kerala!

Cari miei, I eventually managed to get an internet shop with an internet connection that can decently support writing on the blog, so now I am here eating cashew nuts and trying not to stay in the sun.
So, after Mysore I went back to Bangalore, while stopping on the way to see the old capital of the Mysore state (Tippu Sultan, the tiger of Mysore, yeah baby kick the english in the nuts). Then I flew into Kochi in Kerala and now I am in Kollam, from which I will leave today to go to Varkala: yes, I know, I said that I didn't want to go to the beach but I look like a truck driver (sunburnt on nose, cleavage, feet and half arms, up to the tshirt, all the rest white) so I want to get tanned a bit more uniformly and also to be able to jump in the sea to escape this weather.
So, some more considerations:
- the swastika, the symbol that the single-nutted nut and his friends used 70 years ago, is originally a hindu symbol, and it means a lot of very nice things. When you say, comes the european and screws it up.
- the communist party, or parties, most probably, are pretty big here in the south, you see flags and posters all over the place with hammer and sickle. It reminds me of pictures of Italy in the 70s (also considering the cars the go by).
- cashew nuts are really good
- I have a very bad problem, and that is that I found out that books are extremely cheap. So I have already bought around 10, which significantly increased the weight of my luggage. Red alert!!
- I really like the Ramayana, apart from the end: what the hell, you go and live in a freaking forest full of all sorts of demons for 14 years, you have to go with the army of the monkeys and bears to kill the biggest demon alive and most of this for your wife and then a couple of bastards talk behind your back saying that perhaps she made you cornuto despite the fact that you made her go through the fire and what do you do? You send her to the forest! Pregnant!! And when after a decade or so you find your kids and she's there you still don't want her because your fucking ministers would talk badly of you??? Commmeee ooooonnnnnn
- the food continues to be extremely good, but I really would like to eat some fresh fruit and vegetable however every time I am temped I feel like hearing Preeti's voice telling me that I will spend the rest of my holiday on the toilet and I force myself away :(
- bats are 5 times as big as in Europe
- the tight skinned pants to put under the kameez (or whatever it's called) are called churidar and I really like them , so I already have 2 pairs :)
- the kids tend to say Hi instead of Hello. Nothing bad with that, if only it didn't remind me of the way Britney Spears or some other idiot says it (hhhiiiiiiii with a cat-miaouing voice)
- labour here always seems to be extremely people-intensive ( at least 3 times as more people as you would get in europe to do the same thing) and extremely disorganized. I was in the state industry for silk production in mysore and i nearly wanted to scream for how inefficient it was.
- power cuts are pretty frequent but nothing you dont get used to, even though they should get some power generators in the Bangalore airport, at least not to give a bad impression to all this completely wrongly dressed American business men (and women, shit, you cannot go to India with such short skirts with big cuts behind that basically go up to your ass, heeellooooo)

now i finish chatting with Jaccko (by the way, if you didnt know it, he and Jasmina are getting married!!) and go get a taxi to the beach.
ciaoooooo

here I am!!!

miei cari, i am hiding in an internet shop here in Mysore because it's hot like hell outside (toooooooo bad really, considering that when i left germany it was snowing, ohhhh, i am sooooooo unlucky).
Anyway, so far everything is ok, i haven't been illegally ;) robbed and the city is fantastic. Little considerations on the trip so far:
- next time i study a bit more, today the poor guide in the maharaja's palace tried to explain to me all the different stories of the never ending indian gods (because not only there are tons of them but they also re-incarnate!!) and i was staring at him like a un-holy cow watching the train go by.
- snapple!!!!!!!
- pineapple juice is oh so tasty.
- screw the naan, i want more paratha!!!
- 1st class in trains looks too familiar to the regionali in italy, apart from the absence of crowd because it's too expensive and to the working AC (oh yes!). I can say that i had the experience but honestly i thought it would be better. Please, indian minister of transportation, clean the freaking windows!!!!!!
- indian police stole a lighter from me, but i had another one hidden. Alba 2: Indian airport police 1
- in Goa there were tons of stray dogs.
- in Bangalore there were tons of stray people trying to get the train, or spleeping in the train station, or eating in the train station, or bothering me in the train station while drunk, or kicking the ass of the drunk guy off me.
- queues are random
- at the beginning i tought drivers were crazy, now i start understanding the way they drive. Hope it's not a side effect of insolation.
- people here in the south smoke the same shitty tasting small brownish cigarettes with a little purple rope at the end that my freak piano teacher used to smoke.
- people can sleep everywhere
- rickshaw are the best form of transportation on the ground
- kingfisher airline is so cool it's nearly unbelievable

ok, now i go to the market and then i'll try not to get ripped off by the taxi guy.
ciaoooooooo

INDIAAAAAAAA

Cari miei, if Alitalia doesn't screw me tomorrow at this hour I will be in India. Which means that probably for some time you won't hear from me, unless I find an internet shop somewhere. Now I have to finish packing.....
ciaoooooooo

the Italian community grows

miei cari, yesterday I had a shitload of things to do in the office, basically it was my nearly last day in the office before going to India, since next week I am going to be shipped to the plant and will manage to come back just in time to pack my stuff and catch the plane. And, to top it all, I had this shitty headache, you can imagine how nice it was to try and review/write documents, with sametime popping out every other minute and the phone ringing... Anyway, at around 7:30 I decided to screw it all and I went out with Christoph and Angie to Hemingway. We couldn't find it so we started walking around, and this definitely helped getting rid of the headache (and possibly also the couple of beers I drank later). At the place we met an Italian girl that is working with Angie, and 2 other Italian guys. Later we went to Chango (no, I really don't like it) and they were really nice. Net, we have 3 new entries in the Italian community:-) and tonight perhaps they come to Carletto's birthday party.
Note: I read on Gabor's blog of his adventures in the Indian consulate. I understand his frustration, but also I think he has no clue what real burocratic inefficiency looks like. Gaborno, try and renew your Italian passport, and then you really understand...

suggestion

miei cari, suggestion for a holiday (waiting for the washing machine to finish): renting an old VW van from the Seventies and going around, either in California or in Scotland.

frankfurt international

What the hell happened to the font sizes in this crappy blog????? I was using small and now I need to use tiny. The misteries of technology...
Little update. Today I was coming back home from the city centre when a guy runs to me and starts talking at light speed in German. Obviously I didn't understand anything, so I asked him to switch to English. He said that he saw me walking down the street and he thought that if he didn't come and talk to me he would regret it for the rest of his life. You can imagine my shock. This is Germany, men stare at you in clubs but still they don't chat you up. And this guy, out of nowhere, comes and says this. Problem is that I didn't like him so I froze him with a nasty comment. But still, things are improving.
Later, I went to Gültekin's birthday party. He and his wife are really nice people and it was pretty much amusing to see some pictures of when he was younger and wilder with long hair, earrings, catching fish half naked with a spear. Amsuing. And the food was excellent. Main course was some pasta, like the risoni we use in Italy for the soup, with tomato paste, on a layer of meat. Really tasty. And a salat of something that looked like bulgur, even though I am not sure that it was, with onions, tomatoes, parsley, pomgranate juice, lemon juice, cumin and another spice that I've never seen in my life. Really good (and I got some for tomorrow). And also a lot of other stuff, very good as well. Which reminds me that we need to organize a Italian-Spanish-Turkish food orgy event.

nothing special

Cari miei, this week nothing special to report, apart from Patricia staying at my place on Monday, Orfeo's Erben is always a nice place and I've been working a lot. But the good news is that in 2 weeks from now I will be in India. Holiday, at last!
Ops, I forgot:
1. this week there was a "weelbeing day" at work, with stands for the gym and other stuff. In the morning they gave some fruit (nice) on some porcelan plates (even nicer). Obviously I ate my fruit, even because I was hungry, and then I went around collecting the plates. So now I have 16 dessert plates:-) veeeeery nice
2. Italian and English are 2 very different languages. I've always thought so and now I got a further proof. Last time I was in Italy I bought a book from Philip Roth "L'orgia di Praga", translated in Italian. After some pages I figured out that I had already read it in English some time back. Now, the Italian translation is really different from the English one. The book is much more intellectual than the English (and original) version. I mean, obviously you can make simple, linear pages look much more complicated, you simply have to use Italian with all the tricks that it has, specifically not having a fixed structure. It really takes a good translator, and possibly a good author, to properly translate. Ode to thee, Cesare Pavese.
3. I read an interesting book, "Freakonomics". It gives good insights on a miriad of topics, it is well written and interesting. Shame that the authors didn't out the data for us to dig.

we found it!

Yesterday night we had no real plans, so we decided to go Hofheim (nice little village in the middle of nowhere east of Frankfurt) because they had some sort of pay-10-euros-and-go-around-in-the-bars thing. The first place where we went was this Jazzkeller, which ended up being a really good surprise. There were 2 groups playing: the first one, Captain Overdrive, was really good. They are 4 guys, drums, guitar, bass and trombone. No singer, the instruments do the melody in turns. Very nice arrangements, very well played and pretty good musicians also. The recorded music is a bit quiet, but live they rocked baby. Next concert they play I will be there (if I'm not shipped somewhere). And Jaccko, gimme my CD back! The second group was Brad Heart, a bunch of guys who claim to be "the best boy band in the world". I don't know if they are, but for sure they were amusing and clearly had a lot of fun performing. They are 4 guys, dressed up to kill, who are "singing" and/or "rapping" on a computer base. Said like this, it sounds hideous, but honestly their Disco Jackson is so stupid that everyone kept on singing it on the way back and played live is much better than anything a classical boy band has put together by far. Only problem is that I cannot download it from their myspace account, so you have to click and listen to it on your own. Shake your booty on the dance floor yeeeeeah

sempre attuale

summary

miei cari, before I start talking, let me tell you that this morning I was reading a book about the Salento and thereabout and am now listening to Mr Bob Marley, feeling at university again and very willing to be there at the end of April.
Anyway, after I came back from Cincinnati I spent the weekend with my parents, who came visit me for the weekend. It is always so extremely amazing for me to see how well they cope with the fact that their only child (oh yes, I am one and only) went to live abroad, not that far away, ok, but still not living under the same roof and also not reachable with pure will and half an hour drive. Also, it is surprising how these people I really love are evolving as people, and as my parents as well. You meet them and 2 months later you see new ideas, new enthusiams, new strenghts, new quarrels, new concerns, new jokes, new hell-my-knee/back-hurts-shit-I'm-getting-old-but-fuck-I'm-still-coping, new affection, new perspective. 2 Persons, period. And great ones at that. This is what I call being lucky.
After this I went to Spain to work. It is always great to be working when you know that if you get out of the plant alive you will experience sunshine, warm weather, good wine, good food. And it was also amusing to find out how people think: I was having dinner with a colleague of mine and, in vino veritas, he started being very vocal about what he doesn't like, some of it with good reasons, some other points I would assume for inability to adapt to different ways of how people are, of approaching problems, of priority (at the end of the day). Educational.
And today I came back to the office, after more than 3 weeks, worked a lot, always being surprised of how little effort it now takes me to do things that would have taken me ages in the past, and how cool I can be on things that would have driven me crazy (you don't want to see that) 6 months ago. I am more and more feeling that the time for a change is getting closer. Let's see.
By the way, our ex-friend Carlos will be deprived of his Italian passport and a nice big jamon serrano will be stuck up his ass, as promised - not by the side of the bone, just to be clear.