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.