My Greek Olympics: More food and more meetings

Laundry:

Down the street from the hotel was a barber and a laundry, the laundry was owned by an Australian Greek. His daughter, who worked there was pretty and we would talk to her, she spoke with an Aussie accent and I think she like to speak English. The father always gave us a look when we came in, kind of 'what are you doing talking to my daughter' type look. I would always wave to her when I walked by and say hello.

We found out that the 'twig' (SAIC person) had made a deal with then to do our laundry and apparently they gave her some money for having us use them. Since we were in a hotel with no services, we had to have our laundry done. It was a pain, but it wasn't that expensive and they did a fast job of it. We found out the twig did this a lot all over the place, a lot of corruption was going on in the main offices, but no one cared.

Coast of living:

I soon find out that most Greeks make very little compared to us. The average salary for someone with a degree is about 1,000 to 1,200 Euros a month. If they have a PhD they may make 20,000 a year. Some of the people I work with and had advanced degrees were making something like a quarter or a fifth of what I made. For them to spend 10 Euro on lunch was unheard of or much less the 50 Euro we could spend on a night of beers and dinner. So for us to go out to dinner every night was something. At the time we were on per-diem, which was something like 70 dollars a day for food. So we would go out and spend it, the Greeks thought we were all rich. I couldn't image what the uneducated did to servive in Athens, it is not cheep. Most apartments rent for 500 Euros a month or more and some people make less than 400 a month. I am told a lot of people live out of town in small villages and commute to the city to work, plus they have 2 or 3 jobs. I would spend in one day what they made in a week while working two jobs.

Japanese food:

Down the street from the hotel on Apollonius street there was a Japanese restaurant that had sushi. The guy who owned it wasn't very friendly, but the food wasn't bad. The sushi seemed fresh and it was a nice change of pace. The place was small and got crowded at night, some times it was hard to get a table. We would add this place to our list of places to eat, but since it was expensive, we would go not as often. Souvlaki was still the cheapest food to get and it was good. They did have 'chain' restaurants that sold Souvlaki but no one would go there unless they were tourist.

Meeting at Wackenhut:

One of the first things I had to do was look at the AVL system (Automated Vehicle Location) we planned to use. Vic arranged for me to go and I asked Ron if he would go also. Ron and I made the trip to the Wackenhut offices, which were next to the sweage plat on the other edge of the city and to get a demo of the system they use to track their vehicle. This 'off the shelf' systemwould be incorporated into the C4I system. I got Peter to drive Ron and me to the place and it smelled very bad because of the sweage. We go in and meet with the guys who will be in charge of the project on their end. We get a demo and looked at the system in action. I saw it as a formality since we had already contracted with them to deliver the system and it was a good system to use. It was a short meeting and Peter drove us back, on the way Ron said he was impressed with the system. I hadn't really thought of it, but I should have asked more questions. Down the road we would have some problems with the interface.