Like Tears In The Rain

Reading these days... VIII

2011-04-19T11:09:00.006+02:00

Lets start with a TERRIBLE question (and an even worse answer): Is Sugar Toxic?

Then...

It didn't get much attention here in Italy the fact that S&P delivered a blow for US debt by lowering the outlook of its debt for the first time in history. And while this could be helpful for Understanding the S&P report and Krugman insists that is not really important and Poor Standards are in play, it's worth nothing that Obama administration officials tried to keep S&P rating at ‘stable’. But why, anyway? Perhaps, as it is suggested, because US account are like Enron Writ Large? Or because, besides the official one, there is in the US The Other National Debt to consider? Or maybe because, quite amazingly, in the US now Government Handouts Top Tax Income?

Not like we in Europe are faring much better, as while Trichet says that ‘All’s Well’, we can see that a battle is going on, the one of Euro vs. Invasion of the Zombie Banks. Bad news for critically hit countries (Greece, Ireland, Portugal... soon others) and some of them might start considering A parable of two debtors. In any case, The ECB Have All the Means to Prevail? Perhaps it would it be worthwhile (or unavoidable) to embark in Europe’s long road of tears to fiscal union (for that matter, EU corporate tax reform: Weighing the pros and cons).

To be noted that US fiscal policies are a factor in Soaring Inflation Poses Risks Beyond China’s Borders. Even if China is doing its own part as, once again, Krugman easily explains in Inflation, Here and There (Wonkish) (I hate his politics, but have to admit when it sticks to his own field the guy knows how to explains things easily). Anyway, we are probably just seeing The great global rebalancing and its implications, but Don’t blame the (mostly) efficient markets hypothesis.

And while we are at it, Is Germany competitive? Is Norway?. If you consider the banking sector (which also gives a pretty good number of answer to many questions about the EU role in the financial crisis), one wouldn't think so: German Banking: visibility needed

It must be to take its collective mind off economic troubles that now the EU awaits UN approval for deployment of ground troops (and unfortunately, Italy went ahead adn already shipped military instructors...). All that while Riots break out in Muslim north Nigeria as Christian Jonathan wins by landslide. But you do not have to go that far to have more problems with islamics, after all as 'London Taliban' is targeting women and gays in bid to impose sharia law

Finally... how I love to be in the eight most taxed countries in the world (and receiving way less services for my tax money than in any of the other most taxed countries, I would bet)

Reading these days... VII

2011-04-14T12:37:00.003+02:00

First of all, surprising from Germany, Breaking Ranks: How To Become an Accidental Conservative. Favourite line: "A person who lives a leftist life is living with the appealing awareness of being in the right, in fact, being right all the time." to which I would personally add "and being on a higher moral ground of anyone else, about anything, always". Which is actually good news for conservatives: many vote against the left , rather than for the conservatives, for their intolerant and intolerable obnoxiousness...

For the ones who haven't paid attention, with several euro country on the verge of bankrupcy, the ECB raised interest rates.. suppose that's Why People Say "Eeh!" When They Learn About the ECB . Things are looking really grim for the eurozone so much that we are to welcome to the great big fat Euro fiasco.

In the meanwhile, Banks Face $3.6 Trillion 'Wall' of Debt: IMF while the BRICS demand global monetary shake-up, greater influence (That wold be, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.... but I assume the latter will end up like Zibabwe within 10 years, so I wouldnt't worry about it)

And while the U.S. plans new push on Arab-Israeli peace, to the point os maybe, in September, not vetoing a UN resolution recognizing Palestine as a state, an Italian activist found dead in Gaza after abduction. To be noticed that the guy was part of the Turkish "Freedom" flottilla that challenged Israel's embargo of Gaza, was working in humanitarian projects in the strip and routinely denounced the oppressive Israeli regime (apparently never noticing teh plumes of the rockets being fired by the oppressed...). Way to go as a thank you... even if, perhaps in recognition for his merits, the guys did hang him, rather than beheading him.

Still in the arab world, US, Britain, France vow to push ahead in Libya, even if the U.S., allies see Libyan rebels in hopeless disarray and Nato appeals for more planes. Now, exactly why a No-Fly resolution by the UN which doesn't deal at all with the political scenario would require Gheddafi to leave power, hundreds of ground strikes in support of a side in essentially a civil war and more ground support and attack planes, that's beyond me. But then again In the Ivory Coast, France Does Regime Change, so why not Libya, I guess? Nevermind that 1,000 attack non-Muslim village in Nigeria... why christians, heere or in Sudan or other places, should be protected, after all?

And how to get more planes, anyway, when Obama Guts Defense, which leads Gates and Mullen vs. Obama (that'd be, the Secretary of Defence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff). But, after all, Obama Is Just Plain Bad at Politics while being the Presidential Divider.

In the meanwhile, what was once an example of muslim moderation, Turkey, is in Turmoil: Obstruction in Libya, Interference in Syria, Discrimination at Home. In effect, only people who haven't looked at what is going on in Turkey since the beginning of this century can be surprised... it's not turmoil, it's the normal state of affairs of the last decade.

Reading these days... VI

2011-04-12T13:26:00.000+02:00

In the Daily Presidential Tracking Poll Obama scores his lowest approvla rating ever. Might it be because Gas Prices Climbing Toward $5 Per Gallon (which, incidentally, if my math is correct, would be around 0.9 euro per liter, 2/3 of what we pay in Italy, at 1.6...)? Or maybe, as Bill Gross of Pimco notes, because the United States has a year or two to change course or face a debt crisis akin to what Greece, Portugal and Ireland have experienced? In any case, some good news for him as Gadhafi endorses Obama re-election!

Why do I care, anyway? Because anything happening in US has repercussion on my country and this president has been so utterly disastrous on all fronts I care about that the most catastrophic are his policies for him, th eleast probable thy will be proposed here...

Speaking of which, this article is US-center, but in effect it rings true for my country an dmost of Europe, I would say, where we find Big Government on the Brink

And in effect, economics are starting to be so dire here that Anger begins to infect Europe’s prosperous core. In the meanwhile, a bit on Monetary Policy, Deficit Reduction, and the Ryan Plan (the first page of teh article being more interesting than the rest)

Anyway, even if money is running short, We're All Interventionists Now! But what for, one wonders, if in the now going democratic and happy Egypt, Two Killed In Cairo After Night of Protests, while Egypt Sentences Blogger to 3 Years. Notlike the Muslim Brotherhood is stirring things up?

In the meanwhile, we are glad to see that South America isn't left out and finally we have Al Qaeda in Brazil... and it didn't take long before a Brazilian Muslim kills 11 children in shooting.
But after all, we are helping.. for example Why Is Germany's Angela Merkel Strengthening Enemies of Israel and the West?

And while China tells U.S. to quit as human rights judge, Tata chief warns of India unrest as India accuses companies in telecoms probe

For the Star Wars, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica and just about any science fiction fans' dlight out there: Laser gun fired from US navy ship

One does wonder where we will get the power for it tho, as Nuclear Power Fears at New Heights Despite Safety, Viability (interesting, little known outside the people workin in the field, fact from the article: a coke plant emits 100 times the radiations than a nuclear plant) andit's proved that Wind power is even worse than you thought...

Reading these days... V

2011-04-07T12:00:00.004+02:00

And after a few days off due a short vacation in Germany (where, btw, Alles (not) in Ordnung) ... back to reading.

So I found out that While I was away there was the Obama Libya Speech: How the President's War Has Won Him Arab Respect. This while, apparently,we had Washington in Fierce Debate on Arming Libyan Rebels. That's interesting, as it was also revealed that Obama authorizes secret help for Libya rebels already. So, in practice, Intelligence on Libya rebels shows "flickers" of Qaeda, we will have Jihadis who killed Americans get U.S. support in Libya. And in effect, the Libyan rebels struggle to explain rift. That said, an interesting question: What If Gadhafi Had Gone Nuclear? If I were a dictator in the world now, I'd definitely do anything in my power to get a hold of nuclear weapons, since giving it up does not seem to help.

Ah, speaking of countries speeding to nuclear weapons: How the Obama Administration Can Get Serious About Iran Sanctions

Anyway, if we intervened in Libya, why not in Syria, where Syrian cabinet resigns amid unrest,
or in Yemen, where the Trends 'Not Good'? Or Ivory Coast (where actually the French army once again intervened by itself... truth to be told)?

Not to mention that is we are to defent human rights, what to do with China's Crackdown on Bloggers and Human Rights Activists and the Worsening Crackdown in China?

In effect, the overall situation is such a nonsense that Saudis ‘So Unhappy' With Obama They Sent Emissaries to China, Russia Seeking Enhanced Ties while Gates tries to soothe Saudis rattled by unrest. Oh, and speaking of censorship and crackdowns, Indian state bans controversial book on Gandhi... ah, those Censorius Souls.

Not to mention the effects of this in Israel. If you are not aware, in September an U.N. Vote on Palestinian State Could Force Israel's Hand and create major Shock Waves. What could it be
Bibi’s Choice?

Anyway, while Opec set for $1,000bn in export revenues, the western "green" biofuel mania is having Food Prices Stir Concern About Biofuels Mandates . In effect, i always tought that, i a world where hunger is a real problem, having food converted to fuel isn't exactly a smart idea, but what do I know? And besides, not like prices can get any worse, right? Except Wal-Mart CEO Bill Simon expects inflation.

It wouldn't be all so complicated if not for Human Complexity: The Strategic Game of ? and ?.

Let's go to the movies to get some relax... this is another I'll try to watch once it gets out: ‘Atlas Shrugged’

Exit question: Is it time to outsource cities?

Reading these days... IV

2011-03-27T10:48:00.007+02:00

While the NATO "protection of civilians" mission on Libya continues, we discover that Usa may supply Gaddafi rebels with weapons. Now, that seems indeed a good idea, considering that Al-Qaeda snatched missiles' in Libya. But what do we have to be afraid of, it's not like Energized Muslim Brotherhood in Libya eyes a prize, the "Freedom fighters" and "rebels" are pro-democracy, civil people, not like Libyan rebels appear to take leaf from Kadafi's playbook or, like, we have cases of Revolutionary Justice in Benghazi.

In the meanwhile, the question is Will Syria be Next? While we find out, I'm slightly troubled that 'Abbas would give up US aid to reconcile with Hamas'. Wasn't he a western-supported, democracy nurturing leader? In the meanwhile, my new heroine of the month (and let's hope she will be alive at the end of it) is a Pakistani Actress Bravely Unloads on Mullah & Media. But then again, nothing of this really matters, since an Iranian Video Says Mahdi is 'Near'

In case you haven't been following the last two years of economics news (were you in a coma or something? In case, I hope you didn't have stocks in your portfolio when you went under), you might be interested to know Why European Banks Are Stressed Out. Also because this is what could happen The Day When the Debt Comes Due. In effect, What happened to stimulus vs. austerity?

Of course, all of this seems pretty reasonable, considering how broker seem to be making investments these days and relying on young actresses while taking Outside Edge: Hathaway conquers sage and screen

Good think that The City keeps its composure... ok, maybe not: 200 arrested as protesters cover Trafalgar Square in graffiti

Well, at least they will not be able to vandalize cars for much longer as EU to ban cars from cities by 2050. The thing about steep increases on jet fuel worried me, tho, as it's a huge part of my monthly expenses.

At least, one of the things I always thought has been scientifically proved: Employers, you should Indulge your employees so they don’t mess up. More Facebook in the office!

I'm not yet sure I will be go and watch "Sucker Punch"... but definitely Iwill go and see The Adjustment Bureau!

And finally, two VERY politically un-correct articles: First of all, stop being all melodramatic about Berlusconi’s Teenage Whore and, was Gandhi indeed a Great Soul?

Reading these days... III

2011-03-26T17:05:00.004+01:00

First of all, Something I always suspected: Men May Be Jerks...But Women Are Insane (the article is much more serious than the title, worth a reading and I find myself 95% in agreement)

Obama: No U.S. Forces on the Ground in Libya . . . Except for Those Guys.

U.S. must take sides to keep the Arab Spring from Islamist takeover

The Unknown in Libya

So, in short, there is no need to be afraid that the Arab uprising will necessarily lead to islamist government in those countries. After all, there is no evidence of links between uprising and, say, Al Qaeda. Right. Too bad that...

Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links and In Egypt, Muslim Group Takes Lead Role in Post-Mubarak Era (and, btw List of looted antiquities finally released).

In the meanwhile, More Protests Across Syria... which makes me wonder, no one noticed that all the countries affected (Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria) so far were the ones were the governments were, indeed corrupt autocracies, but secularist or trying to be?

In the meanwhile, on the economy news are comforting... well, nevermind that:

US Finances Rank Near Worst in the World while Moody's warns Britain over triple-A credit rating.

Not like the news from the old continent are much better Portugal teeters on brink of bailout, with the WSJ suggesting that the Weak Educational System Hobbles Portugal (but read the original title of the article...). Eventually, the Collapse of Euro Not 'Unthinkable', says Warren Buffett.

Americans are startig to address the problem tho, even if somewhat indirectly: CBO: Taxing mileage a 'practical option' for revenue enhancement. Really, American politicians are starting to think that highways should have a toll? How amazing. But it will never work, US have the strongest Teamsters Union of the world, and with Rocky as president for a time ;)

And speaking of marvelous ideas, and Emotional voter ID bill debate ends in passage. Apparently they realized that requiring an ID with a picture (as opposed to, say, a library card) might be a good idea to avoid vote frauds. Even more amazing, how could they come up with such a notion, I wonder.

All this while Japan's Nuclear Crisis Worsens. However, I shall point out that, no matter what everyone writes, they are wrong: the power plant had withstood a quake 100 times stronger it was designed for without major problems... then a hour later came a tsunami twice as high (14 meters) as planned. But in all the chaos and despair, you can always count on Japanese people to do something superhuman and earn the title of Badass of the Week: Hideaki Akaiwa (or, the mainstream media less cool version of the story For one quake survivor, self-help in the face of seeming helplessness).

In unrelated news, considering the body's track record, I suppose the resolution was written in ancient Aramaic and therefore absolutely impossible to understand if the UN rights body ditches call to condemn religious ‘defamation,’ focuses on freedom of belief. In fact, it sounds too good, I'll have to find the text and see how the journalist got it wrong.

If you are into macroeconomics, you might be happy to know that the
BPEA is now open access
and you might also want to check

More BPEAs
even because the dream of an universal online library might be over as it looks like while they try
Explaining the Google Books Case Saga.

Nevermind, movies would be good for distraction so I've read the new movie from teh director of 300 is out, however ‘Sucker Punch’ Review: Strong on Action, Average on Story. Well, maybe I will watch it. Or not? "Sucker Punch" goes beyond awful, to become commentary on the death of moviemaking (granted, with such a headline one is compelled to go and see it just to see how bad it is...).

Speaking of movies, Legendary Oscar-Winner Elizabeth Taylor Dies at 79. I shall add that she died, artistically speaking, heir-less. Who would be, in fact, her modern day version?

Yes, he was the supreme leader of his contry at the beginning of the XX century, supported eugenics and he thought that his countrymen "have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type". No, it's not Germany and Adolf Hitler, it's the United States of America and Theodore Roosevelt. What, you didn't know the USA flirted with eugenics?

Ok a laugh is sorely needed: ways to avoid getting the sack: HR recommends and, if you are economics inclined, Planet Money's Toxic Asset.

Reading these days... II

2011-03-23T12:18:00.002+01:00

Japan quake: Power lines reconnected to Japan's quake-damaged nuclear plant
Related to:
* Tokyo (Japan) : Tokyo (Japan) News and Photos
* Nuclear energy 101: Inside the "black box" of power plants
* Quake leaves Tokyo waiting for the Big One
Yes, I can tell you, it's a busy time for wheoever works in the nuclear sector...

Libya war: Germans pull forces out of NATO as Libyan coalition falls apart
Related to:
* France Says New Non-Nato Body To Lead Action
* U.S. Says Libyan Campaign to Ease as No-Fly Zone Is Secured
* Split on Libya averted as Nato given military control (doesn't seem so averted at all, in fact...)

Gulf Cooperation Council Between Two Fires in Bahrain and Libya
Ah, the joy of the straightforward policy of western democracies that always intervene for the defense of civilians like in Kossovo and Lybia. Except, of course, in Darfour, Iran, Bahrain, Yemen, Congo, Tibet, Birmania... ok, nevermind.

Work of Depressions Watch
Not the most interesting, but probably one of the last articles of Krugman I'll read, since the New York Time is switching to payment service next week.

Happy Birthday: The Mighty William Shatner Turns 80 Today
Oh my goodness... Captain Kirk is 80??? Now I feel old for real...

Pray for Japan, Worry for Europe
Related to: US Approaching Insolvency, Fix To Be 'Painful': Fisher
It's a good time for not having debts... just wondering wheter I should start buying a few gold ingots...

Yes, sex can kill you, U.S. study shows
Worrying...

Reading these days...

2011-03-22T12:50:00.006+01:00

Nicolas Sarkozy declares multiculturalism had failed
Related to:
*Merkel says German multicultural society has failed
***Erdogan’s Visit to Germany Offends – Again
And Also:
*Cameron's Multicultural Wake-Up Call
***Why Cameron is Right on Multiculturalism
***Concerned With Muslims, Gay Activists Cancel Parade in England
***U.K. Court: Christian Beliefs are Harmful to Children, Christian Couple May Not Be Allowed to Adopt
And also:
*Australia ex-PM Howard attacks 'multiculturalism'
*José Maria Aznar attacks multiculturalism

Did the Copts Miscalculate in Egyptian Elections?
Related to Egypt to Vote Tomorrow on Constitutional Amendments

The Long and Short of Energy Prices

How Obama turned on a dime toward war
Related to Egypt Said to Arm Libya Rebels

Clash Warfare

47% of Germans think Israel exterminating Palestinians
Related to Are Israeli Settlers Human?

The Bankrupt Nihilism of Our Fallen Fantasists
Related to:
*Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1
*The Order of Grace: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien, Part 2
*Eucatastrophe: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 3
*Bored with the Good: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 4

Europe: Northern exposure
Related to:
*Greeks adopt ‘won’t pay’ attitude
*Why the eurozone will survive
*The Eurozone’s new clothes

Illiteracy Rules

Where Have The Good Men Gone?

Degrees and Dollars

Work in Progress... ?

2010-04-26T09:48:00.002+02:00

Well. It has been more than a year, one and a half rather, since I last posted on this blog.

Since then, my life has I had planned it (moving to Germany, getting married, starting a family) had to be totally scrapped and replanned and not on my own initiative too.

Truth to be said, I haven't forgotten about this blog and for the last few months I've been, now and then, thinking about what to do with it. The options are easy enough: closing and deleting it or scrapping all the entries, the overwhelming majority, that constitute now mostly a painful reminder of my foolishness or just keep going, changing the nature of it as th eoriginal intent, keeping updated my friends of what was going on with me, especially while living abroad, i snow mostly performed via facebook.

Truth to be said, I still can't decide.

Civilian Security Forces!?

2008-11-02T00:56:00.000+01:00

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." Sen. Obama.

Now, historical precedents should tell us something, I believe. Did anyone hear of the Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse (KdA), for instance? What about the Blackshirts? Or the Sturmabteilung?

I thought the liberals were aghast at the idea of paramilitary services and left them to the "right wing nutjobs". Apparently not anymore.

This is getting a bit too creepy...

2008-10-03T11:11:00.000+02:00

Could it be we hadn't seen things like that in the western world since, say, the mid '40s?

You've got to be kidding, FT

2008-09-30T18:27:00.002+02:00

From the Financial Times "Republican legislators ripped into a $700bn financial rescue package backed by almost the entire US political establishment. "

Now:

- 94 Democrats, members of the party holding an overwhelming majority in the American House of Reporesentatives, voted against the package, included 5 committee chairmen

- the House (democratic) speaker, besides being unable to keep control of more than one third of her party's votes, thought it was a good idea to lunch herself in an aggressive speech right before the vote criticizing the very idea of a bailout, putting all the blame on the republicans (first video) and casually forgetting the prominent role of the democrats in refusing regulations on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae which could had avoided the subprime crisis (second video)

- Contrarily to McCain, Obama didn't even try to help the bill pass (NYT: "Aides to Mr. Obama said he had not directly reached out to try to sway any House Democrats who opposed the measure. ")

... and the republicans ripped into the package?

An Autumn afternoon walk in Bretzenheim

2008-09-29T12:17:00.000+02:00

The light and the colors of Autumn, the houses and look of Bretzenheim:

Blue eyes, baby's got blue eyes...

2008-09-27T18:37:00.002+02:00

Goodbye Paul Newman.

And you might want to read this too.

Unassuming

2008-09-26T23:27:00.003+02:00

German classes every day at 8.45 is not a light task, I can assure you... however, at 10.30 we get 20 minutes of a pause. After much searching, finally a place was found worth of the walk (and the occasional 50 cents of fine for getting back late...) . It's in Fort Malakoff, which is unassuming from outside (left) and unassuming from inside (right).

The Bar itself is unassuming (so much that, having gone there a half dozen times, I still have to catch the name of the place), with unassuming façade (left), unassuming customers (except when the occasional first or second grade class parks in front of it, which happens surprisingly often) and, you bet, unassuming espresso... but then... try the apfelstrudel or the puddingbretze...

Igloos

2008-09-17T16:50:00.000+02:00

A couple of days ago, Mainz demonstrated as the climate change might be affecting the city, but also that they will be ready for the next ice age, as the new polar compound stood proudly in Gutembergplatz.
No, seriously, it was a series of tents to host some kind of intercultural manifestation, but considering it was FIVE degrees this morning, one has to wonder...

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more

2008-09-17T15:50:00.004+02:00

Here we are again... for the third time in my life, I try once again to learn German. After having signed with the Berlitz school here in Mainz for a course that never started and made me waste 2 whole months, eventually I signed up at the VolksHochSchule... will I manage this time to grasp at least the basics of this barbaric and hypercomplicated language? Ich weiss nicht...

The school (left) , located downtown near the Zitadelle and Fort Malakov, and the old style corridors of the school (right).

The classroom empty and with some of my colleagues. The group s incredibly varied, with people coming from 4 diferent continents and countries as Italy, Iran, Iraq, Chile, Hungary, Japan, Turkey, Greece, Philippines, Cambodia...

Kindergarden feelings: the sparrschwein (left) where people arriving late must deposit 1 euro and (right) an awesomely useful rigmarole to try and remember the insane rules of the language

The two teachers: Angelika (left) and Peter, who apparently has been an actor in the past and that indeed does show when he teaches, making him the funniest German teacher I ever met...

The night of the open churches

2008-09-08T14:44:00.002+02:00

Once a year, the churches in Mainz (well, 18 of them) are kept open untill late at night, each organizing some music, reading or similar events. It was an interesting chance to give a peek to places of Mainz I hadn't been before and so, there I went. Eventually, I visited 12 out of the 15 open churches, stopped in my plan to visit all of them by the storm that struck the city at about 11pm... Here are the pictures from ten of them, St. Bonifaz is missing as it is a modern church whith little or nothing of note, while the rain was already pouring by the time I reached the Altmuensterkirche, preventing me to take pictures.

One note, however: while the protestant churches in Mainz are, as any protesta church, pretty bare, here also the catholic ones tend to be disadorned. That is mostly due the fact that just about all of them were bombed and burned down in 1944. What a little wonderful gem must have this city been before the war, one can only wonder...

S. Quintin (click to enlarge)

The Cathedral (St. Martin)

St. Johannis

JohannisKapelle

St. Cristoph (what used to be the abside is still a small church, the rest was never rebuilt after WWII)

KarmeliterKloster

St. Peter

ChristusKirche

St. Emmeran (which, I discovered, is the Italian parish of Mainz and where I still have to understand why they have that kind of tent...)

St. Antonius

How many times...

2008-09-07T13:08:00.001+02:00

...Can people repeat something over the years before that becomes a meaningless mantra?" Following the democratic side of the presidential campaign, apparently a number higher than a lot and closer to infinite. In fact, googling for "republican failed policies" returns 1.060.000 results, "republican divisive politics" returns 517.000 hits. Not that all those hits are about democrats accusing the republicans of either or both, but an overwhelming majority definitely is. At least we know that for democrats, republicans are twice as failed than divisive... in a country that has Chapter 21 and personal failure in a venture is regarded as much less as a social stigma as it is in Euope, but rather as a wrong attempt on the path ro success, perhaps that is not all that bad.

Bu really, don't people ever get bored in the USA? Perhaps so. Maybe that's why as a mean of diversion, democrata tend to use the terms against each other too like here, here, here...

Various from the world

2008-08-27T10:52:00.001+02:00

Russia, unsurprisingly for all but the western foreign ministers it seems, officially recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Protests and shrieks followed from the western capitals, calling the move illegal and unacceptable, proclaiming the territorial integrity of Georgia untouchable and vowing that the two small breakaway regions will never ever be independant.

Yet, not a single politician or analyst who dared to draw a comparison between the case for Kossovo's independence and South Ossetia's and Abhkazia's ones to demonstrate the differences advocating for a different treatment.

In South Africa, a land reform bill which effectively gave major powers to the government to exporpriate the white ladowners to redistribute their properties to the black people was, at least for the time being, shelved. Considering that was the very move that precipitated Zimbabwe from being a relatively wealthy african country and a breadbasket for the continent to a eight (nine? ten?) zeroes inflation rate and economic disintegration, perhaps that's not a bad news at all.

In the meanwhile, in the States, the democratic convention is going on. Considering I didn't join an investment program because I didn't trust a banker with decades of experience to administer my money, it is still beyond me how the democrats could trust so much part of their life in the hands of a nearly-zero-experience orator. Hillary Clinton had sum it up as no repubblican could with her famous statement "I know Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Sen. Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.". Even now, I feel Hillary doesn't regret saying that a bit.

Pro-Russia

2008-08-09T12:26:00.000+02:00

A semi-authoritarian country wishing to re-exert its control on a breakaway province which has been practically independent for more than a decade resolves to armed intervention which includes firing on peacekeeping forces present in the region, but is pushed back by the intervention of a superpower strongly opposed by its long time cold-war era opponent. Are we talking of Serbia, Kossova, USA and Russia? No, rather of Georgia, South Ossetia (and Abkhazia), Russia and USA.

Now, all would be a "normal" old fashioned sphere on influence's quarrel were it not for the uncommon, even for the protagonists of the events, amount of hypocrisy involved. It is not one year yet that the USA supported the independence of Kossovo, the breakaway province of Serbia, after having been the leader in the war that wrestled it away from Serbia's rule. Having in Kossova's case explicitly rejected the principle of territorial integrity for Serbia, now they want it upheld for Georgia.

And what would be the difference? That Georgia is a democracy that needs to be defended (which is false) , that Russia has been unlawfully deploying forces in South Ossetia in the first place (false, considering that the Russian forces have been there after a joint agreement dated 1996 between the then Georgian president and the South Ossetian one following the war in the early 90s). All that, disregarding that South Ossetia and Abkhazia had been "donated" to Georgia by Georgian soviet dictator Stalin (himself a Georgian) despite ethnic, linguistic and religious differences.

Now, even more worrying (and no doubt a trigger, if not the trigger, of the crisis) is Georgia's bid to enter the NATO. Personally, I think it's an absolute nonsense and a very shortsighted move to allow countries neighboring Russia to enter the NATO, potentially forcing an armed reaction from the western countries in what Russia consider, and rightly so, its backyard. The USA almost started WWIII when Russia moved to install missiles in Cuba, would Russia back down seeing USA doing exactly the same forty years later? Is it worth risking a shooting war with Russia for a semi-dictatorial aggressive state in the Caucasus? No, thank you.

B-2-B: Back to Blog

2008-07-19T17:44:00.000+02:00

Can't believe it has been almost 10 month since last time I posted something on the blog. I would say that the Master kept me totally busy, but that would be a half-truth at best. What had me discontinuing my blog for real was a casual comment by SO (and that's not Second Officer) about her not wanting to start one due blogging being wonderful for keeping in touch with friends, but hazardous for your career, as more and more firms Google applicants' names first time in the hiring process.

Intrigued I Googled myself and, lo and behold, the first entry is exactly this page. That made me think and a whole 10 months at that. Granted, this blog would prove to a potential boss that I can decently write in English, but would I want to disclose much of my personal events or thoughts? The answer was an unqualified no.

So what do I do back here? Well, I still like writing and still need to keep in touch with a number of people (even if Facebook now helps with that) without the time to emailing each and one of them. So, for now, I've decided a partial resurrection of this blog which, however, will contain more comments about politics, news, books and, possibly, movies (I do not get to see many of them in Germany...) and less and definitely sketchy news about me personally. Probably more boring, I know.

As for now, the interface was totally redone as a sign of good will signalling I really intend to be back. Posts will follow, probably not at the pace of 2006... we'll see how it goes.

Readings - 2007

2007-12-31T23:59:00.002+01:00

15) King, S. - Cell - 8/10
14) Perez-Reverte, A. - T he Club Dumas - 8,5/10
13) King, S. - H earts in Atlantis - 8,5/10
12) Guillou , J. - The Heritage of the Templar - 8,5/10
11) Guillou, J. - The Kingdom at the End of the Road - 8,5/10
10) Guillou, J. - T he Knight Templar - 9/10
9) Guillou J. - The Road to Jerusalem - 8,5/10
8) King, S. - The Regulators - 5,5/10
7) Lewis, C.S. - The Chronicles of Narnia - 8/10
6) Cantarella, E. - I supplizi capitali in Grecia e a Roma (unifnished) - 6/10
5) Howard, R.E. - The Conan Cycle II - 7/10
4) Howard, R.E. - The Conan Cycle I - 7/10
3) McDougall, S. - R omanitas - 6/10
2) Figes, O. - A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 - 7,5/10
1) Ken Kalfus , K. - The Commissariat of Enlightenment - 8,5/10

The first days of the new life

2007-09-24T18:09:00.000+02:00

The first days in Germany have been, as it was probably to be expected, a mix of contrasting feelings. The first 24 hours were marked by its loneliness. With Susanne in Berlin, I went along with house cores most of Friday and Saturday, reading and discovering new ways to keep in touch with my country, finding out that I can check the news online, even if with a 6 hours delay, several other TV programmes (not that I really will have the time to) and, most importantly, the football games.

For Saturday evening I had sent out a call for a early meeting of the programme's participants. 4 eventually showed up, which at the moment I considered a great failure, before getting to know that the class would had been of a mere 15, rather than the 25 anticipated. Anyway, besides Anna, who I had already met during the summer, I was glad to make the acquaintance of Fanny, a hyperactive french girl, Ruth, an ever laughing German, and Nidhi, the youngest and possibly most lost of the group, coming from India. It turned out to be a pleasant evening spent in chatting. exchanging background information and wondering about the future classes.

The morning after, not having anything better to do, we met again (on the left, Ruth and Nidhi), missing Anna, with a half idea of reaching Rudesheim, but eventually changing our mind at the every last moment and jumping on a train to Worms.

I must say, I had great expectations about this city, background of some of the most important facts as the Concordat and the Diet.

Unfortunately, Worms was severely hit during WWII, even if to a lesser extent than Manz, and the reconstruction was even more modern than in other places I've seen, leaving a town with a few interesting building in a mostly modern pattern.

Some things were, however, noteworthy. The Cathedral, for instance, is a wonderful example of German romance architecture and holds the sarcophagi of several German emperors of the high middle age.

The Nibelungen Museum, per se little more than a well done and fun audiovisual escapade in the world of German mythology, is placed inside a remaining segment of the old city walls.

Also, the immense tower guarding the entrance of the city was a sight to be seen.

On Tuesday, thanks to the immense kindness of Ruth, who set next to us all through the process, the three non German of us got officially registered in Mainz, and therefore I'm, temporarily, a citizen here. Go figure.

Finally, on Wednesday it was the first day at university, for the induction. There, we were welcomed, in order, by the Programme supervisor for Germany, by the Fachhochschule's Dean, by an envoy of the London South Bank University who turned out to be the same old English gentleman who had interviewed me a few months ago, by the programme manager and my the English teacher (yes, we will get academic English lessons, focused on the writing of academic papers, on top of everything else). There we were also given the guides for the various units (and damn if it looks like a hugely load of work to do in a mere 12 weeks of classes plus a couple of pre-exam preparation).

In the afternoon, we amused the population of Mainz by taking a university scheduled ride all around the city on this yellow "train" designed to give an overview of the most salient aspects of the city and eventually proceeded to the nearest bar, again trying to get a sense of the group and an idea of each other.

The group, as I said, is small, counting at that time 13 elements, raising to 14 today with the late arrival of another student from India, and as heterogeneous as it can be: age goes from 20 to 32 (the latter being your truly), background goes from law to informatics passing through economics and media production, national background covering three continents (7 from Germany, 2 from France and India, 1 each from Italy, Russia, Peru), while gender wise is more or less balanced, 8 girls to 6 boys.

As a skin-feeling, they all look as pretty interesting, smart boys and girls, with some being more shy and reserved than others, but all in all I had a positive vibe, so to say. To my surprise, of the 7 non German, 4 already speak German, which might cause a bit of a friction, but I will also take German classes so I hope to be bale to close the gap.

Thursday was the moment of administrative paper in order to be enrolled officially at the university (and, in the afternoon, of AS Roma's game against Dinamo Kiev which I happily watched online), while Friday morning was the big day of the survival week-end, when, at 8 am, we left Mainz to reach this youth hostel in the hills near Dahn, to indulge in a day of team-building activities managed by professionals, including climbing down a 50 meters cliff, and an evening of barbecue and... free alcohol. At midnight, the time when even the most hardcore partygoers broke down and went to bed, the first hint of a group could had been seen where only singles stood in the morning. Pretty disconcerting for someone used to Italian University, was the Head of the Programme, and professor of International Management, who at some point first sort of played the DJ and then came down with a guitar and proceeded to sing with us.

Saturday, a pretty exhausted group returned to Mainz and dissolved, each heading to his chores, with a vague idea of regrouping in the evening, when ultimately only Fanny and myself met and were later joined by Caroline and Joachim, both German, and a friend of the latter. Those three, at midnight, headed to disco while the Latin ones decided to call it a night.

Sunday was spent home, watching Rome's game against Juventus and relaxing, preparing for the first official day of classes, the morning after.

In the meanwhile, I managed to establish contact with my family over Skype and, in pure Italian tradition, they didn't wait even a week before sending me a relief package... only, my father had the brilliant idea of sending it a Susanne's name and so it is currently sitting in a DHL station and runs the risk of being sent back, much to my frustration....

The last days of the old life

2007-09-14T21:30:00.000+02:00

It would be too long to describe the feelings and what was done in the last days of what is going to be my life of past, to which I will probably never return. Friday the 14th, against all roman superstitions that say that you should never get married or start a travel or begin a work on tuesday and friday, marks the beginning of a journey that will keep me away from what has been, so far, my world, a travel that will last at least until 2009, but that many suspect will go further than that.

In the 10 days leading to the fateful moment, many things went wrong, many went incredibly well and some were unexpected. Just the few that come to my mind now I shall list, sure that many I must have forgotten already.

First of all, some things had to be closed. So it was that I organized my last, for now, VCN ethnic dinner, going back to where I started, at the Eritrean restaurant. I will have to find time to write the report of that dinner and to post pictures, but I shall just say that it was a very pleasant evening.

Then, and most important, my job. And the closing days were intense and rich of unexpected things indeed. On a friday that should had been a day off, I was instead running at the airport, shaving on the way, to pick up the CEO of an important american firm my company was signing a crucial deal with. The day saw me so busy in a hundred different things (among which, chaperoning the host, translating a news release, taking picture of the event) that at the end of the day my boss was patronized by my own CEO about having me doing everything. So it happens that almost at the every last day of a 3 years and 7 months experience I not only get to do an interesting job, but I get even noticed directly by my CEO. Irony.

The next wednesday, last wednesday, it was my last day at work and I offered my colleagues, old and new, a buffet. Most notably, of my previous department's colleague, only 2 did show up out of 13, which generally left me unsurprised, but in at least two cases was upsetting. On the other hand, the attending one, together with my full department and a tenth or so of people I have been close in the last years, did not only show up, but showered me with unexpected farewell gifts (among which, an Ipod shuffle and a number of books) in a way that, I must admit, together with the evident sorrow in most of the faces around, moved me. I hope I shall get a copy of the pics that have been taken that day, I'd like to show their faces.

Friends did, on the other hand, let me down. Admittedly, they had returned from travel abroad just days, or even hours, before, but finding myself alone on my last week-end in Rome was one of the most depressing experience of my life. They make it up on my last day, when we finally met, and yet the atmosphere was not merry at all. I suspect that, as some of my colleagues at work, they suspect I might not return from this experience, settling either in Germany or Italy.

And then, there was family. The farewell to my family was made of a number of rites and of understatement and had started as far away as a month ago, when I went to pay homage to the elder member of my family, my grandmother, and was closed with the one to the youngest one, my one month old cousin, Elisa, whose baptise I shall miss. And then there was the cleaning of the room, the packing (during which not once my mother entered my room), the evenings in front of the tv with my father, the installation of skype on the various computers and the dinner at my favourite restaurant the last night, the summerlike evening of a september day gifted with the most splendid light ever.

And so, the morning after, my father, and he alone, took me to the airport and, unlike all the countless time when he had delivered me there for my week-end visits to this or that country over the last 10 years, he parked the car and came with me on the check-in line, gave me the last recommendations and let me go, unconvincing smiles on both our lips and, at least on my side, an almost inhumane effort to keep my voice straight.

And now I'm here, in Mainz, alone (Susanne is in Berlin for a summer internship in a court of justice), to think it all over and wondering once again, but in a much stronger way than usual, if I've done the right thing after all. I hope so.

Degrees

2007-09-04T14:25:00.001+02:00

Books have always taken a good share of my time. Admittedly, more in the past, when full weeks were spent jumping from one title to another in a breathtaking swirling of names, characters and plots that nowadays I regret a bit, than in the present.

Over the last weeks, I had the chance of falling back in the habit, that someones could rightly label as addiction, and I had the luck and pleasure of engaging in books almost all falling in the second and perhaps even third degree. Thinking about it, I suppose, that doesn't really mean anything if one doesn't know the four degree of books, right? Then I shall go on and expose my personal (or maybe relatively personal, as I do not exclude that someone else has elaborated the same theory in a parallel and independent way, as it often happens with the great things of human life like the telephone and the infinitesimal calculus) theory.

All the books, but especially narrative books, are divided depending the signs that they leave upon someone's soul, a bit like fire and related burns.

First degree books are the bad ones. Even admitting one manages to finish them, and the real reader usually forces himself to, they will leave nothing behind, but a bad taste and the feeling of wasting time. Second hand book stands are full of such books, abandoned soon after having been picked up, or right after their cellophane envelope. The first degrees books have the peculiarity of being as numerous as the locust and yet impossible to name, as the mind usually forgets their title, and often their authors' name as well, as fast as humanely possible, and sometimes even faster, to the point that it is not unheard of the case of the reader who, so forgetful of the experience, ended up buying the same book twice, providing it is presented with a totally different cover, only to realize after the first pages the terrible mistake.

Second degree books are the pleasant ones. They are like the beer in a sunny day, as they are refreshing and yet of no particular importance if not for the time they spend in your hand, and often they have to be finished quickly, before the coolness evaporates. Moreover, like they beer, they disappear quickly and are often forgotten, and yet they leave something behind, even if it is in the back of our mind rather than around our waists. For instance, the lines suddenly popping up in the middle of a discussion, when something incisive is needed to describe something, even if the precise source of the quote often escapes us, are probably coming from a second degree books which are, most likely, the majority of the books we will read during our life.

Third degree books are the ones that leave permanent scars. They are life fire, and yet the fascinating phenomenon with them is that, unlike the fire, people who have been too close to a third degree book tend to repeat the experience. No, they do crave to repeat the experience actually, often re-reading the same book and anything else written by its author, hoping, all too often ending up frustrated, to find the same sensation under a different name. Third degree books are the ones where you are never sure whether the book passed his belief to you, or rather if you liked the book because it shares your own beliefs. Third degree books are like a whole meal, not only it contributes to your muscles, nourishes your neurons and produces the energy everything works with, but also add to the skeleton that keeps everything up, and one should never forget the old saying, which is often more true with books than with real food, that one is what he eats.

Finally, there are the fourth degree books. Rare. Precious. Almost all of them come from that mystical and mythical age everyone passes through between the disclosure of Santa's secret and the discovery of your own mortality, simply because before the earlier everything works its own inner peculiar magic and after the latter nothing does ever again, except the occasional miracle. Fourth degree books are the ones that end leaving you an immense sense of loss, and yet never really end, as you carry them along with you all the time. Fourth degree books are the ones that, not only makes you want to read forever, but makes you want to write yourself and, at the very least, makes you think in a written way for a while, making see yourself and your actions as if being narrated by a third person. To say that they make you better would be a sheer banality, as they actually make you, period. Some books of this category teach you more than a professor, they tell you more about life, at least the life that should be, more than many friends. I've even heard some teach you more than your parents do.

Done and Done

2007-09-03T10:08:00.000+02:00

With less than 14 days to go until my moving to Germany, I'm starting to sort out the things to do and check them out. Week-end was obviously not a very productive time and yet...

- One way ticket to Germany, 14th September, 8.20 am. Done.

- Completing the summer readings, meaning at least 2 Stephen King's book. Done.

Yes, I know, summer ends the 21st of september, but I've always considered it closed the 1st of september and therefore I was quite happy I managed, barely in time, to perform my rite of reading. On friday, in fact, I got "Hearts in Atlantis" in my hands and read it from one end to the other over the day, finding it one of the best books by Stephen Kings just as well as one of the least Stephen King-like (except some supernatural in the first tale and in the last lines, the rest is pretty down to earth) and, sadly, finding myself in one of the characters, named Peter Riley (why, I won't tell, you'll have to read the book and guess, if you are curious). Just to make a big leap from one genre to the other, once finished King, being it september and thus summer over, I took up John Keegan's "War and Our World". Not bad so far.

Besides that, I've been dealing with Statistics, I've planned a trip to Berlin for the third week-end of september and then moved it to the last (which was lucky, as I had forgotten that the third week-end was already taken by some university activity) and then spent almost 2 hours figuring put the site of the german railways and booking the tickets (the site is, obviously, in german only).

With 8 days of work to go (the next two fridays I will use my last remaining off days), it's a strange monday to be a my desk, as my mind is in many places, but surely not on the folders in front of me.

A p-squared weekend

2007-08-27T17:21:00.000+02:00

That means, a week-end of panic and preparations. Being the last week-end spent in Germany ahead of the semi-permanent move (that, at this point, it's likely to be the 14th morning, even if I still haven't got the ticket) and considering that when I will move to Germany I will be on my own for a few weeks, the days were spent in preparing a few things and fine tuning the daily routines.

So it was that we headed to the bicycle shop to have my ride, bought to be a summer week-ends tool, turned into an all purpose, all seasons piece of machinery (which means, new tyres, a retouch to the gears, new tail lamp and such things).

It was then time to hit the hypermarkets in order to make a copy of the mailbox key, buying hangers, a few things for the kitchen, mosquito nets (strongly wanted by Susanne and put in place by me on sunday) and a 5 kgs-heavy de-humidifier set, all to be brought home, by lack of a car, by sheer arms' strength and the occasional bus.

Then it was grocery shopping time where, alon with the usual few kilos of fruit, we stumbled in the little piece of furniture for the kitchen we had meant to buy a few weeks ago but that had ran out before we managed to put our hands upon. Should I mention that the kit weighted a good 10 kgs? And so there we go, assembling the little thing following images-only instructions put together by a true surrealist artist. Then, as I was cooking, she proceeded to re-arrange her wardrobe to leave room for my own stuff to come (and actually partially arrived there already over the last two visits... basically all my heaviest stuff is already over there, together with underwear, socks and a pair of shoes).

Finally, on sunday, it came the feared (by me) and sadistically enjoyed (by Susanne and, as demonstrated by her unstoppable laughter, my mother) "how to clean the house, the sanitaries, the laundry and deal with the (obviously differentiated) trash" moment. Once settled the matter with the various soaps and tools, agreed on schedules, duties' division, economic settlements, rent, bills and settled on further revising the sleeping quarter's situation (we both agreed that the power of love can not overcome the uncomfortableness of sleeping in a 90 cms wide bed for a 4 to 6 months long period), we got to the final, touching, moment: the writing of the new signs for the entry phone and the mailbox (with her name above mine, obviously). I must say, it was... not without some emotion on my part (but, I think, on her side as well) that we glanced upon the shining new tag.

That's for the preparations, but where's the panic, you'd ask. Well, it happened that on saturday I put my hands on one of my future textbooks, the one for the statistics and econometrics's unit. As I opened the book and saw it filled with the most intricate mathematical formulas I had ever faced I couldn't hold a groan as a panic that I hadn't felt since the Economics exam back in university, years and years ago (the only exam I failed twice and that, when I finally passed, I exorcised by burning the books crying "never again").

Such is my horror and fear that I resolved to the unthinkable, I turned to my scientifically minded (and mathematical analysis certified) brother who, after admitting that statistics was his second most despised subject after analysis, agreed to give me a refresh (a refresh!? more like a fresh start) over the slightly less than three weeks I still have to spend here. I'm at page 20 of 300 and my panic isn't but growing steadily, or, rather, proportionately to a dependant variable based on a given positive parameter applied to the independent constant of the mathematical hardship I'm facing. Grim times to come...

Goodbye to a friend

2007-08-24T09:47:00.000+02:00

We haven't known each other for long, little more than a week perhaps, and yet in such a short time I got to know about his whole life, his adventures, his hopes, his frustrations and his world, so different, even if related to mine. Now he is gone, last of a series of friends who come, leave a mark and then disappear. His name was Arn, he was Swedish, coming from a little place called Arnas, and he's now dead. Well, dead for a good seven hundreds years really.

And for the ones who, again, think I've lost a couple of wednesdays, I will immediately put your worries at ease, he is a fictional character in a series of historical novels collectively called "The Crusade trilogy" telling the story of Arn Magnusson, a fictional character of middle age Sweden, brother and relative of various other historical characters like Eskil Magnusson or Birger Brosa.

Not everyone can understand how fictional characters can become dear to someone as real life person, sometimes more. I pity, truly, the ones who don't feel the sadness, and sometimes the pain, of reading the last line of the last book telling the tales of some character that over the time, be it long or short, became familiar and close to us. The ones who, on the other hand, can understand me know that we make a little and special brotherhood and probably all of us have a special affection to the Neverending Story of Michael Ende as all of us must have imagined at least once to just jump into a book and live the adventures along our fictional friends and, more importantly, that a story would, in fact, never end for real.

Personally, the first character I left with downright pain was Long John Silver of the Treasure Island. I was perhaps ten years old and it was a sad goodbye and yet full of hopes, actually, as he escaped a certain death at the gallows for unknown adventures. And it was a lucky goodbye too as, by chance, two decades later I found out a little, great, book called "Long John Silver" by Swedish author called Bjorn Larsson who gave me the chance of another meeting with my childhood controversial hero.

Over the years a few characters (and consequently, books) took their place next to the one legged charismatic pirate: most of the Lord of the Rings' characters (and, even now, I think that Tolkien was so wise to tell of the death of most of them in the book's appendices, despite the chocking feeling I felt reading of the voluntary death of Aragorn and of the desperate and lonely fading away of Arwen), Iliad's Hector and, to some lesser extent, Achilles, Aeneas, Wilfred of Ivanhoe and Robin of Locksley, Tom Builder and Jack Shareburg from The Pillars of the Earth, Atreyu and Falkor (while I never really loved Bastian Balthazar Bux probably out of sheer envy), Merlin and Uther as depicted by Jack Whyte, William Adams and Dirk Struan, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin (of whom I still have to read a handful of tales) and so on a few more, moving between different ages and universes, until, for now, Arn Magnusson the templar and marshal.

So, a fond goodbye Arn, if there is a heaven for fictional charachter, I know you are there in good company.

Vacations... vacations?

2007-08-22T10:48:00.000+02:00

Due the fact that the majority of my off-days from work will be used this year to cover the first two weeks of the upcoming master, I was left with a handful of days to rest this year. Truly, I had thought of having just two of them, before recalling, too late to plan something, that another three had been left as a reserve.

Anyway, one way or the other, the plan for the summer had already been laid a couple of months ago and so it was that Susanne came down to Rome last monday evening in order to stay the whole Ferragosto (the 15th of august is so called, coming from the "feriae augustae", the day of celebration for the emperor Augustus) week and on tuesday, on an overburdened scooter, right after the end of my working day, we travelled the 104 kms between my house and the seaside cottage. It wasn't a particularly comfortable travel, truly, with her backpack between my legs and every possible space filled with the stuff that would had been used in the next 7 days and, probably, between the scooter itself, two people and the luggage my shoulders had to sustain more than 250 kgs when it came to turning, but the weather was fine and company was the best possible, and the about two hours it took were somewhat quick to pass.

In the evening, I introduced Susanne to one of the traditions we have, the night bonfires that we have the 14th august at night. It was a pretty under-tone one as it wasn't possible to organize it properly from Rome, but anyway, there we were with the company of a handle of friends, joined later by some acquaintances and a bunch of totally unknown people. Alcohol abounded, even if we barely touched it, the fire was going (and I was pretty proud of it, being that I was the responsible for that) and laying down in the sand next to if was nice enough. However, between the chill of the night that prevented the typical midnight bath, the lack of interest in games that, honestly, are made more as an excuse for couple to form than anything else, and perhaps my years, more numerous than expected to enjoy such nights, we were the first ones to leave as the soon extinguished.

The next days were relaxing, even if full of events. Besides the oddity of having a girlfriend that, regardless of the hour we had gone to bed, woke up every single morning before 8 to take a one hour long run (that I joined once to carry the consequences even now...), most of the time was spent at the beach, in afternoon siestas and, for me, reading. The closes village's festival, a visit to Sabaudia - an interesting little town nearby -, meetings with old friends and fireworks were all part of the week, together with food, more food and even more food (I took 2 damn kilos in a little more than 10 days, which will take months to get rid of, if ever...).

On friday, I went to pay homage to my only surviving grandparent, my mom's mom, who's living with her youngest daughter in her husband's estate. It had been a while since my last visit and it was very pleasant, even because we spent hours in the swimming pool where the water was above 30 degrees.

Sunday came way too soon and with it the time to repack everything and take the trip back, once again on an overloaded scooter, and the week was closed with a dinner to our usual restaurant and a walk (quite painful for me, honestly, due the consequences of the jogging) around Trastevere and the Tiberine island. Monday morning, after little or none sleep, we headed to the airport and then, on my own again, back to work, with the thought at this coming friday, when I'll fly to Germany for the last time before my definitive move for the Master's first semester.

And so went my vacations, besides the three days off that right now I have no clue about how to use... any suggestions?

Seaside and more seaside

2007-08-14T11:58:00.000+02:00

While work was expected to be even more on the madness level last week after our department got assigned to be directly under CEO's supervision, unexpectedly the days went by with little or nothing to do. Apparently, the CEO himself was pleased enough with the heads he had had the past friday and decided to slow down and eventually to go on vacation yesterday. So it happened that last week was a slow one, dedicated mostly to friends and eventually I got to the seaside for the week-end, which turned out to be quite relaxing.

On friday, I was taken by my parents to a charity dinner held in the village closest to our house. It was pleasant and I felt incredibly young considering that, set aside a couple of dozen of kids under 10 years old, I was definitely the youngest person around. Food was agreeable, served on long tables where one had to sit randomly, so to encourage meeting new people, as it actually happened. Fact is, I was so tired (probably an adrenaline drop after the past weeks) that at 10, as people moved to dance and the (folk and slow) music was filling the air, I fell asleep on my chair to be awakened some time later by my parents on their way home.

Saturday was unfortunately a cloudy day, which ruled out the beach, and was spent mostly on the renewal works of the house (my father has almost finished re-painting the whole thing) and gardening, not to mention reading, which allowed me to indulge in one of my favourite activities: picking a book and finishing it within 36 hours (in this case, "The Road to Jerusalem" by Jan Guillou).

It was only in sunday that I finally hit the beach and, surprisingly, my brother joined us as well for a hit and run visit that was concluded with the two of us boarding the train back to Rome in the early evening. All in all, I probably spent more time sleeping than anything else, and for a good reason: yesterday evening Susanne arrived to stay for the week and we are moving back to the seaside later today. 5 days of beach, swimming, beach-volley and any sport that can be practiced at the seaside is to be expected...

News, news and more news

2007-08-07T08:41:00.001+02:00

As it is happening more and more often lately, news keep coming and sometimes I don't seem to be able to keep up with them. Surely I'm not able to keep up with my blogging, at least. The strange thing is that everything should be slowing down for the summer and while apparently it is so all around me (for instance, there's almost no one on the street when I get to the office, which is currently half empty itself), still, things seem to happen faster than I can fully grasp.

So, news:

a) while my talk with the HR manager at work had more than suggested that I would had never got the leave of absence that I needed for the Master (the sentence "I expect the resignation letter to be presented within the contract terms, if you decide so" didn't leave much maneuvering space), a subsequent intervention by the labor unions, supported by my own boss (not really by my own manager, which came as a bitter surprise) turned the tide. Effective from the 1st of October and for 16 months, I'm on an authorized (unpaid) leave, to resume work as of 1st February 2009.

b) still at work, the absurd pace that had characterized the last week of July had just got worse in august (and it's only too ironic that I'm making myself a name around here barely weeks before moving away). That was also coupled with a revolution of the firm's organization announced last Friday in which 6 out of 8 of the top manager lost their place. Among the casualties, my own manager, the one who had facilitate my moving to my new department and with whom I used to play football once in a while. Despite his lack of intervention on my behalf in the leave of absence's deal (which, thinking of it, might had been caused by his already fragile position), that was still a sad thing. The 50 or so second-line managers are now expecting to see what it's in store for them.

c) finally, I managed to get to the seaside, for a weekend. The result was another decent burn on my back, the second this year (I'm either getting too careless or too old, I used to spend hours in the sun without consequences once upon a time), when I suddenly fell asleep under the son at noon, waking up about one hour later. Besides that, I met some friends I hadn't seen in years, given that the past summers my visits at the sea have been sporadic, at best.

d) I found out that in my planning of the summer and allotment of my off-days I had totally forgot 3 days I had in store. Now, since I do have to use it within the 15th of September or lose them without compensation, I have to decide what to do. Obviously, I'd like to spend them with Susanne, but she might be busy with a stage and I will know only at the very last moment, so the second best option would be to gather Alessandro, Sergio and Francesco and do as we once used to, travelling around. Problem is, Francesco will be in Argentina until the end of September so he has to be ruled out and Alessandro will be back from US only at the beginning of the month and will probably be unable to take more days away from his law firm. Besides, where to? I'd love to go to the Baltic, Tallinn, Stockholm or Helsinki being the places coming first to mind, but.. who knows?

e) there's a new born in the family, the first of the new generation. My mom's junior sister's daughter (my cousin, my mom's niece) finally (she's 38) gave birth to a baby girl called Elisa, an event that was met with all the joy that can be expected and by my mother not even so hidden jealousy. We tried to explain her that, yes, it's her younger sister who became a grand mom, but she even had the brilliant idea of becoming mom at 18, rather than waiting, as my mom did, to be 30 to give birth to her first son, but apparently the argument isn't too effective with her. Considering my own position at the moment, she will have to place her hopes on my brother. Anyway, I just hope Elisa will not be baptized when I'll already be abroad, I'd hate to miss the ceremony, even considering that her grandparents are my godparents.

f) finally, I managed to read a book again, which might sound strange, but was indeed becoming painful. So it happens that in a matter of days I devoured the whole Chronicles of Narnia cycle (which was definitely in a different style than I expected, but immensely enjoyable anyway) and then I started my summer reading with a Stephen King book, the Regulators, which was kind of disappointing and barely decent. Now, I had sent the books on top of my "to read" list to the seaside with my parents as I was expected to be there as well the last week-end, a plan that crumbled under the forced staying at my office till very late on Friday so: what to read now?

And that's about it for now... back to work!

Delirio

2007-07-25T09:50:00.000+02:00

After a week end of the not exactly relaxing kinds (among the rest, my first goodbye dinner organized by my fellow novaromans), the beginning of the week saw me at my office desk on monday from 8.30 am until 9.30 pm and on tuesday from 8.20 am until 11.05 pm. Making a couple off additions (which, in my current state of mind, is not actually easy), that means that between 8.30 am of monday and 11.05 pm of tuesday I've been working 29 out of 39 hours.

That's why I'm in a bit of a haze now, that I'm back again at my desk at 8.30 of wednesday and the reason why I've been neglecting emails, IMs, books, friends.. just about everything.

As it is said here in these cases: "Delirio...".

As was meant to be demonstrated

2007-07-18T14:17:00.000+02:00

Theory: one can't resist his own nature.

Demonstration: As time for reading waned over the last months and the little I had over the last 2 months was used for a book I can't manage to read past page 170, I had decided not to visit my bookshop in order to avoid piling up books next to my bed, books that I would probably have to abandon in September upon my moving to Germany.

It was a wise choice, a practical choice and, not to be overlooked, an economically savvy one. But...

Today, 37 Celsius, lunch skipped in favor of a big and cold ice cream, 30 minutes left of my lunch break, what else could had i done, together with my closest friend at work, then walking to the air-conditioned bookshop?

So I entered, just to give a look at the covers and perhaps read a page here and one there... and 30 minutes later I got out with the burden of 7 books in my hand and a wallet 40 € lighter.

As was meant to be demonstrated.

VCN Ethnic Dinners go to USA

2007-07-18T08:34:00.000+02:00

The last VCN dinner before summer break saw a reduced group of VCNers heading to a Tex-mex restaurant, after having realized that an argentinian dinner, in any of such restaurant would had been way over the dinners' usual budget.

With numbers dwindling gradually as the summer advanced (probably the heat calls more for open-air barbecue rather than indoor dinners, even if with air conditioning), it was a little group of a dozen persons that met at the T-Bone Station near Piazza Barberini in a pretty warm and damp evening.

The place, however, turned out to be pleasantly cool and arranged, in the intention of the owner at least, as an american bar with tables able to host 6 persons aligned along the wall (down the corridor, in the picture).

The menu had a wide selection of (mostly fried) appetizers, hamburgers, different cuts of meat (included the one and a half kilo "T-Bone and King cut" steak), salads, nachos, fajitas, wraps, chili and so on and so forth, all with accompanying sauces.

A pleasant surprise was the fact that, when one of our members, finding the meat he was served not up to the expectations, had left almost all of that in the dish, the waiter ran to inform himself about the problem and immediately offered a new dish, free of charge.

All in all, the dinner was a pleasant one and the food agreeable, if not exactly light (I think just the sauces served with my wraps would had covered a full dinner's quantity of calories and fat). Bill was reasonable too, which is always a good thing. Out of the dozen people present, only one was a newcomer, while the other 11 fairly represented what, over the months, has became the core of the VCN dinners.

Given the evident trend in presence, it was decided to suspend the dinners until september, when I'll organize my last dinner before leaving to Germany. For the occasion, i decided to go back from where I took over: Erithrean.

Back to Italy, for now, and the week-end past.

2007-07-17T10:19:00.000+02:00

If you were wondering what had happened to me after the Poltergeist incident of the other day, relax, I'm fine.

Week-end in Germany was indeed very nice, even because we (Susanne and me) celebrated our second anniversary with a ferry-cruise along the Rhein river (where, much to my surprise, I ended up half burnt by the German sun reflected by the water), getting a look at the famous Loreley rock and a dozen different castles, then a walk in the pretty and extremely characteristic Rüdesheim am Rhein and its Drosselgasse and eventually a dinner at my favourite restaurant in Mainz, for once opened, taking a table outside in the square looking at the back of the majestic Cathedral of the city. If my sweet half (that's a direct translation from the Italian "dolce metà") remembers to send me the pictures of the day, I shall post a few of them.

On Sunday, right before leaving to the airport, I got the chance of meeting one of my future classmates, Anna, a pretty interesting person who defined herself as a tailor studying business management. For as odd as such a definition may sound, it actually makes sense in a world where fashion design tends to be just as much, if not more, business than a form of art. Besides, that, If all the other future colleagues will have such interesting backgrounds, I'll end up being the boring one and the time in Mainz will be a definitely interesting one.

Anyway, speaking of Mainz, I must say that since I know I will have to live there for several months, I'm looking at the city with different eyes than the ones of a simple passer by, and yet the result is still greatly positive. Hoping we'll not have a very cold winter, I think I might really enjoy staying there for a while, in a totally different dimension than the one I've lived all my life.

Strange things happening

2007-07-13T18:31:00.001+02:00

Premise: I believe in God, the immortal soul and in several concepts derived from that and I believe in paranormal phenomenons as things we are not yet able to explain, but nothing more. I'm not a lunatic maniac either, as the ones who know me among the ones who read this blog know.

That said, why, one hour ago, I did see the metallic cover of the shower box drain hole move a good twenty centimeters by itself on the shower floor, with rhythmic jumps that slowly did fade off once the thing had stopped in its final position? There was no heart quake, no air flow for how strange it could had been to create such a precise and rhythmic movement and no insects hidden under it and the whole thing made the hair on the back of my head rise. And why in my mailbox there is a mail for the former tenant of this place, gone more than two years ago? And why such creepy things happen on a Friday the 13th and when I have to catch a flight?

That was one of the creepiest things I've ever experienced and I'm now nervous about flying. Ummm....

Japanese Night

2007-07-11T13:37:00.000+02:00

A couple of days ago I happened to find myself, for a while, in Japan. Nah, I am sane, don't worry, at least my brain is (other things aren't and in fact I'm home even if it's Wednesday). The fact is, I ended up near Campo dei Fiori at a table alone with 4 girls all of them speaking Japanese. The fact that two of said girls were Italian didn't spoil the moment, even because they are so fully into the Japanese language and culture that even their tone and gesture (for instance, they instinctively covered their mouth when laughing, a typical Japanese thing) was more similar to their Japanese friends than to the ones proper of our culture.

The excuse for the "aperitivo" (at the Aristocampo, as usual) was the end of Lucia's exam session and her consequent leaving for Japan for a two months summer vacation. Oh, of course... who? Lucia is a nice Italian girl I met by the way of Yoko (a Japanese teacher and a regular, if not a fixture, to the VCN etnic dinners) who studies Japanese ans is practically dying for moving to live in Osaka. Now, between this lifelong ambition of hers and considering she'll be returning at the end of September on one and and that at the mid of September I will be moving out of Italy for over a year on th eother hand, we decided that the chance of that evening being the last one in which we could had met until 2009, at the least, was well worth a mid-week drink.

How it happened, tho, that I was the only boy sitting at that table, I still have to understand. Lucia's boyfriend didn't show up as he doesn't enjoy international company speaking a language that he doesn't understand (and, considering a given barbecue I had recently in Germany, I feel inclined to understand, if not sympathize with, him) and neither other male friends summoned did made it. Anoher boy, a friend of a friend, did arrive at the table only to leave 5 minutes later to a square nearby where a concert was being held.

Not that I complain. Having been trained to hours in the presence of people who speak a language I do not understand I tend to get restless only after at least 8 hours (my recently estabilished record at this time being 14 but, quoting a famous movie, reaching that level is possible, but not advisable), so 4 hours of mixed japaneglischitalian was nothing to be afraid of. Besides, I just came out of a period of intense fascination for the Japanese culture marked by the reading of Shogun and Gai-Jin by Clavell and the repeated visions of The Last Samurai together with the occasional Babel, Last letters from Jiwo-Jima and a couple of Kurosawa's movies so... it was even fascinating to hear the sound of the actual language.

And it was fun, I must say. So much that after two liters of red wine, two trays of mixed hams and cheeses and a couple of light cocktails, we decided we had to head to the Tiberina Island where, being summer, there are once again little bars offering more than averagely expensive cocktails, dubiously comfortable pillows to sit upon, but a very nice and charmy atmosphere (when not overcrowded) and where we stayed until 2 am.

All fun, truly, and yet, on my way back to the scooter, I did pass in front of "our" (Susanne and me) church, where everything started almost exactly two years ago (in the first hours of the 15th of July) and couldn't help dropping her a "missing you" message... because it's true, don't laugh at me, I found out, not without my own surprise, that I can be alone in the company of 4 girls and still think of and miss my girl. I must be getting old...

Bad news, good news

2007-07-04T08:53:00.000+02:00

So, as the old custom goes, bad news first (why? because the sugar in the end makes the bitter better? What if one is already in a bad mood and beheads the messenger before he gets to the good news? Anyway...).

It is now official that my firm has denied me a leave of absence in order to attend the master programme. Although I knew that such outcome had always been possible, part of me had been keeping in believing that a rational solution to the situation would had been chosen. In fact, while being away, I would had cost nothing to the firm (not even the social security costs) and thus I saw no point in a negative outcome. So much for rationality, considering I was not even paid the courtesy of a talk with the HR director.

So it is that, barring some unpredictable event or going to court for a case that is, to say the least, dubious, by the 14th of august I shall have to present my resignation letter and consequently I shall be unemployed by next October. Quite a way to celebrate my birthday.

The good news is that Susanne's landlord not only has manifested no contrariety to me staying with her over the months I shall be in Mainz, but he has not even raised the rent, much to our surprise. That, besides the obvious satisfaction of being able to stay with Susanne (which is obviously the main thing), will allow me to lower my estimated living costs for the first year of the programme of almost a thousand euros, bringing it from 10.200 to 9.500. Some little thing per se, but still...

Flash

2007-06-29T21:21:00.000+02:00

I'm in Mainz, at the University, at 9.20 pm. I'm at a huge open-air party called sommerfest (the summer party) where basically thousands of university students (the ranks of whom I will soon join again) stroll along among stands that sell food and various kind of alcohol while university bands plays mostly heavy metal and punk rock, which I absolutely despise.

It's the 29 of June and, coming from the 30-something degrees of a sunny Rome, I found myself in less than 20 degrees and rain with nothing serious to cover myself. Whenever Susanne meets someone, a strictly german-only talk ensues. Finally, I'm in the office of AIESEC, the students' association that, at least in Rome, was the mortal enemy of my own association, ELSA.

All that said... I'm having a blast.

VCN Ethnic Dinners go to India

2007-06-22T13:21:00.000+02:00

(click pictures to enlarge) The 11th Ethnic Dinner took the VCN ED crew back to India, which was last visited for Vietnam, and, for the first time, saw the event co-organized by two persons: Andrea (right) who dealt with the restaurant and myself dealing with the email exchanges and information. Honestly, hadn't it been for Andrea (who, coincidentally, joined the group at the previous asian dinner), the dinner would had never taken place as I was too busy with what's going on in my office and my leave of absence' request.

The restaurant chosen was in the middle of the Monti neighborhood, not too far from my office and in one of the most downtown zones of the city. The name of the place is "Guru" and it has the misfortune to be just two door next one of the most famous (and expensive) indian restaurants of the city, the "Maharajah". The restaurant, in my opinion, comes out well in a comparison anyway. It's small, tidy (as it was noticed even by the most careful ones among the girls of our little company) and the only bad side is that the place feels hot, perhaps even due the spicy food, and the waiters didn't help by forgetting to turn on the air conditioners.

The menu was a mix of meat and vegetable dishes, spicy but, according to the most sensitive ones of the table, "just as much" (and served with a series of sauces, just in case someone wanted to enhance or dim the spiciness). The vegetarians got a couple of separate dishes just for themselves.

Unfortunately, the names of the actual plates are unknown, but we started with a green soup which was really appreciated, followed by two different kinds of vegetarian croquettes which vaguely reminded of arab felafels. The first meat came in the work of Tandoori chicken and some spicy chicken balls. Then it was the time of rice, three different kind of beef meats presented in several different sauces (one in particular of these dishes was in absolute my favourite).

The food, it must be said, was not only of good quality and excellent taste, but so abundant that much was left at the end of the dinner, as it hadn't happened since the last peruvian dinner. Some indian beer was also present on the table, but I cannot say much about that as I didn't try it.

The company was less numerous than usual, maybe due the very late announcement made (on friday) or the summer period not encouraging evenings spent within 4 walls. Fact is, we were a pretty manageable 15 people, made of 6 italians, 2 each for Canada and UK and 1 from Brazil, Egypt, USA, Philippines and the Netherlands.

At the end of the dinner, everything was almost ruined by an idiot driving a Porsche speeding in the narrow streets and bumping with his rear-view mirror against Rachelle's elbow. Nothing serious, luckily, but still...

Anyway, next stop, probably, Argentina!

When the market is imperfect and the master gets in the picture.

2007-06-21T20:54:00.000+02:00

One of the criteria that define a perfect market is the full and complete knowledge by the actors of the elements of the markets, most notably prices and information.

Now, what does it have to do with me. Yesterday I faxed my acceptance of the place that was offered to me to the MSC-IB programme. Today I was supposed to go transferring the 1st semester's fee, but a technicality (called work) prevented me, which is not a big deal as I will do that tomorrow morning. Those two acts, together with the subscription of a health insurance, will seal my fate for the period going from mid September 2007 until later January 2009.

And here it comes the imperfect market. Not only I'm jumping into his thing without a real and objective knowledge of what this programme will be able to give me in term of work opportunities, but I'm doing it without even knowing, still, if I'll be able to keep my job as a backdrop plan, as my HR department failed to answer my request for a sabbatical year within the deadline I had. Practically speaking, in a matter of months I will probably find myself with no sure future and no sure past to get back to.

Most of my friends, when they hear I'm going forward regardless, make a strange face when they do not tell me right away that I'm insane leaving a "sure place". Considering the European job market in general and the Italian one in particular they might actually be right. Between the mere chance of a better future and the reality of a steady job with benefits and health coverage paying already one and a half times the average Italian salary (although with little or none prospective of career), most of them would just go for the second, if faced with a "either or" choice.

But, ironically enough, even if at times the idea of a possible, total, utter disaster clouds my thoughts, that's the least of my concerns. Maybe is my Italian side, but I'm more concerned about leaving my family: a triple-bypassed father who thinks he can do just about everything someone in his twenties can do and a mother who is already showing the signs of the typical Italian motherly "he's leaving home" crisis. I'm concerned by the lack of information about their well being while I will be away and if everything will be ok with them.

I'm more concerned, and my mother got it perfectly right by instinct just as well as some friends of mine, that should I leave without a place to get back to, I would be forced to look for a job while abroad and consequently stay there indefinitely. The lack of information about where I will end up troubles me more than the lack of the one about what I will be doing, I do not know why.

Then, I'm concerned by something that most of my friends, well, the not Italian ones at least, take for granted, meaning living on my own and even worse, even if I hope so, with someone else, at least for the months I'll be spending in Germany. I do not know if it happens to all the ones who leave their house for the first time or only to overly pampered guys in their 30s, but the idea of being on my own for the menial tasks of grocery shopping, cooking and, my goodness, ironing is fascinating and horrifying at the same time. Having to keep a straight balance and make ends meet without having incomes worries me more than having to sit through lessons taught in a foreign language.

And yet, I'm eager to start and put myself to the test. I just want to see if I can, after years my brain has been working at 10% of its capacity (at most), face university once again and in subjects that are not even vaguely familiar to me (and some even scaring, like finance... me and maths have always been a troubled relationship). To boldly go where no friend of mine has gone before and face hurdles and challenges that, as I said, makes some of them tell me straight on my face that I'm crazy.

To be honest, I'm also praying God I'm not making the greatest mistake of my, at this point not even that short, life...

Alea Iacta Est

2007-06-12T08:48:00.000+02:00

Ok, I'm not moving war against the Roman Republic (soon to become empire) as Caesar was while allegedly uttering those words, but, anyway, yesterday I submitted my request for a sabbatical year (and something) in order to take part in the master programme.

Despite several people telling me that, as long as my boss and direct superior agree, the request is but a formality and having, more or less, made up my mind of going in any case, I can't but admit I'm nervous. If nothing else, there is the fact that effective from the 1st of June we do have a new HR manager about whom no one knows anything about. How funny to be a case study for the labor unions representatives at work...

On indirectly related news, to release some o the tension yesterday I finally managed to get back to my pool and found it, finally, uncovered. I must say it was quite something to swim under the (late afternoon) sun rather than under a heavy Kevlar white tent. The downside is that, having schools ended last friday, the pool was semi-crowded with teens who have nothing better to do and doing my 100 legs was at time more a slalom trial than a swimming one.

Yet, I hope to manage going there again today...

News and great hopes...

2007-06-09T16:55:00.001+02:00

Indeed, my blogging entries have plummeted since I changed department at work. No more blogging from work, and that's probably a good thin as it means I'm much more busy then I was before, with more work, more responsibilities and colleagues who keep me busy.

It is, then, quite ironic that, after three years spent doing nothing due what probably could be labelled as mobbing, it is right now that I'm busy that something I have been thinking forever and most especially over the last two years might eventually come true: studying abroad.

In fact, last tuesday I flew to Mainz for the final interview in order to be admitted to the Master of Science in International Business which is organized in cooperation between the London South Bank University and the Fachhochschule of Mainz. The interview was quick, the test that followed pretty easy, or at least so I thought, and I was offered a place right after.

So it was that in the evening I flew back home thinking of the main obstacle that is now between me and what has been for years a dream of mine: how to took part to the programme without losing my job in the process. In fact, the programme is supposed to last for 15 months, three months longer that the longest leave of absence that I could supposedly get from my office based on my contract.

Quite a problem, which I hope to be able to solve with the help of my bosses at work (which were quite supportive when I broke the news to them, even if my direct superior wasn't definitely thrilled) and the labor unions and basing on the discretionality that the whole matter has. And all has to be settled by the 20th of this month, date in which I shall have to confirm my participation, or giving that up.

And should I have to choose between studying and my job, if I would be put in the position of having to burn all bridges behind me? Right now, I'm leaning towards leaving in any case, yet I will have to face the moment to really know. People around me are neatly divided between the ones who think that, in case, I should keep my steady job and the ones, included (quite surprisingly, my father) who think I should go. Honestly? I hope I shall not have to make such decision...

VCN Ethnic Dinners go to Nigeria

2007-05-30T14:18:00.000+02:00

(Click on the pictures to see enlarged versions) The last edition of the VCN dinners marked two sort of milestones: the 10th dinner and the 1st anniversary of the dinners as a whole. And in fact, just for the chronicles:

26/05/2006: Mexican dinner (Organized by Curt Wagner)
19/10/2006: Turkish Dinner (Organized by Curt Wagner)
07/11/2006: Eritrean Dinner
28/11/2006: Thai Dinner
23/01/2007: Peruvian Dinner
20/02/2007: Greek Dinner
08/03/2007: Egyptian Dinner
22/03/2007: Vietnamese Dinner
03/04/2007: Peruvian Dinner 2
15/05/2007: Spanish Dinner
29/05/2007: Nigerian Dinner

Some things have changed over the year, pictures were taken regularly, for instance, and I tried to make the dinners more periodic, yet I hope that the spirit, the idea of meeting new people in a relaxed environment and experimenting new accents together with new dishes, still remains.

This time, to be true, what ended up to be a Nigerian dinner was originally supposed to be a Cameroonian one, but, as I found out, the restaurant, which I had discovered the September of the last year, had since been transferred and transformed.

Honestly, the dinner was not the most successful one. The dishes were oddly tasting and while I personally appreciated the Suya (spicy chicken pieces on skewers), the groundnut soup and the banga rice (rice with cream of palm nuts), some other, especially an odd looking green rice of unknown name was simply inedible with its bitter and fishy taste.

The company, on the other hand, was more mixed up and colorful then usual. A good number of "core" people was present and several new faces showed up, apparently a group of friends who decided to show up together. Table's arrangements also caused some more problems as there was no space to form a single table and, consequently, we were forced to form two. Further on, at some point I realized I had not thought of forming the vegetarian corner (quite a problem, considering Susanne is one and with our original places we would had to split) and therefore I had to re-arrange places suddenly. Finally, despite several people calling for a later beginning of the dinner, the actual choice turned out to be counter-productive as several people had to leave before the actual end of the dinner.

Eventually, 20 people did show up, with Americans for once reaching the majority together with Italians (5), followed by Brazil, Australia and France (2) and Germany, Belgium, Norway and UK with 1 each. A non perfect dinner, all in all, which forces some re-considerations about the whole formula.

Siena: a tale of hunger for culture and not only.

2007-05-29T14:14:00.000+02:00

(Click on the pictures to see enlarged versions) Susanne is in Rome, which usually means being quite more busy and usually much less domestic than usual and this week-end made no exception to the general rule. To make good of a promise I had made more than one year ago, I finally decided to take her to Siena from where I was myself absent since 2001 and of which I had quite nice memories when it came to think about them.

Some forewords are necessary anyway. Siena is today almost universally known for the wines produced on its hills and the landscape those very hills provide and only after for it's artistic and architectural masterpieces. Fact is, Siena had two blesses: it has been awesomely rich for the past 1.000 years (usually by lending money at high interest rates to anyone needing that) while being politically insignificant for the last 500, sparing her from most of the wars that ravaged Italy and making the demolishing of old buildings to build new ones a pointless task.

The same two blesses turned into a curse when it came to logistic: Siena is not connected to the rest of the country neither by a highway nor by a train line placed on the north-south backbones of the rail system, but only by a secondary line.

Another thing about Siena and its countryside is that it is indeed one of the best places in Italy (which, obviously, means of the world) for wine and food.

That said , we embarked in this journey and selected the train as the transport of choice, mainly to avoid having to drive after what I expected to be a major banquet of Chianti and local hams.
Of course, we woke up at 6 am on a saturday to take the first train. Obviously, the train departing from Rome was one hour and a quarter late. It goes without saying that we missed the connection to the train heading to Siena which eventually caused us to arrive in Siena well past noon which, in turn, would had devastating consequences over the rest of the day.

In the meanwhile, on the train taking us to Siena (a new one, paid probably by the city of Siena and looking like the interior of a Star Trek shuttle) the funny moment was brought about by a couple of young americans in their early twenties who boarded the train without waiting for their parents and, obviously, did lack the reflex of jumping down as the train started leaving the platform before they had got reunited. It followed a funny exchange between the two that ended with our offer of helping them in the remote hypothesis that a ticket controlled had came about (which, obviously, didn't happen).

By noon, as said, we were in Siena and we headed straight to the main square of the city, Piazza del Campo, and, for the first time in my life, up its 84 meters (and 400 something steps) tall bell tower, called "La Torre del Mangia" from where we enjoyed an impressive view of the city and witnessed a japanese tourist looking down and then collapsing out of vertigoes. To be noted that at the beginning of the ascension there is this large sign saying that the place isn't suggested for people suffering of heart problems, giddiness, claustrophobia and similar niceties. The sign is not to be taken lightly, as indeed the height is impressive and the steps taking to the top platform are steep and running into such narrow corridors with such low ceiling that even I, despite my far from gigantic height, had some problems. The view from above is, however, truly magnificent.

Once climbed down from the tower, we headed for the palace, famous especially for the XIV centuries frescoes that, unlike many other operas of the same period which were over painted as the stylistic fashion changed over the centuries, here remained at their place.

By the time we had managed to finish the visit it was already 2 pm. Having arrived so late in Siena we took a decision that, by insight, turned out to be dramatically wrong: we decided to head for the cathedral by the way of a long sweep of the Eastern side of the city and only afterwards heading for a restaurant.

Not like the cathedral of Siena is not worth a visit as it is actually a majestic example of italian gothic. Originally thought to be only the right transect of the real cathedral (which, map at hand, should had taken almost one third of the whole city), the cathedral remained what it is now due the black death and the consequent economic crisis. Still, it's immense for such a relatively small city and contains incredibly works of art, among which the Piccolomini Library, the pulpit, not to mention those you would actually walk over if they hadn't fenced them: some incredible marble tarsias and mosaics, some dating back to the mid of the XIV century. Also the baptistery is commendable and, from the external, would look like a separate church by itself.

The problem was that, unknown to us poor tourists, the restaurants of Siena, and I mean every single one to them to the very last, close inexorably at 2.30 pm to open again to the public (but quite sadistically, at times, leaving the door open to raise the hopes of the hungry passer by, to crush them right after) only at 7.00 pm, not a minute earlier.

So it was that, after having walked for more than a hour in the desperate search of food in one of the shrines of italian tastes, we had to give up and resolved to just have an icecream, much to my desperation, which we ended up consuming in a typical Sienese fashion: sitting down on the brick floor of Piazza del Campo. The good side of this misadventure - one has always to find a good side - was that, in the quest for a place, we actually got to see many corners of the city that one would normally not even imagine the existence of.

The long search and the icecream pretty much ended the trip, as another short walk around brought us close to the time for our chosen train back home. At least the trip back went as planned, with trains being reasonably in line with their schedule and eventually making it back around 11 pm.

The hunger for culture and art was satisfied, the stomach's one, well... maybe next time.

God is in the details...

2007-05-25T11:17:00.000+02:00

... and happiness in the small things, like:

having your girlfriend arriving in a few hours to stay almost a week;
preparing a day trip to Siena (tomorrow) which promises to be full of culture, good wine and good food;
having managed for 4 days (5 with today, I hope) to swim for 2,5 kms without suffering too much;
having discovered a place near the office that makes a pretty agreeable durum kebap;
having re-discovered that the closeby icecream place still makes quite good fruit icecreams;
having being called for scheduling an interview with the Admission Tutor of the LSBU the very same day they got my Master application papers (I don't know why, but I want to take it as a positive sign);
*and* having had a very supportive reaction from my job's boss as I went to tell him about the possibility of taking a year off from work (ok, it's mostly up to the HR department, but having your boss ready to back you up makes it quite better).

So yes, happiness is in the small things.

VCN Ethnic Dinners go to Spain

2007-05-18T19:08:00.000+02:00

(click pictures to enlarge) The 9th edition of the VCN ethnic dinner moved back to Europe, but stayed in the same language zone than the previous dinner, from Peru to Spain.

Honestly, the Spanish dinner was hastily organized and that might have had an influence on the number of people present which dropped to the maximum ever registered the previous dinner to the lowest number ever of this one, with just 16 persons (7 Italians, 2 Americans, 2 Brazilians, 1 each for France, Belgium, Japan and Norway).

However, the dinner went along nicely...and slowly, as the restaurant was probably the slowest one in serving that we have ever been so far. Yet, to some nice (and pretty italian) focaccias and some tortillas, served as appetizers, three different kind of paellas followed: the classic Valencian one, a meat and (just for one person, but abundant enough to be tried by several people) a vegetarian one, the whole thing accompanied by abundant sangria.

I must say I'm not an expert of paella, but I found all three of them pretty tasty and rich, if a bit greasy (but I suppose that's as meant). The sangria surprisingly went along pretty well (and fast!) with the food and conversation kept nice and lively, hopefully making feel the new faces (making about a quarter of the whole) feel welcomed and integrated.

The only bad point of the evening at least for me, was that the service took so long that eventually we finished right about the time of the last day-buses' and metro' run, which meant that suddenly almost everyone had to run away without having had the chance of enjoying the free coffees and limoncelloes offered by the restaurant's owner. Personally, I closed the evening escorting Yoko to the closest (and crowded, just to be on the safe side) bus station and Lucia (Yoko's friend) directly to her place, lost in Rome's suburbs... quite a trip, I must say.

The lack of our semi-official photographer (Laura, where are you!?) was heavily felt as, I do not know why, two thirds of the pictures I took came out unfocused, with only 4 surviving... my apologized to the ones who intervened and didn't show up in the pictures here.

Next time it will be Africa time again.. Cameroon? Senegal? Nigeria? We'll see...

Britons are out of their mind, it's official.

2007-05-17T14:29:00.000+02:00

From UK:

"Ministers have bowed to pressure to allow the creation of human animal hybrid embryos for research.

Public Health Minister Caroline Flint denied that the government had staged a climbdown, saying they had always wanted to "leave the door open" for this type of research to be allowed on a case-by-case basis.

She said scientists had put forward more evidence about the importance of using hybrid embryos.

We saw this was an area where these could be used for scientific benefit

Public Health Minister Caroline Flint

"We saw this was an area where these could be used for scientific benefit."

The draft bill allows the creation of human embryos that have been physically mixed with one or more animal cells."

That said, I think it's official that Britons are totally out of their minds. Sometimes they are characterized as being pig-headed... well, that could be, in a not so distant future, more literally than figuratively said.

Family and family day

2007-05-14T22:41:00.000+02:00

Ok, I'm a conservative and that's nothing new. I hope a wise conservative, possibly a corny conservative and surely, to the eyes of some people, a hopeless or even sleazy one, who knows. But that's what I am, at least in the large majority of subjects, and I've never been ashamed of being one nor to publicly show my standing and my beliefs, and that in a country when, as a teenager in mostly left wing schools where professors openly do political propaganda and literally brainwash their pupils, coming out as a right wing person is worse than coming out as a gay in the most conservative states of the Bible belt.

Now, while on some things I can be borderline progressive and on many others I can at least open up a discussion, there are a few selected subjects where not only I feel my point of view is the best one (which is not uncommon), but with absolutely no manoeuvring space about it, as some unfortunate ones discovered along the years, last of them my girlfriend a few days ago. One of these things, possibly the cornerstone of my own beliefs, passed to me by my father and to him by his own, who knows, possibly since roman times, is the concept of family.

Family is, by my standards, which in this case I assume as absolute standards, the union in marriage (religious or civil doesn't matter, but marriage as solemn commitment to each other AND the community AND the state) of a man and a woman aimed at, first and foremost, having children. A married couple is not a family, even if it can be a family to be. An unmarried couple with children, although very close to being a family, I can't but see as an odd social group where two adults are acting as kids refusing commitment and although they should be granted some legal and social protection in consideration of the children, shouldn't be elevated to the same level of social and legal consideration that a married couple with children should.

I know, by now half the people reading this few lines will have labelled be a bigot and another good number as an oddly old fashioned one, but so be it. I will even go further and add that families, my kind of families, should be encouraged by proper legal provisions, contributions and fiscal measures that shouldn't be granted to the other "family like" social aggregations. And even more, I get annoyed by the people who say that legislation should follow the reality of the time they are forged for, while I always believed that the State should change for the better, not simply certify, the social reality it deals with. Old concepts, ancient ones actually, totally out of fashion these days, but that's me.

So, keeping all that I've said in mind, is no surprise that last Saturday I did something that conservatives very rarely do: went to a huge rally. Yes, conservatives usually don't do that, they usually are the silent majority (or minority?) that think it's impolite to protest, to rise their voices, to invade the streets and cause so much troubles to the ordinary life of their fellow citizens, so it is kind of extraordinary that there was a rally organized in favor of the traditional family and against a bill soon to be discussed to the parliament which basically recognizes and practically parifies traditional families and cohabitations, same-sex ones included.

(Click on the pics to enlarge)
Not only I did go, but I did go with my parents and I must say it felt good to be surrounded by between (even more extraordinary) 750.000 and 1.300.000 people who, apparently, did share my own point of view. People coming from all the country, from different backgrounds (although admittedly the catholic organizations and the groups organized by the churches around Italy played the prominent role), all age groups (the baby carriages were uncountable, with grandparents keeping a extremely watchful eye on their nephews for them not to be lost in the crowd), talking, singing, playing old forgotten games.

People who were so evidently, just like me after all, not used to go to rallies that were wearing the wrong kind of shoes, or had no hats to protect them from the already hot sun (Good thing that my father is a veteran of the '60s and '70s and prepared us properly). People who invaded the immense square in front of the cathedral of Rome, Saint John, a place traditionally used by the leftish parties for their own mass demonstrations (ironic, thinking about it, as they tend to enjoy the shadow offered to them by the tall walls of the church which so majestically represents the institution they usually despise), with the statue of teh said seemingly waving to the crowd.

People who could be met already a mile away from the square and that became more and more thick as the walls of the city approached (Saint John is, for historical reasons, very close to one of the southern gates of the city rather than in the center of the city) to become a second wall themselves right after having passed the gate. People smiling, rather than yelling to make their point across. People playing with their kids, rather than devastating the streets. People laughing rather than setting cars on fire.

Good people. And a good day.

VCN Ethnic Dinners go to Peru... again

2007-05-10T20:02:00.000+02:00

Late, late, late report, but better late than never, as we say here (and boy if that's a popular saying in Italy). As usual, you can click on the pics to get a larger version...

The 9th edition of the VCN Ethnic dinners should had seen as "host" country Brazil, yet, as it turned out,it was extremely hard to find a suitable Brazilian restaurant in town. In fact, after a whole week of search, I found out that half the restaurants that were to be found in the various lists were either out of business (one in particular, since "at least 8 years", as I got to know from their former-neighbors) or in places logistically impossible to reach, way in the suburbs or simply in area with no public transportation whatsoever.

So it was that, the day coming closer and closer and with no real alternatives, I decided to organize a second Peruvian dinner, relying on the fact that over the previous months many new faces had shown up and many hadn't been there at the first dinner.

Three factors were actually in play that could had turned the night in a nightmare: first of all, I had announced the dinner very late, just days before the day and right before a week-end when most people were likely not to have a Internet connection. Secondly, as it very often happens when it's time for our dinners, the weather was a mix of hail and heavy rain. Thirdly, I even added on it by mistaking the number of the restaurant communicating 43 rather than 44 and, obviously, it turned out that the wrong number was exactly on the other end of the street.

Then, quite surprisingly, things went precisely the opposite way: not only the turn-out was the higher ever (more than 30 people), but people just kept arriving as some of the guests called announcing they were taking someone else with them or showed up with a friend of them without any warning at all. Although I lost track of all the ones who showed up, I know we had people from Japan, Philippines, USA, Canada, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, UK, Finland, Norway, France, Brazil, obviously Italy and another couple of countries I can't recall. To make it even sweeter, we also had a canadian couple just about to get married (on the right... and married by now, congratulations Rachelle and Renè).

Being the menu exactly the same that we had successfully experimented the previous time, the satisfaction was just as complete, with lots of food left on the table and eventually taken away in the most common north-American "doggy bag" tradition. Unfortunately for the first time there was a little mix-up with the numbers, but the ones who eventually paid an extra euro to fix the bill were rewarded with free drinks (and a wide array of them, between limoncello, amaro, grappa and I can't remember what else)... the owner actually made the mistake of leaving us the bottles for us to serve ourselves, without imagining the mistake he was doing...

So, I think I can say everyone had fun, and to make it even better, the rain had gone by the time we were out of the restaurant...

Now, some weeks have passed and it's time to be back to dinners and it's Europe time now and while usually the locatons are voted upon, this time I will decide and Spain will be... Paella, Tortillas, Sangria and, who knows what else...

A month in a post... Again

2007-05-08T15:06:00.000+02:00

Lately, it seems that if I get to my blog it is only to make long reviews of my previous weeks for my friends who have heard little or nothing from me. Actually, it doesn't seem like that, it is precisely like that.

At my partial excuse I could say that, on one side, work is keeping me much more busy than it used to, basically impeding me from writing from work (which, I suppose, is good), while on the other side I've spent 2 of the last 4 weeks in Germany. Truth is, to be honest, that at least partially I've been lazy. If over the last days my hours at work have reached the 8.20-19-30, while in Germany, at least the second time, I got to spend many hours on my own while Susanne was in class... so what? Possibly, I might be feeling the spring. Or perhaps a lack of inspiration. I do not know really.

Sure I'm busy. Work, as said, is crazy, especially these days that my CEO is bound to face a senatorial commission and, in a few days, a parliamentary inquiry commission. I can honestly say that over the last three months, since I change department, I've worked probably 10 times more than the whole three previous years. And they have been months of discoveries and excitement, just as much as frustration and dismay.

To compensate these bursts of activity, I gladly seized the chance offered by a favourable connection of dates and holidays (not to mention the obligation I had to finish my days off for 2006 withing the 30 of April) and spent the second week of April, the Easter's monday one, in Germany, most notably getting the second and worst ever case of drunkenness of my life for which I still have to understand the reasons behind, having consequently to renounce to an already paid for trip to Metz. Also notable was Susanne and me starting an interesting joint project: the vase. We basically chose and planted some seeds together and we take care of the vase together when I'm over there... and something started growing already. I got to see my football team irremediably smashed by Manchester United in the European Football Champions' League (we lost 7 to 1 in out worst defeat in European history) and the day after Susanne's team also getting eliminated. Oh, and I bought myself a bicycle on Germany, at a second-hand market, a nice yellow mountain-bike which I had, thanks to Susanne's impressive haggling skills, for 25 €.

The first week in Germany was important also for another reason: I went and checked the possibility for studying over there. It happens that, after having thought about it for years now, I've decided to try the study abroad experience and my choice fell on 2 programs. The first, and more promising, is a Master of Science program by the London South Bank University which is taught in English and, for a semester, in Mainz. The second is a LLM in financial law in Frankfurt. I had a nice talk with the administrator of the first program and got the impression I would be in if I only applied and eventually I decided to. The second one is an higher level one, more expensive and definitely harder to get into, but I will send my application anyway. What will happen should either of them accept me is still to be seen, given I'd have to discuss with the HR department of my office for a one year leave, something definitely not easy to get.

The second week in Germany was more low-profile in a way as I had a lot of time by myself. Besides a second visit to the FH schule of Mainz, the week-end was particularly intense with hours of disco (and a "over 30" party at that, gee if I felt old... but at least music was good) on Friday and 90 KMs of biking on Sunday along the Rhine river, going from Mainz to Bingen and back, with a nice little picnic in the meanwhile (and, for me, a little nap...). The result was a bit of a tan on my arms and two very sort legs (and something else) on Monday morning as my totally untrained body did cope with the day before. To be said I was lured into it, as they shoul dhad been "only" 60 kms!

It's strange as April has gone so fast that, even being so close, it's blurry already. There has been another VCN Ethnic dinner, which I quite shamefully haven't put up yet, and there has been the first time in years I've been at the cinema with my parents (The Good Shepard). There were also the celebrations for the 2760th anniversary of the foundation of Rome which was the reason for a national meeting of Nova Roma started with a visit to the newly discovered imperial insigna at Museo Massimo, a visit, I must say, full of atmosphere.

And a new month has started, with plans and projects and expectations and much more...

A month in a post

2007-04-08T10:38:00.000+02:00

March has been the month with the least entries of this blog and the reason is simple, Susanne has been here the whole time, from the last days of febraury until last monday and, as they say, people who live life have little time to write about it and indeed we did live the period.

A month. A month that seems to have passed almost overnight. I managed to fix for her two internships in Rome so that she would be busy while I was at work. One at the Unidroit, the other at the law firm of someone I met when I started again taking german classes at the Goethe Institut.

It's hard to describe 4 weeks so intense. In a way, it's hard even to remember all the things we did. I know we had a lot of movies, thanks to the fact she was here while a special promotion called "Cin Cin Cinema" was ongoing offering shows at a very reduced price (3 € in afternoons and 5 in the evening, against the usual 7,5). So it happened that we went to see Letters from Iwo-Jima and the Last King of Scotland (in the same day, figure...), A Night at the Museum (We had to counterbalance the two hyper-serious ones, I suppose), Borat and Notes on a Scandal (again on the same day), a Guide to recognizing your Saints and Still Life.

Then there was a day trip to Tivoli, to show her Villa d'Este and its famous fountains (unfortunately, half of which closes for maintenance works) and walks in the green at the small, badly maintained and yet charming botanic garden of Rome, from which a majestic view of the city can be enjoyed. Unfortunately, two other trips, one to Siena and one to Ariccia, had to be abandoned.

Then we had dinners (two of the ones I do organize - The VCN Ethnic Dinners which made up most of my posts of March -, a vegetarian one and another couple just the two of us) and happy hours (one of which surrounded by half drunk welsh people who migrated to Rome for the Wales-Italy game of the 6 Nations tournament).

Then there was the internal moment when we participated and, in a small way, co-organized an AEGEE-ELSA conference for the 50th anniversary of the Rome Treaty which started the European Union (at the time, European Economic Community). Something that actually brought me back to ELSA, at first in a pretty conflictual way facing the disarray my board seems to be, now in a more constructive one.

There have been formal moments, in one of which Susanne wore such a nice (and, in my opinion, "elvish") dress for the gala of the above mentioned conference that another girl commented she was "a splendour", and way informal ones, with me wearing, after years, a jeans jacket that was almost forgotten in my wardrobe or when we went flower picking in the kind of natural park which is next to my house.

There have been new friends (in particular a couple of italian friends we first met at a VCN happy hour and then again at the VCN dinners and finally the last week-end Susanne was staying home) and old ones (among whom Francesco and his new argentinian girlfriend, Mercedes, who seemed to go along with Susanne very well... but then again they are both "Carlosites") while some others were nowhere to be seen, quite sadly so.

There have been sublime moments and fights, one of which so major that seemed for a moment to be able to shatter our couple. We had sport (we went playing basketball together with another VCN group that plays every week-end, while we couldn't go swimming together as we discovered that just 10 entrances to my pool cost one fourth of my year-long entrance ticket) and "couch in front of the TV" times (and I swear I had Susanne laughing at "Grey's Anatomy" scenes). We did have dancing, but far less than Susanne had wanted as we discovered it can be quite complicated to find a good place for dancing in downtown Rome with not too much or too little people and of the right kind. There has been music too, with a concert of students' bands at Rome University, one of which, for Susanne's amusement and delight, was German (funny moment when the front-man of the band called for germans in the hall and she screamed, probably alone, a lound "JAAAAAA").

We got invited at a marriage (well, not exactly, a PACS) in August in south France (and I'm already planning a wide trip...) and we had tension and happy release moments about Susanne's first exams (all passed, at least the ones we could check over the net, included a very though one). We did cook for my family once, we had an "official" dinner at home with a highschool mate of my parents and his, 20 something years younger, second wife and we had Susanne's discovery of Pastiera, a typical Easter cake my mom is a master at cooking (she does cook a number of them for Easter and distributes them around between friends, colleagues of my brother and mine, former neighbors and now my brother's gf's and Susanne's families... probably more than a 100 people in the end, while her recipe has been sent over to Russia, Germany, Kazakhstan and at least twenty families in Rome by now).

We had all this and more, but how can one remember everything, really? I'm sure, should Susanne read this entry, she will come up with something else and I'll add it, but right now... that's all, my friends, and I hope I shall be excused for having disappeared for a while.

Oh, and another two things: the 5th april my parents celebrated 35 years of marriage and... Happy Easter everyone!

VCN Ethnic Dinners go to Vietnam

2007-03-21T14:23:00.000+01:00

(Click on the pics to get a larger version) It was a dark and stormy night... and it was exactly like that, it's not just the standard beginning. In fact, the day the 8th edition of the VCN ethnic dinner was set for it was also the day when not one, not two, not three, not even four but for FIVE times the sky of Rome decide to shower the city with hail, each time in a heavier way than the previous one so much that the last one, fell just a few minutes before the meeting time, left a good layer of ice over the street and cars, making it difficult to just walk straight.

In such circumstances, I was expecting a high number of defections and I would had even understood them. Quite surprisingly, in the end, almost everyone made it to the restaurant making a fairly crowded dinner with 18 people. As usual, italians made the largest group with 5 people followed by Germany and USA with 2 each, then Netherlands, Philippines, Norway, Finland, Chile Brazil, Croatia and the first Australian ever... and someone else the country was never discovered. Unfortunately, even if almost everyone showed up eventually, the weather took its toll in the form of huge delays, making the proper dinner start quite a bit late...

The restaurant itself didn't have enough place to accommodate all of us in a single table and so we were divided between a main table and two, smaller, ones. Speaking of the restaurant, located in via Giulia (right behind Campo dei Fiori), it turned out to be the only vietnamese restaurant left in Rome after the closing down of a more famous one near the British Embassy. It's pretty unassuming and barely noticeable from outside, and even inside it's nothing really impressive, made of two relatively small rooms. Putting together a standard menu was somewhat complex, in part due some communication problem with the owner and even worse with the waiters, which made problematic at first the service, but that eventually was reason of amusement more than annoyance.

Food was ok, even if not sensational, the best dish being probably, at least for my taste, the beef with onions and talks were, as usual, lively and cheerful (as you can see...). And while I was pretty much stuck against a wall and basically unable to move, fate made us discover the one who could become the official photographer for our future dinners in the person of Laura, who spent a big deal of time happily jumping around the tables to make pictures (being barely noticed while doing it, I must say, making for a couple of pretty funny pictures) and apparently immensely enjoying herself in the process.

Dinner went along smoothly and before we knew it, we arrived to the end, but apparently no one wanted to leave as we kept going with our talks and having more spare rice brought to the table as an excuse for keeping the tables (not like the owner of the place would had sent us out, anyway). But as always, things must come to an end and a few minutes before midnight we called it over, happy to discover that, in the meanwhile, the weather had improved and, despite the bitter cold (well, in italian terms, but what can you expect in a day when ice had been falling down from the sky the whole time?), we could had made it back home dry.

VCN Ethnic Dinners go to Egypt

2007-03-15T13:12:00.000+01:00

The 7th Edition of the Ethnic dinners saw the VCN gang moving to Egypt (click pics to enlarge). I ended up choosing the restaurant where a former neighbor of mine had worked for a while over last summer, having only nice things to report about the owners and the cook.

Indeed, I went to check the place with Susanne and, even if small, the place looked nice and charmy, especially due the tent-like arrangement of the interiors and ceiling. Arranging the menu was easy and mostly vegetarian friendly, what was complicated was putting together the participants as, due an unnoticed bug if yahoo, my first two messages about the dinner were never delivered to the crowd. So it was that five days before the actual dinner I had still no one attending. Yet, someone finally dawned on me the problem and after I send yet another invitation, this time making sure it was delivered, withing half a hour I had already more than a dozen attendees.

The dinner could had been a francophone dominated one had all the booked ones actually showed up, while eventually only 3 out of 6 did, leaving to the italians (5) the title of largest group, followed by french (3), UK (2) and 1 each for Germany, Belgium, Philippines, Japan, Croatia and USA.

The place itself was not easy to find, somehow off the beaten track in the Piazza Bologna Area, and that took its toll on the arrivals which were scattered over one hour and a half, so much that I eventually the dinner began while some were still missing.

Once started, tho, the dinner went smoothly. Tasty the vegetable Felafel, between good and obscenely good the various vegetable creams that were served as appetizers together with some spicy arab beans that went by mostly unnoticed. The particular arab bread was nice, while the very big mistake was picking some arab wine from Morocco, overpriced and with a dubious taste.

Once the appetizers were, quickly, disposed of, the main courses made their appearance, with mixed results. While the Swharma chicken served with white rice with raisins and pine nuts was so good that I lost the count of the times I (together with others) served myself and the vegetarian cous cous met the general appreciation, the kebab was extremely disappointed, served in big, oily pieces and left not fond memories behind itself once it was gone (above, to the right, the "asian corner" dealing with the kebab cutting task).

The VCN crowd was showing evident signs of having been properly fed by the time the tables was cleared for the last part of the dinner: mint tea accompanied with special arab pastries that, I must say, looked delicious but I didn't even try, having and indulged too much and eventually succumbed to the shwerma chicken. It was about eleven when the group finally disbanded and while the final bill was higher than the last dinners (around 24 for the ones who had taken the wine, 20 for the others) , the dinner appeared to be a success.

Next time: Vietnam.

Absence

2007-03-05T09:53:00.000+01:00

If anyone is wondering what has happened that is preventing me to write, well, this someone hasn't been reading with attention, or has just happened to find my blog.

One way or the other, the reason why my last entry is dated 26th febraury is that on the 27th Susanne has arrived in Rome and here she will stay until the first days of April. That, together with the fact that I can not write extensively during work time anymore (amazingly, I find myself with something to do at work, and happily so) is also the reason why, probably, I will write only sporadically over the course of this month.

In other news, I've been made an offer about my writing, a very tempting one, but have not heard from the offering one since I've accepted, so either he realized the enormity of what he had done, or he has simply been very busy... who knows.

More in the next news flash.

The importance of being (with) Carlos

2007-02-26T19:32:00.000+01:00

I've already named a couple of times on this blog a spanish friend of mine named Carlos. Carlos is the perfect personification of the spanish hidalgo: educated, well mannered to the point of looking old fashioned even to someone like me, soft spoken but with a deep laugh. Maybe defining him friend is a bit too much, probably "friend squared" is more like it, meaning he is a friend of a friend, but I like him and even if I didn't, he still would fall in that category of people who are close enough to be entitled to more than general guest' attentions, first of all a meeting whenever life brings us closer than a hour ride.

Carlos happened to come to Rome, at least that I know of, two times.

The first time was one year ago, in a warm july. He came to attend an italian course lasting two weeks but, for a series of circumstances, I only managed to meet him the last day, at his goodbye dinner, or rather at the bar in Campo dei Fiori, where people had moved after the actual dinner. It was one year, seven months and 11 days ago, I can be so precise about the date due a very memorable event happened that night: around the table of that bar, that evening, I met Susanne.

More than a year passed by before Carlos, suddenly, re-appeared in Rome. Seizing the chance given by an Alitalia special offer, he decided to come over from the Canary islands, where he's working as a police officer, and have a roman week-end at the end of november. Once again we met around a table, enjoying a good pizza together (and an awful service) with Alessandro, Ippolito and his argentinian girlfriend Nuria and her friend Mercedes, and Francesco. A pleasant, but normal evening and I didn't think much about it after the goodbyes were exchanged until last saturday, when I accidentally came to know that Francesco and Mercedes are now dating and that, as I'm throttling up and down between Germany and Italy, he's now doing just the same between Rome and Oviedo, where Mercedes is studying.

Now, my single male friends, if you cherish your freedom, you might consider asking me when Carlos will be in town next time, so you would have a chance of moving as far away as you can, he can definitely be that dangerous, that way.

Food for thought

2007-02-22T15:33:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I had the rare chance of facing what the foreigners think about my city, in a very candid and unfiltered way. I happened to be invited to a sort of conference organized by the Arcadia University, one of the several american university which opened a campus in Rome over the last year, for his students.

Defining it a conference doesn't actually gives an idea of what it was, as the term makes one think of a speaker addressing a bunch of people lost in a variable degree of boredom. It could had possibly had been like that (or maybe not, considering the speaker who was many things, but surely not boring), but the combined effect of the general attitude of students towards extra-curricular activities not giving you credits and the pouring rain that hit the city yesterday turned the whole thing in a sort of round table, only without the table, by about a dozen people on the students' impressions and the speaker's experience about living in Italy in general and in Rome in particular.

Now, being the speaker american, the students americans and american the university organizing the whole thing, the language used english and english the school that gave us the room (which was, actually, the central nave of a former church), it's no wonder everyone forgot there were italians around and among them a real roman... me. Maybe it's the legendary openness of the americans, which someone less used to deal with foreigners might simply label as bluntness or lack of manners, fact is that the comments were clear, direct and, occasionally at least, bright... just as much as a lightning falling right over your head.

And what was the first thing that left an impression of Rome? The sense of history hovering over your head all the time? The magnificence of the churches interiors? The art hitting you openly in the main squares and jabbing you at the sides when turning less famous corners? Nothing like that, the first thing named was: Rome is dirty. Point taken, it's 10 years this city is turning more and more out of control and the cratered streets and litter everywhere are the most evident signs.

Fine, I took the hit like a boxer who instinctively knows where the punch is landing and had prepared his muscles for absorbing it. But the next one took me so off guard that revived in me one of the most classic stereotypes about americans: their total inability of understanding and adapting to the place where they are, expecting the world to turn around them. Romans, in their view, are "hard to adapt to others", the example given being the fact of being looked down when ordering a cappuccino in the evening.

Now, besides the obvious, english, saying "When in Rome do as the Romans do" which was all but forgotten, the romans tend to be, obviously in my opinion, among the most welcoming people in the world. Two thousands years of dealing with (and admittedly, in some period living off) pilgrims coming from the whole Christianity and having stable communities of foreigners in the city for the last twenty centuries made romans very tolerant, even if probably in a condescending way, towards different habits. We are often amused by foreigners walking around the city and often look at them with the sense of superiority and in the way adults do with children, but just the same way we tend to lend a hand to everyone in obvious troubles. So much that is not rare that people coming for a vacation end up staying here months, years or never leaving again.

Surprised as I was, it's not without a bit of discomfort that I observed the talk moving towards more stereotypes spaced out with experiences' tales by the speakers, those often making a long wide sweep before getting to the point he meant to do. So it came the one about italians being able to forget about any trouble as long as their soccer team wins a major game, being very concerned about the way they dress and conformists too at that and so on and so forth.

So I was there, wondering if that's really the way we are perceived even by foreigners living among us, and that much more surprising from someone, the speaker, who had been doing that for the past three decades, when realization did hit me.

First of all, that the journalist was doing, I do not know how much unconsciously out of an unconscious habit and how much on purpose, his job. During the conversation, while discussing how the students kept track of the news, he had pointed out, not without an apparent regret, how the media tended to channel towards the audience the news they thought their readers wanted to read about and that would had met their already formed idea of the fact so that they could related to them. And wasn't, maybe, what he was doing as well, channeling to the students anecdotes about the stereotypes about italians, to have them echoed back to him?

The second thing is, I realized I had done much the same during the round table and in the past as well. Me and most of everyone here. After all, with our idea of americans as uneducated, goofy people with their own standards of morality, didn't we laugh with gusto at the news of Cheney shooting his pal by mistake, Bush almost chocking to death with a peanut or the whole Clinton-Lewinsky affair and how americans took damn seriously something that we would had dismissed with a chuckle and a telling glance?

So I was left with a dirty town, the stereotypes and their creeping appeal, an obviously smart journalist with very interesting stories to tell and a slightly too self-centered and theatrical way of doing that and a bit of thinking to do. An interesting evening, and the pizza in the end was for free...

Btw, the journalist, Christopher Winner, is the editor of an online magazine, The American, which, for the little I could see for now, looks as an interesting read, even if not necessarly one to agree with...

VCN Ethnic Dinners go to Greece

2007-02-22T08:47:00.000+01:00

Now that I've 5 minutes, here we are (oh, and you can, as usual, click on the pics to get a larger version).

The last VCN dinner was slightly more difficult to organize than the previous ones. On one hand, someone decided to pick exactly the same day to have a VCN carnival party (well, ok, it was fat tuesday after all), on the other hand, for the first time, I had to pick a restaurant without any external suggestions and with no previous first hand experience, or so I thought, given that eventually it turned out I had been in the restaurant I had chosen, even if a whole 10 years ago.

Anyway, my worries turned out to be unjustified, as eventually 19 people showed up, from Italy (5), US (4), France (2), Canada, UK, Philippines, Sweden, Belgium, Hungary, Croatia and Serbia (those two happily sitting next to each other), with only one person missing, making it one short of the number I set myself as the maximum.

The restaurant was small, cozy and even if not terribly atmospheric, it still gave the people a nice feeling and I must say the crew there was beyond praise as they dealt, first or all, with an unexpected number of vegetarians (I had signalled 2, when indeed we had three) and then with another couple of people changing their mind at the very last moment about the pre-arranged menu. Speaking of which, also the food turned out to be very agreeable, even if I made the bad mistake of serving myself of tzatziki twice before realizing it had cucumbers inside.

Time passed quite fast, helped by a very quick service and interesting talks. The ouzo (the typical Greek liquor made of anise) was not that great and mixed opinions were raised by the also typical white aromatic wine with pine's gum.

To make things even better, the final bill was not that expensive (for an ethnic restaurant in Rome, that is). So, I think I can honestly say, a very pleasant evening. Now, for the next time, we are heading to Africa... and once again I have no clue about which restaurant...

Happy Blog-Birthday to me

2007-02-21T08:43:00.000+01:00

One year. One year ago I started, out of I do not know what strange impulse and with little confidence that the experiment would had lasted more than a few days, this blog. Well, against my own expectations, one year later I'm still here writing, this being the 183th post, making it exactly one every two days.

And what a year it has been, with travels, music, a relationship developing despite distance and objective difficulties, some friendships strengthening and some vanishing, dozens of books, movies, dinners, happy hours kilometers of swimming and, at the very end, changes at work. A very interesting year, all in all, and despite the fact that in China the "May you live in interesting times" is considered a kind of a curse, I somehow hope the coming year will be just as full of things (yes, I know, beware what you wish for...).

On other news, yesterday was VCN Ethnic Dinners' night at a greek restaurant. Later on, if I get the time, I'll post a comment and some pictures of what has been a very pleasant evening.

Carnival and new experiences

2007-02-19T13:44:00.000+01:00

After 5 weeks since my last visit to the city and just as long since I had seen my girlfriend, this past week-end I've been in Germany again, bringing with me, as a present both for the missed Valentine day and a particular anniversary we had the 15th, the result of my artistic inspiration of the past week-end, the two venetian-style masks on the left.

uniforms of Right, because Mainz is famous (well, relatively so, I had no clue until Susanne told me) for its Carnival and I must say that, although I could see only a bit of it, the spirit of the period can be found everywhere, included people of all ages going around masked as just about anything, from Prussian Frederick the Great (very popular and much envied by me) time to... a flower in a vase.

Susanne, the poor thing, is swamped in studying for her exams and, while I think I managed to have her forgetting about the coming onslaught and relax a bit, I sure didn't help her with her studying schedule. I feel guilty, actually.

Anyway, to celebrate the above mentioned "special days", we headed out for dinner, finding our favourite restaurant once again closed and looking as it had been so since our previous visit and making us believe it could be closed for good. We found a suitable, even if less atmospheric, alternative and had a pleasant meal, the proceeded to head out and have a little walk in an unusually busy and colorful Mainz (only at Christmas I had seen so many people around, whereas the general feeling is the one of a militarily imposed curfew at 19.30). More dye the curiosity of the moment than anything planned, we entered one of the several big tents raised in the main square and alleys around the cathedral, finding ourselves in an improvised disco where, again, people of all ages (I've seen kids of perhaps 12 together with mature couples in their fifties) were enjoying the disco music, the occasional beer and dancing. So it happened that we danced without interruption (except for drinking a beer and avoiding a brawl suddenly exploded and quickly extinguished just a few steps from us) from 9 until 2 am.

Sunday passed, as always when in Mainz, in talks of impressive depth (this time, about the objectivity or subjectivity of a system of ethics and moral values), dozing off (at least for me, considering that I had slept less than 9 hours in the previous two nights) and glances full of hate to the (three) clocks of the room and, as usual, way too soon it was time to head to the station and get the bus back to the airport and then the flight home, during which I finished the disappointing or, rather, dull "Romanitas".

Today, I'm back to my new work, only slightly less frenetic than it has been the last week (one of my missed colleagues made it back, considerably relieving a bit of the pressure) and with an unannounced news: in 20 minutes I'll be heading off (with a taxi paid by the firm) to some ministry as part of a delegation to I have no clue which authority for I do not know which business: another new experience.

A brand new world

2007-02-17T12:21:00.000+01:00

I realized, not without some degree of surprise, that a whole week has passed me as a wink of an eye and that I hadn't time to even think about writing something on my blog. The reason is simple and it's indeed a good reason: my new job.

It's surprising how time passes quickly when you have something to do, I had forgotten the feeling of discovering it's past lunch break not because you have been staring at the clock every five minutes or so, but because your stomach is sending noisy protests (not that he stops afterwards, considering that until I' allowed to be back to the pool, my lunch consists of one banana and a yogurt, but that's another story) or the surprise of rising your eyes from a paper or a PowerPoint presentation to realize it's time to go home or that, as it has happened the last two days, that you should already be there.

Now, to be honest, it could not be always like that. For a series of delays of the HR department I happened to start the new job much later than the date planned, which originally should had been the 1st of January and then was moved to the first of February, just in time for me to be in hospital. That, in turn, made me start the new work two days before the new Board of Directors took office and in a week where, for one reason or the other, the personnel of my department was reduced from 6 to 2 members, one being the totally inexperienced me. So it happened that I had my baptism of fire in the worst situation possible (I didn't even know where the documents were stored, not to mention how) and to make things even heavier, 2 senators and a member of parliament chose exactly this moment to start asking things to the Government about us and on, obviously, who's asked elements about the answer if not the "Institutional Relationships" department?

And yet, despite a lingering feeling of being inadequate, or at least totally unprepared to face the situation, it was exciting to deal with all of that and I probably have spoken more with my new boss over the past week than I did with my former one over the last three years. All in all, I still have no clue for real about what I'm doing in a general prospective, but in the specific I'm pretty happy, even if, having lost totally the habit of working, days of intense use of the brain for 8 or 9 consecutive hours left me exhausted in a way that I hadn't faced since the last weeks of thesis redaction at University.

The funny thing is that in less than a week I already established myself as the computer-savvy guy of the department, especially when it comes to PowerPoint presentations and graphical editing (which, considering we are also a PR department, come handy) and that without doing anything really special but revamping the limited knowledge I had acquired and then never used again since University time, but such is life I suppose.

On the wrong side, because there's no rose without thorns, I've just arrived there that rumors about my boss being removed by the new CEO are spreading around and a few, older, members of the department (even if not of my same area) more or less evidently feel threatened by me. once again, I might be facing in the near future a cold war I did nothing to provoke.

A brand new world, in the end, but with some elements of the old one indeed.

My last two weeks (and a 110/120)

2007-02-12T18:13:00.000+01:00

It's scary how easy is to summarize the last two weeks of my life in just two words: surgery and recovery. Indeed, that was almost all that took place in the week, with a couple of notable exceptions tho.

Monday I checked in at the clinic early, had the various analysis done and then waited and kept waiting for the surgeon to arrive. From late morning, when the surgery should had taken place, we moved to lunch time and then early afternoon and, considering I hadn't drunk or ate anything since midnight, it wasn't easy. Then the moment came and I found myself nervous, not so much for the pain to come, but the idea of being put asleep and being helpless, possibly never to wake up again always deeply troubled me. I did wake up, obviously, little more than one hour later, to find myself no so much in pain, but unable to speak due my nose being totally filled by tampons. The day went on well and without incidents, if we exclude my fainting to the ground in the evening (my fault, I had been warned it was too early to stand, luckily, despite my "I'm perfectly fine", I was wise enough to have my father close).

The problems started the day after, when I got back home and I had to start eating something, rather then being fed by flebos. Then I found out that swallowing, that at the beginning was a nuisance, as time progressed became painful and then a torture, just as much as the sore throat and bruised lips caused by days of continuous mouth breathing. Yet, the worse moment was undoubtedly friday, when the tampons had to be removed in what turned out to be the second most painful moment of my entire life and a really traumatic experience as three balls made of 1,5 meters of cloth each were removed from my nostrils. It took a good half a hour before I was able to stand properly again and another quarter of hour before I could walk to the car and make it back home.

The following days were easier, mostly spent in or over the bed reading (and in fact, after months, I finally managed to finish my book about the Russian Revolution), reading, watching tv and playing with computer games. Strangely, I found myself exhausted most of the time and sleeping during the day has not been an uncommon occurrence. I also managed to make a couple of attempts of drawing with my new graphic tablet, but the results were... well,worse than horrible. At least some good news came in the form of Susanne being accepted for an internship in Rome, which means she will be here for a whole month in March, and my TOEFL result, scored a pretty good 110/120 (30/30 reading, 29/30 writing, 29/30 comprehension, but a meagre 22/30 speaking).

Being discouraged to drive (apparently, nose surgeries can have some temporary effect on balance), there was not much I could do. Once I went walking around with my father, discovering things about the place I live I could had never guessed, while on thursday I visited Liesbeth at her working place (making a good 7 kms walk while at that) and had lunch together.

By friday, I had enough of staying home and decided to go to the VCN Happy Hour, unexpectedly receiving a kind of a award, but ending up stuck at the bar for hours waiting for the weather to improve enough to allow me to drive back home. Saturday I started preparing the room for Susanne's future visit, freeing up space for her in my wardrobe and going out to buys some staples and, finally, sunday my artistic side once again emerged while I prepared something to take to Germany next friday, which I cannot write about yet, should Susanne happen to come reading here, being it all a surprise.

And so two weeks passed.

Nova Roman days

2007-02-08T00:07:00.000+01:00

I've said over and again what Nova Roma is and who novaromans are and the fact they can be the most different people put together by their love for ancient Rome. Recently, a new member joined who happened to be the owner of a hotel in a touristic place on the Adriatic Sea and who invited over any Novaromans who would had liked to go there. Chance was seized and it was quickly organized a national meeting which was joined by a bunch of representatives of Dacia (ie, Romania). Of course, Murphy's law (renamed for the occasion Murphii lex) struck and we happened to schedule the meeting in what turned out to be the week-end with most catastrophically bad weather of an otherwise insanely warm and dry winter.

A premise must be done: on friday, after months of absence due by conflicting scheduling with my travels to Germany, I had finally returned to a VCN happy hour, eventually making it back home at around 2 am. That was probably the cause that made me live the traveller nightmare: having accepted a ride and having set an alarm clock after having said to my mother to wake me up at the established hour, I was indeed brought back to life by my mobile ringing and my ride announcing me he was basically under my house. Obviously, my mom had overslept and my alarm hadn't fired or I had simply ignored it. If you consider I still had to do my bag, you have the complete picture.

Anyway, I managed, skipping breakfast, to be down in less than 20 minutes and after having recovered the other representative of the roman novaromans we were set to cross the Appennini mountains and facing the snow in what was a travel that I spent mostly sleeping. After arrived in Vasto and got our rooms (single ones, the generosity of our host was incommensurable), we had just 15 minutes to say hi to the others as it was already time to go eating.

Indeed, the whole week-end was a never ending series of eating and visiting of monuments or museums, but especially saturday the eating surpassed anything else. After a gargantuan banquet in a farm and a few hours spent in the ancient part of Vasto (interesting especially for the newly discovered roman baths and for the odd facade of a church, only thing left standing when the rest of the building fell in the sea), it was once again time to eat, this time in the hotel, but with a dinner prepared for the eventuality that the mayor would had attended (which means, even richer than the lunch) and completed with a cake prepared for the occasion.

The day after, rolling rather than walking so full our stomachs still were, it was the time of Chieti, the famous (for the ones into such things) Capestrano's warrior, it's twin temples and the theatre, the visit made somewhat harder by a vicious wind blowing from the north. After the thorough visit of Chieti, in which we were taken by an uncommonly cute archaeologist, we Romans decided it was time to leave and avoid the ice and possible snow that was forecasted for the night and so we parted, regretting not being able to have such week-ends more often and inviting everyone to be in Rome the 21st of april (Rome's birthday).

Back to running... no, writing

2007-02-06T14:44:00.000+01:00

Writing a blog is, in a way, very similar to jogging or swimming in that you need daily discipline. You can cover easily a long distance if you do it every single day as a routine and even skip a day or two without consequences, but if you stop for a prolonged period than, unless you are one of those people with an iron will, it can be quite hard to get back to it.

That's precisely why it has been, besides the little message that makes the previous entry, two whole weeks now since I've last written. Yes, I've been down with a surgery and the consequences of it (and, let me tell you, the extraction of the tampons from my nostrils has been the second most painful and physically shocking experience of my life). Yet, it has been days now that I've been fine enough (if for "fine" you mean feeling like having been punched hard squarely on the nose and having a heavy nasal cold at the same time) to write.

And is not even that there are not any news, because in fact there are some news that are of, relatively of course, great proportion, but it was the simple will of sitting down and concentrating enough to put down thoughts in a written form that was lacking. But I know that the more I keep myself from returning to the daily exercise, the harder it will be to do that and so, here I am.

So, where to start, I wonder. From where I left, I suppose, and that was the tuesday of the ethnic dinner. Wednesday was a calm day as the movie evening at the cinema that had been planned was called off. Thursday, on the other hand, was interesting as, after almost a year, I took part once again in the Arcadia's tandem program. The Arcadia is one of the american universities which have opened a campus in Rome over the last 5 years and they try to pair up their students with some "locals", meaning romans, in order for them to practice italian and learn a bit of the local culture.

The first time I took part in this exchange it was a total disaster, as the person i was paired of and myself turned out to be totally incompatible. Since then, apparently the program changed and is now based more than on pairings, in groups around a table with some good wine in front of us (funnily enough, several of the students around the table would be forbidden to drink back home). It was a pleasant evening, all in all.

Friday (the 26th) was also a relaxed day, marking my last day working for the department I have been part of for exactly 3 years. There was an odd atmosphere and I spent my time sorting out papers, some of which had to stay with me, some had to be passed to the colleagues, but thmost part was shredded as useless. There I realized how much time and energies I've wasted over the last three years, since I started working where I work (1st febraury 2004). Yes, that did allowed me to have a bit of money and (thanks to the italian way of life of staying with my family) even to save a bit, it did allow me to travel and see my girlfriend, but on a purely professional level, I feel like three totally wasted years which are pretty much symbolized by my closet, which after the cleaning up was for two third empty.

And the week-end came, but that will get its own post (later today or tomorrow) as it was spent away from Rome with a somewhat odd bunch of people, known as Nova Romans...

Alive

2007-01-30T16:24:00.000+01:00

For the ones wondering, I've survived my nose surgery and, despite quite an amount of sheer pain and uncomfortableness, I'm already back home. I'll write more about last week-end and these days when I'll feel a bit better.

VCN Ethnic Dinners go to Peru

2007-01-24T12:50:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was quite a day. Combining work, swimming, barber and then a dinner out all in the same evening is already difficult, but if weather plays hard against you and Rome's streets produce half a meter deep ponds for lack of drainage, then it becomes borderline crazy to do just one of the things. Somehow, I managed tho.

And so, we did have the 5th VCN Ethnic Dinner. After Mexico, Turkey, Eritrea, Thailand, it was the time of South America again and Peru in particular. Of course, Following the most obvious application of Murphy's law, after a winter absolutely poor of rain, yesterday we had a perfect storm to make logistics complicated for many of the participants. However, it didn't go all that bad, considering that of the expected 20 participants, 13 were stubborn enough to fight against the elements and make it to the restaurant and other 3 late comers made the whole number raise to almost the one considered in the original plan.

The evening turned out to be quite nice, the food tasty (and abundant, we all left overfed and there was still some leftovers...) and all in all inexpensive, considering that, with the exceptions of the ones who decided to try the Peruvian beer, we ended up spending less than 20 €.

(click on the pictures to see the enlarged version)

So, at 20.15, quarter of hour before the planned time, I was at the restaurant, which, as it can be seen, is in a definite Inca fashion. As it had to be Expected, there was no one yet, but already a message was waiting for me about the forfeit of 2 persons.

Prodigiously ahead of time, Can did show up a few minutes later.

But then, the storm took its tool and it eventually took 45 minutes before everyone managed to arrive at the restaurant and we finally managed to be all assembled and ready to start. Visible on the left Laura (Italy), Magda (Italy), Silvia (Italy) and Can (Turkey), on the right Claudia (Italy) and Cristina (Brazil).

The other side of the table. Visible on the left, Dario (Croatia), Isabella (Italy), Liesbeth (Belgium), Maria Rosaria (Italy), on the right Frances (USA) and, partially, Jean-Fracois (France).

Now why is everyone having their right fist up? Some sort of ancient Incaic ritual? The one on the left is Deborah (UK), then Jean-Francois and Frances.

Can tries the... slightly... spicy "orange" cream.

Isabella smiling... as usual.

Does Caroline (France) have a secret to tell? French people, for once, made the second most numerous group at this VCN dinner, whereas usually this position is taken by the Americans, this time represented by the sole Frances. The most numerous group was, as usual, the italian one.

Someone is apparently enjoying her food...

About half the people who attended this dinner had not been to another VCN dinner before. The atmosphere looseded up quickly anyway, and while some people were having fun and some had serious talks (talking with Deborah is Cliona from Ireland)...

...someone was doubling himself to control the table and make sure everything is ok with service and food (that's me).

But eventually I managed to relax as well. In the middle, Maria Rosaria (Italy).

The week-end and the coming week

2007-01-22T14:43:00.000+01:00

So, yes, I did the TOEFL and yes, I managed to get to Germany.

The TOEFL was worse than I thought it would had been. First of all, despite I should had known, I hadn't fully realized that the test would had taken 4 and a half hour of constant attention, which left me somewhat exhausted in the end. Secondly, while I think I managed well the reading and writing part, as I wrote replying to a comment in the previous post I have doubts about the listening and spoken part, the first made harder by the background noise produced by another dozen or so of test-taking people the second by the strange feeling produce by having to talk in a microphone knowing you have less than minute to say something meaningful. Anyway, in three weeks I should have the score and I'll move from it, deciding if it's good enough or if I'll have to take it again.

In the evening, I was not still sure whether my flight would had left to Germany or not, considering the hurricane that had stormed Germany and most then norther Europe the day before, causing billions of euros in damages and about 50 casualties. Turned out, flights going to west Germany were on schedule, while the ones to east Germany or Sweden, due a wide detour they were forced to avoid the storm at the time over Poland, had from 2 to 6 hours of delay.

Taking off on time didn't help me much anyway. Already tired from the test, I had the misfortune of finding myself right behind a family with two hyperactive kids who basically yelled and cried for the whole two hours, despite the attempts of the parents and of the cabin crew of distracting them. Once at Hahn, I found out that, if the storm was over, the wind was still strong and cold and the last of my energies were drained by the waiting for the bus to Mainz. I was so utterly exhausted that I didn't even bother arguing with the taxi driver who took me from Mainz train station to Susanne's house and who failed to give me back the exact change for the ride.

Saturday was a quiet day, not surprisingly comprising a lot of sleep, studying on Susanne's part and reading and computer playing for me, until we decided to head to Frankfurt for a movie. It should had been "Casino Royal" (Susanne is a Bond girl of sort) yet, due mostly to the slowest MacDonald's employ of history, we ended up missing a fateful train and arriving at the theatre when the tickets for our show had been sold out. It turned out to be a good thing anyway as, given we couldn't go to see "The pursuit of Happyness" due the fact I'm going to see that with Liesbeth on wednesday, we decided to see "Babel" and that turned out to be an impressive, if distress-producing, movie (on the left, part of the cast).

Parenthesis about the theatre, the Turm. Never in my life, at least for seeing a recent movie, I had been in such a small, cramped, totally irrational (with the middle seat row being higher than the one behind it) place with such a small projection screen (that could had just as well been a larger than usual flat screen for how small it was) and who sported at times a bright vertical green line at the sides of the picture. It's really a testament to the movie that we left the cinema without being upset about all of that, but rather discussing about the meaning of the story or its inconsistencies.

Oh, we ended up with a James Bond movie anyway as, once back home, we put on the DVD of Goldfinger from Susanne's collection.... well, "we" might be a bit too much as I think I managed to see maybe one third of it, sleeping in and out of it.

And sunday came and as all sundays it went away much too soon, with the added stress that it will be one month and a painful surgery before I'll see Susanne again. Oh, and I got on the way back the same happy family that made such a wonderful event the first flight, and again they happened to be right next to me, behind rather than in front, with the added joy of being patted on the head from time to time by one of the over-exuberant kids.

And now, this week, which will be quite a full one too, it seems. VCN Ethnic dinner tuesday (which will be odd, my last list sees 16 girls and 4 guys), movie with Liesbeth on wednesday, Tandem happy hour with the Arcadia University of Thursday, probably an evening out with friends I have not seen for months now (between Being constantly in Germany and Christams time) on friday, a week-end out of Rome with Nova Romans and on monday... Bah, don't want to think about it.

Have a nice start of the week everyone.

Quick one

2007-01-19T09:16:00.000+01:00

So, my TOEFL day arrived, today at 2 pm I'll do it and in two or three weeks I will know how exactly good or bad my english is rated by an officially recognized institution. Slightly nervous, I must say, it's years I do not have to take an exam and I'm too relying on spell checkers for my writing, which obviously I will not have at the test.

This evening, in theory, I should fly to Germany. Only problem is, last night a hurricane struck the country forcing the cancellation of hundreds of flights and, for the first time since the war, shutting down down the whole national rail system so, I do not know if my flight will take off, if it will land in time and in which airport, if the bus connection will be working as usual. So many ifs...

Boy I'm beat

2007-01-17T13:43:00.000+01:00

News, more news...

Yesterday was a day devoted to sport. After my usual 2 kms at the pool (with a time of 52 minutes and 25 seconds), as that was not enough, I went to play football until 10 pm. The result is that today I'm aching all over, but I'm sure once I'm back in the water I will be ok again (or my arms will fall off, which is also possible).

In the meanwhile, it's sales time here in Rome. Over two days I got myself three shirts, three ties, a pair of gloves, a hat and tried out 3 suits (none of them, unfortunately, fitting well). Suits apart, I wouldn't mind getting a pair of good shoes and maybe a couple of blouses, we'll see. All that while I should be studying a bit of english grammar as this coming friday is the day I will be taking the TOEFL exam.

What else, what else... I've decided to start the VCN ethnic dinner for 2007 and organizing a peruvian dinner coming tuesday. A half a hour ago, using my lunch break, I drove quickly to the place, arranged the menu and, considering I'm basically skipping lunches these days, came out of the place with an immense hunger. To make things even nicer, I was caught midway back to the office by a storm.

Thinking about it, the coming days will be pretty full: TOEFL on friday, Mainz over the week-end, VCN dinner on tuesday, the following weekend out of Rome with Nova Romans and on monday my surgery. All along, swimming and possibly some reading and german studying. I wish I had 48 hours days.

New year's first...

2007-01-16T19:02:00.000+01:00

...book. As I was coming back from Germany I finished my first book for 2007. No, it's not Figes' monograph about the russian revolution yet, curiously, it has something to do with it and it's called "The Commissariat of Enlightenment". The book is a novel taking place right before, during and after the same revolution, having as main character a russian man called Gribshin, an early cinematographer believing in the power of the images of changing history and people, Stalin and a professor who invented a revolutionary way to preserve a human body, Vorobev.

It's a hard book, both in language (for the first time in a long time I had serious roubles in reading a book in english, and that is right before my TOEFL exam, scary) and in atmosphere, especially the second part, taking place in the violence of the civil war and in the claustrophobic year followed the communists' victory and consolidation and eventually the last day of Lenin and Stalin's triumph. Yet it's a little gem, compelling and extremely well written, full of characters that pass by and sometimes get lost in the whirlwind of events of that period, leaving you, despite their brief appearance, with the immense curiosity of what happened to them.

The Commissariat is Klefus' first work, bought by my father second hand I think, and already my serial reader nature is moving me to find other books by him... if only I didn't have another meter and a half of books waiting for me on the shelf...

There and back again

2007-01-15T20:48:00.000+01:00

In so many, for now only announced, changes, I got back to the usual week-end migration. Friday evening at the usual time I got to my usual airport, boarded the usual flight and made the usual travel to Germany. Something unusual happened then, when I met Laura, another of the "sentimental travellers" I did write about a while ago and I was offered a ride to Mainz rather than having to get a bus.

Only thing was, I couldn't give precise directions so, eventually, I made them stop at a place that looked more or less familiar and then, for about half a hour, i tried to orientate myself in Susanne's neighborhood, too stubborn and proud to call for help. Maybe as a form of premonition, tho, I had taken with me a little map of Mainz and eventually, despite the scarce light, I made sense of the tiny characters and made it home, finding a Susanne jumping for my arrival (which is something I honestly adore, when she literally jumps around... it's a bit childish, but lovable).

What followed was a very relaxing and unfortunately short week-end including restaurant (unfortunately our favorite one turned out to be closed for unknown reasons), cocktails (and there I was reminded that german cocktails are twice as big and twice as strong as their italian counterparts), grocery shopping, italian studies (for her, with me as corrector) and all the niceties of an established, yet none the less enthusiastic, couple. Indeed, Susanne and me turn 18 months right today and a month from now we'll become each other's longest relationship, right on Saint Valentine day, go figure.

Anyway, the week here has opened in a mixed way. My weight is still way over the warning line despite strict diet and 2 kms of daily swimming. To be precise, I lowered it to 71.6 (for the new electronic scale we got today), down from the 72.5 of right after the Christmas holidays but still far away from the minimal BMI (68) and another universe form the sought after 65. On better news, my soon to be manager invited me to a play five-a-side with him.

Oh, and struck by the delusion that the artistic gene that was in my grandfather (a quite good painter, in my opinion) could be awaken in me if only I tried long enough, I got myself a graphic tablet... we'll see if I'll manage to draw something even vaguely unable to produce nausea in the observes.

Quite some news

2007-01-11T13:16:00.000+01:00

Sometimes an event that you have expected so much that you were losing hopes to see it happen combines itself with another event you didn't really expect at all and the mix opens wild new possibilities.

The expected event is my office transfer. I was unofficially given the news yesterday afternoon that, operative from the 1st of febraury, I'll be working for the Institutional Relations office, a nice label that actually covers the unofficial lobbying and legislative contacts department of my firm. That's good news, if nothing else because I will be doing something new. Actually,to be honest, I'll be doing something, as the last months here have been a time of total no-employment, compared with the previous years of under-employment. The still unofficial, but this time written, news came this morning by the way of an email from the HR manager, so I can finally say it's true.

The unexpected event came about yesterday as well, just minutes after the news of above. The same HR manager sent about a note in which he basically froze the use of overtime for the whole firm, based on budget re-allocation for 2007. At first, that was a pretty annoying news, as the first consequence of such a thing would be a net economic loss for me of about 200 euros a month, a good 1/7 of my monthly incomes, yet, moments after the note was made public, it opened a whole new horizon to me.

The enlightenment too the form of a call from one of my soon-to-be colleague. In a brief coffee talk, he explained that my new office, for its peculiar kind of work, had the need of having at least some people working, in turns, until 8.00 pm. In the impossibility of having overtime anymore, flexible time was "offered", meaning some people would get to job at noon rather than at 8 am and finish at 8.21 pm rather than 4.21 pm. And everything fell in its place when I considered that, with two free morning every week, I might get back to lawyer practicing (although a light form of it) and most important, to hearings attendance, two years of which are necessary to even consider taking the bar exam.

And so, I did call my best friend (I was working in his father's, now his and his father's, firm as a practitioner), explained the situation and, almost exactly three and a half years (damn, can't believe so much time has passed already) after leaving for the job I have now, I was welcomed back in the ranks.

So, not only I will have a new work in February, I will actually have two. While I'm sure it will mean a mighty effort to put forward both activities while keeping a LDR relationship going and possibly not abandoning the idea of a MBA, I'm challenged by the idea. Of course, coming out of three years of hibernation just to jump right in hell doesn't help at all. Somehow, I feel my brain has been in a sort of a coma, I just hope it is still a reversible one.

I do actually not know if I will be able to make it, but if I do not try, I shall never know, I suppose.

Me and Politics

2007-01-10T13:20:00.000+01:00

A couple of friends have asked me why I do not write about politics anymore. That probably has to do with the reason I basically do not even talk about politics anymore, with the exceptions of some exchanges with my parents and with Susanne. It actually gets even worse, as my rejection has worsened to such a point that it's about 6 months I do not even read newspapers anymore, with the exception of the online versions, which do not say much anyway.

And after all, why doing that? If I check the things I did write about untill last summer, I see nothing has changed: Iran was then and is still now developeing its atom bomb in the more or less total indifference of the world. Same for North Korea, assuming the test they performed a few months ago was indeed a failure, as labelled by the US, and not an actual detonation of small scale. Iraq is the usual bloody affair, made worse by the democratic victory at the US midterm's election (why worse? Because I think Iraq needs more determination to be applied and not the "when are we leaving" attitude the Dems will unavoidably bring in the picture). Israel is still being targeted daily by rockets, despite the light civil war that is ongoing in Gaza.

In Italy, the center-left coalition government is more and more conditioned in its choices by the extreme-left parties and, in the 8 months they have been ruling, they have only been able to agree on a 40 billion dollars tax increase. For the rest, foreign banks rule the economy (for example, former Goldmann & Sachs people can be found everywhere, first and most notably the governor of the Bank of Italy), the foreign minister moves Italy more and more on an anti-american and generally filo-islamic line in foreign politics, while the country, as a whole entity, is generally stuck in the mud.

In the meanwhile, the head of the conservative party here opens to gay marriages, euthanasy and fetal researches, basically depriving me of any political representation, as I do not need a conservative party for things the left and radinal ones have been the heralds for since forever.

If there is somone who is disillusioned with politics, that's me. The very illusion, because that was it, of the existance (somewhere, somehow) of politics as rational ideas transmutated in objective plans efficiently put in action to achieve practical goals, hopefully in light of teh national interests and for the good of the state and the society as a whole, or at least of a majority of that, has faded for me and therefore any interest in following the minor and usually irrelevant squabbles of more or less secondary politicians which will not translate in anything practical, locally or internationally.

Hopefully, this state of mine will last only for a while and not forever, inthe meanwhile, I promise to make an effort and get back reading at least a newspaper. If my stomach can stand it, that is.

One thousands steps and more

2007-01-09T14:50:00.000+01:00

Ok, last post about new year's vacations, both because it has been almost a week now and because after last wednesday, nothing much of interest has happened. All the pictures following can be clicked upon to get an enlarged version.

Wednesday the 3rd was the last full day of Susanne staying here and we decided to have a little day trip. After having evaluated Siena and Viterbo, both turned down because too complicated or too long to reach, the choice fell on a little, ancient and fascinating city in Umbria, Orvieto, which I happened to visit two or three times in the past, even because some relatives of mine live there.

So it was that we found yourself under my office early in the morning. There I parked the scooter and hoped to get the tickets at the travel agency right next to my firm's entrance, but that revealed to be a vain hope, as I actually should had imagined, given that the agency was closed. The line at the station's ticket office was better than I expected anyway and so, after little more than a hour of train in a freezing car (we discovered almost as we arrived in Orvieto that our car was the only one in the train with the heaters broken) surrounded by americans, we reached our goal.

Out of the station, a cableway took us up the steep hill Orvieto is built upon and from there, a bus rode directly to the Cathedral's square, right in front of the tourist information office where we could easily get a card allowing us to visit the most interesting things, with the exception of Saint Patrick's well. Our first stop was, obviously, the Cathedral (on the right, picture taken from the Moor's tower) and the famous San Brizio's chapel and its Signorelli's frescoes, which I always loved. After having given a look to the rest of the cathedral, we moved outside and we spent a few moments taking pictures over its steps.

Ah, the steps. The steps turned out to be the protagonists of our visit, the beginning, the end and the in between, above and under the ground. As we had booked a tour of the underground of the city (Orvieto is built over an immense number of artificial grottoes dug in the volcanic ground) and we had a bit of time, we decided to check the Moor's Tower, the highest point of the city from where one can truly enjoy a breathtaking panorama. If only the breath hadn't been already taken from him by the 240 steep steps needed to reach the top (left), which making the way back become 480. The view was truly magnificent anyway and we happened to be there at noon, which meant being deafened by the tower bell.

After those 480, it was the turn of the 200 or so of underground steps as we went visiting the quite interesting grottoes under the city, excavated for almost 3.000 years, since Etruscans time and until late XIX century, and used along the millenia as wells, mills (right), pigeons' farm (left), cellars, smuggling heavens and even bomb-shelters during WWII. And after those 200, the 240 of the not particularly interesting civic museum followed. At that point, it was finally time to eat something and, after having wandered a bit, we finally settled down in a nice restaurant where I had a language incident. It is common in Rome to ask for "two" of something indicating "a small portion of". Apparently, and for the first time ever, I found a place where this way of speaking isn't properly understood and in fact after I asked for "two potatoes" I was actually presented with two full portions of them, much to my puzzlement and Susanne's merriment.

Anyway, as it often happens, time ran fast as we sat at the table and enjoyed our meal and so, while paying the bill, we found out it was almost time to leave. But a visit to Orvieto couldn't possibly be finished without paying a visit to Orvieto's architectural wonder: Saint Patrick's well... and it's 248 (496 if we count both ways) steps. So we walked all the way there, we easily went down to the bottom (right, click to enlarge), which is incredibly suggestive and still water filled... but I must admit I heavily struggled my way back up. And so it was that we made it back to the station and the trip was over. Not really surprisingly, we ended up staying home that evening...

A few more pictures from Orvieto (as usual, click to enlarge):

The first days

2007-01-07T15:12:00.000+01:00

The first days of the new year presented themselves with a rare opportunity: both Alessandro, my best friend, and myself with our girlfriends in Rome. Now, it has always been a problem for Susanne and me to go out with others. On one side, most of my friends in Italy are single or have their girlfriends abroad, making going out together unpractical, on the other hand Susanne doesn't have many friends in Mainz and in any case, germans in groups have this unfortunte habit of talking in german (which is true of italians as well, if you consider they speak italian rather than german, but Susanne speaks italian).

Seizing the chance, with Ale we decided to take them at a concert the 1st evening, a Strauss Gala along the line of the yearly concert held in Vienna. So it was that, after the traditional immense new year's lunch, we took our time to dress up and I must say the results were, obviously on Susanne's side (I'm hopeless in any case), astounding. Thanks also to a mantle lent to her by my mom, she had this perfect "Princess Sissy"'s look, much appropriated for the occasion. Monica, Ale's american girlfriend, looked superb too, making us the most eyed people at the bar during half time break.

The concert was in the main cavea of the auditorium, the music was good and accompanied with all the classical "jokes" between the director (who happened to be the russian Bolshoi's one), the orchestra and the public that Vienna's concert got used us to, the soprano that sung some of the pieces was good (even if she sung rigorously in russian, which was a bit strange), but the ballet part was absolutely ludicrous.

The late hour the concert finished and, admittedly, the need of recovering for the past day's late hours made us part early, with promises, that eventually never came to fruition, of meeting again in the next two days.

The 2nd was indeed a day all devoted to relaxing, reading and all around recovering, culminated in a movie, Eragon, at the cinema theatre near my house, a run to a stylish bar for a glass of red wine and then back home, where we eventually got to see another movie, "Sliding Doors".

To be noted that while the second was in english (and we both struggled with the heavy londonish accent of the charachters), we saw Eragon in italian... just to point out to what level Susanne's italian has risen in little more than 18 months. Much to my shame.

The end and the beginning

2007-01-07T00:25:00.000+01:00

It's traditional custom in Italy, the last day of the year, to wish "A good end and a good beginning" and I think I do not want to hear such a wish anymore. The days between Christmas and new year's eve were pretty uneventful, spent going to work as any other day and , for once, without the stress of deciding what to do the last of the year. In fact, Susanne was supposed to fly in and arrive around 11 pm at Fiumicino. Now, considering that Alitalia has a terrible record at flying on schedule, especially on holidays, that she had to make a stop in Milan and that Fiumicino has an awful record when it comes to baggage delivery, I was fully prepared to spend the midnight in the waiting corridor of the airport. Yet, it was not so. In fact, I almost spent it in front of the damn airport.

What happened was that, thanks to Susanne's incredible skill of fitting stuff in her Mary Poppins' like backpack and a nice Alitalia's officer, she managed to switch flight in Milan and arrive in Rome at 9.30. With barely the time to reach the airport, I jumped on the car as my father arrived bringing a guest (our former neighbor from the old house) and leaving dinner behind and off I went, reaching the place just in time to pick her, while my mobile was all a ring of messages wishing me a good ending of the year.

And then it happened. We got back to the car and, taken by a moment of madness, I picked up the phone to call home and announce that we would had been back in 45 minutes top. The Gods above didn't miss my act if hubris tho and as I turned the key... nothing happened. Worse, something happened, and was that kind of noise that no driver would ever want to hear, and surely not the 31st of december with midnight nearing.

The car was dead, dead as only a dead car can be and nothing I could try while wearing a full suit would revive her. Much to my desperation, the battery had gone where no battery goes with any chance of coming back, the good old "push and start" wouldn't work and not myself, not apparently anyone in the airport, police included, ad some damn cables to connect it to another car. So it was that my year ended giving 120 euros to a tow car's man for a 25 minutes job: he came, sparked my engine, got the money and went with a wonderful "And happy new year, have a good end and a good beginning".

As I got home it was already a quarter to midnight and there was barely the time of a bite before fireworks had to be fired, champagne drunk and all the other rites performed. And I must say, between fireworks, sparkles, wine and, most than anything Susanne... well, the beginning made me forget the end.

Christmas Tales - Part II

2007-01-05T12:19:00.000+01:00

During the Mass of the 24th night the Pope said, perhaps more as an allegory than literally, "Do not invite at dinner the ones who can return the invitation, but the ones who will never be able to, make presents to the one who can't give you presents in return, rather than the ones who can". Now, my father didn't just take it literally, but actually anticipated him, inviting home, after years no one had seen him, the 99 years old last survivor of my grandmother's family, my grandmother's older brother and therefore my 2nd removed uncle Alberto.

Now, it should be said that a number of happenings over the years, coupled with the troubling strain of maniacal selfishness and insane greed that plagued most of my grandmother's family (and eventually made it to my father's brother) had irremediably ruined the relations and, as I said, for years we had no contact whatsoever with him. Plus, sometimes along those years, his memory started to fail and, despite being absolutely conscious of himself and able to remember perfectly the times he was fighting as a volunteer in the nationalist army during the Spanish civil war, he basically doesn't remember at all my father or any of us and has problems remembering who of his acquaintances are alive and who, and at his age are an overwhelming majority, have passed away.

Yet he lives in a state of abandon and my father, being the man he is, took it upon himself to provide that minimal care and, for instance, have electricity restored to him, just to make an example.

Anyway, so it was that, much to my mother's dread and my brother's discomfort, this man came to lunch, the most important lunch of ths year in an italian family, and for hours entertained us with memories of his youth of dubious taste, sayings in strict neapolitan slang that no one, save perhaps my father, could understand and hard invectives against relatives gone since at least a quarter of century. As we finally took him home at the beginning of the evening, both my parents were showing signs of exhaustion and, more than usual, I was wondering about the effect of stress on the coronaries of my father.

And yet, after what was indeed a heavy day, the fact of having given my uncle probably the first decent meal in a long while and not having made him spent the day alone, in a way, made us, or at least me, feel Christmas more than ever.

Ah, the Pope's words...

Readings - 2006

2006-12-31T23:59:00.002+01:00

22) Follet, K. - The Key to Rebecca - 7/10
21) Follet, K. - Hammer of Eden - 6,5/10
20) Harris, R. - Pompeii - 6,5/10
19) Clavell, J. - King Rat - 6,5/10
18) Williams, W. - The Rift - 6,5/10
17) Whyte J. - Uther II - 7/10
16) Clavell, J. - Gai-Jin - 7,5/10
15) King, S. - Everything's Eventual - 7/10
14) King, S. - The Running Man - 7/10
13) Clavell, J. - Shogun - 8/10
12) Clavell, J. - Tai-Pan - 8/10
11) Kipling, R. - Epitaphs of the War - 7/10
10) Kipling, R. - The Man who would be King - 8/10
9) O'Brian, P. - The Wine-Dark Sea - 7/10
8) Whyte, J. - Uther I - 7,5/10
7) Whyte, J. - The Sorcerer: Methamorphosis - 7/10
6) Rankin, I. - Beggars Banquet - 7/10
5) Whyte, J. - The Fort at River's Bent - 7/10
4) Whyte, J. - The Saxon Shore - 7,5/10
3) Whyte, J. - The Eagle Brood - 7,5/10
2) Whyte, J. - The Singing Stone - 7,5/10
1) Whyte, J. - The Skystone - 8/10

Christmas Tales - Part I

2006-12-29T09:31:00.000+01:00

Oh the weather outside is frightful, But the fire is so delightful,

And since we've no place to go, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

Actually, I can't remember a Christmas with such gentle temperatures and perfect sunny weather, but the song is nice anyway. Yes, it has been a good 10 days I haven't written, but Christmas is Christmas: relatives, dinners, lunches, recovery times from the previous two items of the list, friends, walks, some presents to buy and so on and so forth, you know how it goes. That, and I got my new laptop last tuesday and I spent hours since then trying to configure the system the I like it, failing miserably so far.

With the exception of my girlfriend being next to me (she's stranded, as every year, with her family in a remote danish island), I really had it all.

The creation of the Presepe (nativity scene), for instance, which posed some very interesting logistical and architectural problems being the first one built in the new house. Eventually, it turned to be probably the biggest and most impressive one we've ever made (mostly by my father, who had a bit abandoned the construction works in the past years, but who now has a lot of free time...).

Then it was the Christmas tree's turn, which took much less and saw the new edition of a discussion that has been going for the last ten years: should we change the "puntale" (the ornament you put at the top of the tree)? And as usual the discussion went on for a couple hours and was eventually closed by my mother with in the usual way: uttering the sentence "We can't, we got it the month after Guido's birth!". And so, while balls, crystals, ornaments come and go, silver threads are added and removed and the very tree (an artificial one) has been changed three or four time over the course of my life, there the puntale, worn and made opaque by the years, stays, unchangeable, one of the very symbol of Christmas for me (oh, and the weird individual next to the three is my younger brother).

To be noted that for making room to the Christmas decorations, half the house had to be reworked and that meant that, for instance, my own room's space has been severely cramped has the computer and its chair had to be moved out of the living room, the carpet on which they were staying had to be folded, the CD boxes which were in the corner now taken by the nativity scene had to find a new place, plants had to be moved, the boxes containing the Christmas decorations placed somewhere, tables cleaned for the afore mentioned decorations to be placed, books moved, silverware recovered from the obscure places the moving had stranded that, even paintings had to be taken off the walls to allow the background of the nativity scene to be placed. All in all hours and hours of work, made with the unavoidable Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" CD in the background (it used to be a tape once upon a time, I think that's the only CD my mother ever bought).

And then, finally, the 24th evening it was the Christmas dinner time, a meatless one yet none the lighter, as my mother delightes us with: salmon tarts, shrimps tarts, olive tarts, red and black "caviar" tarts, apetitizers of all kinds, smoked salmon, roasted fish, vegetables of various kind, dessert, dry fruits, normal fruits, all coming with white wines and eventually liquors.

The new element of this year was the presents. Following a philosophy that i shall not explain, there used to be a kind of unspoken ban over presents' exchange at Christmas. A ban I started to ignore the year I started working and that was eventually lifted, again without a word being said and with the silent understatement that presents had to be inexpensive, this year so that, for the first time in family history, there actually were boxes under the tree. And so it was that the first real day of Christmas passed.

Summing up

2006-12-18T16:35:00.000+01:00

It has been almost a week since my last post, the longest hiatus, probably, since I started blogging. had too many things to do, I suppose, and for once it is not an excuse.

Wednesday I had the dinner with the company's CEO and the football team. It was as pleasant was expected given the situation, that being a dozen low and middle level employees facing their hyper narcissist CEO, her secretary, the head of the legal office, the head of the general service department and some ex cop currently a consultant for security. My strategical position, at the other end of the table, allowed me some freedom, but still... to make things worse, after a wave of decent appetizers, it was served a pizza that we discovered, too late, made with a flour made 50% of soy.

Thursday afternoon, after a run to get Susanne's Christmas presents, and early evening were all spent tidying up my room in preparation of Susanne's arrival later that evening.

Friday I took the day off (which means I had an hyper-short working week, considering that monday and tuesday I was home due illness), which was spent mostly at home studying (Susanne) and playing with the computer (me). I got a hold of Space Empires V, the latest installment of one of my favourite 4x strategy games and couldn't help myself. In the evening, I had the unfortunate idea of taking her to my football game, the last of the tournament. Now, last time I took a gf of mine to a game we did loose 12-1. This time we did fare better, ending with a 2-2 tie, but after having been on the lead 2-0 until 10 minutes from the end, which surely didn't make anyone happy (especially after the CEO, 2 days before, had stressed out HOW important was to win the last game...). Anyway, a dinner with the players followed and was nice in its own way, even if I should never do the mistake again of eating half a kilo of almost raw meat.

And saturday came. Susanne and me, for once, acted as the very typical ordinary (italian) couple and found ourselves wandering around the large mall which is close to my home, surrounded by hundreds of other couples browsing around for their Christmas shopping, a horde of teens (basically girls only) and a bunch of scattered families (but the numbers of family could had been higher with many of them disguised as couple, given that at the mall's run kindergarten there were at least 30 kids being entertained so that their parents could freely walk around the shops. Unlike the typical couple, tho, we ended up staying almost a hour in the (little) bookshop of the mall. In the evening, erithrean restaurant, walk downtown and especially at Piazza Navona's classic Christmas market and then we decided not to go to dance as we had planned originally, but headed home and ended up watching "The Terminal" at home, placidly laying next to each other on a couch.

Sunday we ended up raising awfully late (so much that we were greeted by a "good evening" rather than by a "good morning" by the family and Susanne skipped breakfast to wait directly for lunch). After that, we headed to a museum in via del Corso where we met with Liesbeth and checked an exposition about Piranesi (one of my favourite artists and probably one of the greatest printers ever) followed by a drink at a irish pub close by. And it was already time to head home, have dinner with family, exchanging wishes and then taking Susanne to the airport (with my scooter, an 11 minutes ride, kind of a record).

And that brings us here, monday, working day, swimming pool afterwards and then I got a sudden invitation for dinner by Liesbeth for some "flemish food"... I'm curious. And I can't believe it is already the 18th december. I started buying a few sparse presents, but the total lack of cold weather makes me hardly feel Christmas-like. We'll see...

Oh... and I finally ordered my new notebook!

Brief note

2006-12-13T16:58:00.000+01:00

I'm alive, I'm alive. It's just that monday and tuesday I've been at home, recovering still (and not yet completely), which means I didn't have much to say. Today I'm back at work and later today I'll be going with most o t he football team at dinner with the firm's CEO. Yes, I know, it sounds ridicolous and indeed it is, but what can I do?

For the rest, not much worth of note: I'm proceeding my readings about Russian Revolution, got back to studying german on my own, waiting for this week-end hoping it will be more rewarding than the past one.

The last famous words

2006-12-11T15:03:00.000+01:00

"I'll have a long week-end in Germany, hoping I shall not have to spend it confined in bed." which is, obviously, precisely what happened. No going out, no Christmas Markets, no secret day trip projected by Susanne (she even refused to tell me where and what after it was obvious I couldn't walk out the door, never mind staying out the whole day), no anything. Even now, I'm at home with the posthumous of whatever it was that got me, if a very ironical outcome of a flu shot or something else.

Yet, one must look for positive things even in the disasters and so: I can at least say that Susanne makes a great, even if at times dictatorial, nurse; that I lost 2 kilos in 3 days; that I finally really seriously started reading the Figes's book about the russian revolution I've been toying with for months now.

Too much with too little

2006-12-07T09:51:00.000+01:00

For the series "doing too much with too little stored up energies", also known as massively overdoing, here is the perfect "what you should never do" day.

It starts with waking up, going to work, realizing that of the 6 things you should do you can actually do only 3 due others' people not having done their job, calling them, explaining the problem. So far, so good.

But then, DO NOT enter in crypto-ironic mode when they come up with the most hilarious excuses for not having done their job. DO NOT close the call with a "Well, sure, take your time, Christmas is close anyway" as, despite what you may think, those people could take your words at face value.

As you get out of work, DO NOT run getting a flu shot right after work and, if you do, DO NOT go running on a football field with 6 degrees of temperature and 90% humidity just 2 hours later. If you decide for such unwise course of action, at least DO NOT ignore your body's warning sign pretending the severe pain in your articulations, headache, swollen eyes, short breath are simply going to pass with a warm shower. DO NOT dismiss the wise words your bones and muscles are trying to tell you, that you should just get in bed and rest, just because you have a dinner out and calling off a dinner 30 minutes before meeting time is like the most uncorteous thing to do. If you persist in going out, DO NOT order a full pizza when your stomach threatens to turn itself inside out and, if you are crazy enough to do that, DO NOT have wine going along with it.

When finally your body decides to start a revolution to oust a dictatorial brain that obviously isn't serving the good of the (cellular) masses, DO NOT try to start a counter-revolution just to prove your brain can control everything even when everything is way beyond control... if white russians couldn't win in 1917 despite the help of american, french and english armies, most likely you will not emerge victorious as well.

After you deliver home your (friendly) date, DO NOT drive home as everything was fine, risking to have a close encounter of the deadly kind with a car and with a sidewalk and, once home, DO NOT lay down too quickly or your articulations will remind you with waves of blinding pain that they want to adjust again to the horizontal position.

When you wake up in the middle of the night, DO NOT get out of bed right away without thinking what happened 3 hours before, you might discover that you undressed without giving it a thought and the belt is exactly where your foot decides to land, that your slippers aren't were they are supposed to be while the corner of your closet is exactly where it should be, unfortunately.

As the morning comes, DO NOT simply dismiss the fact you are having warm shivers despite the heaters are off blaming a strange case of disfunctional thermo-dinamic law, because you will not have anything to turn to 5 minutes later, when the shivers will be suddenly of the cold kind. DO NOT give up the idea of calling sick for the first time ever when you do not have at least 38 degrees of fever just because you hope those people mentioned above did their job, because you will find that they didn't. DO NOT pretend you are put-puting towards the office because it's a nice day and you want to enjoy the atmosphere, while in fact it is because your arms are having a hard time absorbing the usual bumps of the road.

If you do not do all those things, you might avoid feeling as wasted as I currently feel, my friend. And despite all of that, I will be on a plane tonight again, but for the last time this year, as tomorrow is a holyday here and I'll have along week-end in Germany, hoping I shall not have to spend it confined in bed.

PS: at least we won the football game, yesterday.

PPS: for the first time ever, as i went spell-checking this entry, teh message came out saying it couldn't find any mistake. Too good to be true, I think the spell checker is broken.

The Sentimental Travellers and tired, tired, tired

2006-12-04T20:55:00.000+01:00

The week-end was the nicest in a while. For once, not a single incident of note, not a screw up, just relax and a new experience. And quite a new one.

The funny thing is, after a month that I go up to Mainz every week-end, I'm starting to recognize a small group of people who, like me, seem to be doing the trip every week-end or two... we should form a club and call ourselves the Sentimental Travellers. So it happened that I spent the flight to Mainz chatting with a Laura, whose boyfriend lives somewhere near Mainz as well and who I'm sure I must have seen at least a couple of times already (and she said the same), while on the way back I spent my time chatting with a Luca and a Michele, with whom I had talked on the way back to Rome last week as well, who have their significant others in Frankfurt and Koblenz. With all of them, the parting line was an "Ok, see you at the next flight!".

To be said, we are indeed a strange category of people, very different in everything except in one thing: only hand baggage and online check in to sit in front of the plane and be the first to run out of it and towards the bus.

As for the week-end, as I got out of the terminal (5 minutes after landing) I managed to get on a bus which drove so fast and in such a thick fog that I arrived 15 minutes ahead of planned time without having had any chance to realize we were being early. That meant that I ended up waiting at the bus stop for 15 minutes before Susanne arrived right at the time I had told her I would had been there.

For the rest, on saturday the new experience was spending 3 hours at the meeting of the Young Socialists of Mainz on saturday, hearing people talking politics in germane with everything closed by everybody singing "the International"... not just the first stanza, the whole thing! Me! Listening to a song that in Italy (not in the rest of the world tho) is hopelessly and exclusively linked to the communist party, rather than to the reformist socialism. Anyway, it was an interesting experience, which funnily reminded me of my ELSA days for how the meeting and the votes were handled.

After that, a visit to Mainz's main Weihnachtsmarkt, meaning the Christmas Market, where I couldn't help buying food, candies, chocolate (mostly for Susanne, and ten to find out she decided to give up candies for a while... women...) but abstained from the Glühwein, the hot spicy wine they drink in Germany. I must say, it looked nicer and bigger than the one I had been in Freiburg two years ago, but the one in Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin was by far more lively and interesting (even if not more crowded). Home soon (was -3 degrees) for a good movie (I brought the DVD of "Scent of a Woman" from home) and sunday came too soon and the flight back home with it. A relaxing week-end, as I said, which left me pleasantly tired by sunday night.

And monday came and I woke up even more tired, as funnily enough a queen size bed when alone can be much more uncomfortable than a single bed shared with someone and sleep didn't come easy. And today was one of those day that makes Garfield utters the famous "I hate mondays".

For three years I've been severely under-utilized at work and now that supposedly I'm about to leave that office, I'm suddenly submerged with things and assigned tasks and duties. And, finally, I started with a specific programme at the pool. There are several for the people like me who go there on their own without relying on instructors, in escalating level of difficulty. 8 easy, 8 medium, 6 hard. After 3 months of constant, almost daily, swimming, I started with the 7th level of the medium programmes... and didn't even find it so terrible. If I wasn't so exhausted that it took me 2 hours to write this simple entry and Susanne's net wasn't still dead, I'd be cheerful and even vaguely proud.

Sometimes...

2006-12-04T20:45:00.000+01:00

... all of us fall to the temptation of those stupid net tests.

Your EQ is 133

50 or less: Thanks for answering honestly. Now get yourself a shrink, quick!
51-70: When it comes to understanding human emotions, you'd have better luck understanding Chinese.
71-90: You've got more emotional intelligence than the average frat boy. Barely.
91-110: You're average. It's easy to predict how you'll react to things. But anyone could have guessed that.
111-130: You usually have it going on emotionally, but roadblocks tend to land you on your butt.
131-150: You are remarkable when it comes to relating with others. Only the biggest losers get under your skin.
150+: Two possibilities - you've either out "Dr. Phil-ed" Dr. Phil... or you're a dirty liar.

What's Your EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient)?