How much more difficult does it have to get?

I took this picture at sunset on the beach in front of where I live.

The beach and the ocean. This is where I live now. This is what I have in front of my apartment and I see every day.

It is hard to think that I will have to leave this for an unknown place where to start a new life. But hopefully it will be a place where I will be able to have a life, as I am tired of traveling all the time and having no stability, making friends to leave them again after a couple of years, just when I get close to them. I am tired of feeling home in a place to have to leave it again. Since I decided to get engaged, my life is not here nor where my boyfriend is, in the USA. I am also very distant from everyone here, as I don't want to get attached and then have to suffer as it happened when I had to leave France. So, although I do not look forward to leave the place where I live now, which represents one of my dreams (living in front of the Ocean and being able to take long walks on the beach whenever I want), I also hope finally at the age of 37 to be able to have a life, live in a place that I can feel it is my home, get a dog with whom to share my long walks, possibly make some friends with whom I can share my life without being afraid of leaving them any time soon, and be closer to my boyfriend.

I got a new job and a new place ahead of me and although I am currently terrified for all those huge changes in my life and although last time I lived in the USA I ended up with a huge depression (and not for a joke, but a serious depression that last about three years), I try to keep a positive attitude toward it, especially focusing on the good things.

But the truth is that if it was not because it is easier to find a job for two people in the USA than in Europe and the fact that my boyfriend has a job that could actually help us even if my salary will be quite low (for American standards), I would rather live with him here in Europe than going to the USA. I have nothing against the USA and there are things I like and dislike of every country where I lived so far... so it is not that. But my family and friends are in Europe and I am deeply European in my way of living....I am actually perfectly fit for a small European town, like where I am now.

This to say that the coming change does actually cost me some mental effort to get used to it, I get immensely sad when I think that communicating and seeing my family will be much harder than now (I keep wondering if they will visit me and how often we will see each other considering how much a flight ticket costs), and it costs me some work to stay focused on the positive things. But I manage. Some days are better some less good...but I manage. Until I get under a pile of difficulties like today.

To make a long story short. My boyfriend is American. I am Italian. I have much more flexibility in my job than him. He has very little holidays. He has a better job stability than me. It is easier to get a job for me in the USA than for him in Europe. I cannot stay in the USA on a tourist visa for more than 90 days over a year. It is much easier to get a permanent position there if I am either already in the USA on a working VISA or if we are married.

From all this, the decisions that followed thinking that our relationship would be easier.

September last year, my boyfriend and I contacted the consulate in Florence to ask information about green card, immigration procedure, etc. What we got told was that basically once we were married, getting a green card for a spouse would be easy and that while I could not live permanently in the USA without a green card or an immigrant visa, I could travel while waiting for the green card back and forth with my passport and on a tourist visa.

What instead we found out today was that if I apply for an immigration visa, I CANNOT travel to the USA. This to prevent that while people are waiting for the green card approval, they become illegal immigrants.This actually has nothing to do with immigration offices, it is something enforced by the border patrols....it doesn't matter if I can demonstrate that I am traveling to visit my husband but that I have a job somewhere else for now to which I want and I need to get back....no, no, no....I may be a potential illegal immigrant. I understand that they cannot make a special case for everyone, but how ridiculous is that I get married and then I cannot see my husband for how long it takes to get a green card (which may take more than 7 months), unless he comes to visit me?

Not only.....even more stupid....the place where I got offered the job would not request a working visa for me (which is much quicker to get and would make our lives much easier) because I previously told them that I would apply for a green card after the wedding....so, now they told me to apply for the green card and if I don't get it by the end of October, then and only then they will apply for a working visa for me, hoping that it will be done by the time I would need to start my job.....

Gosh, all this is so frustrating....how difficult does it have to be to just want to be in the same place as my boyfriend???? and plus...I am really sick of feeling rejected all the time because "I am not American or I am already a legal immigrant in the USA" ...first I had this for the numerous job applications I sent, then some of the members of my boyfriend family made me feel not good enough because not American (or not from a civilized enough place because it is not the USA), and now this immigration crap....................................

and a friend of mine just told me that her cousin got a green card for the USA through the green card lottery...............COME ON!!!!!!!!!!! are you kidding me? I have a job, I will have a husband there and I cannot even enter the country while applying for a green card.

gosh, gosh, gosh.....


 

Quality of life

I am a spoiled girl. There is no doubt about this.

I live in front of the ocean. I work whenever I want at the time I want where I want. I travel. I have people who love me a lot. I have traveled to a lot of places, I have seen and known a lot of different parts of the world, met many interesting people, done many things already. I am healthy. I have a wonderful family. I know what it means to deeply love and be loved by someone. I have the job I wanted to do. My job is actually one of my passions.

I am lucky. And I know this. Despite being angry or down or feeling lost, I know that overall I have a fantastic life, I had so far an amazing life.

I am lucky and I am spoiled. Right now, I live in a total status of freedom. I live alone, I have no kids, no schedule, none depending on me. I count on my own capacities and myself. And I like it. I actually love it. But things are about to change. Not necessarily for something bad. But they will change. Commitment is at the door, in my personal and working life. I feel terrified. Petrified if I think about it. I feel I want to run away and hide on a beach somewhere (I actually exactly know where. I have been there once and that place since then represent my mental escape).

What terrifies me most is not the change itself. I am used to changing continuously: places, cultures, people. What terrifies me is to lose things that I now give for granted and are part of my routine. Running whenever I feel like around the ocean, walking to the bakery to buy fresh bread, walking around at any time of the day I want.

I have to move again and overall this next step, this next change of scenario is for good. I am getting married soon and I know that to make it work, we cannot have an ocean in between us. So, I am moving back to the USA and I am lucky enough to have found the job I wanted there. In this economy, this is definitively not something little. So far, so good.

But. I started this blog when I was living in the USA, about six years ago. I can't remember an unhappier, more depressing period in my life so far. I actually started this blog because I was so depressed, so lonely, so hopeless that the only thing that made me feel connected in some way was writing my thoughts, my feelings. I am scared of ending up in the same way. Is this a stupid fear? maybe.

The thing is that I like the USA. But there are also things of the USA that I really do not like. Last night I got to think about naming three things I hate about the USA. I didn't have to think very long:

1) Free guns
2) Need of having a car
3) Waste

Of course, I can also as easily think of three things I hate about Italy:

1) Corruption
2) Lack of a national spirit
3) Superficiality

And so on, I could list three things I hate about France, about Portugal, about Germany, probably about any of the countries where I have been living. However, not all these things I hate weight the same in terms of my quality of life and I deal extremely badly with the idea of living in a country where guns are legal. It makes me feel threatened all the time. It is not my culture. I am not used to that. Yes, European cities are dangerous too. I completely agree. But they are in a different way. There are dangerous parts of the city and you just don't go there. In the USA often is not only a part of a city, it is one street is safe and the next street is dangerous. Why? who knows why. Plus, you never know, but the person walking in front of you may have a gun, as well as your neighbor, as well as basically anyone else. So, some of the things that for me make my quality of life good, which are the possibility to walk or take public transportation anywhere I want to go without needing a car, the sense of freedom in time and space, getting fresh bread when I feel like, are all going to be lost with my next life change. Because I am not going to move to any of the American/more European life style cities.

I can deal with a lot of things, I can adapt fairly easily to different cultures, I can always find my own dimension in a new place. But living in a country where guns are free and owning a gun is the normality is not something I want to adapt to. When I discuss this with Americans, the reply to my questions I receive more often is that guns are necessary to defend ourselves from the ones who already have a gun.....it doesn't take an extraordinary IQ to understand that this is a circular explanation that will never solve itself. If guns would be under regulation, meaning that people owning a gun has to declare it and that from now on buying a gun would be permitted only in special cases, there would be less uncontrolled guns around, and less crazy people who get the chance to use them and to assault, shoot and kill people just because they are having a bad day.....

Unfortunately, there are so many personal interests in the USA in keeping things the way they are when it comes to guns (or public transportation, or public health system just to name a few things) that the poor Obama will never manage to regulate them. Unfortunately. Because people do not have the chance to understand and appreciate the value of freedom of movement and existence without feeling that you gotta own a gun to defend yourself from others who may threaten you.

When I was living in Germany I used to often work late at night. Late night means that sometimes I would bike back home at 2-3am. Often, I would bike at that time through the forest. I always felt that I could have biked through the forest at that time at night completely naked and nothing would have happened to me. Of course, there may always be the bad luck of meeting a bad guy. This happens everywhere. But if a bad guy doesn't not have a gun, first thing he has to get close to me to assault me, second thing at least it will cost him more effort to harm or kill me.....it is a small consolation, but it does reduce the chances to get severely harmed or killed.

Statistics at hand......

I wish I would know how to make a difference and help to ban free guns in the USA, which will be my future home place.

Just to stay on this subject.....this happened just a few days ago and these episodes keep happening over and over in the USA.

Anger, so much anger

When I started writing this blog, it was therapeutic. I didn't know with whom to talk in a comfortable way, I didn't want to bother anyone with the same things over and over and so I started writing. Then, I started to feel better about my life and the blog turned out to be more a together or random thoughts and observations. Then in the last months, I didn't have time to write and I didn't feel like either, because I was just going through too much in my life.
Now I am back to this old friend. Because, although I am not in the same status and condition as when I first started this blog, I am also not a good place in my life either. In the last months I had and still have to make so many life-decisions for things that I would never do or accept if it was just about me. But when you get engaged to someone and deciding to marrying someone, then it is not anymore about "you" or "me" but it about what to do to make it work in the best possible way. And it is one compromise after the other and it is scary.....it is scary because to be with that one person, I have a prospect of life with many things that I would have never even considered if it was just about me. Moving to a place that on paper may be wonderful as well as it could be hell, leaving the peace of the ocean and the safety of where I am now, accepting the baggage that comes with him (and for which he has no fault or responsibility) even if it is extremely unpleasant, be even more far away from my family, feeling that I have no place in the world no matter where I am because my life is all in pieces here and there.
It is months now that I am struggling and the only way I can cope with this is running and walking, walking and running. I escape social contacts because I am so angry and feeling uncomfortable all the time that nothing makes me aggressive and exploding....with the result that I am becoming socially awkward. Four-five months ago, I was positive, optimist and seeing the same things as adventurous challenges. Now I am just tired of all the difficulties that comes with the already per-se difficult decision I had to take.....I feel I can't take any more... it is already too much....why do things need to be so difficult sometimes? all over....not just my working life is difficult.....and I don't know how to get out of this and I don't want to talk to people about this, because overall is very boring and people are just different and would see my overall situation in a very different way, so none can actually advice me on anything...and if I would talk about this with my family, they would just get worried and if I would talk about this with my fiance' (although I do it), he would feel responsible and guilty, when he actually has no responsabilities....

I just feel that I have to do what I have to do and hope for the best....but it is not really a good way to approach things for me....I wish I could be more enthusiastic....but the past months and events really killed my enthusiasm for all these things.....

Life changes

So long that I don't write here.
So many things happened in my life in the last months.
So many different emotional states: stress, happiness, excitement, being scared, freaking out, sadness, anger (lot of it), more stress, feeling lonely......I don't even know from where to start.
Maybe from the fact that things in life, at least in my life for sure, never happen when they are supposed to happen or when I wish they would happen or in the way I would like them to happen. I constantly feel like being at the right place at the wrong time.
I can't have things figured out. Even when I think I do. I just rest thinking that wow even if in a weird and unexpected way things are turning out quite well, when suddenly something new comes up to mess everything around again.
It may be considered a good thing, sure. But sometimes I also feel that it wouldn't be bad to have a vision for a bit longer than just the current day.
Since November I have been traveling between Ecuador, the USA, Italy, Portugal, France and in a few days I will be in Holland and then in the USA again.
I have applied to many many jobs and I also received many many rejections.
I have hoped and get crashed and hoped again.
I have been excited and miserable and excited again and miserable again for the same thing over and over in the past three months.

Part of me would like to learn how to be immune to other people. Part of me would like to learn to not care so much. Part of me would like to learn to not be polite when people do not deserve politeness, when they are not nice to me, my country, my family, or my culture. Part of me would like to learn how to be able to still be positive when surrounded by a tick layer of negativity that oppresses everything and makes everything grey.

I have a lot of beautiful things happening to me and in my life. But there is always something or someone who feels the need to ruin everything, to make things more difficult than they are so that they become an unbearable wall.

Sometimes I feel that it doesn't really matter what I do or I don't do, because things keep happening on their own, because life is just this way, and the only thing I can do is to try to get the best out of all these things, no matter how hard other people only try to make me see only the negative aspects on any of these things.
It is really not the way I am, or at least I have never been this way before. It may be a change due to aging or it may have something to do with the fact that some days I am really tired of thinking over and over about this, but I often find myself taking a decision more on "why not?" than based on over-thinking as it usually was.
Not that the end product of the two different modes of action is any different anyway.

I have been proposed. And I accepted.
And someone tried very hard to kill all the enthusiasm and expectation I had for it.
And I felt lonely and rejected.

I waited for something to happen for years. And when it did happen it was completely the worst possible timing.

I received a job offer for a job that overall I thought it would be cool. Not perfect, not ideal, but overall cool.
And someone tried his best to make me see only the negative aspects of it and how it will only make my life even more solitary.

It must be the yin and the yang. Nothing can be just good or just bad.....it must always be something in between apparently......at least in my life lately.

Single or in a couple

I just read this very nice article on the BBC News about being single or being part of a couple. I loved this piece. It is honest. Or I felt it is.

I have been there. I have been asked what was wrong with me for not being in a relationship (although now I am again part of a couple), why do I not want to settle down, why do I need to be so independent to make so difficult to be with me as a couple, why...why...why.....like if being alone instead of being part of a couple is a curse.

Understand me. I love being in a relationship with a person I love. But I do also love myself a lot. This has been a problem already in the past. I recognize this. But I do love myself and my life. And being part of a couple has never been (and I doubt it will ever be) the center of my life, nor what defines me as a person or for who I am.

Certainly, I would rather be alone than with a person who does not love me as much as I love myself.
Certainly, I would rather be alone than with a person who does not love me for the way I am.
Certainly, I would rather be alone than with someone who think he should be the focus of my life.

And this does not mean that I am unable to love or of being part of a couple. It means that it will take a little bit more effort for me to find someone who will respect, understand and appreciate than in my life being part of a couple is something that make me happy, yes, but it is only part of something that makes me happy.

...and this fear of being alone that often (at least for people I know) urges a person to be part of a couple, to not spend the week ends alone, to not have to face the pressure of the world that points the finger at single people, to just be with someone......well, in my case, it has happened that I felt lonelier in a couple sometimes that when I was truly alone, single.

When it comes to me, it actually freaks me out quite a lot the idea of being in a couple, and especially the idea of long term commitment, the idea of making decisions not only based on what it is best for me and my life, but based on what it is best for "us" as a couple, the idea of something becoming a routine rather than the true pleasure of being with someone......

I can say for experience that people relax a lot when they can fit you in one of the "standard" boxes (in couple, married, straight, gay, weird....), when they stop seeing you as a threaten to their stability and their securities of what it is known........

.....I do feel very very lonely sometimes and I am happy to be in a relationship with a person with whom I have no problems to think about myself as a part of a couple, but I hope that I will never forget to love myself first. It is my own duty to make myself happy. And if this will mean to be single again at any point in my life and have people looking at me as "poor her" or start asking uncomfortable and rude questions again, I hope that I will be able to be true to myself and not settle down for what someone else from the outside expects from me.

In any case, enjoy the article on the BBC.

I am an immigrant

I am living abroad, away from Italy since 10 years. It is a long time. I have been living in a lot of different countries and only in few of them I didn't feel that I was different, not belonging.

Here in Portugal, despite the cultural differences, none ever made me feel like I was "different" because non-Portuguese. People in general are doing a lot of efforts to understand me in my mixed mostly-spanish-a-bit-of-Portuguese spoken language...well of course, except for my landlord....but I can live with that. This until this morning.

I went to the farmers market as I do every 15 days on saturday. I love going to the farmers market here, it is one of the things I love more of living in this small Portuguese village. I like chatting with the people there, they all know me by now. They even remember my mom. They know what I like. It is a familiar environment. I really enjoy it and since there is only every 15 days on a saturday, I always look forward to this regular appointment.

However, this morning I had a not too pleasant conversation with one of the vendors. He was telling me that just a bit before me there was a Spanish girl who bought something and that he was surprised that there are so many foreigners, Spanish, Italian, etc living in this small village, because we are not here just for the holidays. I told him that we all work together in a research center nearby. He was surprised, but not pleasantly surprised. I like to state here that this guy is normally extremely nice and friendly, so it was not that he is rude or anything like this.

The first thing he said was:
- I hope that the money to pay your salary come from abroad or from the European community.

I stared at him......and only said "sorry?" I was not sure I understood well.

- I mean, why should Portugal pay someone who is not Portuguese? and even more, why should Portugal pay so many foreigners?

I understand that this may be a difficult concept for people who are not familiar with how the research world functions and that the foundations of our work are based on shared knowledge, independently of the nationality or race of the people doing research. I understand that with the current economic situation people are less tolerant. But the thing is....I have a salary, I live in Portugal, I pay my rent in Portugal, I do my shopping in Portugal, my life is in Portugal.....so, it is not that someone is paying me to bring the money to Italy and spend it there. I am part of this economy, I am part of this country until I work and I live here.

I don't understand this growing intolerance toward giving a job to a foreign person. I am not talking here about an illegal immigrant. I am talking about a person who is legally allowed to work in the country, who lives in the country, who may even pays the taxes in the country, etc. It is not that the money that the country invests on me are thrown away.....I just don't get it.....

The guy actually only chilled out when I confirmed to him that yes, a large part of our salaries come from the European community......

I am not very favorable in general to globalization, but local and narrowed thinking is a very dangerous thing, I feel.

Neither here nor there

......I wonder where is the place for me in the world......

One year I am in Portugal and I still don't get the way of doing things in this country. Procrastinating is a world that must not exist here, as it is such a common attitude that here it would lose its meaning....yeah, yeah, I know, I generalize too much.......The thing is. I am sure that there are exceptions to the general trend, but my experience living in this country for a year already shows me that I can't expect anything to happen in a reasonable time.

Three things I noticed in a year and that people who visited me got (all of them) noticed in a matter of just a couple of days.

- Service here generally sucks. Portuguese people are nice, no doubts about that. However, it seems that selling you something, serving you or whatever other interactions especially including food service could not happen in what I consider a normal service....no, instead either the person serving you does not even pay any attention to you for a randomly but generally quite long time span or if he/she does, you can bet that it will be a rather unfriendly exchange, like if they are doing a favor in serving you....no matter if I am actually paying for the service.
So, up to now this is an example of things that happened to me (and this is not a complete and extensive list, but just a few examples):

- At a restaurant, the waiter left me waiting until a soccer game action was over to get my order
- At a restaurant, my friend and me were left unattended because the waitress owner left and none else was in the restaurant except us and another customer.
- At a restaurant, the waiter shoveled the plate with the food to a friend of mine, so that most of the olives that were in the plate ended up on his pants, on the floor, or on the table.
- At a restaurant, the waiter kept smiling at us for long time before actually come to get out order, when it was clear that we were ready and she was not really busy.
- At a restaurant, the owner/waitress would not bring us the bill because she was too busy eating (and this not at the end of the service, but in the middle of opening hours).
- At a restaurant, the chef, waiters, and waitresses would sit at the table to eat when we were still there and would have liked to leave....but since everyone was eating at a table next to us, they couldn't stop to bring us the bill.
- At a cafe', we had to wait 15 minutes even if the cafe' was almost empty before someone would come to ask us what we wanted....and this after we got told 15 minutes before to sit that someone would have come (of course....they didn't specify when they would have come).
- In my apartment, I still have water on my kitchen floor every time it rains.....today I had to stay at home another day and work from home to wait someone who was supposed to come to look at the problem....only, as always none showed up and my landlord not only didn't call to tell me something, but he also didn't reply to my calls. I have no idea how many days of work I have already lost staying at home waiting for someone to show up.
- At work, my student has the philosophy that either something can be done quickly, no matter how badly it is done, otherwise we could do it together so that she could do something better with her time.

I feel that in this country, respect of other people time must be a very fuzzy concept.....
Now, considering my very organized mind and way of doing things and my kinda-of-German mentality, I can't stop struggling and being frustrated all the time.

And it seems that it doesn't matter what I can do....nothing change, nor if I try to solve things nicely, nor if I get angry. Nothing.

Too bad it is a lovely country and I love the place where I live, because otherwise I would have already had a break down.

On the other hand, I am applying for plenty of jobs in the USA, where my boyfriend is and where there are more job opportunities. Unfortunately, the fact of not being American and not having presently a working VISA in the USA, makes any of my application becoming a nightmare, as I have to keep sending email to ask if I can actually apply to the position and my application will be considered or as I am currently an "alien" I cannot even dream of getting a job in the USA.........

The older I get, the more I get the impression that I should just stop caring about things and try to abuse of any system I am in and not even bother trying to do things in a proper and efficient way, because most of the times the only one getting completely frustrated is just me.............................

The art of effectively protesting

I love my native country, Italy.....but there are things about Italy and Italians that I don't understand.

In this moment of deep economic crisis, in every European country facing more strongly the crisis, Portugal, Spain, Greece, there are massive protests, with an incredible amount of people of every age participating to it. In Spain and Greece the massive protests against the measures proposing large cut in public sectors like health or education were even violent. Maybe these protests will not help or change anything, but it is the only power that a normal citizen has to complain about decisions of the government that we didn't agree with.

And what about Italy?

Every single day, I get news from Italy about friends or family losing their jobs or having problems to get to the end of the month.....and yet, not longer than five-six days ago hundred of people waited in long cues in the major Italian cities to buy the new iPhone, l'iPhone 5 the price of which in Italy almost reaches 1000 euros!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1000 EUROS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and the most impressive thing is that the people waiting in line for hours to get this iPhone were young people, under the age of 30......how can they afford it??? I don't believe that all these people are either selling drugs or their bodies to make money to buy these gadgets......

It just doesn't make sense.....as it doesn't make sense that in my home town little family run shops are closing one after the other, because they cannot afford the expensive rents with the low income that they make now. And yet, beauty centers do not feel the effect of the crisis.....When I was in my home town this summer, I spoke to a friend of mine working in a beauty center and she told me that this last year they sold more beauty packages (expensive beauty packages) than any of the previous years....

my question is.....in a moment of economic crisis, I understand to keep the market running and flowing, but wouldn't you limit your expenses saving on things like going to a beauty center??? It is good keep spending money to not stall the market.....but still.....

maybe because for me these are not necessary things.....

In any case, today I read on the Italian news that high school students protested on the streets of Milano and Roma........high school students??? most of them will be under 18....I don't want to diminish their impact and the value of their protests, but I have been an high school student too and these protests were always at the beginning of the semester and at the end of the semester, when the desire to go to school was almost zero and any excuse to spend the time doing something else was good......

I would really suggest to Italians that if we really want to learn how to effectively protest and do a strike, we should attend a couple of protests and strikes in France and then maybe we will effectively manage to send a strong message of disappointment and disagreement to the govern.

Being bullied

If I should define myself in a couple of words, among the first ones coming to my mind there would be "determined", "responsible", and "just".

Now, not having worked in Italy or in countries where things work similarly to how they work in Italy (meaning that hierarchy is extremely important, much more important of what it is right or of working things out together), I am not used anymore to not be able to discuss things in a civil way with people who hierarchically are "above" my status. Not only I cannot discuss things in a researcher-to-researcher way with someone who is "above" me in the research center where I work, but I should just zip my mouth, as I have been invited to do.....

Basically the way things are currently working is to spend as less as possible, to invest as less as possible, to not care about safety and safety rules, and in general to do things "alla carlona" as we use to say where I came from.....It is not my way of working, especially when I am responsible of someone's else work and I have to set up the good example.

Because I asked to organize things in the lab so that everyone has some space to work and store things and because none of the people who should be in charge of this organization and cleaning got back to me or did anything and because together with other people after spending 5 months politely inviting the people in charge of this to do their jobs nothing happened, we decided to clean and organize things by ourselves......the result has been that instead of someone "high up" thanking us, one of the someone "high up" has been complaining openly about me stepping on other people feet and doing things that should not compete to me. The thing that disturbed me is that instead of telling me his complaints straight on my face, he went to tell this to students...so he didn't even have the gut of coming to me. And this was one.

Then, I tried to organize a space to do something with toxic reagent in a way that none could have to breath the toxic substances. Of course, someone else, still "high up" went straight to the responsible of the group where I am working here and complained about me wanting to change things....I just arrived and I am so arrogant to change everything.....well, for safety reasons, yes...especially considering that this guy sits at his desk and doesn't even know what he is talking about.....fortunately, the person with whom I am working and who is responsible for me working here, is an intelligent person and basically told this guy to shut his mouth since he had no clue of what we were talking about....again, none said anything directly to me.....only complains to others.

Today I got an email from the secretary of our research center saying that the second person in charge of the center wanted to see me. As I was not there at that moment, I contacted this person to know when we could meet and of course, he ignored me as he has always done when I tried to discuss with him the cleaning and the safety measures to do our work.

As if this was not enough....It is three months that I look at the fight between my landlord and the man in charge of the building where I live on who should pay the reparations to avoid that every time it rains, I have the kitchen full of water....it is obvious that because these are expensive reparations, none wants to pay for them. The end result is that my landlord who is a judge decided that he will file a legal complaint to the tribunal against the condominium for not doing the reparations....thing is that legally he could do whatever he wants and file a legal complaint etc., but as I am paying the rent to him every single month, even if this problem is going on since forever, he should send someone to do the reparations and then deal with the condominium on who will pay what....of course, at the end the one who is losing instead is me.....and if I leave, my landlord will keep the deposit.....

Lastly, they renewed my contract for another year and without saying anything they decided to cut 700 euros from what it was established on the original contract. Of course, this is also illegal, but they did it....not just to me, it is not just me being unlucky....

I feel that any of these things mentioned above is just ridiculous and I am bullied around because I am none at work and I am a foreigner here......I hate this.

Moglie e buoi dei paesi tuoi

And this is another common say that we use in Italy...literally it reads : wife and beefs of your country.
More in general it means that it is wiser to chose someone with the same background for a long-term commitment, being this getting married or something else.

I thought that this say wouldn't make too much sense today and that it would be totally outdated....I recently discovered than instead different backgrounds and cultures are not always easy to melt....especially over serious matters.

Traveling as much as I do and living and moving from one country to another, my two last relationships have been with non-Italian people. Not a big deal I thought. As long as we are all open-minded we can overcome any issue....I still stand by this thought, but I have to add that overcoming cultural difference, which most of the times one doesn't even know to have, requires a lot of work and a lot of patience, from both sides when the people involved are in a relationship.

Things that for me are completely obvious for the other person may not be at all. I remember when during my first relationship with a non-Italian person, the olandesino, he always freaked out when my family would scream and yell at each other in the middle of a "normal" conversation....before being able to understand Italian, he always thought that they would end up killing each others...considering that for my family this is the normal way to communicate and to talk and that discussing with animosity can happen even for small things like where to have dinner, without anyone actually being angry at someone else, you can understand how many times he had to experience this kind of situation before realizing that it was not the end of the world and it was just a cultural difference from his own (Dutch).

Now that I am in a very committed relationship to my ex-now-new-again-boyfriend I am facing cultural differences on a regular basis......it can be quite frustrating and it requires a lot of communication, patience and compromise from both of us. It is worth it. But it is also quite some work......

We may be all connected by internet, facebook, and whatever else, but cultural differences are still there....and despite the work and the stress that the may cause in a relationship between two people with a different background, I am happy that they still exist and globalization didn't wipe them out yet!

Let's preserve differences and work to learn about them and understand what it is unfamiliar to us!

I don't understand how this keeps happening

...people getting on the street, in a mall, at a convention and start randomly shooting and killing others.

I don't get how in a civilized country like the USA this keeps happening. What is it? is the third time this year already?

I don't understand how someone can just freely possess a gun and use it to randomly shoot around.....Yes, it does happen also in other countries, but how often? once every many years? yes, the USA is a big country, so statistically the chance of something like this happening is higher than for smaller places....but still. It is unacceptable....

I am so sad and shocked for this news that I just read about what happened in NY. I am not American, so I am probably not able to understand the gun law and I am a pacifist, so of course anything having to do with violence is very far from my way to look at things.....but how can something like this be normal or be part of normal life? how can a crazy person possess a gun and shoot people around??? how??? can someone explain this concept to me? because I really don't get it.

Btw....and today they also decided about another crazy, evil person...21 years in prison is nothing...they should put him there and throw the keys away.....at least they judged him "mentally normal" so that he could be convicted to these 21 years in prisons, which is still better than nothing....

And about this general topic, I just saw a good movie with a good message Runaway Jury

Farinha torrada

I just had this cake that a friend of mine brought me from a place South of Lisbon...

Fantastic!!!! I have to force myself to stop eating it. I love everything with cinnamon and this is so good!!!!! I should try to make it....

Mazza che puzza!

I am definitively clumsy. This is not something new to me.
However, burning something and have the whole kitchen smelling so much that I still cannot close the windows even if this happened hours ago, it is something I would have warmly avoided.

I am not new to burning things either just because I forget about them.

Once I put a moka machine on the stove to make some coffee.........thing is that I totally forgot about it and I went to take a nap. When my sister got to my mom's place (where I was staying at that time), the kitchen was full of smoke, the smell of burned coffee and plastic was unbearable and the plastic parts of the moka machine were melted.

Another time, when I was living in Germany, I baked a cake and left the oven half open to cool down but forgot to switch it on. I went with the cake to stay at my boyfriend's place and then I left for Italy for a few days...when I got back to my apartment, the whole place was probably around 230 degrees C, the temperature at which the oven was set up. I don't want to mention the electricity bill I got that month, because it was not as important as the fact that I was lucky enough to not burn the entire place down.

After these episodes (and these are just examples of how forgetful I can be), I turned out to be little maniacal about checking to have switched things off million times before leaving my place. However, when I am relaxed, as my mom uses to say to me all the times when I am in Italy in vacation "I send my brain in holidays".....so these episodes of me being especially clumsy they mostly happen when I am relaxed.....

This evening I was in fact very relaxed watched a movie after dinner, when I realized that I was still hungry and I wanted to eat something more...so without paying any attention I put a pot on the stove, without realizing that there was something in wood under the pot, which of course, got placed in between the stove and the pot.....the result is that it is very smelly here.

Still about bad smells.....I am not a sherlock holmes, but on the first floor of where I am staying it is since 3-4 days that there is a smell of something rotten....something like a rotten dog.....it is so strong that we have to keep the windows of the building all open to be able to breath while on the stairs...the smell is so bad that we can smell it even from the outside......now, nobody seems to be at home. There were people during the winter, but not the whole place looks without anyone inside, windows closed, curtains down......ok, I read too many thriller books maybe...but what is someone got killed in there or just died in there??? it certainly smells like something rotten....

Now, of all the people living in this place, why does it have to be me who doesn't speak a single word of Portuguese to call the guardian of the building to ask him to just check that everything is ok in there??? I guess that if in some months we will see worms crawling out of that place, we will know that something is definitively wrong......

42nd parallel south

It doesn't happen often, but when it does, I am shaken to the bottom of my soul.

I got this book from my mom as a present, I cannot remember if it was last Christmas or for my birthday last year. In any case, when I got the book is not important. What it is important is that some of its pages touched me so much that I just had tears in my eyes. 

I have always dreamed since years to go traveling and wondering around in Patagonia. Without a schedule. Without a goal. Just to live the place and feel it. I still don't know why Patagonia. It is just that any time I read something about it, I feel like it is my place. Maybe I am becoming too much of an hermit. I don't know. I don't necessarily think so. But I dream of the solitude of walking around in a place like Patagonia. Of being in a place where nothing can be given for granted. I have to admit that I would be too scared to go there and spend months there alone....but I always hope to find the right company to share this dream with.

In any case, I enjoy travel books. Books about places in the world. This is why I probably like so much B. Bryson's book (together with the fact that he is an amazing writer!). But this book, this specific book I am reading is not only about Patagonia and traveling below the 42nd parallel south of the world. It is about encounters with people who love this place. It is about a hard land, a difficult solitary place where people still live in a simple way, without the pressure that we have in this kind of world instead. I just read a chapter of this book about a solitary 95 years old woman living in this solitary place, in her isolated little house, drinking mate. But she is not alone, she has her dog, her sheep, her garden. I was reading about it, but I could imagine the whole place, the old lady, everything like if I was standing in front of the scenario. And the book tells about the appeal of this land to people with a lot of money who cannot appreciate the wind, the steppe, the nothing and want to use this immense space to build something on it, to change it, to destroy what it has been until now, as it happens for many other once uncontaminated places on earth. And reading this and thinking that Patagonia too will face the advancement and progresses of our civilization and most likely lose all what I ideally love about this place, the isolation, the lack of the globalization pressures, the scattered living things surviving there, the natural environments, made me extremely sad.

I love starbucks and I always enjoy getting an ice soy latte when I am in the USA. But I also love the fact that it is a treat for me, that I cannot have it all the time, because here, in most of the places in Europe, we still have little coffee places, which are one of a kind. I am not against globalization, but it shouldn't be so widespread. I like characteristic, traditional things and there are places in the world that shouldn't be bought just because someone has the money, that shouldn't be destroyed in name of making more money and making a world that looks all the same, no matter where we are. I am definitively for diversity.

Please, let Patagonia be and stay as in my dreams!

I am not superstitious

Friday 17.

I should have known better and spent the whole day in bed.

I instead decided to wake up, get out of bed and live it like a normal day, because I am not superstitious....

But what a major crappy day it has been today!

I had a major drama-like situation for work, with panic, phone calls, everyone worried.....and the thing is not solved yet....it even included someone telling me that my career after this may be over...I thought it didn't even fully start yet.....

Then I had a major fight with my ex-now-current-again boyfriend, which made me wondering why I am not just staying on my own....

Good thing that I live in a little corner of paradise, so that I escaped the two things first by biking along the sea for long time and then in the evening, by walking on the beach at the sunset looking for animals left behind by the low tide.

Second good thing is that I have many episodes to watch of BBT, which I love and which still makes me laugh even if I watch the same episodes over and over!

But gosh if this was a very harsh day!!!