I know that my physique can mislead people. When I travel to England, I am always questioned for 5 – 10 minutes, separately than the rest of my friends, just because they find me Arab… I have been called Italian, Spanish and many more. Yesterday I became a Turkish man too! “You know, mr Ilias, you don’t look like a Greek, you look more like a Turkish man. And this is a compliment”. “Turkish man? Compliment? Ooooooooooooooooooooook…” The guy explained to me that he didn’t have good experience from the Greeks he met in the past and for him me being a Turk is something good. He [...]

SIMA exhibition has started yesterday and I can not really say that I am fascinated by it. Of course “Hope dies last” as we say in Greek, but the first signs are not exactly satisfying… • The organizers have forgotten something. Based on what happens here, I guess they had in mind to give to every foreigner who comes in the exhibition a special “pill”, which the foreigner could swallow and automatically start understanding Spanish. I think they forgot the “pills” somewhere, but they still left EVERYTHING in Spanish.• Most of the signs, the catalogue of exhibition, the food in [...]

Hello to all my friends. No, there was no problem, nothing serious caused my… disappearance all these previous days. We just had some very serious problems with out servers, but now we are back in business. I apologize for this and I hope that it is the last time that it happens… Well, now that I am sending you these lines, I am sitting on my desk, in the best “value for money” hotel I have ever visited in my life. It belongs to the “High Tech hotels” chain and my room (for which I payed roughly 100 euro / night) includes: Steady bicycle for training, wifi (free) internet connection, [...]

The 50 years old gentleman came to my stand, without knowing much about me, I guess nothing at all. He was a Romanian citizen living abroad for most of the time. He asked to sit and to talk to the boss, so my people informed me to join the conversation. He started talking by trying to understand who I am and what my company does. Then he changed to some topics that sounded irrelevant, probably he was checking my knowledge about the real life and facts in Romania today. Then it was time for… football! Steaua, Rapid, Dinamo and the other teams were mentioned… The time was passing and after [...]

Well I have to admit I did not manage to keep my promise to you and provide you updates about Cannes and MIPIM exhibition. Waking up at 06.30 in daily basis, working hard all day with endless meetings in my company’s stand and many things to do after, I didn’t manage to let you know in daily basis what amazing things happened there… In this moment, exactly now that I am writing these lines, I want to tell you that I really feel very privileged. I traveled from Nice next to a really nice gentleman, German doctor from Leipzig, who is 60, looks like 45 and knows… Greek language! Now I am at [...]

The lady of Lufthansa in Bucharest airport was pretty rude, although I am client of    the company since she was in the high school. Did I care? No… The old lady next to me on the plane to Düsseldorf was snoring non stop and the plane  was quite small. Did I care? Not at all, I got the chance to read without stress Financial Times, The Guardian and other newspapers… We arrived in Düsseldorf really late and I just managed to enter in the bus, transferring me to the plane. I found my brother Greg (who was coming from Thessaloniki) in the plane, after we were worried for some minutes. Did [...]

Lessons from an exhibition: What Romanians want TODAY On Sunday it was the last day of “Condominium Fair”, the first exhibition of the year for residential projects. My company participated there with a stand, but we did not present one exclusive project. We usually present to people many offers, over 200, so as to match with the REAL needs of the clients. Also, we have the ability to discuss and to find what the client wants, totally customized to his needs. As we participated also to the “Condominium Fair” of 2007, I am able to compare the 2 events. They were both successful, mainly because [...]