If Argophilia had a backbone, it might look suspiciously like Iorgos. He is the one who shows up, the one who meets deadlines, the one who never forgets a detail. While others lean into their quirks, he leans into discipline. That makes him both respected and occasionally teased, because in this team, being too perfect is a flaw in itself.
When the COVID crisis hit, Argophilia closed its office in the heart of Heraklion. Nobody wanted to walk through glass doors in a city where fear hung heavy in the air. So the newsroom moved to MIG’s home. Desks were set up, laptops unfolded, and the house became a hybrid of family and newsroom.
Iorgos thrived in this new setting. His discipline carried over to home office life, but it also gave him space to reveal a softer, stranger side: cooking and crochet.
The Fish Whisperer
Iorgos cooks fish the way some people write poetry. Perfectly grilled, delicately seasoned, plated with confidence. He will not brag, but the rest of the team will: nobody cooks fish better. The flavors are balanced, the texture precise. You could pay for a chef in a seaside taverna and still come away saying, “Iorgos does it better.”
Cooking is his meditation. He enters the kitchen, ties on an apron, and lets the knives and pans become his tools of rhythm. His most surprising flourish? Edible flowers. Tempura roses, crisp and light, arrive at the table with a name he coined himself: “a touch of MIG.” It is equal parts joke and tribute, but the result is undeniably beautiful.
Plushies and Teasing
Cooking is not his only surprise. He crochets. Not scarves or blankets, but plush animals — octopuses, cats, small creatures stuffed and stitched into life.
At first the others laughed. “Plushies?” Kostas snorted. But when he saw the detail, the care, he quieted. MIG requested a blue octopus. Mojito, ever the dog with a taste for mischief, was immediately suspected of plotting to chew it, which only made the joke funnier.
Crochet became another way the team teased him, but it also became a point of admiration. It is rare to find someone who can code-switch from editing copy to threading yarn, from cooking fish to fact-checking tourism stats.
Rivalries and Realities
Every team has tensions. Iorgos and Kostas do not always see eye to eye. Their rivalry simmers, sometimes over nothing more than a tone in a sentence or who got praised for a tighter edit. MIG admits she may have worsened things by leaning on one more than the other at times. But tension is not destruction; in fact, it often fuels sharper work.
What keeps them bound is the reality of Argophilia’s economics. They see the Google AdSense numbers, they split the profits, they manage the guest posts and the PayPal. It is not wealth, but it is survival. And survival with laughter is better than money with silence.
A Man of Contradictions
The truth about Iorgos is that he is both steady and surprising. He is the worker who does not flinch, the cook who can turn fish into art, the crocheter who stitches life into yarn, the man who serves tempura roses with a sly grin.
He is also the one who can make MIG laugh when she least expects it. When the newsroom grows heavy with deadlines, he has a way of lightening it — not with jokes, but with small offerings, a dish, a plushie, a reminder that life continues outside the browser tabs.
If the Argophilia team sometimes feels like an olive grove — twisted, stubborn, stubbornly alive — then Iorgos is one of its oldest trunks. He holds ground. He keeps the rhythm. He gives more than he takes.
And sometimes, when nobody is watching, he adds a touch of MIG to the table, and the whole house smiles.
