Overenergetic

I have too much energy. I don't know why, but I often look like I am on some exciting drugs...instead, it is all natural...a lot of people envy this surplus of energy and I agree that it is a useful tool, because I always manage to do million things in a day....the thing is that I also need to manage this surplus of energy very well, because when I don't use it, I risk to get very down, very paranoid, I don't sleep well and I get agitated, very stressed, and nervous very easily....

Of course, in general I have a life-style which allows me to burn all the energetic surplus. I wake up and I do abs and push up, then I walk very fast to and from work (20 minutes each way), then I work a lot, and in the evening I always dance a little at home or I do some other activities...anyway, in general managing the overenergetic me is not a problem. I do a lot of sport and everything fits well in place..and I can smile at the world.

The problem is when I am in holidays or when I don't have my own life.

In the last 3 months I have been living either in hotels or at some friends place. And while I am very thankful to my friends for having hosted me and I am very happy for my trip in Costa Rica, it is also true that it was much more difficult to have a routine to avoid building up too much stress and energy. Plus, I had too much time to think during my holidays alone in Costa Rica.....and since for me thinking too much always ends up in some kind of paranoia, I really needed a lot of sport to keep myself under control and in a good mental shape....

In Costa Rica, I hiked a lot, and tried stand up board paddling. I had plenty of occasions to do some outdoor activity. It was very easy. The problem was when I got back to Portugal, and in Montpellier after and now in Italy. Fortunately, I brought my running shoes with me.

I went running tonight and I am so proud of myself. Not only I was impressed of still being in a good shape, I ran very well and my mood improved in an incredible fast way. Sometimes I get so down and stressed that I forget how badly I need sport to keep myself balanced.

Anyway, my wish to everyone for this new coming year is to have a very healthy 2012.

I have to keep in mind to hit the road regularly, no matter what the weather outside is, to be in good mental and physical shape!

Happy 2012!!!!

..and life keeps going on...

I couldn't have believed this if someone would have told me.
I couldn't even imagine it.

A month and a half ago I left Montpellier crying to move to Portugal. I spent a week there before leaving for Costa Rica and then another week there before coming back to Montpellier for a few weeks. And I miss there already. I was sad to leave Portugal and I didn't feel I was coming back to a familiar place by arriving here in Montpellier, where I am now. Of course, I am happy to see my friends here, but it doesn't feel like I have been living here for three years. And I liked here. I just think to like Portugal more. I just feel that I could maybe be even happier in Portugal than here. Of course, everything seems so good in Portugal that I am scared....it can't keep being so good all the time...can it??? it would be too good....

Yes, I have a problem with my apartment and the day I left there I woke up to find my kitchen full of water on the floor. Yes, I am not settled there fully. But still. I like there. I love to be on the Ocean...it reminds me of a very very small version of Ocean Beach in San Francisco. I love the food. People are nice. People at work seem nice. Yes, the economy there falls apart....and still, I am optimist.

It feels so weird.....a month and a half ago I felt like I wanted to keep my life here in Montpellier and now that I am back to Montpellier for a few weeks, I don't feel any specific attachment to this place, except the attachment to a few people who live here.

Maybe I move so much from one place to the other, that my body automatically learned to adapt to a new place and make a life where I am living at the moment. I still think that it is very weird. It never happened so fast. Beginnings have always been very difficult for me.

Anyway, I am slowly back to blogging...I have to write down something about Costa Rica too...

Sad, sad, sad, sad......

I am sad. I am definitively very sad. I spent many hours yesterday just crying.
The day of my departure from Montpellier to Portugal finally arrived.
And I cried, as expected of course.
I am going to miss some of the people I met and got close to here. I am going to miss them a lot.
I wish I could have a life in a place where I like and where I can also have a job and that all the people I miss who live around the world could come there and spend a lot of time with me.
I love sharing things with people who mean something in my life and once I move, it is never the same. Distance sucks. In friendship and romantic relationship. It just sucks.
I hate moving because of all the people I grew attached too and I have to leave behind. I bring them in my heart with me, but certainly it is not the same.
Every time, no matter where I live, it is always very painful to leave.

Costa Rica

Planning, planning, planning. But this is fun.
I spent a couple of hours looking for scuba diving places and parks in Costa Rica. Thinking of what I would like to see while there, what I can't miss, how to get around, etc. It is very exciting and I am very looking forward to this trip......The more I read about, the more I feel I should stay there for some months, not just for three weeks....ok, three weeks is a beginning....but it looks like there are so many things to see and to do....many things that I would like to see and to do and the nature must be so beautiful there.
I am really enjoying this part of planning where to go and what to see when I will be there!

I am fidgety. I always am. I don't even know how to find some peace in myself for longer than just some minutes. For that, I need to be in a forest, on a beach staring at the sea, in a place without obstacles to the view, maybe in a desert. I need to be walking along Ocean Beach in San Francisco, or bike without scope, goal or a place to go in Holland. I am re-reading the book of Jovanotti "Il grande boh!", which is quite in line with the way I feel lately and right now and with the way I feel about this lonely trip to Costa Rica.

I think that I will take my bike and bike for some hours along the river till I will be very very tired but my mind will be more relaxed and clean of all the thoughts that are always there and they never leave me alone.

The first thing I will do when I will be based in Portugal will be to get a good bike to bike around.

I really need this trip

I am looking forward to my trip in Costa Rica in November. It is not only because I am looking forward to see a new country, to possibly see many cool animals, to discover something I don't know yet, but also because I really need some time out of everything, out of what it is my life right now. And not because I don't like it, but because I keep being overwhelmed by not being able to even rest and enjoy a place. This moving to Portugal is shaking me to the bottom of myself. I can't find a way to be happy and excited as I should be. I keep thinking that I don't want to leave here and my life here. Because even if my life here is not perfect and there is a lot of room for improvement, overall I like it. It makes me feel comfortable. Maybe in a couple of years I would be bored and I would like to move, but for now I feel that I just started feeling home here and I have to leave.
Of course, I could stay here and find whatever job. But then why here? why here versus somewhere in Holland or in San Francisco, which are certainly places that I love more than here. Beside, I invested so much on my work that right now it would be completely stupid to throw everything away to stay here for no reason except that I don't want to move again. If I would have a relationship with someone, there would be at least a personal deep connection here. But there is not even that. I just don't want to move. Simply that.
I don't want to have to think about it, I don't want to get nervous the more the time passes by and I think about all the things that I would like to do here and I am not doing for various reasons. My life is magic and wonderful, but all this moving is making it also very very difficult. It is difficult to keep friendships or relationships with the distance, it is more and more difficult starting over again and again in a new country in a new place and having to re-make a new life there when my old life here is not so bad after all.
I can't get used to the idea of moving and this trip to Costa Rica hopefully will help me to have some time for myself out of everything that now is a source of stress and a lot of thoughts for me.

Emotionally unavailable men

I am 36 and even if I do not have large experience when it comes to relationships and men, I can say that I have a bit of experience on this subject and that my experience is based on a sample size coming from many different parts of the world.
I had few very important relationships in my life. Two with someone from Italy, one with someone from Holland and one with someone from the USA. Plus, I base what I am about to write also on the experience of my girlfriends and sister.

Where are all the men/men gone? I am not talking about the dominant, bossy men, of course.
I am talking about men we could rely on and build something with, without them having a crisis and leaving us, without them not knowing what they really want, without them not being able to decide when it comes to important matters, without them not being able to distinguish between deep love and infatuation.

Of the four important relationship I mentioned before, three of them were with very good, incredible men. And I loved all of them very deeply, even if in a different way. I am someone for whom freedom is one very important value in life. I am someone who not easily gets into a relationship. I am someone who doesn't easily fall in love, and even less is willing to commit. I am complicated and I am very independent. I understand that I am not the ideal "couple" person. But when I am in a relationship, I am 100% in there. And I try, even if I don't always succeed, to work my issues with the other person.

What I am coming to realize lately is that most men I have met, my sister have met, my girlfriends have met are emotionally immature and when it comes to relationships they have no idea of what exactly that means......I think that "us", women, we are more aware of how we feel for someone and what we would like to have with this person. Them...I am not sure. They can love you very much and still not being aware of that or still feel that "it should be different" or still have many doubts on what being together means. I have met a lot of men who are afraid of feelings and strong feelings. And it didn't just happen to me.

I wonder what it is the right strategy to deal with these men. I am not the kind of person who would convince them to be with me or on how they feel for me. I can't be in their minds and know how they feel. And I have too much self-respect to be with someone who is not sure if he wants to be with me or what he wants. But I keep finding myself being asked to invest more than them, running the relationship not as a team but as a carrier, me being sure of what I want and them not being so sure about me/us (and they never know why that). This till the moment the relationship is over and then they suddenly realize that they can't live without me or they want me back. By that time, I am almost always saturated of their insecurities and I am never fully able to trust them that they got emotionally "more mature". I am also very very tired to feel the psychotherapist of every man I am with....because they all have issues......

I have issues too!!! a lot of them, believe me!!!!

But the thing is...if I have issues (or my sister or any of my girlfriends) is "us" being too demanding, irrational, putting pressure on them (men love this!!!!), & company. If they have issues, we have to understand. Or anyway we end up trying to understand because we love them. We have this sick spirit of saving the world.

I admit that I am very good in making relationships difficult and probably most of the women when they love someone feel very insecure (well, me for sure!) that the person they love may leave them. But the thing is. It is many many years that I am having distance relationships (which honestly suck!!!!) and for sure I wouldn't know from where to start if I would have again a "normal"/ in the same place relationship, but I often end up with the feeling of running away from a relationship and just think about myself in a very selfish way because I am sick of the situation and the fact that all the guys I have been with ended up not knowing what they wanted from me and with me.

So, what I got to wonder is: does it exist out there a man who is man enough to know what he wants from the person he is with and honest enough to admit it to himself and tell her? And how come most of my girlfriends, my sister and I keep meeting men who are sentimentally totally immature?

A colder end of August day

I went to the beach yesterday evening. I am trying to enjoy as much as I can the things I love of here. I biked to the beach in the evening. I saw a stork and many many flamingoes...I am going to miss the bike path that goes to the beach so much!
I was colder at the beach. Windy. And this morning seems to be a perfect fall day, sunny and a bit chilly. It reminds me of the season I loved most when I was living in New Haven. The beginning of the fall, when the temperature started to be a bit colder, and the air in the morning was crispy. I loved to walk around when the weather was like that and I especially enjoyed the East Rock Park in the fall. I have so many nice memories of so many different places around the world.

my stuff is moved

Vila do Conde...day four of this road-moving-trip.

I feel very uncomfortable in being in a country where I want to interact with people, I understand the language and I can't speak it. It doesn't happen too often, but when it does, I hate it. I got a book on quick sentences to learn in Portuguese to get around. It is a start. Then as soon as I will move here, learning the language will be one of the first things I will do.

Last night I had a bad crisis. And today too. I cried for some time without stop. I am not ready to move and mentally I guess I realized only now that I am seriously going to move my life to another country again. Yes, I have friends here, even a very good close friend here. Yes, there is the sea and hopefully I will find an apartment just a few streets away from it. Yes, the working environment is very stimulating. Yes, people of Portugal are generally very nice....yes, there are a lot of positive things and I can see all that. I also feel lucky in having got the grant to work here, possibly for long time, on my own project, when the economy is going worldwide so bad. I can see all the good things of this. It is not that I am ungrateful. But still. I am not ready to move. I am not ready to leave my old life behind. I am even less ready to leave the people I got attached to in these years. I know, there is skype and sms and emails. But it is not the same. Nothing can replace the real time spent together with someone I love or I am close to. Nothing can replace a real hug. In my life I found a few very good huggers. People who are able to hug me and make me feel part of something, not alone, as if I just got home. I have met one of these good huggers in Montpellier and I am sure I will miss hiding in his arms when I need. And then there are the people I shared these past three years with. They have been with me trough the break ups and the ups and downs of my life in these years and the surgery I had and the bad and good news at work. They have been with me, especially one girl. A few days ago I was very down and I spent an entire afternoon with her. We talked and then she showed me the pictures of her last trip. I felt connected and I loved it. The people I feel connected to are very precious to me.

I don't want to leave all this now. No matters what I will find here next. I am just not ready. I have many more things to live, share and experience in Montpellier before leaving. And yes, there are plane connections that are not too expensive, and it is not so far....but it will be not the same once I move, unfortunately. I wish I could live in a place I like where I could also have all the people who are important to me. I already know that this can never happen.

Today, to ease my being so agitate and sad, my mom and I went for more than a two hours walk along the beach and then this afternoon we relaxed at the beach, just reading and swimming in the ocean. It was good. I liked it....but it is weird and sad that right now I am not able to fully enjoy it. I am happy because I know that this is something I will enjoy of my life here, but I can't fully enjoy it now because I am aware of the fact that my life here will mean the end of my old life in Montpellier. And I don't like the idea too much.

moving- part three

We finally got to Vila do Conde, in Portugal.
From Burgos to get here we had to go up and down, up and down, up and down and so on for an infinite time across many mountains.....We had the same exact scenario for many hours....and unfortunately also the same music as we only bought a few cds of Zucchero and by now we listened to all of them many many times (and none of us likes radio very much)....I will need a detoxication from Zucchero after this trip.

The car was fully loaded with my things to move to Portugal. At the end I couldn't fit everything in there, but we managed to move a lot, the most important and heavier things for sure....now they are all in my friend garage, till when I will have my own apartment here.

I had a nice welcome as soon as I got here from a couple of people with whom I will work.
I also confirm my first impression that people of Portugal keep being very nice and drive very bad.
I miss Montpellier and the close people I have there....Today I passed from feeling home sick to being excited for this new life.
My mom's reaction after seeing how far is the place where I will be working from where I would like to leave make my mood dropping to the floor.....she didn't seem too happy about this change in my life....at the end the important thing is that I will be happy here...and I hope so, even if for now is difficult to leave people I grew attached too and my apartment and the things I like of Montpellier behind.

moving- part two

I am in Burgos right now.
Today it was a full, complicated day.
We drove in a pooring rain...we....my mom actually drove...she doesn't let me drive...never...
Anyway, the rain was pooring.
My mood was in full pms mood...
We stopped for lunch and we got ripped off.....The price we paid for lunch was higher than the amount we paid for one night in the hotel included breakfast for two people...
We got to Burgos and we got lost trying to find the hotel.
Immediately after I got a phone call from my bank in France telling me that for security reasons they had to block my atm card because it was among the cards that were possibly be used for frauds...fortunately I have with me another credit card, otherwise I would be without money....
Then I got a bad news about work.
Then I got my period, I went to buy some pads and I bought something gigantic, which I realized only too late that it was for people with bladder problems...

Then we finally set off my mom and I and we enjoyed Burgos, which is a very nice town with amazing monuments. We strolled along the river and it was relaxing...fortunately....but I guess not relaxing enough to stop my brain from thinking in a scattered nervous way about many things.....

Tomorrow we will head to Portugal, where I will leave my stuff.....

moving,moving,moving

I am writing this post using my mom's little laptop....very cute, but my fingers are bigger than each of the letters, so to write every single world I need about 3 minutes of writing, deleting some additional letter that shouldn't have been there, writing again, etc. etc....basically, writing a single post will take me an hour :-(

I moved. Not definitively, but I am moving most of my stuff to Portugal already. Yesterday I felt very blue about it. No more pictures on the walls of my apartment, no more board on which to mimic the surfing, no more rollerblades, or books, or many summer dresses...not many things left in my apartment in Montpellier. All these things will spend the next months closed in boxes and left in a basement of a friend of mine in Portugal.

My schedule for the next months includes the following crazy trips across countries:
- Currently, a road trip with my mom to bring my stuff to Portugal. We left Montpellier today and we will be back on the 24. First stop, the one of today, Lleida, in Spain....where we found 37 degrees of temperature to wait for us....no matter what, we went for a long long walk...I needed some movements after so many hours in the car.
- Back to Montpellier till September 25, when I will go to Luxembourg for a week.
- Back to Montpellier again.
- Sometimes during the first two weeks of October, I will spend a long week end in Italy.
- Back to Montpellier till October 15 or 17
- Take a plane to move myself and my life to Portugal.
- November in Costa Rica, with a stop in the USA for a few days.
- Back to Portugal for a few days.
- December 8 I will have to be in Montpellier. I will stay for a few days and then
- Italy for Christmas

My life is going to be a bit scattered around, as always when I move from one country to another. I will miss the few close friends I made in Montpellier. I will truly miss some of these people. And I know that I am lucky because I already have friends where I will go in Portugal. I even have one very close friend there. But every time I move from a place to another, it is always hard to leave people I feel close to behind....I hope that we will be able to keep in touch and see each other, but of course it will be not the same and it makes me very very sad.

I guess that has someone told me recently, this is my life and I should be kind of used to it...but the truth is that every time is painful for me to leave people and things of my old life to which or to whom I am attached to to start a new life somewhere else.

PS. I really have problems with Spanish food...it is so much about meat and I do not really eat meat that much.....My mom and I got crazy tonight to find something to eat.....but we managed.

PPS. Next stop of this road trip: Burgos, tomorrow.

Packing, packing, packing

Here we are.....moving again...don't know if it is for good or not....but this is the way it is....The other day a guy wondered why I am so down about leaving here and moving again, as I should be used to this by now....this is after all pretty much as it has been for me in the last 10 years.
But I am not used to this and moving didn't get easier and easier with time. It just actually got harder. I was just starting to put my roots here. I have some very good friends here (a few days ago, I just skipped one afternoon at work, to spend it all with one of these good friends of mine), I love the fact that my life here doesn't depend on a car and I car bike everywhere, I have my favorite bookstore (which is a very important life essential for me), my favorite bakery, my favorite beach place, I like the people I am working with, and even if I am not totally crazy about Montpellier, I do like it here and I did like spending the last three years here.

I am a bit blue in these days because of this moving.

And I hate, deeply hate, to see all my books in boxes. I have a very few material things in my life, exactly because I keep moving all the time, and I developed a profound attachment to these material things...my books are among these things. And I hate to have them in boxes, it makes me feel like if a part of me was in a cage.

I am also excited about starting a new life in a new country, learning a new language, spending time with some very good friends I already have there. But still...it is a change that I would have honestly avoided right now. But the job market is currently so bad, and this new job may represent a good opportunity for me that I can't be too picky. I will have to come here often, as I will keep collaborating for work with people here, and to visit some of my friends, but it will not be the same. And I will miss my apartment. I really like the cozy nest that I made for myself. It is just me and when I step in here, every time I truly feel home. I was the same when I was leaving in the USA. Leaving my apartment was very very hard, as I liked a lot and I loved living there.

I will be ok and I am sure that I will find things to love about my new place and my new life, but it is always hard to leave people I love and my current life (as it has been in the last three years) behind and start new again. For sure my life is never, ever boring, as it changes so much, all the time!

In love

Gosh! Today I had an epiphany. I love the way I smell. I may be in the process of becoming nuts, but I discovered that I truly love the smell of my skin. I think that if I wouldn't be me, I would fall in love with myself.

I think that from feeling very insecure in my past relationships and my work, now I am going exactly at the opposite end and I feel very much in love with myself. I guess that as long as I don't become self-absorbed or very arrogant, it may not be a bad thing. Especially since I struggled so much and for so long to find my self-confidence back. I just hope to not lose it again, especially if one day I will be in a relationship again.

The world is at the feet of self-confident people

I was supposed to go to a birthday party tonight. Instead the party has been cancelled because one of the friends of the guy organizing the party decided to have a dinner with most of their common friends at his place. I thought that it was very rude, but this is just my opinion.

This story made me thinking about something.

I know a lot of people and I am very close to a few of them. Many of the people I am very close to are not that self-confident, even if they would have all the reasons to be. It had always be part of my role in life (and I don't why) to open the eyes of these people to let them see how great they are and how many good, fantastic qualities they have. Me, finally, after many years of struggling, I got most of my self-confidence back. Not all, of course I still have many insecurities here and there, but for sure right now I care very very little about what others think of me. For sure it helps that I am alone, without a boyfriend....I always lose self-confidence and self-respect when I am with someone, unfortunately...I guess that it is because I always put the other person and the other person desires in front of me.

Anyway. The point is that when someone is self-confident he/she can convince almost anyone else of how great he/she is and attractive, and interesting, and the rest of the whole "I am cool" package. On the contrary, when someone lacks self-confidence, it doesn't matter how great he/she is, he/she will be the first to put him/herself at a second place and either follow what other people think or do or isolate him/herself. It is very sad. Because all these people that I know who lack self-confidence are actually very cool people, they are probably just different, they just probably don't fit in and they didn't find their dimension yet, but they are wonderful, amazing people, who cannot see how valuable they are because they lack of self-esteem. My ex-boyfriend was and in part still is like that. And this always made me very angry. The world is so judgmental, we are so judgmental (and of course I include myself in this statement) that if someone doesn't conform to what it is generally considered "cool" or if someone is just slightly different, then he/she doesn't deserve attention and the investment of time to be discovered as a maybe wonderful person.

When growing up I had many problems because I felt different, I have always been interested on different things than the majority of people of my age, and in general I rarely felt that I fitted in. Fortunately, instead of becoming a very self-insecure person, I don't know why, but probably thanks to my mom who always encouraged me to just be me and follow what I like and want to do, I grew up liking myself very very much. Again, I have my insecurities, but overall I like the person I am and the way I look. I am proud of myself. But I do know how difficult is to interact with people when you are even just slightly different. You can feel immediately wrong or not interesting enough. I had times in the past years in which I thought I lost my self-confidence forever and it was very hard, because I felt incredibly insignificant, invisible, and unimportant. And it was horrible.

It is amazing how much importance we give to the people around us and how strongly we let them influence our lives, who we are, and the opinion we have about ourselves.
We should all get a course while growing up on how to be just ourselves and on how not to be afraid of not fitting in and being alone, because after all it is better to be alone and be ourselves, than being surrounded by people who actually don't know the real you or are not interested in knowing it.

I feel lucky

I feel extremely lucky. I know very wonderful people. Interesting and wonderful people. I just had two very close friends visiting me and I had a great time with both of them (too bad that when I am having a good time, it runs away so fast...). One of them lives in Portugal and I always stayed at his place when I went there to arrange things for my new job. His house is always open for me, as well as his heart when I need someone to talk too. I have met some really wonderful person in my life so far and I feel very, very lucky for that. Good, interesting, loving people. I am always positively surprise by the good heart of people, because it is a very rare and a very precious quality and I highly value people who are not just absorbed by themselves.

My plan is to take a road trip with my mom and drive with most of my stuff to Portugal at the end of the summer. I will leave my things in a garage of a friend. And this friend is another amazing person. I cannot believe that at first I had an horrible, horrible impression of him. I thought that he was very arrogant and I immediately did not like him at all. And it didn't matter if other mutual friends kept telling me that he is actually a nice person. I needed to see this with my own eyes. And I did. Fortunately, because otherwise I would have missed out a very altruistic, nice guy. I keep being impressed by how helpful, friendly, altruistic he is.

I have to say that I don't know why, but the best people, the most helpful and less selfish people I know are all men.....and they are not just very nice with me because they have some second goal, like sleeping with me, they are just naturally very good people. I feel so lucky in having met them! Truly good, helpful, altruistic people are so rare that they represent a treasure to me.....

Pizza, mandolino e mafia

This is the definition that a friend of mine gives of what represents Italy in the eyes of a foreigner. I think that he doesn't go too far from the truth.....

Last night I was out with a good friend of mine from Spain and we met some people I know here and some others. Before going on, I have to say that my patience in general can be quite limited, that I badly stand people who do not use their head to think and talk by using pre-made sentences, and that in general I am a very demanding person (read "pain in the butt"). This often ends up with me being very bored very quickly after meeting someone new. I love to listen to what people have to say and I love meeting new people. But if these do no result interesting according to my standards, my attention starts to drift away pretty soon and I get bored. Anyway, last night overall was not bad, especially because my friend from Spain is a very good company and for sure he is someone with whom I don't get bored. But then I met a girl from the USA and we were talking a bit and I was telling them as the best pizza I have ever eaten was in New Haven, in the USA. Soon enough from pizza we ended up to talk about the pizza from Naples and then the boyfriend of this girl made a very stupid comment about Naples and Italian mafia. Gosh, I can't express enough how much I HATE with all myself, very deep down, when people feel the need of making stupid comments about Italian mafia, especially when totally out of place.

I am very proud of being Italian. Despite the things that I don't like of my own country. Despite Berlusconi. Despite the very much needed improvement that the country should invest in doing. Despite many things. I am proud of being Italian and from Tuscany because I love the natural beauties of my country. The sea, the mountains, the forests. I love the architecture and the monuments of many cities. I love the diversity that we have from region to region and sometimes even from city to city in terms of food and traditions. I love the sense of family that we generally have so strong. I love the colors of our flag. I love the we were the home of the Roman Empire. I love the many old historical cities. I love that Italy gave birth to Leonardo, and Michelangelo, and Fermi, and Marconi, and Dante, and Manzoni, and Pirandello, and Calvino, and Puccini, and Verdi, and Armani, and Piano among many others. I mean....how can you just think about mafia when you think about Italy???

It makes me very sad and angry when someone tries to be funny making a joke about mafia as if it was all what Italy is known for abroad!

Missing

I miss my regular escape to the USA at least a couple of times a year.....being far from a place for quite sometime makes me appreciate the things of that place that I can't have here.
For sure when I will be moving away from Montpellier, I will be missing biking to the beach and the wonderful Mediterranean sea, of which I am a big fan.

I still have among my life-dreams the one of traveling across the Mediterranean on a sailing boat. Not that I am absolutely able to sail. But it would be a nice thing to do with someone or with a well-selected group of friends.

At the same time, while I keep dreaming, I started planning my trip to Portugal to move things to what it will be my new home pretty soon. And I got a Lonely Planet about Chile. It is not like being there, but it is a beginning after so long dreaming about traveling there. Most of my dreams are all about new sports to try and especially new trips and adventures to take.......

Two more days

Two more days and my year of waiting will come to an end. The last Harry Potter movie is coming out this Wednesday and I am really looking forward to that!
I am planning to go to watch the movie alone, as I don't have any friend who is so crazy as me about Harry Potter and I deeply want to enjoy it. I am also hoping to find a shop where I can rent some Harry Potter's stuff to wear it on Wednesday. I may even go to work in a Harry Potter look if I find something.

I know that this passion of mine sounds very childish, but I absolutely don't care at all and I am extremely excited and I am strongly looking forward to this new movie (unfortunately maybe the last one, if no more books will come out.... :-( ).


PS. I really enjoyed the last Harry Potter's movie. I will go to watch it again very soon, I think. The movie also broke the box office record in the USA.

PPS. It is very weird...here in Montpellier, it was not a big thing at all this Harry Potter last movie. I went to the movie theater very early to make sure to get tickets and there was NOBODY! I was very surprised. Nobody was dressed or anything. I felt a bit of a nut-case here....but I then saw that around the world the movie has been received as I would have expected.

Los Angeles: here I come!

I had a very weird dream last night. Not a bad one. Just weird. It must have something to do with my travel planning for the month of October. I would like to go traveling around in Chile for 3-4 weeks.....my father already told me if I am crazy and that it doesn't sound a good idea.....(why not???)....

Anyway, the dream.
I was on a plane and I landed in Los Angeles. But in a weird Los Angeles. I have never been there, so it could also be that the "real" Los Angeles resembles the one of my dream. But I doubt it. The airport was in the middle of nowhere and it was night and there were only a few people and only one helping desk. And my destination was not Los Angeles, but Philadelphia. And I didn't know why I was actually in Los Angeles, when clearly I should have been somewhere else. And then I looked at my tickets while I was talking to the woman at the helping desk and on the ticket there were many different destinations, so she couldn't help me. I basically had to buy another ticket. I was supposed to go to Philadelphia for work, to go to a museum (is there even a Natural History Museum in Philadelphia?). While I was trying to buy the ticket, someone put a cheap bomb in the airport. We had all (the few people there) go out and then in again. But while I was out, I got totally depressed seeing the scenario around the airport. Only dark and tracks driving around, nothing appealing on the horizon. I woke up totally frustrated that I wanted to go to Philadelphia and I was stuck in Los Angeles in a very unappealing place.

What does this means????

Freedom and the lack of it

Sometimes it seems to me that things in Italy are going progressively from bad to worst. Sometimes it seems to me that Italians just stand there complaining, without actually doing much more than complaining to their neighbors and accepting anything that someone else decide for them.
Sometimes it seems to me that in Italy we passed the limit of what it could be considered acceptable and still nobody does anything.
Sometimes it seems to me that in Italy we are not able to do much more than just talking and talking and talking without actually acting to improve things.
Sometimes it seems to me that the people of Italy represent the apex of being selfish.
Sometimes I can't believe to the way people do not react and respond to what it is going on.
Sometimes I wish I could do something to change the things that I don't like there.

Take the right that the police and carabinieri have to record all the private conversation of citizens that may be considered suspect of some illegal action. Take for example the extension of it, which include the right to listen to private conversation, control sms, emails etc. of people who are more or less related to these suspects.
In the course of recent events in Lucca, the police and carabinieri obtained a large body of information by putting under surveillance for more than 3 years the phones (cellphones, home phones, office phones) of some suspects plus the ones of their family members. But this was not enough. They also placed recording devices to record conservation in some public cafes in the city justifying this fact by saying that "these suspects sometime were meeting there". We are talking about a public place, where me, you could go to have a coffee and chat about private things with a friend. The police and carabinieri got the information they wanted.
But my question is: aren't we free anymore?
Didn't we pass the limit?
Is it normal and considered ok to spy on other people and other people lives because they could be in some way connected with people that are under investigation?

Consider for a moment how you would feel if you would discover that anything you said in the last 3 years have been recorded and of course you didn't know about it. Consider if all your private sms, emails, phone calls would be available to the police and carabinieri. How would you feel? wouldn't you feel deprived of your freedom? wouldn't you feel spied? wouldn't you think that how come a private citizen in Italy can be spied without a warning or anything when the human freedom should be one of the main values of humanity to protect?

I keep wondering, how can this be all legal? and why none protest against it?

I love Italy

I am so proud of being Italian.
Especially right now. Especially today.
We just had a referendum yesterday and today to vote, among other things,for the abrogation of the law about building new power plants in Italy. And the large majority (at this moment it seems to be above 90%) of the people who went to vote at the referendum voted for the abrogation of the law. So, no nuclear power plants in Italy. And this morning Berlusconi finally admitted that Italy should start to invest in alternative energy sources. I guess that it was about time!!!!
And I would add the need of a better education on how to save energy to begin with. It would be helpful to everybody to know how to reduce the electricity bill, but also how to actively do something for the environment.

Walking the streets of Montpellier

I went to see the movie "Midnight in Paris" with some friends last night. They all liked it except me. It was funny, but it was very predictable and I found the story in itself to be very poor. After the movie we went to a pub...like always.
I discovered one thing. For the people of Portugal, it is all about food. Getting together is all plaid around food and eating (I guess in Italy it happens the same....I just don't remember). Here in France, it is all about "prendre un verre", which basically means going out to drink something. I have to work hard to convince people to do something else beside sitting in a cafe' or in a pub to drink something and even when I do convince someone to do something else, the afternoon or the evening program MUST also include "de prendre un verre". Fortunately yesterday we didn't stay at the pub too long. I just get so bored after a while of sitting in a group in a pub drinking and talking. I am more the kind of person who likes to do things instead of just sitting and drinking (also because how many juices and glass of water can I drink in a single evening since I don't drink alcohol???).
In any case, after the pub we went for a long long walk and since I was not alone (I don't like to walk alone at night here, there are too many drunk people around), for once I really enjoyed walking around the streets of Montpellier at night. It was a bit chilli, but overall it was very pleasant. I guess that we walked for about two hours and it was very nice. I am a nocturnal person, definitively, and I love walking around. I think that it is the best way to discover a place. So, even if I live here since almost three years, last night I had the chance to really enjoy this city. I hope to have the chance to walk around at night again in the future. I love it. Plus....I got the chance to see a few geckos on the walls of the old houses here. Nice!

La botte piena e la moglie ubriaca

This is another common Italian way of saying that indicates a person who wants it all. Like me right now. And not only right now, to be honest.
I just got back to Italy. Crazy how much I miss being there, with my family, my close friends that I know since I was little (or much younger anyway), my home town, the familiar things, the food I love. I know that I would get saturated of all these same things within a couple of days if I would live there, but when I am there for just a few days, it is never easy nor pleasant to leave.
It may sound very childish, but I do wish that I would have it all.
My family and my friends close to me, so that I could spend a proper normal time with them, without always having to rush.
My home town, which I truly, deeply, love because it is beautiful (too bad that I cannot say the same about the typical "Lucchese", the people of Lucca).
All the familiar things that make me feel immediately at home.
The hugs of my mom and my grandma.
The long beaches on which to walk in the evening, at the sunset.
The laughs.

Many years ago I took a decision, which was to leave Italy to try to do what I like as work. I have never regretted that decision, even now, even when things were very hard for me. I do what I like and I consider myself lucky for this possibility that I have. But my roots are important to me and there is not success in my work that can replace the emptiness given by not having my family and friends close to me to share things with them. I could try to go back, but in this moment of general economic crisis, there are not possibilities in Italy, especially considering that my job is not "commercially valuable".
My last ex-boyfriend often said that we should have tried to find a way to spend half of the year living where we had a job and the other half of the year in Lucca, where I am from. Maybe half of the year would have been too much, but some months every year would be ideal. My next job is much more flexible of what I have now, so maybe it will be possible to work for some months from abroad...with abroad meaning Italy or any other place where I would like to be. For now I have to slowly get back to my life here.....one step at the time....

PS. Fortunately I have The Big Bang Theory and Sex and the City episodes to watch....perfect cheer me up tools!

so stinky

I may have finally found a deodorant that works. Maybe.
The thing is: I don't want to buy nor to use cosmetic products that contain animal products and are tested on animals. I am strongly STRONGLY against that. I even recently discovered that tooth paste is tested on animals. Is it really that necessary? I think that animal testing is such a cruel thing, especially when it is for cosmetic purposes. So, if I can find a product that has not been tested on animals, I will go for it. The problem with this is that I live in France, not in the USA. And in France, I don't even live in Paris or Bordeaux, where I guess you could find whatever you want. No, I am in the South of France, where things that in the USA you could easily find next door (at least to my experience), here would take you days of exploration just to maybe find only one brand of what you are looking for (therefore, you better like it or give up on your principles).

In any case, I love The Body Shops because one of their philosophies is to be against animal testing. And there is a Body Shop here. So, I got this deodorant there. The name was very promising. The nice smell too. I didn't read the review on it before buying....come on, it is just a deodorant. I even got two of them (very smart of me, I admit!). Basically, as soon as it started to be a bit hotter outside and I started to sweat a little on my way to work, by the time I started my working day, I was nicely stinking more than a skunk....of course, to my deepest embarrassment. I didn't think that it may have something to do with the deodorant. I mean, it smells so nice when you open it. I thought that it may have been because I switched the type of vitamins I am taking. Stopped that for a while and still my armpits were smelling like nothing you would like to be close too. I tried different options with no success.....till the other day, almost by chance, I read the review on this deodorant....apparently I am not the only one to have had the stinky experience.
So, yesterday I have visited a few shops here which have natural and bio-products hoping to find something with written on that the product was not tested on animals. I couldn't find anything. I love the vegan (and not tested on animals) brand yes to carrots ...why couldn't they make deodorants too??? I ended up at the Body Shop again and I got another one (this time before buying anything there I checked the review on the product).....I biked in the sun today and I didn't smell bad.....have I maybe found the one?????

PS. I am reading the Bill Bryson's book Down Under and I love it. But more than that, I am even learning a lot of new (meaning, unknown to me till now) English words.....but I can't find what "dozy" translated to in Italian or what it means.....I even have an American slang dictionary and I couldn't find it in there.....in the book it is written "what a dozy bugger you are". I found the meaning of bugger....but no idea about the meaning of the word dozy.

The beauty of this world (and beyond that)

I love week ends. Week ends can be quite tough if you are alone, no boyfriend, no plans with some friends. But I love them. Today is sunny, but with a light breeze. I went to get a baguette for breakfast and I think I just had the perfect morning start.
My perfect saturday morning start includes having breakfast while listening to the Nature or Science podcast. I always feel privileged by being a scientist. It is very frustrating sometimes, very often, especially in this economy and for how the world set its priorities. But I do think that I am privileged. It may sounds a bit like an opening from The Big Bang Theory Tv show, but I do think that as scientists we are able to grasp and appreciate life as full in a way that other people don't or can't. Since school, I always thought that physics was fascinating. I mean, look around yourself, to all the natural (but also technical) beauties and phenomena that you see every day. A sunset, the wind, a thunderstorm, even deadly things, such a earthquake. For me all these events are just magnificent. I still get impressed by TV and internet and phones. And these are technological things which have been built on physical proprieties of matter. Just thinking of all started, with the Big Bang, makes me feel so lucky to just be here and being able to see all this.

I wish that more people would be able to grasp the beauty of all this, because there is an entire Universe out there in which we are just a small piece of the big puzzle.

The mysteries of technology

First. Because I am in France, everything must be in French. I tried to set my internet browser to ENGLISH and as soon as I close it, well.....it restarts in French....or it restarts in English as a main page while all the rest remains in French...it is like watching an English movie with French subtitles to me....very annoying.

Second. Mysteries of technology. Since yesterday my Firefox internet browser wouldn't let me access my blog. I could access Gmail, the readers, everything else, except the blog. I thought that it was a momentary problem...but it is still not solved. However, I can access the blog by using any other browser (of course, otherwise I wouldn't be here posting). Sometimes Firefox stops liking my favorite sites and doesn't let me access them anymore.....Why that? no idea......fortunately, I have installed any sort of internet browser on my computer, so that I can use one or the other depending on my mood and needs....of course, Firefox is my favorite....but sometimes it drives me crazy (like in any respectable relationship....love and hate are often going together).

Last. I should be at work already, but since here it is already more than 30 degrees (and it is only May) and since last night I worked till 1 am, I guess that I can arrive a bit later today (even later than the time at which I normally get to work....which is already quite late....no idea how I could have a job from 8am -or even 9am- to 5pm.....I mean, with a normal schedule)...

Thanks God I am not on facebook

Yesterday. On my way to go food shopping, I met one of the guys who was always flirting with me at the laundry place. I acknowledged his presence by saying hi to him. Nothing more. Just hi. From then on it was all about trying to convince me to sit at a cafe' with him to chat a bit.

I know him. I have been talking to him a few times in the past months, always at the laundry place where I go, before he had some trouble with the owner of the place and he disappeared. So, it was some months I didn't see him. I didn't miss him. I could easily go on with my life without seeing him ever again. But since I met him yesterday, I thought that it was polite to say hi, instead of just walking by. MISTAKE!!! I have beautiful eyes, sit down with me to drink something, chat with me.......etc, etc....fortunately, I had the excuse that I needed to do my food shopping before the shop would close. And then before leaving, he asked me if I had a facebook account "so that we could be in touch"......

I am not sure which part of my subtle insights he didn't understand about not having absolutely any intention to stay in touch. Maybe my insights were too subtle. In any case, I am glad that I don't have a facebook account. So, I didn't even need to lie, which I hate and I am not good at. Sorry, no facebook for me. I am actually quite against it (and even more lately, as it caused me a reason to get very upset at my last now ex-boyfriend). He tried to convince me on how good it is to have a facebook account to be up-to-date on what it is going on in the life of people we know. He didn't occur to him that the people I want in my life or that I want to be informed about my life, they are actually in my life and update on what it is going on without me being on facebook. If I don't have an account is exactly to avoid to have "whatever" person who means absolutely nothing to me among my facebook friends.

One of the few good things of always moving around is that at the stage of getting ready to move to another country, I always have to go trough a cleaning process. Selecting clothes, books, things that will make it to the next stage and I will bring with me, and things that will be left behind. The same goes for the people I meet in every place. Some are acquaintances, people I have met during my life but who didn't mean anything to me on the long term (and in some case even on the short). Not negative people, people with whom I may even have shared nights out or fun, but that just didn't add anything to me or my life. These people will be left behind, without a further thought. He will be for sure one of them and I am very happy for this reason to not have a facebook account, so I can easily avoid the feeling of having to refuse a facebook friendship from some of these people.

I am in the mentally "cleaning" process that preludes my next moving to a new country and starting my life over again (or a new life anyway). I have to say that beside all the negative aspects of moving all the time all over the places, this cleaning process is something that I love to be forced to go trough as it allows me to think about what and whom matter to me and gives me an incredible sense of freedom to be able to actually chose what and whom I want in my life. Otherwise, I think that if I wouldn't be forced to go trough this "cleaning" process, I would just keep going on without actually stopping to think if what I have in my life and the people I find myself sharing my life with (friends, acquaintances, maybe a boyfriend) are truly the people and the things I want in my life.

So, gladly I don't have facebook and the people I want in my life know how to find me and know about me anyway, no matter where I am in the world.

6m3, 8 m3, 12 m3........

The fun of moving again......
calling it fun is being sarcastic.
I have been to the tax office this morning to know if all the incredible amount of money that I paid for the retirement and unemployment during the three years I worked (and still work) here will be lost or if it can be transferred within Europe in any possible way and what I should do.

.....anyone who will tell me that bureaucracy in Italy is worst than here in the South of France, should experience living and working here for at least one year.....

I waited in line (because none was answering to the phone any time I tried to call) to talk to someone for 40 minutes to just hear two things: why didn't you call (right....why didn't I.....doh......) and sorry I have no clue what are the two different offices where you can get these info....

So, this is one of the things I have to sort out before the end of June when everyone will take their two months holidays and therefore will be impossible to find anyone or do anything or have any answer before September.

Next thing is to find a company to move my stuff between here and Portugal. Every time I move I waste so much money. And I hate waste. I am not going to sell the few things I have here to buy them again there. I am not going to leave my books behind.....so, at the end I will not have many things to transport (as I am also living in a furnished apartment and I didn't buy too many additional furniture), but I can't just move with a couple of bags...it just wouldn't be enough for everything. My idea and what I would have liked it was to make this new change in my life less dramatic and take the occasion for a road trip with my stuff between the two places. Of course, it is a long trip and I am a disaster in driving, so I have asked to my mom and to my friend in Italy to come with me.....but none of the two liked the idea for different reasons....so I am stuck to the start point again.
I went online to look for companies that would help me with moving my stuff. And for the same exact objects to move, three different companies considered three different volumes of stuff to move and gave me three quite different estimates (all quite expensive). In any case, it is apparently too early to ask.....I will have to do it one month before the expected moving (should I recontact them in the middle of August????)....and the same goes for the apartment.

I would have found a very, very nice place, close to the sea, with a balcony, perfect locations. Very nice, definitively. The rent was a bit more than what I would like to pay, but still....a very good thing. Too early to contact them now if I only plan to start renting in the fall......

.........should I do everything at the last minute then???? just because I will not be already stressed enough........and of course....as my project at work keeps going nowhere (and this since a year and a half now), I can already see myself organizing all these things PLUS having to finish my entire project in September all at the same time.....

It is going to be so much fun.
I already enjoy the idea of all this together immensely.

vegan, vegetarian, lactose-free...whatever

Just to resist to the temptation to make a radical change in my life for a new start by cutting my hair (which I already know I would regret for sure a couple of minutes after leaving the hair dresser), I am thinking of changing something that would actually improve my life.

Let's say this something could be learning how to cook.

I do make a lot of cakes and pastries and they normally come out quite well. But I can't only be able to make cakes, pies & co. It is a "pleasure-food", but it is not a real food. It is a food good for the spirit and good for inviting friends over on a fall or winter afternoon, but it is not a real food which you could serve to other people. Let's admit it. I didn't inherited the right genes from my mom. How can it be that she is so naturally talented in cooking (even if now she doesn't cook too much either, as she lives just by herself and she doesn't often have guests) and I suck so much at that? My sister is something in between, I guess.

My main problem with food is that I don't like to eat. I am just not interested in food. I like to see it. I like to smell it (when it smells good). I like to try it if I am in a new place. But in general, food is not something to think about it for me. My eating habits are boring and totally uninteresting (according to my friends), but they work perfectly fine for me. I can go on for weeks with just boiled vegetables and some proteins for dinner. Just dinner after dinner. In the winter. During the summer I make a change. From the boiled vegetables to salad.

On the other hand, I am a creative person. And this is what actually fascinated me about food. How from simple ingredients you can produce some very tasty outcome. And I find especially fascinating vegan recipes. Not only they work well for me, as there is no milk of any sort in them, but how you can get wonderful tasty things with none of the ingredients that I consider "basics" is more than a challenge. There is a place in Washington DC, which I may consider my favorite there. It is a vegan cafe'. I had there the best pancakes I ever had (now I have learned how to make very good dairy-free pancakes too). And they were vegan. I had a great corn bread. Vegan. I had many other incredibly good things. All vegan. And it is such a relief to be in a restaurant where you don't risk to get something prepared with butter, milk, or cheese even if you specify and kindly require to the waiter to please make sure that there are no milk products in my order. I had a similar fabulous experience in San Francisco too. At another vegan restaurant. In this case, when I am in one of these places, I love eating. I feel free to eat whatever I want without being afraid of getting sick and I feel free to explore all the different incredible things that they serve.

Because vegan and vegetarian, with a bit of fantasy, can be much more than just a salad.

The thing is. I love eggs. I love molluscs (the octopus is my favorite!). I like fish. I adore the honey. I just wouldn't do well for long time as a vegan. I would live it as a privation. And being vegetarian for me it wouldn't make sense....as I already cannot have milk products....

...back to the cooking and the vegan good recipes......

I was thinking that maybe I could save my hair and myself from the grief and regret of having cut them and start learning how to cook some vegan recipes....that wouldn't be so much about the cooking itself, even if in case they come out well, I could serve them and finally invite some friend over for dinner...it would be about the challenge of learning something new which I find very fascinating.

Negative point of this plan: I want to see how I am going to find the ingredients that are sometimes necessary in vegan recipes when I will be living in Portugal in the middle of nowhere (because I am going to be living in a very small village where I am sure it will be difficult to find the necessary ingredients sometimes). I will have to start with something easy and I will have to look for supermarkets outside the village where I could find many "exotic" food products. I still dream about the fantastic vegan ice-cream cake I had in San Francisco.

I should find a good blog with easy and tasty vegan recipes to start with.

In search of happiness

Organizing this new moving is making me crazy already. I am scared of the change, I have many things to prepare, I am not mentally ready to move and I am not mentally ready to move to Portugal more specifically (why the more I want to move North and the more I keep getting jobs in the South???), I am not at my best. Plus, my current job is stuck (exactly the right timing to get stuck, as I have only a few months to finish the projects I am working on) and so is my personal life (this latter more precisely seems to go down hill....).
It seems the right moment for a change, certainly.
I am just not ready.
I am a slowly adapting organism, even if it doesn't seem so.
Biologically speaking...I don't have the best surviving strategy. I waste a lot of energy and I don't get anywhere.
Since I have to change, I was looking for a change that would fit me better, like getting a short-term teaching position in some tropical place where when I don't have to teach I can go scuba diving....so far, I got only "picche", which in Italian is a way to say that I only got negative replies....
When there is air of change, the first thing to go are my hair....this time they are still there...I think that the older I get the more allergic to drastic changes I became...or maybe I have to face already enough drastic changes in the next months that I don't need anything additional.

I was looking at some older pictures...how come that my face looked much much happier till about five years ago and lately I can't even manage to have a picture with a full happy glowing smile??? I am aware of the fact that I spent some years being totally down, where even a tight smile was a big job to achieve, but still.....now things are better, overall....but I still don't feel in a good place in my life. Just an example. I travel a lot, but I don't have even the time to enjoy it that I have to go somewhere else. It seems that I have to have another marathon of a traveling for my job, this time to London. I am so much trying to avoid that.

Let's say that I am trying to change what can be changed in my life, to improve it and hopefully find again my glowing, happy smile. For the rest, I guess I have to learn to accept things that I can't change.....

I guess that something that can already improve my mood at the present is either bike or rollerblade to the beach. I am also reading the Bill Bryson's book "Down Under". He is just a brilliant writer.

A better way of living

I just got back from Portugal. I love that country. People are so incredibly nice and helpful that when I came back to France last night, I had something like a cultural shock. People were smocking in the train (and it is forbidden), young boys were calling a guy with nasty names on the street, just waiting for the right occasion to pick up a fight, and on the overcrowded train people would not even more an inch to leave some place also for the new arrived.

On the other side, in Portugal everyone got out of their way to help me in any possible way and to help me and make me feel comfortable. I went for dinner with two colleagues of mine and beside that we spent 15 euros in 3 people, the lady of the place where we had dinner gave as a present 3 small cakes to the other two people with me (I couldn't have them unfortunately, they had cream and milk) and fresh bread to me. For free. As a present.

And this is just an example.
Unfortunately, the country is sinking, economically. Every country is facing economic problems (I have to find out the cuts on which the US government agreed...I hope that they will not cut funds for the EPA and the global climate change research), but the situation in Portugal is particularly bad....and it is not a very good feeling for me considering that I will have to move there in October and start to work there. I just did all the necessary paper-work to accept the job offer, now I hope to sign the contract very soon.

However, I was very impressed by the high life-style that people seem to have there. It doesn't look like a country facing a serious economic crisis. People are very well dressed, make up, women with jewelery, lot of cellphones each, lot of amazing new cars that I could never afford with my current salary (not I would spend it in a fancy car, anyway)...it seems like everyone has lot and lot of money by just walking around in the street and looking at people. They told me that Portuguese often live much above their financial possibilities and this is completely incomprehensible for me why they would do that, especially knowing that this behavior would create even more problems to the whole country.

I had a lunch with other two colleagues, we are all scientists, and we also discussed about this topic. All the three of us agreed that instead of creating more and more problems by adjusting the world to us, we should decrease our consumptions of things and waste less.
It is a common practice now that when something breaks, it is easier to buy a new one and throw the old one out than trying to repair it. This creates a lot of waste, a lot of trash that we are not able to displace. Not only, the current economy wants us to buy new things, so it is cheaper most of the times to buy new things that repairing them. Furthermore, and very sadly so, people who are able to repair things are disappearing. I grew up in a place where people repairing bikes, electronics, whatever object was the standard and now these jobs are not needed anymore. They are also not considered "good enough" by our classist (I guess this word doesn't exist.....I mean our view of dividing people in classes) view of the society. We value people who are able to make money, lots of money. It doesn't matter how they achieve that.

I recently saw the documentary "Inside Job". I think that everyone should watch it....just to have an idea of where we are currently going....We are just too selfish to be able to make a better place and a more functional place in which to live.

On the move again

Paris, Amsterdam, and then Portugal. All this in less than two weeks. A lot of traveling. I have many train and plane tickets around....

I am so happy to go back to Amsterdam for a few days....I can't remember last time I was there....too long ago for sure.

A lot, maybe too much is going on in my life around now. I feel a bit lost....I guess....difficult to say, I don't have too much time to think about how I feel. I just know that there is so much going on that just a few days ago I felt overwhelmed by all this and my always-there desire to run away from everything was fairly strong. I recognize the symptoms...and when this happens, it normally means that I need a break because I feel all over the places and nowhere at the same time.

A friend of mine went trough a similar life change last year and now she is using any occasion she has to just explore the world, travel, don't ask herself too many questions and just live. I think that sometimes, often, in my case I am buried by responsibilities. I wish I could be scuba diving again in Florida right now. Or in the tropics. Or somewhere else where I can be underwater, isolated from the upside world to unplug and re-boot for a while......

of course, having so many things to do and so many trips ahead, I can't really do that now...

Very confusing

....the level of danger at the nuclear power plant is Japon has been raised. However, experts are now declaring that the worst seems to be gone and that nothing like Chernobyl could happen there...

......I guess it means that the situation is still critical, the level of radiation spread in the environment could still be high, but things may get better......

I feel that depending on where I read the news and what time of the day I read the news, the information are a bit contradictory.....

Latest news

I have been following the latest news on the BBC and discussing the issue of the nuclear power plants in Japan with my colleagues, all scientists. None of us unfortunately foresee how a further leak of radiation, if not even worst, can be avoid, even if we all hope for a miracle. Furthermore, the US today complained against the lack of proper information.
I feel that when it comes to nuclear power plant problems, the lack of updated corrected information is often the case. However, in this specific case, the whole country is already suffering so much on so many different sides that I don't even know how they can face all these problems at the same time. For a summary of what has been going on till now on this subject, I found this useful.
The prime minister of Japan advised the people who didn't leave the zone considered dangerous around the reactors to stay inside. These same people, after all what they already experienced, are left alone there to hope for the best, to worry for the worst. The latest news on the BBC reported that food and water is extremely limited already in the area and people interviewed said that they felt abandoned to their destiny, forgotten.
At the same time, inside the structure of each of the reactors of the nuclear power plants, people are working to try their best to avoid a catastrophe. These people are for me already heroes. They are risking their lives and they are already absorbing radiation to try to safe the situation. I want to be optimist, hope that everything will turn out to be not as bad as we fear. But it seems that every day something new is coming into the scenario, making things more and more difficult.
Now it started to snow and people in the shelters, the people who already lost everything, are hungry and thirsty and they feel cold. Like if they didn't suffer enough. I read that the couchsurf asked to the couchsurfers of Japan who are save and have a couch to host some of the people who lost their houses. It is a good initiative. I wish we could all do something. I feel impotent to just sit here, listening to the news, when my life and my worries are unimportant compared to what it is happening on the other side of the world.

Please, if you know of any good initiative to help from a distance, let me know.

Terrifying unfolding events

It is terrifying to see how the situation is unfolding in Japan. Every day there are more terrible news coming from there.
The situation at the nuclear power plants is just a more terrible development of all what already happened there so far. I can't imagine how it feels to live minute by minute with the nightmare of an explosion of the reactors at the nuclear power plant. I believe that they are doing anything possible there to try to solve the situation. However, this so far seems to not be enough. And people have to leave their houses for who knows how long. Moving away to try to avoid possible contamination. I think of the people working at the nuclear power plant now, trying to avoid a further disaster, while they have already being contaminated.

And while Europe is revising the security measures at the nuclear power plants on the territory, Italy keeps wanting to go on and build new nuclear power plants. Again, it may never happen, but if a disaster happens at a nuclear power plant, the consequences not only are terrible at a large distance for everyone, but also for long time, as the radiation will be deposited in the ground, in the water...and how long does it take to the radioactive material to lose its radioactivity? I keep writing about this topic, because I am very strongly against it. Because for me, the risks of a serious accident at a nuclear power plant, cannot justify in my mind any reason to build one.
And next to what and to whom will they build these nuclear power plants in Italy? people complained about how ugly are the eolian windmill and that none wanted them on the Appenins because they would ruin the landscape. What about a nuclear power plant? have you ever seen one? I saw one here in France and it is so ugly and scary and it stands there, next to houses, where people live every day.....which is fine, until something happens.
And not only this. In Italy we can't even find a way to dispose of normal trash....where are we going to put the radioactive waste produced by the nuclear power plants? dump it in the sea? bury it under someone else house? it wouldn't be the first time that toxic material get disposed in this way in Italy.
And the fact that countries around us have nuclear power plants is not a justification for me to have it in Italy too. Sorry, but I trust Swiss and German people more than Italian. There is so much corruption in Italy, that I wouldn't trust that things are done in a good and proper way, with all the necessary security measures.
Another thing. True, nuclear power plants produce a lot of energy. First, it wouldn't be bad for the environment if we would all learn how to save energy. Second, a nuclear power plant produces much more energy than any alternative energy source could. But it also costs a lot of energy to work. Let's not forget this too. A lot of the produced energy is necessary to maintain the correct functioning of the nuclear power plant itself.
Furthermore, Italy do not invest in any kind of scientific research anymore since ages. It especially does not invest in alternative energy sources. So, looking for quick and dirty solution is the way to go there.
Finally. We have so much need of a restart of the economy....why investing now in building nuclear power plants that may be ready in 20 years when the same money (or even less, even half of it) could be used for something else to benefit the country now?

The best part has been that I have read that one of our minister declared that Italy is not a country with earthquake risks. First, this minister should give a look at the position of the tectonic plates. Second, maybe he forgot about the terrible earthquake that destroyed some cities in Abruzzo about two years ago.....or didn't he (or she I can't remember) know that the Abruzzo is in Italy?

Nuclear power plants- yes or not again

What happened on friday in Japan, the devastating power of the earthquake first and then the one of the tsunami after was terrible, scary, an immense disaster and I couldn't avoid thinking to all the people of Japan, scattered around, trying to know if their relatives and friends were ok. To all the people who lost someone, who lost their houses. To all the kids who will grow up with this experience impressed in their minds. My thoughts are for all of them.

Earthquake scares me. I fear them strongly. Maybe because the majority of Italy, including Tuscany, lies on a "hot" place in terms of tectonic activities. Maybe because I experienced earthquakes since an early age (and yet in Italy we are not nearly as well prepared as the Japanese). It terrifies me. Scientifically, it is an amazing phenomenon. In terms of effects that could have on human lives, it is terrifying.

Beside the earthquake and the tsunami, now there is the fear of a radioactive emergency in Japan. Like if they didn't have enough problems already, without this additional thing. I have always being against to re-entering the nuclear energy era and even if I fully understand many of the reasons supporting the need of the nuclear power plant, I am still on the side on investing more money into alternative energy research than to build nuclear power plant. There was the proposal to have them in Italy, to avoid to buy expensive energy from France (that fully relies on nuclear energy). Again, Italy lies on the meeting point between two tectonic plates. So, would it be smart? considering that we are not as nearly diligent and well organized as the people of Japan.

I already wrote about this issue in a previous post last year, as I have very strong feelings about this subject. Which basically are: nuclear energy is great till the moment everything goes well. When something happens, it is a disaster. And a massive disaster. A massive disaster with long-lasting effects on the human health and on the environment. And to me it doesn't matter if there is an accident every 10-15 years. When there is one, it represent a natural disaster of huge proportion. Plus, on a daily base, my major reason to be against nuclear power plants is where we are going to dump all the produced radioactive by-products.

So, now that we are waiting to see how the situation develops at the nuclear power station(s) in Japan, I enjoyed reading this article from the BBC environmental correspondent on this topic.

Something has changed

I may have become more disillusioned and cynical in the last year. Not that I like that. But I wonder if this has happened to me and if this could explain a lot of things.
I am much more detached from things that happen in my life. I suffer and cry, still. But it is not the same. It feels like I don't let things sink into me anymore. It is a sufferance and a sadness and a disappointment that in some way doesn't get to the deep part of me. Like if I could walk away from it at any time, any moment.

I think that after the whole mess I have been and I have been in in the past years, in some way not only I recovered and found myself and my self-confidence again, but I also in some way learned to let things to not touch me deep inside anymore. I don't necessarily think that it is a good thing. Of course, I am very happy to have gotten back to my feet and recovered from my past break down, after the mess/drama of my past/last break up and the mess/drama of my working experience in the USA. But I like the old version of myself, the one who could really feel deep happiness and deep pain. Now I feel like things cannot touch me, in good and bad, so deeply anymore. I feel unable to feel deep joy, and deep sadness. I can be content, I can be sad. I feel it, but it is temporary, very temporary all the time. If something feels hurtful, I can put it in a part inside me where I don't need to see it, or think about it, or nothing. I don't process it. I just put it there. And it is dangerous, because one day it may explode and all these things could come out all at the same time and have a huge effect on me.

I tolerate things (said, heard, lived), that until recently would have just destroyed me and made me walk away from them and react and look for a solution and for something that would have made me happier. These same hurtful things would have made me fight for an improvement or react in some way. Now I just get temporarily down or sad, I move them somewhere else, so that I don't have to think about it or feel anything, and I keep going, in some way ignoring them. And this happens in any aspect of my current life. My work, my relationship, my friendship. It is like if part of me experienced how it feels to be on top of the world in each one of these things, saw that anyway deep happiness is not made to last and experienced that falling from the sky, from this deep happiness normally hurts so much that some part of myself decided that maybe it is not worth to feel these deep emotions. It was not a rational decision, but it must have happened in me. Something has to have switched somewhere.

Because I hear people who know me very well since longtime asking me how I can stand this or this other thing or where I am going doing this or this other thing, or what something means to me, or if it really makes me happy overall. And the truth is, I just don't want to think about it. The truth is, if I start to think, I am afraid of getting overwhelmed and scared by things that I don't know how to change, by things that could seem hopeless. What good would do that to me?
I wonder if it is possible to subconsciously stop feeling strong emotions because too scared of the highs and downs that come with it. I think that this is what happened to me.

But then I wonder....is it really living just keep going on as best as I can?

what next? ..... a private jet, maybe

I finished the work thing on which I have been working till middle of February and for which I couldn't at the end travel around the world (I wouldn't have gone around the world anyway, but I would have liked to travel a bit). It was a liberation to be done with it.
Such a liberation that required to spoil myself a bit. With a short trip to Florida.

It was good.

It was so good!!!

After 5 years, I went scuba diving again. I have to say that the scuba diving place we chose (and which received a lot of good reviews from I don't know whom....) was a disappointment. We took a refreshment course, because after longtime without scuba diving it is always safe to check if you remember everything well before jumping into the water. They charged us a lot for this refreshment course, which was unnecessarily long. They charged us twice for renting the scuba diving equipment that we used in the morning for the refreshment course and in the afternoon for the actual scuba dive. This after that on the phone, when asked, they told us a complete different price for all the equipment for the entire day. Then (and this is a classic PADI philosophy), they would try to sell to us any possible thing, even after I told them many time that I used to scuba dive a lot, I did it for work too, and I have all the necessary equipment in Italy and so I would not buy anything that I already have. To be even more pursuing in convincing us to buy things, they told me that they couldn't have rent us the scuba diving computer or even a table for the afternoon dive and that if we wanted them, we needed to buy them. Of course, at the end it was not true....but it was a nice try.....Basically, the impression the Silent World scuba dive place left on me was that it is a money-making place (or they want to be that way). But I didn't want this to spoil my "back to the underwater" world adventure and my short holidays. It was so nice to be down there again. See all the fish, the corals, the feeling of peace that reigns underwater. Marvelous. I missed it so much. I should do it more often, but in Montpellier and without a car, I wouldn't know how to do so.

Anyway, my little holidays in Florida was very good and I wish I could have stayed longer. I didn't want to leave.

But.....I have been living in the USA for a couple of years some time ago and my impression is that things got more expensive and the society is getting more and more materialistic. This is absolutely true everywhere. But I am the opposite of that and I get very sad every time I see so many big, giant cars, big, giant houses, all the space taken away for immense, huge buildings that do not allow you to even see the sea and the beach when you are next to it.

I always wonder what next....
Once you have the giant car, you live in a huge apartment in a huge building, once you have an immense tv in your apartment, and all these big, expensive things....how can you get even bigger and more expensive things when you get tired of the old ones????

What is the point of all these big things? to show them? is it a sign of having money? and then what?

I don't get it. I heard a woman saying that her big, immense suv was getting too small for her and her children and that she needed to buy something bigger. What can she find bigger than that? a private jet????

All this materialism makes me so sad. I wish there were more people biking around, buying small cars, living in places of normal size (of course, what it is considered normal for me is not considered normal for the people wanting immense, expensive things)...and that there were less huge buildings and more trees and nature at their place.

How can someone really desire to live in a city of concrete huge buildings when they could have the sea, the beach, a forest, and a lot of nature instead?

I do miss Italy a lot

I watched a movie yesterday, Eat Pray Love. Beside that I don't get how the book (which I didn't read) and the movie could have had so much success, since the story doesn't seem very interesting to me, beside that, there was one scene in the movie in which I couldn't help but crying.

It is when Julie Roberts is in Italy and cooks for everyone, her friends and the family of one of this friends. This reminded me a lot of my mom, my mom's place in Italy, how she can make everyone feeling welcome at her place and how happy and familiar and so precious to me all the moments spent at the table eating together or in the kitchen talking. I grew up in my mom's kitchen. Or at least I recall a lot of happy, family moments always to be linked to her kitchen.

I do miss Italy a lot, because I am very proud of all the beautiful things we have (even if we are not very good at preserving and praising them), but I especially miss my family incredibly a lot, and every time I have to move again for work, I think if the new place where I will be will be easy enough to reach to allow me to spend a lot of time with my family. It is so difficult to be far from them and not being part of their daily normal life.

This city is a public bathroom

That the walls next to every Irish pub in Ireland are covered by human pee is well known and established. What it came to surprise to me was to find out that if you are a man living in Montpellier, it is totally normal that you pee where you feel like when you feel like.

In the last months I saw men peeing:

- Next to a car, directing the pee toward the tire of a car. It happened in the late afternoon, on a very busy street. I saw him (and I actually even looked well at what he was doing because I couldn't believe it) while I was coming back to work. There were people walking around, and he didn't look neither ashamed or worried that people could see him. He looked like if it was the most normal thing to do.

- Next to a trash bin, on the road. At least this one was trying to hide from the main road, as he was facing the wall partially covered by the trash bin.

- At the corner between two roads, during the day, on a sunday morning. I saw him while I was bringing the laundry to wash.

In any case, if these seem only a few example, I can ensure you that the streets of this town smell like pee sometimes, especially in the summer, when it is hot.

But this is nothing considering that human pee is not the only thing that you can find on the streets in Montpellier..........and I don't continue further with more disgusting descriptions.....

A solo trip postponed

My coming month off is not going to be a month off.....
it always happens.
This time for good...I hope...

I very recently received the news that I got a 3 years grants to work in Portugal. It is a great news, even if currently my mood shifts from being worried about starting over again in a new place with a new language, and being totally excited for a new place to live, a new language ect. This past friday I was so worried and in a such a bad mood that my company was certainly very unpleasant.

Anyway. This is the biggest news of this month so far. I didn't accept the grant yet, as I am waiting for the results of other two things I applied to....but of course now I have to organize myself like if Portugal will be my next home. So, there is a grant deadline in February to which I have to apply to ask the money for my project (the grant I got is for my salary). This means that I can spend some much time traveling in February and that I will have to work......but it is for good anyway...

How do I feel now about the news? still scared and excited at the same time.....

kids yes, kids no

I guess that it is normal when a girl reaches the age of 35 to ask herself such a question.
The girl it's me. I have been asking myself this question since last winter. I got to think about that because of my surgery.
Would I like to have kids?
Kids? plural? I would say no.
A kid, one, probably, maybe, I think so.
Why?
Because I love life. I think that living is an amazing experience. And since I am not religious, nor I believe in reincarnation or anything like that, I think that the only chance for someone to experience what life is all about, it is just by being conceived and then be born.
True, the world is not moving in a good direction.
True, we are too many and if everyone selfishly will have a kid there will not be enough space on this earth for everyone.
True, from a purely ecological point of view, having a kid is a very bad idea.

As a scientist and as a person in favor of the environment I can support all these arguments (and many more) on why having a kid would be the wrong decision. Plus, I love my time. I am very bad in adjusting my time and space for someone else. I am very independent and I like to be so.
I also see a lot of friends having a kid and their life, what they liked and what they liked to do, is mostly disappeared now due to the kids. Finally, the giving birth action is disgusting me, I can't deny it. I feel like trowing up as soon as I see a bit of human blood.....imaging how that would feel.

However, ideally, so, yes, I would like to have a kid, because giving the gift of life to someone must be amazing. As a scientist, I find this fascinating. Even if talking about this with the olandesino, he told me that giving birth is the most run experiment on earth. True, so what? it is still pretty cool. But I am not settled with the pros and contros. I would like to be able to decide this with the person I am with.

Instead, the last two relationships I had have been with people who do not want kids. Point. Neither of them want kids. No discussion there. Having a kid is certainly not something you would do for the other person, no matter how much you love that person. I wouldn't do it for someone else, nor I would want the person who is with me to do it to make me happy. It wouldn't work...especially when the kid would wake you up at night crying for no reasons.

Still. I would like to be able to talk about it. I would like my opposite positions to be taken into consideration. Not just a conversation that it is take it or leave it.

I don't want a kid now. On this, I am sure about it. As I said, I am not even 100% convinced that I would like to have a kid. For sure I wouldn't like to have it alone. But it scares me to think that if I am with someone who for sure doesn't want a kid and one day I feel that I would like one, I will have to seriously think if this person would be enough for me to not hold against him the fact that he was not open to discuss with me an issue like this. I know myself and I know that even if it is a very miserable thing to do, when I am angry at the person I am with and unhappy, I can make him feel highly responsible of my unhappiness. And it is a terrible thing to do....and generally doesn't bring any good, just more misunderstanding and resentment. So, for sure I want to avoid to go along that path.

I made the mistake of making someone feeling responsible for my entire happiness, and it didn't bring any good. So, I learned and now I would like to be with someone with whom I feel I can talk about big, important life issues. One, because I am not sure of what my position is. And two, because none should feel forced into a situation or a condition, no matter how much he/she loves the other person....

Feeling tall and a new addiction

I just got back from a short trip to Portugal.
I found a country where I feel tall. At least taller than the average.
It must feel weird to look at people from the top.
I have never experienced that before. I am 1.63 m tall....or short...dunno....I consider myself of an average size in Italy, average in France, very small in Holland and Germany, and surprise!!! I am above average in size in Portugal. Not only I realize that I am taller than a lot of women there, but I am also the same size of a lot of men. Isn't that weird? It felt very weird to me.

Anyway, beside this pleasant surprise (pleasant? I guess....at least this is the first word that came to my mind thinking of how I felt when I realized that), and having got a good news while there, I also discovered a new addiction.

The big bang theory show.

I can't stop laughing. It is the best pick up mood I have found in years. It is very hilarious and the dialogs are brilliant. I have to thank the olandesino for this discovery.

Only negative point of this. I can't stop watching it...and so I am getting very little sleep....but it is so funny!