My Summer as an Olympic Volunteer: Part I

Introduction

It goes down as one of the craziest things I have ever done. Summer had arrived, and with the year being 2004 it could only mean one thing: The Athens Summer Olympics was among us! And I along with my good friend, university mate and fellow Malaysian Puvan were headed to Greece as two of the 55,000 volunteers of the Games. Just six months ago to the day of our departure we had meticulously filled out the seemingly endless pages of the volunteer application form on the official website of the ATHOC (Athens 2004 Olympic Games Committee), with just the slightest glimmer of hope that we were going to be picked for the job.

But now that we had our volunteer mandate in hand, new challenges threatened to derail our travels even before we set foot in Greece. ATHOC unfortunately did not provide volunteers with any means of accommodation. So we were confronted with the near impossible task of finding a place to stay in Athens around the time of Olympics without getting ripped off. Room prices made you think that everyone aside from the rich and contest winners were going to miss out on this historical event. Dormitory beds in youth hostels, the usual suspect for budget travellers which normally go for EUR 20 (RM 102) a night were now in the range of EUR 100 (RM 510) or more. What you would normally pay for a hostel room would not even get you a place in a campsite anymore! To alleviate the shortage of beds for visitors the city of Athens had conducted a rent-a-home programme in which Greek homes doubled as housing while their owners escaped the Olympic hustle and bustle, but this was by no means affordable to university students like us! So in desperation many had advertised on the Net wondering if some kind soul would lend them space in his garden or backyard! Some like me received unreasonable offers from private home owners demanding full payment even before I got to Greece! After months of trying time was running out, and despite still not having found anything we booked our flight tickets to Greece. Was it such fervour to be part of the Olympics or just plain foolishness? Those were tense times indeed!

The last resort – the Malaysian Embassy in Berlin, which is also in charge of our affairs in Greece proved to be our saviour. News of a Malaysian family living in Athens who could help us was hard to believe at first. They found us an affordable apartment in the classy district of Kifissia, which is a lot like Bangsar, that we could rent for a month. The family runs a Thai cuisine restaurant business. The father is a very successful self-made chef and general manager. He once worked for the Marriott in New York, while the hotel chain was still up and coming. During those late night dinners we had (on the house!) in his restaurant he would recount fascinating tales from his experience in the restaurant industry. I can still taste those glorious asam prawns and sesame ribs! His wife is also his top aide in the business. Several times I had trouble convincing her at dinner that I was already full as she was so generous! “Are you sure you don’t want to eat some more?” No auntie, thank you. “Sure?” They also have two bubbly kids who speak fluently and maturely in English, Greek and Cantonese. Entertaining in the way that they were pretty opinionated and up-to-date about everything, they kept insisting that we spoke with a Singaporean accent, much to my objection!