons, losing money after money after
money. I'm telling you, it looked like
a Black Mirror episode because everyone was also so silent.
No one was talking. Everyone was just staring at the
spinning things and just clicking and clicking and
clicking. And some of them had also this
(13:19):
very serious look, like if you remove the slot machine and you
put a computer in front of that face, you would be sure that
this person is doing very serious work.
They know exactly what they're doing.
They're typing the last details on that spreadsheet or finishing
a presentation. They had this type of look while
they were in front of an arcade machine showing a Greek gods
(13:44):
spinning things like swords and Dragons and bones to mats, three
in a row, which is a very strongcontrast.
And this is another thing I didn't know about these
machines. I was imagining just Vegas.
You need to get 777. Yeah, you can have a little bit
of design, maybe some coins or something like this.
(14:04):
But these machines, they all look like arcade games, like the
arcade games I was playing when I was 12 years old taking the
ferry from Piros to Icaria. And they have this horrible
design like the the the design is like they are designed for
pre puberty 13 year olds. They have sexy girls, they have
(14:26):
ancient Greek themes, they have Dragons, they have samurais.
So it was the most bizarre thing, this 70 year old man
playing a slots machines with Dragons and samurais and secret
portions. Because at the end of the day,
it doesn't matter what the design of the slot machine
shows, we just need to keep hitting the button, slowly
(14:48):
losing your money until you hit big.
So I tried to play one of those before we moved on.
I didn't understand what was happening.
I put €5 in and this is another trick it does.
When you give it money, it doesn't show you you have €5 and
then you play through those euros it converts.
You put €5 and it converts the €5 into credits.
(15:11):
But it's not that €5 is 5 credits or 500 credits or
something. That makes sense. €5 was
something like 250 credits. So the connection between
credits and money gets jammed. You don't always know how much
you have in or out, and you keepspinning things and pressing the
button. Your credits go slowly down,
(15:33):
down, down. Maybe once they go up, but then
they go down, down, down again until you have nothing.
So my slot machine experience, Iwon 36 long pause cents, $0.36
was my winnings. It gave me a special piece of
paper that said it. I took a photo with that, even
(15:53):
though no photos were allowed, and then we finally decided to
leave the depressing floor, sucking money out of the
pensioners away and go upstairs.I was just thinking of all the
little grandkids or nephews or the youth that could be taking
that money from the pensioners and giving them a smile, giving
(16:14):
them that dopamine that they're chasing from the machine.
If they just gave pocket money around I think they would still
get it. But anyway, depressing floor out
we go upstairs and on the 1st floor are the tables.
And this is what the real casinois for me.
They were tables, they had poker, they had blackjack, they
(16:35):
had a third thing that I don't know what it is but it was full
of Chinese people all around that table.
They were having a blast and this is where I decided to put
some more money in and get 2 chips to play some blackjack.
It's chip was €10 so you know, not a huge investment, but we
(16:55):
sat down on a table and I've never played blackjack in a real
table before. I've played with some friends at
Christmas or something and that's it.
So I had the time of my life. I was with another friend's last
colleague there and let me tell you the the the table was more
joyful than I thought. I thought that everyone would be
(17:17):
super serious because it's a casino, but the in blackjack,
everyone plays against the dealer.
So you are in a in a full on table or everyone tries to win.
The person that is dealing the cards, the casino person.
So there was this solidarity. We're all against this guy.
This guy is lucky. We're losing our money.
(17:37):
Should I do this? Should I do that?
Another funny thing was, you know, casinos take things
seriously. They're full of cameras, they're
full of bouncers, they're full of people that try to see if
anyone is cheating. And in in blackjack, you can
actually cheat. There is this card, card
counting, if you're not familiarwith it, in blackjack, you need
(17:58):
to get as close to 21 as possible.
They give you cards and if you get more than 21, then you're
burned, you lose. If you get 21, that's a
blackjack and you draw cards andthe dealer draws cards and
whoever is closest to 21 wins. Now there is a way that you can
count the cards that have already passed and calculate the
(18:20):
possibility of getting closer to21 or not.
This is a complex thing and in order to do it, they have teams
of people who know the game and they do signals to each other
when it's a good time. You don't always win, but it
raises your chances and you knowin the casino, the casino always
wins at the end of the day. But if you manage to play with
(18:40):
something like this, then you have better chances than the
casino. Long story short, because we
went with a big group and we hadquite a few people that were
there just to observe and have fun and have a drink and not
play. Our table was very busy and our
friends, they were, you know, giving their advice or they were
(19:01):
getting excited when we won or sad when we lost.
And I noticed that quickly the dealer made a signal and the two
extra people showed up behind the table and observed us for
like 5 or 10 minutes. And these are the checkers.
These are the people that were checking whether we have some
sort of secret system that we are creating a distraction where
(19:24):
someone else is notifying the person counting the cards if
they have a good count. Well, none of that was there.
And the checkers didn't stay more than 5 minutes because they
could very quickly see that we're just two people that know
nothing and are just losing while our friends are watching.
But I was interested to observe that there is a YouTube channel
(19:45):
of a professional card counter. He plays blackjack with a group
of four or five people professionally, which means
every now and then they travel to a different casino and they
have this system of counting thecards and trying to signal each
other when to bet big and they have spreadsheets and they track
their earnings over time. I don't know why I ended up
(20:10):
watching some of these videos inthe past, but if you want to see
any of that they are really wellmade videos.
You can search on YouTube card counting team hits casino and
you will see that they also havedisguises like you can put a wig
on. Because technically a casino is
a private business, right? They can deny you entrance, but
(20:31):
it's not against the law to playthe odds against the casino.
So what these groups do, they goto a place with a couple of
casinos and they try to see how long it will take until they
figure out that they are card counting and kick them out.
So sometimes they can play for acouple of hours before they are
pushed out. Sometimes they enter the casino
(20:53):
and they immediately can recognize through software that
it's them and they kick them out.
And if my story of the casino was underwhelming, then if you
watch those videos, you will definitely get some excitement.
But to close it off, the casino was a very interesting place.
Everyone working there was a mixture of extremely friendly or
extremely hostile, which means that they are dealing with all
(21:16):
sorts of people. I guess the floor of all the
slots machines is the most depressing thing I've seen in a
while. I was still having a good time
because I was there only for onenight, but damn it, all of these
old people in the machines, if you could plug a cable to all of
them and feed it into a machine,it would feed desperation and
sadness it felt. There are so many lights in that
(21:37):
floor, like so many neon lights from all the different slot
machines that it almost feels like a factory of sucking the
life out of the old people. And by life, I also mean money.
So that part depressing. Thank you very much.
Not going to stay here. First floor with the tables,
much more fun. People are losing, but at least
(21:59):
they're having fun. You know, if you're going to be
losing your money, have a drink,socialize a bit, Blame the
dealer, all of you, instead of being alone pressing that little
button and you should lose with the chances you see in front of
you with the cards, not lose by the chances that a a closed off
machine is having. How do you know it's it's
(22:19):
rigged? Trusting an algorithm that the
casino made that is going to give you money.
Bananas. That's bananas.
And the drinks were not for freebecause I heard in other casinos
they give you drinks so you keepon playing.
Well, not in that one. Enough people were playing
without drinking. Would I go again?
Absolutely. I would play some blackjack
(22:40):
again. I only lost €20.
That's not even the price of a of a cocktail.
OK, two cocktails in the rooftopbar of the hotel, probably 1
cocktail. So I would totally do it.
I wouldn't take my kids savings to go, but I would have a drink
with a friend and do some money on blackjack.
That table was, I guess I shouldsay here, never gamble.
(23:03):
It's not good. It's addictive.
It can cost your fortune, life and misery.
So here's a disclaimer, but let's wrap it up here.
There was this one slot machine with ancient Greek gods and
goddesses just showing a lot of muscle and boobs and all of
these things, which reminded me of the only piece of news I will
(23:23):
give you this week, which is that the Acropolis in Greece has
a new update. So in the Acropolis hill, you
have the Parthenon, the big temple, right?
Well, that temple has had scaffolding around it for the
last 200 years. One way or another, the monument
(23:44):
has had scaffolding around for restoration.
Well, no more visitors can enjoysomething not seen in decades,
an unobstructed scaffolding freeview of the Parthenon temple.
It is happening. So if you want to see the 500 BC
template, you can now enjoy the Parthenon without any
(24:06):
scaffolding. My note on the Greek government
would be, how about now you maybe fix the elevator because
if you don't know there is an elevator to take you to the
monument because it's a very steep hill, you need to go up.
It's definitely not accessible. So just a few years ago, they
made an elevator. However, that elevator is broken
(24:31):
more times than it works. It's extremely slow and it's
extremely tiny. If they knew about all of this
and they could have made a bigger one, but they didn't and
now the person needs to maintainthis elevator every week.
So if you are a person in accessibility needs, you still
(24:51):
might not get to enjoy it. It's a coin toss if you'll make
it or not. And one more thing I want to
tell you is that the tickets to go see the Parthenon, up until
one year ago, you could pre buy your ticket but it did not have
a time slot. So you were buying the ticket
and then you would queue up withthousands of people that bought
(25:15):
a ticket because no one goes at noon.
If it's too hot, everyone goes in the morning or everyone goes
for the sunset. And what a great thing to
showcase as a country, having one of the most impressive,
unique monuments in the entire world.
Probably the reason why your only product, tourism, is
(25:38):
bringing all these people. Why do people come to Greece?
The food, the sea, the ancient history, right?
So it's in the top three. You go to Greece, you need to go
see the Parthenon and you don't have a working elevator for it
and you don't have a ticketing system that someone can
respectfully enjoy the monument.But hey, no more scaffolding
(25:59):
around the monument. So this is a beginning.
If you are visiting Greece, try to get tickets with a time slot
and make sure to visit the Acropolis Museum because that's
one of the few things in Greece that will make you think we are
a modern European civilized country respecting its past.
Now in other news, we are apartment hunting in Berlin, the
(26:24):
toughest of sports. It's the Iron Man of the modern
world. You need to do obstacle races,
You need to do different kinds of sports.
You need to swim, you need to dance, you need to jump, You
need to run. You need to sweat.
It is by far one of the most complex projects I've had to
(26:46):
manage. But for apartment handling in
Berlin, you need to go in by allmeans.
Did you manage to get a viewing?We bring the baby.
We even trained the baby to laugh.
We're having a viewing. We trained the baby to charm the
homeowners, to raise our chances.
We look at the owners beforehand.
Who are they? What are they?
(27:06):
Are they fashionable? Are they photographer?
Are they architects? How should we disguise
ourselves? What is the social camouflage we
need to do? What chameleon must we become
for them to feel relatable to usand increase our chances?
How can I casually drop the factthat I have my own Greek olive
(27:29):
oil from our own trees? And that could be something they
get to enjoy as well. But they are asking for
everything. Just the amount of documentation
that today apartment handling inBerlin is requiring is more than
asking for a mortgage in a bank.40 pages of documents including
(27:49):
salaries, pay slips, work contracts, credit checks,
verification from the current landlord that we are good
people, and all sorts of other things.
At the end of the day, I would give them, I would give them our
own child. I don't know what they want to
give us an apartment at this point.
(28:11):
We're using services, networks, friends of friends,
advertisement this podcast, you name it.
If you find me a four room apt, I can reward you with half of
the monthly rent as your payment.
How does that sound? There are different types of
owners. We had people that give us a
(28:32):
slot, a time slot where we can visit the apartment and have a
normal conversation with them. Now another genius person I had
the joy to be part of their process did the following.
He said. To everyone that has applied for
this apartment, come see it on Monday from 2:00 PM to 2:30.
(28:56):
No one else will be allowed at any other time.
And we went there and there werelike 100 people to see the
apartment. I've never felt so insignificant
in my life. I also felt very competitive.
It was like we are in some sort of twisted Mr. Beast video where
(29:16):
we all need to contest for a chance to win the great
privilege of having to pay an enormous rent to have an
apartment. But so we did it.
We tried to cast the charm, but I don't know who got that
apartment. But that was crazy.
So kudos to the landlords that actually give one to one slots.
(29:38):
So good luck to us. Things are progressing.
We're having viewings. We have a really good system in
trying to secure. We are the first to apply in
different apartments. I cannot share more details on
that. If someone wants, you can DM me,
but that has significantly increased our chances in getting
some viewings. Why am I sharing all of that?
(29:59):
I don't know. I guess this episode of the
podcast is more of my personal diary.
Sometimes it's more of the news,sometimes it's more of a diary.
And this is it for today. A little tour from Lisbon's
casinos to Greece, unscaffolded Parthenon, sprinkled with some
(30:22):
news of the relentless apartmenthunting squid games of Berlin,
and topped up with two stories of people pleasing.
What is your most extreme example of people pleasing?
What would your story be if you were in that 2:00 AM McDonald's
conversation in Lisbon like I was?
(30:43):
I'll let you go with this one. I hope you're doing well.
I sincerely thank you for tuningin for another week and I will
see you on the next week. If you enjoy this podcast, click
like, share and subscribe. And as I said on the beginning
of November, I will share an episode where I was interviewed
(31:07):
by another podcast. It will be a deep dive into some
areas of my life, so if that is of any interest, hang in there
and I will share all that information on the next podcast.
Until then, Ciao.
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