Cool science

France, morning

I was just listening to the 60-second Science podcast and I heard the news that two students of a New York High College, together with other scientists, used DNA techniques to test the food composition and food labeling. They tested 100 food and found 11 cases of food infringement in food labeling. They found cow milk in a cheese labeled as pure sheep milk, while caviar was instead constituted of cheap fish eggs. Which means....never fully believe what it is written on a food package, unfortunately.....which of course could be dangerous if you have a food allergy, as in my case I would get sick eating a labeled sheep cheese actually made only with cow milk......

The other cool news that I heard is about using or not running shoes for running. The scientists found that running shoes increase the pressure on hips, ankles and knees, more than high heels do while walking. Basically, if the pavement would be cleaner than it is (here is France is covered with dog shit and crashed glass bottles almost everywhere), it would be better for our joints to run barefoot......so, the sandy beaches could be an ideal place to hit for a run.

A tea and a chat

France, afternoon

After surviving a snow storm in Germany (I got back on thursday from Frankfurt) and getting back home in France, I got a bit of homesick feeling, after almost a month spent in Italy with family and close friends.

So today, before going food shopping and to Ikea, I sent a sms to a friend if she wanted to meet for a tea and to catch up. We met and sat in the sun at a cafe', drinking tea and chatting for hours, till it got too cold to stay outside. It was nice and it made me feel a connection with here again. She is quite different than me, but she is very open mind and she has traveled around the world because of her work (and lived in many different places) like me, so in some way, it was easier for me to bond with her than with other people I met since I moved here. I like to be alone and I am very independent. I don't mind doing my things and doing things I like alone. But sometimes I really need a contact with the outside world that goes beyond the "bonjour" or "bonsoir" that I can say to the lady at the cash-register when I go food shopping. Drinking tea with a friend for me is relaxing, highly enjoyable, and therapeutic when I start to feel a bit blue.......

People to whom you can connect to make a very big difference in my life when I move to a new place. They can make a difference between having a crap time where I am or enjoying the place where I get to live. So, I am very happy that I have met her a few months ago.

P.S. Yesterday I went again for a tea and a chat with a kind of family relative who lives here and I didn't manage to meet in a long time. Again, it was very nice and very enjoyable. And I tried a very good green tea. It had ginger in there....very good!!! I am not a tea-freak, not a tea-connoisseur, but I like tea (including herbal tea) a lot and I like to try different tea types. Today I just got a plain Jasmine tea.

Si chiude una porta, si apre un portone

Italy, night

I am not sure from where to start...My month is Italy is almost over, and I am trying to psychologically get ready to go back to France. I love living there, but it is never like being at home here in Italy where I grew up, where I can always be pampered by my mom (no comparison in having a flu alone in France, or here at my mom's place :-)), and where I have all my old time friends, the same since I was little. It feels like I can't fall, and even if I do fall, nothing bad is going to happen to me. It is comfortable, and this time I really recharged my batteries here. So, I guess going back home to France will be not easy, especially because the day after I will get there, I will have to leave again for Frankfurt....I would need to hide in my bed with a book to just get comfortable there again....But I will survive, as always, and I will get used to the different life style again. Not better, not worst, just different.

In Italy we say "quando si chiude una porta, si apre un portone", which translates to "when a door closes, a gate opens"......I am someone who doesn't care about the bigger door or gate that can open, if I like the small door that just closed. I never want to close a door. Every door that closes in my life, takes away a part of me. Closing doors can be a lot of different things, places where I have been living, apartments that I loved and had to leave, friends that I left in other countries, people who meant a lot to me who decided to follow their ways without me. It takes me very long time to cope with the changes.

Everyone who knows me thinks that because I travel all the time, because I have been living in so many different places, and started my life over so many times, I can easily adapt. But the older I get, the more attached I became to things, and I have always been very attached to the people who mean something in my life. So, when I have to leave or someone leaves me, it breaks my heart every time.

But I never had to experience what I experienced in the last months. Seeing someone who means immensely to me who not only decided to leave me and my life, but also slowly decided over the past months that there is nothing more worth to fight for, that there is nothing more to dream of, that there is nothing for which to smile again. This person broke my heart not only by deciding to leave my life, which at the end one way or the other I would accept for his happiness, but he did it much more by slowly destroying the person I adore so much and that he was.

The causes of his decision are too long to be explained here, and I understand the frustration and fear of having health problems and not being able to know what it is going on, after months spent seeing doctors and taking different analyses. I understand the anger, the feeling that life can be very unfair sometimes, the feeling of loneliness. I understand all this. And I understand that being far from him, I may not be the best person to support him, that my independent character is not ideal for someone who would need more attentions than if things were normal, I understand the reasons for desiring some distance from me, but what I can't stand and witness and breaks my heart is to see him falling into a deep dark hole every day more and more.
I never experienced the sense of impotence that I am experiencing now. I can listen to him, but I can't actually do anything, because he wouldn't listen to me, and he doesn't see a reason to react.

Every day when I wake up, I think of the person he was and I miss him. I miss his laughs and his smile. Because when I talk to him, all these wonderful things are replaced by sadness and lack of any hope for the present and the future. And it hurts me to see every day passing by without any improvement. I deal very very badly with other people's sufferance, especially if who is suffering is someone important to me. My first reaction is to escape, which I know doesn't help anyone, especially the person who is suffering and feels left alone. But after my first instinct, I force myself to try my best to be there, to offer my help.

I always thought that you can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved, and in this case it is especially painful, because not only I feel that I don't help at all, no matter how much I try, but I also feel that he stopped to consider me as the person I am long time ago, seeing me now, depending on his mood, more as someone who could take him out of the place where is falling into or as someone who could have helped him, but decided to not do so. In both case, he makes me feel incredibly responsible of his situation, which I don't think it is fair to anyone. Furthermore, none else of the ones close to him can do anything at all, because he just doesn't listen to anyone. Again, maybe I am made in the wrong way, but I feel that I can help as much as I can if I see that he is fighting to get back in mental shape again.

Not really a topic for a week end, but it is now four months that I am living this, and it is four months that any single day I hope that it would be a better day for him, and I realized that I am living in a dream world, as I often do, and that the reality is different than my dreams.
However, when a friend of mine today, after seeing me getting every day more and more sad and worried for this person, told me as a joke (quite crappy I have to say) that maybe now that he left my life I can start to live again, I could only feel the loss and think of all the nice things I shared with him. Sometimes they are really the little things that make someone so special to me and to my life.

Cheer up mood

Italy, evening

When I am not in my best mood there are two things that work perfectly to cheer me up. One is "doing a bit of boarding", which means standing trying to keep the balance on a wood board, like you would do if you were surfing. This is so challenging that makes me forgetting for a minute about my worries or anything that made me sad.

The other thing of course, as I wrote it hundred of times probably (if not more), is dancing like crazy. What I am doing is not actually a real dance, it is more of a mixture of jumping around with the music pumping in my hears like crazy (no worries for the neighbors, I normally use my IPod, maybe worry for my hears...) with here and there some dance moves. I dance so fast and so much in a crazy way, that again, I have no time to think.....

I suggest one of these two therapies to anyone who is a bit down.

And even if I don't like Britney Spears, Womanizer is great for shaking my butt like crazy....

Too much stress or too much relaxation?

Italy, morning

I spent the majority of my time in Italy being sick. A reason could be that a) I don't like to take medications and so when I get sick I just increase the uptake of vitamin C and wait that it goes away, and b) if I don't have high fever, I keep going on with my normal life, which means that I go out and all the rest.

The olandesino has always told me that stress for me does what smoking hundred of cigarettes and drinking a lot of alcohol do to the rest of the world. He basically always complained that my level of stress well compensated for my very healthy life style. Anyway, I am not sure of what it is going on with my immune system, but my thought before the Christmas holidays was to wait for the beginning of my new contract in February, relaxing a bit in Italy.....I managed to not work for a total of three days in about a month, which is already a success for my standards and I also relaxed and had fun with family and friends. However, I can't deny that I have also felt stressed for different reasons, one of which that I felt that I needed to relax much more of how I relaxed (very smart reason to get stressed, I know...). The conclusion of this month of forced-relaxation has been that I got sick with a flu three times. The point is, I almost never get a flu.

I think that till I am totally stressed out, my immune system does not have the time to let me get sick....all my body is working to keep me going....as soon as I relax a little, boooooooooooom.....I get any possible virus or bacteria that is in the air as my body get confused on what it is going on...I am still stressed, but I am trying to relax.....so it is neither one or the other....

End of the story seems to be that from now on, I should just avoid to try to relax even a little....my body is just not used to that :-)

PS. In this month the best part of my relaxing plan has been sleeping a lot....now I am used to sleep at least 9 hours a night.....it will be interesting to see how I will manage to get back to a normal working schedule....

PPS. One of the good things of being sick is that I can stay in bed watching movies. I just saw a movie I loved. Great sound track. Of course, I cried for it. I know how it feels being with someone who apparently can never be sure about you, while you think that he is the person for you.....

Nice discovery

Italy, night

I was wondering on internet, while I should sleep...anyway, I found this blog and the thing that I post here below. Not a single word of what it is written here below in this post is mine, I just copied from this blog. So, I don't want any merit for it at all. I thought that it was very nice and I wanted to share this pleasant finding. It may contain common made sentences (I have no idea how to say this....in Italian is called "luoghi comuni"....but in English???), but still very very nice and well representing some of my thoughts too. Enjoy the reading:




I've learnt that the people you love most are going to be the ones who hurt you the worst, but you're going to have to learn to forgive them for that, simply because you love them. I've learnt trust, and the vulnerability of it; how it takes years to build, but only takes suspicion to break. I've learnt that the most cliche saying ever, "never judge a book by its cover", might just be the most true. I've learnt that no matter how bad your problems are, there's always someone out there having it worse. I've learnt that good doesn't always triumph in the end. I've learnt that sometimes forgiving yourself might be the hardest to do. I've learnt never to give up on the future, no matter how bleak it may seem, because whatever negative thing's happening to you now will pass in time. I've learnt never to set your goal too early in life, because sometimes it doesn't help but instead prevents you from trying out other things.I've learnt that home is always the best, and that family will always stand by you, even though you might not have talked to them for a long time. I've learnt that sometimes the best company is your own. I've learnt that passion is never enough to get what you want; talent counts for more than anyone thinks. I've learnt that sometimes the things we hold onto aren't really what we want to keep; it's just that we're afraid of letting go of the familiar. I've learnt that to let go doesn't necessarily mean to forgive and forget; it simply means to accept. And finally, I've learnt that if you want to love others, you must first learn to love yourself.

Heading to Oregon

Italy, afternoon

If these holidays brought me something good (except the forced rest due to being sick for over a week), for sure it is a much nicer relationship with my mom. The relationship that I have with my mom is characterized by a lot of ups and downs over the years, depending on the reciprocal level of stress due to other things and regularly taken on each other when we end up in the same place.

This time, independently of the stress and of other things that may have happened, so far we had a great time (and I need to knock on wood at this point, since I will spend some more days here in Italy). I am appreciating the quality time spent with her so much, that it will be hard to leave and being far again. We went to see a ballet, we took long walks, we went to the movie theater (a few days ago to see Sherlock Holmes, which we loved!!! I really enjoyed the way the movie was directed), we improvised a lunch out, we talked a lot, we took a lot of rain, we laughed. It was just very, very nice as it hasn't been in a long time. It felt like we were again on the same wave length again.

So, as since a while I am thinking that I would like to spend some time visiting Oregon, and especially Portland (and this may be due to two bloggers (MissB and Piccola) that I follow who live in Oregon), I was thinking that I may start to plan a couple of weeks visit with my mom. I like traveling with her. We both love walking around, and she is very open in terms of food, things to see, experiences to have....I know that a couple of weeks would probably not be enough, but I don't think that I could take more time away (nor my mom could)....I don't even know if it could happen this year, but it is already nice to start to think about it, read about it and make some ideal plan!!!

Of course, Oregon bloggers, any input about best season to go there, what to see in two weeks, etc, is very welcomed!!!