Protest season
Oct. 9th, 2006 02:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bktheirregularBeen working from outside the central city for the last week. In that time, the Yankees lost in the postseason and immediately became the target for everyone who wants to exercise schadenfreude, and North Korea became a nuclear power.
Maybe I should have stayed in bed.
Back in the central Athens office today, and there's some sort of protest going on outside the building. We're only a few blocks from Plateia Syntagma, Constitution Square, and that seems to be the endpoint of most protest marches.
It's actually been so busy for me that I forgot that one of those protest marches gave me an unpleasant experience a coupla weeks back: my first exposure to tear gas. Wasn't pleasant; I wasn't sure at first what was happening, with the sneezing and the burning in my eyes, but the sensation ended up like being pushed face-first, eyes open, into a bucket full of Tabasco.
And that was just at the outer edge of the perimeter; I wasn't even near the protesters, just trying to find a place to get a bite of dinner.
One thing I remember from my police-academy clerk days is that part of the cops' training in using tear gas (at least the type of tear gas that they can carry on their gun belts) was that before they were authorized to use the stuff in the field, they had to go through the pepper-gas training course, one part of which was getting blasted full in the face with the stuff, so the cop would know just what he was doing to the suspect.
Wonder if the Athens riot cops had that bit of training.
Eleven days until I'm home. God, but I miss New York City.
Maybe I should have stayed in bed.
Back in the central Athens office today, and there's some sort of protest going on outside the building. We're only a few blocks from Plateia Syntagma, Constitution Square, and that seems to be the endpoint of most protest marches.
It's actually been so busy for me that I forgot that one of those protest marches gave me an unpleasant experience a coupla weeks back: my first exposure to tear gas. Wasn't pleasant; I wasn't sure at first what was happening, with the sneezing and the burning in my eyes, but the sensation ended up like being pushed face-first, eyes open, into a bucket full of Tabasco.
And that was just at the outer edge of the perimeter; I wasn't even near the protesters, just trying to find a place to get a bite of dinner.
One thing I remember from my police-academy clerk days is that part of the cops' training in using tear gas (at least the type of tear gas that they can carry on their gun belts) was that before they were authorized to use the stuff in the field, they had to go through the pepper-gas training course, one part of which was getting blasted full in the face with the stuff, so the cop would know just what he was doing to the suspect.
Wonder if the Athens riot cops had that bit of training.
Eleven days until I'm home. God, but I miss New York City.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-09 06:09 pm (UTC)