It’s the 31st and I’m the only one in the office. Did I not get a memo 🙂
The half italian-half romanian waitress offered me Italian lessons in exchange for english lessons…
nuff said…
I’ll be sure to not use those italian lines that worked so well for Matt 😉
show them all of your good parts. Leave town when the bad parts start to show…
My three favourite bands of the last couple weeks. 2 of each…Avett Brothers, Leningrad, and El-P. All new stuff to me…I guess I’m a bit out of it…Thank me later.
Food, football and figs.
I made it home OK. The train trip is quite nice so that’s not a pain. When the taxi man is hiding in the coffee shop and does not come out to check to see if anyone (me) is standing next to his taxi that is a pain, but alas, it happened eventually.
I may have said this before, but what a great week! Luca is the greatest tour guide ever, and we were staying at his mom’s house who I guess is a typical Italian mom. She doted over me (and everyone else), which was kind of nice. Luca’s family and friends were all great.
Luca is really the only one who speaks english fluently, so I was forced to attempt Italian. It didn’t always work, but it was a good experience. We all laughed at our failures.
I bought a couple of learn Italian type books so I guess I have no excuses. It was somewhat inspiring to be in Rome and around Italians.
When I get more pics from Luca I’ll post them on the Roma pic page.
Cheers again mate. I had lots of fun.
Words I learned this week:
busta=stop/enough…As in “I’ve had enough food” or “Stop bringing me food”.
fico=fig…Difficult one that. I also learned that if you make it feminine it’s an insult/bad word
mangare=eat…We ate well.
I somehow feel mentally better than I have since I’ve moved here. Relaxed, refreshed, refocused. It feels good!
I just downloaded some El-P, and Autolux. Cleaned a bit. Trying to catch up on laundry and soon off to the Focacceria.
ahhh Roma.
Took a bunch of pics yesterday at the Forum, Coliseum etc…
Here’s the link. More will be added later.
Rome is a beautiful city. I’m sure I will make it back.
…and so I guess it’s 24 December. If any of my people in the States read this, please consider it a happy holiday wish! Enjoy!
when you’ve seen one sistine chapel you’ve seen them all…
So I’m in Roma now. I have a ticket to Frankfurt, but since it seems everyone but the Saffas are gone (and I don’t want to feel like a third wheel) I have taken up Luca’s gracious offer to come to Rome.
The weather over the weekend was a wreck. It seems to have finally warmed up now, which is a nice gesture from the weatherpeople.
So a review…Matt arrived from Frankfurt on Saturday. Because of the weather he had to divert from Pisa to Genoa and he had to ride a bus from Genoa to Pisa. No skin of my back 🙂 I just walked around Pisa while waiting. In the meantime there were also train problems so when he got dropped off in Pisa it was getting late and I was worried about more train cancellations-Â so instead of showing Matt the tower we just went straight home (and then to the pub) to watch some football…which was also cancelled because of the weather. Didn’t really stop us tho. We still had a bit of fun before we both left Monday morning to catch a train (and an emergency taxi ride from a colleague – thanks Massimo!). Him to the airport for London and me to Pisa central station to move on to Rome.
I hope my tour of Marina di Carrara wasn’t too boring 🙂 At least there was snow on the beach. I guess you don’t see that everyday!
The train ride to Rome was pretty smooth (other than me sending a text to the wrong Luca to tell the roman luca when I would be arriving – oops).
Last night Luca played football with some friends while I kept time. It was about 1°C and pouring last night so the quality of play was questionable ;)…as was the timekeeping…This was followed by a great dinner.
Today Luca took me to the Vatican and it was great. It rained most of the day, but the museum and the Vatican were beautiful, as is the rest of Rome so far. On the way to the Vatican (by bus) we saw all the big sites (Colisseum etc) and we’ll get back there tomorrow to see them up close.
Cheers Luca for being such a great host!!!
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- Luca
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- Vatican Museum
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- King George right?
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- Umbrellas rock!
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- Vatican
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- Vatican
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- Vatican
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- Vatican
It snowed…
Gotta find a way to Pisa to pick up Matt. This should be fun.
Sarzana
I went to a dinner with colleagues last night in Sarzana. It was a steak restaurant where they bring out a plate of raw meat (whatever you ordered – beef, chicken, rabbit, buffalo etc) and a hot stone to cook it on. It’s sort of like raclette, but man was it good!!!
Sarzana is a cute little medieval town. I hope to go back when it’s warmer.
It’s way cold of late. Not quite as cold as Frankfurt so I guess I can’t complain, but it sure feels cold.
My German boss told me an Italian phrase that goes something like “christmas is like fish. After a couple days it starts to stink”.
Web 4,0
I saw Web 3.0 referred to in an article today…Idiot. Why don’t we just skip to web 3000?
Whoo hoo…I coined Web 3000 AND web 4.0!!! At the end of the day lawsuits will follow. Don’t you dare use it…
This is the death of Web x,x…It’s like typing www. It’s like 1999. It’s like being obsessed with midgets.
My boss accused me of having a 2 byte memory today 🙂 I think he was right.
allow me to rephrase that…
I am a bloody frickin genius…
I was dinking around on my pre 2009 blog because the link in the Dec 2008 page is gone…anyways I clicked on a random page from 2008 (August 16, 2008) and found this:
so I’m following this U.S. election with my usual aplomb…I love politics as soap opera, but don’t get emotionally involved except when I get pissed/annoyed at stupid people…
anyways…
IMO it would honestly be a huge upset if McCain actually won this year.
…Me always more viewing the big picture is much more interested in the long term repercussions for the US two party system etc.
Can you imagine the disarray of the republicans if McCain loses?
They accidentally nominated the most centrist, decent candidate they possibly realistically could have (jayssssus can you imagine Huckabee as the nominee right now?) and if McCain loses what will those dissatisfied religious voters do in 4 years? They got the centrist-ish candidate they didn’t want and he still lost…they won’t possibly compromise their ‘values’ even more in 4 years. will they backlash and get behind a ‘real’ conservative candidate in 4 years only to lose that election as well (you have to expect the economy will be better in 4 years, and after the democratically controlled house and senate actually pass things that will help middle class voters, those crazy fiscally responsible democrats won’t be so distasteful to the football mom skeptics who aren’t so sure this time)…?
anyways point is…If Obama wins this year he will win re-election…and my best case scenario is that people realize the two party system is crap…the religious wackos will vote their own party, the progressive wackos will vote their own party, and the reasonable dems, pubs will just merge…
anyways ultimate goal…proportional representation…so everyone gets a voice…
then I can complain about people having a voice that are stupid and don’t deserve to have a voice, but that argument can wait for 50 years…
…as I said…politics as soap opera much more interesting then politics as extension of my emotions…
So I claim correctness on my prediction. It was probably not original thought, but it was my own (meaning someone else probably wrote or realized the same thing well before I did, but I didn’t read anyone elses prediction before writing this)…but if two people have the same thoughts in a vacuum does that mean the second person who said it is just as smart as the first?
An article on Republicans and health care.
There is snow in the forecast next week. Uhhhhhh…..
Matt comes next weekend. Then I may head off to Rome the following week to catch up with another Frankfurt friend. It’s cheap enough and easy enough…but I’ll probably return before or on x-mas as spending time with someone elses family on a family holiday is more worse than spending it alone.