THE TRAVEL PHOTO COMPETITION

After I returned home from my trip, I received an email from "Windmills" Travel agency. This was an agent that I used to book online for various Greek Island accomodations.

They were informing me of a photo travel competition they were running. So I forwarded the email to Oishii and told her that I was going to enter a few of my photo's. Before I could finish my sentence Oishii was calculating how many hundreds of photo's she could enter to make sure we won the competition.

I think I entered a total of 12 pictures where as Oishii decided to email photo's after photos reaching about 200 submissions. The competition closed and they were supposed to annouce the winners in about a week. So for the next week we spent day and night checking out this website for winners. When they didnt annouce the winners we sent emails after emails demanding to know. I personally didnt get a reply but Oishii's reply stated that they received more photos than they expected and hence would be delayed in picking the photo winners. Hence Oishii clogged up the competition.

Anyway we spent close to a month checking this website with no luck. At one stage I had given up hope thinking this was another Greek scheme. Forgetting about the competition, I rocked up home one day and dumped everything in my room. I went downstairs to get a drink and by the time I came up to my room I had a missed call from Oishii with a voice message. I normally dont bother listening to the voice message if I know who called me but for some reason I decided to listen to this one.

The message said something like this "Call me back as soon as you get this message, its URGENT". I didn't know whether to panic or to start dialling. It sounded like she was in serious trouble or she's been muggled. Dialing quickly, before the phone could even ring Oishii answered and was hysterical.

I couldn't understand what she was yelling about. She kept yelling "We Won, We Won!!!" and laughing her head off. It suddenly hit me that she was talking about the photo contest. At first I thought she was kidding as she tried a prank on me previously saying she won but this time she was completely hysterical and I knew that if we ever won she would be totally hysterical like this.

The funny part was at the time when she told me the first thing I thought was "Oh fuck were going back to Mykonos". It was a replay of the $40 dollar woman, Johnny, Tony the Italian guy, The crazy hat woman and the xchange woman playing in my head. Seriously this cant be happening. The thought of going back to Mykonos for a third time. I thought the second time was for closure but a third time.

Within minutes we were plotting and planning on what we were going to do. There was no way I could afford to go this year. I'm dead broke and still catching up on my previous trips. We thought of asking for an extention until 2007.

Just to show you guys here are the photos that won:

1st Price went to some chick called Leila in Vienna Austria for this beautiful sunset at Olympic Stadium Athens.

Second Prize went to Christine in Germany for "Panagias Islandby night, Parga"

Third Prize - Drum roll went to Oishii for this beautiful shot of ME!!!

I still dont understand why on earth they chose this picture of all pictures. I look totally ridiculous with my hands in the air. Our theory is that they are going to make me into a cardboard cutout at both their travel agents and I'm becoming the face of Greece in 2006!!!