intellectual evening

miei cari, tonight I give you some hints on some nice books I am reading/read (yes, obviously I had Jasmina over for dinner and I am sort of drunk, otherwise you would get some nice random crap as usual)
first book is called some like wikinomics (don't know where I put it anymore so you just have to go with a random description): this is a book written about new (kind of) ways of doing economy by sharing - hence the name. The book has some nice parts and some are really boring, because, dear author, if you write saying that things are changing so fast you also need to consider that if you write your book in 2006 by now most of the stuff is old anyway - ah, funny. Still, it is nice to know that you can actually make a living by writing about wikipedia, myspace and facebook, so if one day I get bored I can turn into a writer. And there goes the business plan, dear readers.
second book is called the tiger that isn't. And this, as far as I can tell (because I haven't finished it yet), is a nice book. Basically it is a book that forces you to remember that every time you hear a number you should switch on you little bullshit-detector fuse in the back of the head and start thinking. Example? If a government, let's say the UK one (and here I am copying shamelessly from the book), tells you that they are going to invest 300 million pounds to create 1 million childcare places over 5 years, should you go down in the streets chanting and dancing and prasing the government? I mean, 300 million pounds is a significant shitolad of money. In reality, when you think about it, you should take 300 millions and divide them by 1 million (the places): this gives you 300 pounds per place. The you take 300 pounds and you divide them by 5 (the number of years) and that gives you 60 pounds per year. Then you take your annual 60 pounds per place and divide them by 52 (number of weeks in a year) and you end up with little more than 1 pound per week per place - which is far less than what a normal person would spend on a weekend out with friends and by far not enough to have some proper childcare. So what does it mean? That they are bullshitting us. And this is the simplest of examples. Now, I understand that you might think that this is a nerdy book to read. And you are wrong. Numbers are nice but they can cheat you badly (not the numbers themselves, but whoever massages them and boasts them and tricks them to fool you). Think about it next time your boss gives a salary increase, and you start wondering. I assume I need to go to bed. Peano rulez!

zzzzzz

miei cari, I am in Italy at my parents place and I am falling asleep. Because I went out too much yesterday night, you wonder? No, because I am old. So now I will go back to the sofa, read half a page of a book, fall asleep like an idiot and then wake up (hopefully before tomorrow morning) and go out with friends. Or could just skip the whole sofa experience, get my ass out of the place and go around to wake up - which probably is the best solution. Anyway, I will come back to Germany tomorrow night, then 4 days of work and then MEXICOOOOOOO
ciaociao

feels like 15 again

miei cari, I am having a complete trip back in time. First, I find a lot of my high school classmates on facebook (and yes, I confirm the post from yesterday, the new version sucks). Then I am finding some nice groups to listen to. Unfortunately I am not 15 any more so tomorrow I will look like a piece of organic matter formed after digestion (see how polite I am, I didn't say shit - shit, I said it! shit! ah, again!! shit!!!). But anyway, who cares, long live whoever invented make up. So mark your calendars because on November 21st we go see Foals - still have to understand why they actually decided to come play in this town, but I shouldn't complain. And if I find something else I keep you posted.

PS yes, as usual it will be me and Gaborno because my friends are OLD FARTS (do you feel challenged now??)

alba vs. technology - part 200

miei cari, as you have probably noticed facebook now has a new layout (this assumes that you are registered in facebook, which probably you are not since you are spending time reading this instead of getting the newest and bullshittiest application). That said, I've just arrived home and I wanted to check what happened when the bloody thing starts crashing miserably. After the 10th time I try to make it work I decide to change my status to Alba says: this new facebook SUCKS! But, misteries of technology, an error message prevents me from posting it. Strange, eh? As the zeppelins used to say (the led ones, not the baloons): ooooh it makes me wonder...

small Thai lady - big pain

miei cari, yesterday I decided to go for a Thai massage in the city. So I go there and meet the lady who was going to give me a massage. She was no more than 150cm tall, no more than 35kg in weight and very quiet and smiling. So I thought that it will be a relaxing 45 minutes and I prepared myself on the bed. And all of the sudden she starts with a massage and I thought that she was going to tear my muscles away. I also checked whether instead of the little, quite and smiling lady I was actually getting massaged by the twin brother of Mike Tyson. After some minutes I try to grunt that it was a bit too hard but my German is bad and hers was even worse so she understood that my muscle was a bit hard and she kept on cracking it for the next 5 minutes - which was a good learning, so for the remaining 30 minutes I just shut up and let her massacre me. That said, the massage was actually good so now I feel more relaxed. I still prefer the ayurveda massages that I got when I was in India, they were far more gentle and still very good. The only disadvantage is that they covered me in oil and at the end I had to wash my hair 5 times to manage to get rid of the oil.

so when do I get my 2 free dinners?

miei cari, yesterday night we went out with Jasmina, Tina and Gaborno to a really nice thai restaurant. At a certain time our man Gaborno decided to bet with me. First time he was saying that Nutella for sure was invented in Germany and I said that it was invented in Italy, so we decided to bet and I won (Ferrero is Italian, my dear Gaborno, and it comes from a region full of nuts - fruit and people). Second time he bet that the nose of the elephant was called trumpet while I said that it was not, and I won this one as well. So now Gaborno owes me 2 dinners: 1 is for sure schnitzel, since he is very good at them. For the second one I think he is trying to find out whether they sell elephant meat anywhere, to be honest i hope he doesn't find because it sounds slightly gross. And apparently if you are jew or muslim you are not even supposed to eat it - not that we care but you never know. Apart from this what happend? Nothing. So now I go get myself a manicure and pedicure and if I manage also a thai massage. Ah ah.

Gaborno, I've got it as well:)

I saw this on Gaborno's blog and I liked it a lot

Only problem is that I don't know how to make it bigger... (me ignorant, ja)

bollywood, here I come!

to clean the toilets, perhaps... Miei cari, today Maria, Ana, Betty, Sofia and I went to this bollywood dancing course and it was great fun. We could also learn and dance (well, sort of) a whole 3-minutes coreography!! At the beginning the teacher was a bit tense, especially after I stopped exercising a turning move because after doing 3 times I thought I was going to puke my soul off after yesterday night's party at Naka's place (more on that later). But then we started bullshitting and at the end everyone enjoyed it a lot. I am still wondering how can people move the head right and left, after trying for 2 hours I could barely move it 2 cm per side with the very painful feeling that my neck was going to break. Well, anyway. I really want to find more of these courses, they are a great way of spending a Sunday, especially when outside it's getting cold like hell. So then yesterday I went to Naka's place for her birthday party. Peter had catered a cook to cook (which sounds a bit like an oxymoron, however lately cooks seem to spend their time on tv sporting fancy hairstyles and giving the impression that they couldn't distringuish a pan from their grandma) and the food was very tasty. The wine was also pretty tasty, which basically means that I ended up shit faced with people wanting to steal the keys of my car for fear that I would drive home and kill myself. So I made this perfect plan, like "pretend that I go to bed, wait until noone sees me and then sneak out of the place". Unfortunately I felt asleep the moment I touched the bed (welcome to the world of old farts...); the good thing, at least, is that after not even 2 hours I woke up to go to the toilet and was intelligent enough to put the alarm clock, otherwise I don't think I would have made it to the bollywood dancing course. Highlight of the night, apart from the great eintopf and roasted pig, was a discussion on cultural differences on the topic "should a man do the first step and chat up a woman or is it also OK if she goes and basically puts her pussy on a silver tray in front of him" - well, perhaps we didn't really say that way but it sounds like a effective summary-. The majority declared that it is OK for a woman to go chat up a guy and basically put her toungue in his mouth. Obviously the majority was German. Being the only Italian, I was looked at like some sort of only living survivor of an exint ancient civilization, when I tried to make the point that a man should make the first move, for fuck's sake. At least this. The audience really did not seem to even slightly comprehend what I was talking about. Depressing.

new meaning of the word overworked

miei cari, as you might have noticed, I haven't been writing here for a long time. I would like to pretend that I had extreme adventures in far-away lands with exotic and charming men that prevented me to keep you updated, but unfortunately the sad truth is that I am working like a slave. And the weather sucks, too. That said, I have just figured out that we are in full ramadan - which seems to be a more plausible explanation than the ones I had defined to explain why the muslim center 2 houses down the street is full of people from the last week - no, I am not becoming paranoid, I was thinking they had some sort of olimpic games of the muslim nations or something like that, then tonight I figured that they are singing and, since they are not allowed to drink alcohol, I started investigating alternative solutions. Anyway, I have been told that I need to let you know that Jack and Jasmina are in Italy and they are enjoying it a lot, even though they (well, Jack at least) complain it's expensive (surprise!). Jack is also saying that Napoli is dirtier than Beirut (surprise!) - well, might be dirty but at least you don't get a missile on your head while you are walking down the street. I am pretty sure that he is taking trillions of pictures, so I will just wait to see those. And now I end with the news update and go to bed. ciaociao