translation lost

when you speak in italian and you add some english words is like showing off:
"guarda, sono appena stato a un briefing"

sometimes it is simply, plain stupid:
"arrivo or ora da una sessione di inside trading"

If I had to show off in italian, I'd say: "L'altra sera ho visto i tool", and I'd get some appreciation for the ultra-metal band. But saying "yesterday i went to see the tool" is making sense only for a subset of people here, the others maybe thinking about some naughty erotic show.
Only when you're in an english-speaking country, you get to realise how silly some band-names are:

- city names: Berlin, Boston, Turin Brakes, Chicago, ... If i called my group "poirino" nobody would come and see me

- animal related: Animals, Bug, Cows, Cranes, Eels (what about "The Passero Solitario"?)

- my favourite category, objects: Cake, Can, Tool, Helmet, Alarm, Coil, Cream, Doors, Elbow, Shoes, Sky, Smile, Smog (wjat about "saracinesca" or the already existing "cerchi in lega"?)

- the out-of-context category: A House, All, The Band, Cleaners From Venus, Dinner Is Ruined, Handsome

any others?

i'm going down down down...

The latest italian elections were a real treat for ilaria and me.
We went off to Turin for voting properly, and we had the time of our lives following the exit poll projections with bated breathe.. personally I stayed up to 3 in the morning to have an idea of what was going on

Lately, a dvd is raising new questions, and they are heavy questions: what if the "sacred" right to vote, this taboo, was violated? What if my ballot was just a fake? What if the "almost draw" of Berlusconi and Prodi was driven by some external force?

For italian-speakers, this is the link

There are theories.
There are believers.
There are faiths and assumptions.
There are parties, political convictions.

I am an engineer, first and foremost, and I like data, as a matter of fact. And when I see something like this (projections of the votes for the Parliament through exit polls, during the day):



or, better, something like this (votes for the Senate):



i would love to be a statistician and claim that these curves were never seen in any elections. Never.

Pity I'm not a statistician

Five years on the run

my first academic paper has been accepted at the 2nd workshop on open source software in 2002. I remember vividly the sensations of flying to Florida and meet the legendary people I knew from their papers, the astonishment of hearing his presentation and thinking "oh gawd... THAT is sound...", and especially a long talk with Donald K. Rosenberg. The idea of speaking with him, his involvement in the discussion, and his book as a gift are among the best momories of that conference.

Five years later.

Another life.

During ICSE 2007, Grex and I will take over the workshop and run it ourselves.

Ok, it's only a workshop. But we will run it.

inevitable transition

Some lecturers believe this.

"Students represent the lecturer's greatest reward and heaviest burden. Some students can be both at the same time. There can be few more gratifying experiences than to instill a life-long love of learning into another human soul, or to hone a blunt, dull-edged mind into an analytical instrument of surgical precision. Most lecturers experience this once or twice in their careers. For the rest of the time, we take averagely bright individuals with modest critical faculties, and do what we can to turn them into averagely bright, but well-educated, individuals with some notion of independent thought"

"We all knew that students were incapable of mature judgement, and were as likely to rate a lecturer highly because he had an interesting haircut as by the quality of his teaching. So, clearly, students' opinions were irrelevant. "

"A lecturer's recognition by his students is irrelevant because students' opinions are held to be worthless. What matters is recognition by other lecturers. This means that status is tied to research activity above all else, as it is something that other lecturers can relate to. No lecturer increases his status by being a renowned teacher."

I believe that the biggest challenge for lecturers is not to forget how they felt like when they were students.

socialism without frontiers

living in england without being english is not easy.
As it's not easy to live anywhere away from your homeland.
Communication problems lead to a lack of socialisation, and you typically end up in composite groups of international friends (if you're lucky), or within people of JUST your own nation (if you're lazy - or unlucky - but mostly lazy).

Yesterday a colleague told me "mate, i feel so much better since we play football".
Take any children, give them a ball, and they will start kicking it. Communication is not an issue (apart from "meeeee! meeeeeeee! passsss meeee the baaaaaalllll!").

Corporate football sucks. Amateur football joins nations (especially when your nation wins the world cup)

in-between

Cheap flights come with cheap magazines which drive your attention away from the perception that you're some kilometers up in the sky inside a tin cilinder.

Cheap magazines contain useless stories, cheap humour and barbershop-like gossip. These days, cheap flights come with small biographies of famous enterpreneurs, to make you feel like a negligent piece of crap who is still flying on a 43cm long seat instead of any luxurious business class seats.

Cheap magazines tell you ambivalent stories. And they stay in-between like many other things in our recent culture. Nothing is black, nothing is white. Only countless shades of grey. This behaviour is cool; but its opposite is cool too. Felix Dennis is the founder of the man magazine Maxim and other needful ones. He founded a magazine of Kung-Fu in the 70's to cash out from the death of Bruce Lee. And he claimed in the cheap magazine that he spent some hundred thousands pounds in drugs, parties and whores in a year. That team work is for losers. Only tigers survive. And the predictable amount of "my dick is bigger than yours".

Everybody should be responsible for his/her own actions. I don't want to stay in-between anymore. Felix Dennis attitude revolts me. The attitude of sitting back silently revolts me more. Someone in the world is scaring people with the winner ideology for the masses. Scared people must reject this ideology: cheap magazines journalists should stand up and say to Felix Dennis: "what you just said will be with you always, when you will be sick and old and alone"

love and hate

three moments when teaching is frustrating
- you enter in a classroom where the air is hot and thick, and you are sure everyone will be sleeping
- you see someone really sleeping
- your mouth is dry and you forgot to take water with you and the words come out like small bricks

three moments when teaching is gorgeous:
- you think "now it would be nice someone took notes" and they actually take notes of what you say
- you are approached by students after the lecture, explain once again, and they tell you "smashing"
- you see someone in the audience with a TOOL t-shirt (this single reason is stronger than the three weak points)

sabbatical

recent heard conversation
"He was a great man"
"Indeed"
"But I think I would have not survived the experience"
"What do you mean?"
"I would have killed myself instead"


Not only they did a remake of the first superman movie.
Not only they chose a similar actor.
Not only they painted his face to make his look more resemblant.

In the movie, which i didn't see, he's supposed to justify himself for not being around on the Twin Towers airplane crash.

He was having a sabbatical 5 years on the Krypton planet.

Now it's clear why Zidane could do the headbutt.

sleepy songs

if you could choose to hear - live - one specific, whole record of a band you have liked a lot in the past, which one would you pick?
Personally, I would like to listen to "achtung baby" from U2, "born to run" by springsteen, "daydream nation" from sonic youth, "oK computer" from radiohead, ... and so many others

But I didn't understand why, at the barbican, in London, Tindersticks played the [untitled 2] album entirely, having released better records before ("untitled I") and after ("curtains") that one

The tone was slow and dense, and the audience responded quite well (people sitting below and beside us were only awakened by the overloaded applauses after each song) and I couldn't understand why and if U2 could ever play all together the zooropa record

But then I thought of how difficult is to have on stage all the instruments to reproduce live a whole record. Still on other records they use pretty much the same stuff

But then I thought that they may have liked that record more than others. Still after playing it all, they started playing something more cheerful from other records

But then I thought whatever, they are tindersticks!. Still i paid 28 quid for it

But then I thought the venue was fantastic. Still we were sitting, probably in the farmost chairs from the stage.

This series of concerts is called "don't look back".
So tindersticks, please, follow this rule because maybe it's me running after you, claiming my money back

missing genes - 2

I think that I miss the genes for getting into the Fabric of London

probably I would need some weeks to understand how I should get dressed

sense of

i coulnd't update this blog from japan, it would have been a shame to loose time connecting too much on the internet

but this new toy made me remember some of our impressions about where we stayed in Japan. When we got to Tokyo, we didn't have any accomodation yet, so we decided to give a try to the "love hotels", las-vegas, rococo-like and cheap accomodation designed for "rest" (up to three hours) or "stay" (the whole night). What you saw entering the room was a bunch of stereotyped erotic gadgets in a cleanest, zero-windowed cube, soft music, fluorescent lights to make your teeth shine (well, that's what we got from it really :-(, coloured yakuzi, porn dvd on the player, porno channels, and the dream-of-a-life: a tin box with ropes and hook to emulate your manga heroes...! Come on Mazinga!

The playful and idioteque look of it stuck in my mind for a while, but later it changed to something dirty, pervert and utterly wrong, girls exiting/entering the places with clients, the dull mornings in a sex-obsessed city and an unfortunate reading , occidental tourists being accompained in sex tours by japanese guides, where they shouldn't be allowed to enter, girls' favours sold by their schoolmates.
That's the one, real aspect that I disliked of Japan, this "sense of", which you can't even mention in words, because it's already gone, Ilaria's bottom and cleveage being stared continually and obsessively, commuters watching naked girls on magazines sitting beside impenetrable women, everywhere impenetrable faces under which

this sex ipod to me is childish-ness exposed

beside i'd like to try some speed metal or death-metal on it

cool brain

time for vacation
time for cooling my brain off
time for something easy, brainless easy
time for shortest-term plans (I'm hot. Shower. Ohhh)
time for "it hurts to see you dance so well" from The Pipettes, nomination for the best song title ot the year

the next post will be from japan

time and flow

i could program for hours when i'm in the flow...

this limb-like state which everyone experiences also in movies/theatres/books, I'm quite happy it's an important part of my work also

my recipe is:
- discard the time applet on the laptop
- avoid reading emails
- plugging the music of underworld/tape/lithops/motorpsycho

I read of an autistic guy who could memorise 22,500 number of the pi, and declaim them as in a prayer, he said. He felt like paiting on a canvas a scenery of immense colours and flashing lights, but to me the best part is imagining his state of flow in that hours

i'm english and I'm proud of it

p.s. sorry for the cheap humour
p.p.s thx to ilaria for the picture...
p.p.p.s. thx to the mysterious girl leaving that beautiful trace on our tracks!

useless zodiac

i think all the italians seeing Germany vs Italy have baby-cried at the end of the match: it's something in our genoma, italy and football is like Uk and beatles, you have one (or many) modified genes

my theory today is about zodiac: planets move and influence your life, the closer the better. So, since 60,000 fans were supporting Germany last night, their hopes were influencing the games. Ther hopes were useless. Hence zodiac is useless!

Come on Italy let's make it magic!

have you seen this man? - 2nd edition

this man is hostage of Lincoln (or, as they say, "Lincon") City
we will release him shortly, but only if Italy wins tonight (or when he'll reveal how he can type that fast)

embarassing embarrassment

one of the beauties of the work i do is going for conferences. I am at one at the moment. For privacy (and some other reasons), can't tell where...

I remember having big problems for introducing myself and speaking with strangers at conferences when i was younger. But that's also caused by some professors, who treat PhD students at conferences a bit worse than their socks after a long walk. Now the bits of conferences which I prefer is knowing new people. Sometimes it's ok, and you find someone to do some nice smalltalk (where you can use the jokes you have been testing with your students); some other times it gets very lucky, and you find someone with the same interests as yours. That's not only nice, it also gives sort of an excuse to get along with your research ("i'm not the only one wasting my time on this stuff")

I remember the PhD general-tutor in my former job, listing a number of errors to be absolutely avoided when going to conferences:
1) do not walk in groups with your PhD buddies everywhere
2) practise your 5-words statement to introduce yourself, and be captivating!
3) do not tell obscene jokes when approaching a magnus professor
4) avoid having sex with any of the conference attendees
and others

To these wise advices I would add the following:
"never run like hell out from the train to reach the conference in a haste"
"avoid to sweat massively after that"
"for goat's sake, never share the lift with other attendees in those conditions"
"if you do, complain that the lift has a strange smell and that they didn't clean it properly"
"in doing so, do not raise your arms"

if thee hath done that, do not complain if approaching people you will feel like Moses and the splitted waters of the red sea

wrong sequence

Lukas Moodysson is a very brave director: he first created a number of devoted fans all around the world with three (fucking amal, Tillsammans ("Together"), and Lilya 4-Ever) beautifully crafted movies, and finally spat in the eyes of each single of them with his latest movie (Hål i mitt hjärta, Ett ("A Hole in My Heart"))

I saw an interview with the director, where he said that when you are in such a position to be able to speak to many people, you should say something important. Like in the Oscars' night, when you get a prize you shouldn't just stand and thank your mum, say something for real

"a hole in my heart" is a disturbing movie, i like to think that the director was so deeply impressed by a certain sequence of "lilya 4-ever", that he created a whole new movie digging in the hole that sequence created in his soul. It's a moral baptism, where all sins are washed away in the latest scenes. I was not impressed with the movie, but yesterday, due to the absence of ilaria, i made an experiment. I played first "a hole in my heart", and next "tillsammans", to see if that made more sense as a sequence. I found out that yes. The newest movie looks like conceived by a young anarchist, with all his dreams and hopes and confusion and anger shaped up in a nasty black hole, the only redemption being keeping your eyes wide open and watch. "Tillsammans" made me think of a director building around his peace of mind, rather than trying to cope with a psychosis.

And I wondered: how many directors or artists can claim a "reverse order" in the power of their works?
Also, playing that sequence, I really hoped that his ghosts did evanesce after opening up the hole in his heart

my tube

i like questionnaires, especially when they ask you to rate your opinions, like in "strongly agree", "mild agree" or "mmm i agree but i would rather ask my wife first". Some of them nowadays are about how long you spend on the internet, but mainly about what you are interested in, when surfing among pages. Typically you can find these answers:
1) Newsgroups
2) Chatting
3) Sending email
4) Information-seeking

Questionnaires are made to extract patterns, so choices are restricted. Therefore you will never find this option, which I add as the most dangerous one:
5) Losing time

there's dozens of choices to loose your time, instead of sending boring emails, or reading about people buying viagra on internet and then finding themselves small as berlusconi.
Since blogging is mostly sharing, here's my shared catch of today for loosing valuable time: http://www.youtube.com/. Dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions of videos, made by amateurs for everybody to see their compositions. My second catch of today is: how many will never have a TV again? or prefer to download free music/videos/amateur football/amateur theatre, instead of the bloated, commercial ones?

I don't mind loosing the latest episode of X-Men on widescreen if i can see four folks preparing and smoking the largest joint ever (40 gr!!!). A video or two after lunch are even better than coffee and cigarette!!

be my driver

looking for the definition, the term "generalisation" (or its yankee counterpart, "generalization") is termed here as follows:


Noun 1. generalization - the process of formulating general concepts by abstracting common properties of instances

i love generalisations, like "all faculty meetings are boring", or "all socks stink after some running" or even "you are really a man, you always generalise" and the such. Generalisations ("gen" in the following) help cleaning your mind, and provide fewer things to carry with boring details. My previous tutor is a great generaliser, and I guess his ability in writing academic papers is his focus on simplicity and how to give the big picture quickly

Lately I found this article, that reports on some outspoken attack by a Sun (the eXtreme magaZine) journalist claiming he would shoot in the face bus drivers, because they are "little Hitler bastards". He claimed that bus drivers never let go cars first... But something else which happens quite a lot in London is that bus drivers never open the doors when they are any centimeters away from their stop, they shout at you if you don't sit properly, they shout at you if you are eating mentos on the bus, and in general, they shout at you. Bus drivers do not open the doors even if the passengers are waving correctly, in the correct position, with the right amount of waves and everything. They simply vroooom away. So, my generalisation is "London bus drivers are mad".

In the movie "Wings of Desire" by wenders, two angels speak about the nice things they see about humans, how many wonderful small and big actions men and women do along their days: so my counter-generalisation was this amazing London bus-driver (angel?) who picked me from the bus after waiting for me who came running, asking me if I was ok, where I was going, letting cars pass with a smile, waving at his colleagues on other buses, letting an old lady jump on the bus to cross a dangerous junction, and smiling, smiling like only africans can

masquerade

blogging is like sharing secrets (well, kind of...)
i'm astonished of what people can tell when writing blogs.
Like noone could ever judge them for what they say.

Admission of a poor personality becomes a value point through comments: i read once the "set-him-free" comment pool for a guy admitting he's always watching girls ass. Always. When he's with the girlfriend. Can't imagine what's the driver for saying that thing publicly

Last sunday it was father's day in the anglo-speaking parts of the world, and along with the celebrations of "regular" dads, i found this site where people share their secrets on eventually not-so-nice dads
I was wondering what is the difference here, so is these guys trying to catch some easy compassion? But then I realised that I prefer this one better: my secret is my secret is your secret, you might say...
i give away something valuable when you don't see me

ready for the flood

interesting news shows that the son of the last italian king has been convicted to prison, alligations being his involvement in mafia and prostitution

the best thing of this is what is happening as a side effect: politicians are called to testify, other politicians are allegedly involved, a whole scandal has been raised (again). Again. Always the same story: a young girl asks for favours and lays with some politician. As a result she was given a TV program for kids broadcasting tom&jerry. I remember thinking she was angelic and a bit dumb doing that program "chiiildreeeen, are you ready for the toons??", but now someone claims she was a big "porcella" (i wouldn't know how to translate that)

and once again, I would like all this system to crumble down, politics being involved with mafia, mafia being involved in casinos, casinos being involved with prostitution, and everything being symbolised in an italian town, called "Campione d'Italia" (Italian Champion) created with the pure intent to attract healthy managers and mafiosos to spend money and have some young girls as a compensation. Once again this news gives the false hope that something will finally change, there will be some wheel spinning, and as the tool sing in Aenima, "The only way to fix it is to flush it all away". I am ready for the flood, let's do it

when fact is fiction TV is reality

united 93 is the movie related to the events happening on one of the four planes which allegedly were hijacked by terrorists to crash on specific targets around US. Three of them hit their targets, and the movie tries to explain what happened to the fourth one, and why it couldn't reach its final destination.

there are some theories on what could have happened on that plane, different from the original version of the facts. There are also well-documented, extensive documentaries about what could have happened in the tragic day of september 11th.

I had strong feelings on what I have seen, which make my veins tremble with anger, and useless frustration: one was getting to know, once again, that in these absurd, dehumanised, horrible cases, what you are shown is something digested and pre-processed by someone else. That isn't even censorship any more. That's managing emotions and feelings, moulding brains, building the breath of the nation into one single stream.
Also, what I experienced during the movie was something new and violent and unexpected: my brain could not filter the facts on the screen. It is for real and you can't excape that. On internet you can find all sorts of weirdo movies, hard scenes, bloody imagery, and what you are left with is some numbness, the inability to tell what's true, what's giving you emotions, what's a plot, what's made for my voyeurism. United 93 gives shape to real feelings of real people, and you can't fool yourself anymore.

I could resist and avoid to have a look at Nick Berg's humiliation. My brain refused to take that. I had to refuse some scenes of United 93 by closing my eyes. Also to avoid to throw up my lunch over my friend Fabio

singing the twilight - aka again weird habits

in my career of music passionate, i listened to some hundreds albums (dont say thousandz cuz wouldnt like da RIAA to come and inspect my houze...)

my stupid stupid habit (which i'm trying to work on) is about associating people I meet with albums I've come to listen: have you ever met anybody looking like a pet shop boys album? Personally I have crystallised some friends to the "papa don't preach" period of madonna, some others to the "concert in finsbury park" by art and garfunkel, someone other to the trance-techno of underworld's "dubnobasswithmyheadman"

of course the best part is seeing whether and how these references change over time: has any marillion record ever become a nine inch nails one? i can testify one case indeed

the powder burns new album by twilight singers is what I'd like to be associated with for the next 10 years or so

think for yourself, question authority

Opinions are a damnation to me: it's always possible to find someone undermining your (my) hard-earned vistas on events and things. I used to love a music magazine in my youth, where opinions were straight and in black and white, no shadows of doubts there. "This record sucks" hey, I'll never buy it! "Look out, that movie is a masterpiece", cinemas here I come! Most of all I loved a movie reviewer speaking weird technical and philosophical terms about movies: i remember the review of "dancing in the dark" by von trier, and how it made me want to see the movie and feel the same hate for the director...

But then I realised: how many movies did I skip based on bad reviews? how many more books are there which could cause a sparkle in my mind, even if everybody agrees it's crap? why do I feel frustrated if I can't appreciate "Ulisses" by Joyce and everybody says "aahhhh wonderful" instead?

and there it came: the perfect fusion of theory, opinions, historical facts and fiction, that Da Vinci Code which is turning everybody in suspicious doubters on everything religious...
what if jesus was an UFO troll? maybe we would be adoring some fake icon since too many years... what if the daughter of jesus was connected with the millennium bug? or the high heels of berlusconi? I bet each one of us would like to be among the jesus and magdalena descendants to watch the world and think "ha! THAT is something to tell friends at the pub"

beside the "american catch" that the whole operation is having, I am amazed by how everyone wants to have _their_ view on the facts, maybe biased and incomplete, maybe extreme or naive. And I amazed that everything, _everything_, can be questioned

noone likes to be pushed opinions in the head and to realise it

Bad teachers create students. Good teachers awaken the teacher in you.

A former colleague used to say that marking exam papers for teachers is like unloading trucks... at least you have the sensation of doing something real, like other jobs do

I spent three whole days marking papers for my new "operating Systems" course, and it was amazing: you can't predict the outcome of what you say during the course to the students. It's simply a matter of hope to believe they are really involved in what you teach.

Ilaria strongly believes that I'm a good teacher, but I much prefer thinking that I'm mostly NOT a bad teacher: _my_ models of bad teaching are the first and only ones I try to avoid. Some teachers in my youth were apparently concerned only with the best eggheads in the class, and I hated that. Some teachers patronised the class, and I hated that. Some teachers terrified the class, and I was revolted by their responsibility and how they managed it... puah

That said, the exam papers where splitted in some clusters:
- the majority was citing the book, citing my words (gosh, somebody even cited my example of a trip between Turin and London...)
- some of them wrote "highly common-sensed" sentences
- but...

...but some of them really made something out of what they learned... it was not only the concepts, the lines in a book, the boring details of the subject for them. It was engaging their brain in something new, it was trying and focusing their attention on *other* details that I wasn't even mentioning

On the question "how can you define this xxxx policy"? a student wrote "this is self-explanatory, and I won't explain it...", but oh
...after that s/he gave a long, amazing, appealing dissertation on a more open question and I was gazing the paper and I was happy

As a student, I had never been THAT clever: but, boy, it feels GREAT to have such students

freedom of choice

Between 10 and 13 years old, a nice and grumpy teacher made us pupils go read some various stories, write an essay on them and adding a special session, the "moral taught". It was weird and utterly adult-esque trying and imagining Joda-like sentences ("this teaches us how to behave in a situation of panic" I remember writing on a story I read, and for which i received a pretty good mark) but in the end it wasn't that bad (I imagine everybody in the class survived the experience)

so, this is my essay on a story and the "moral taught" will follow:

========
premise
========
"my parents remember that my choice of icecream flavours was always different, and that I liked to try different combination all the times. This mix-and-match attitude was brought on lately in other aspects, like the variation of deodorants I owned, the shirts, and other things (note of the author: I got severely punished because I couldn't get rid of the "etc" after a list of elements, as in "I like apple, oranges, etc", and they made write hundreds of times on my note-book 'I will not write again etc')."

========
story
========
"When I first saw a penguin with a couple of floppy-disks attached I couldn't resist: I had to try something called "linux" on my computer. That was an old windows95 pc, and I hated it. I wanted to escape its limitations. The instructions on how to install linux on a machine already holding windows were clear, I think, but with my pioneeristic attitude I broke some ten times the machine which my whole family used happily. They hated me for that. Those were their documents: I always tried to push the argument, yes, but with the new linux you will be happier! I had this vision of happiness: a happy family is a linux family! In the end I made it also a research topic in the university, but this will be explained in another story (and another moral)
That situation was unbearable: a single pc wasn't enough. So I bought myself a laptop and started my experiments, nobody knows what damages i created to myself (would you like to talk about your thesis document, and how it got evaporated in an attempt to "try some interesting commands"? No, thanks), so you will not know. Something was still not ok: I always has a safety net: whenever I wasn't able to achieve my objectives with linux, windows was an (unwanted) cure.
When I visited my friend Gregorio in Spain I remember thinking: now I will only use linux, so i will erase everything of windows and have no other choice... That was it, from then on I never touched windows again"

============
Moral taught
============
this story teaches us that, as long as you have many options, you are not a real linux user

idiotheque

I have very silly habits, and I'm sure im not the only one

like summing up numbers on every car's plate
like listing the 10 best songs ever
lately, like seeing resemblance everywhere

that girl looks like my sister
this man looks like a badger
that politician resembles a friend (who looks like a camel)
and the such

i know that many other people do the same, someone told me for sure I was similar to Hugh Grant. Well the exact words were: you are better than Hugh Grant. I assume the amount of alcohol plays a role here

Even if this resemblance thing is old and silly, I wonder: how many can testify two "similar" people who have "similar characters"?? I did, and after a lot of harrassing I got a photo from them

gianni this is patrick
patrick this is gianni

my rewards these days

teaching is the best job ever -- that is it
sometimes you stand there and there's






...silence...





and you understand you're doing a good job

lincoln mon amour

After the two-year experience in Milton Keynes as a visiting researcher of the Open University (of which I'm totally, utterly proud), I recently got a permanent position at Lincoln university

Apart from the pleasure of being selected for an interview, when I first got here I have to admit that I was deeply struck by the city, and that helped me accepting the position. Its university has been lately built in front of the large pool formed by the Brayford river, and many sailing boats are parked here just steps away from the main entrance of the building. Swans and other birds find here their natural habitat: the magic thing of this place is definitely about its distance from the main city centre, which is literally 3 minutes away from the university main site.

When you hear speaking about "old England" you can safely figure it out as the Lincoln site: the main, high street is paved with cobble, the main chains of stores don't disturb too much the sight. The whole city sits at the base of a steep hill, which takes you up to the main castle and the cathedral of lincoln

I love walking in the morning or in the evenings and discover new places, spots and sights: it gives me a lot of peace. It gives me a lot of satisfaction also the idea of being able to see my house when I'm working, and back... Here some of the spots I could gather

re-election day

Italian politics has evolved thorughout a series of boring and grey individuals, which tended to hide politics from citizens.
Maybe it's a perspective of youth, but all I remember before 1994 is a long list of ministers, coalitions, parties which didn't influence too much my life: I believe that a vast majority of young italians can't mention the progression of prime ministers up to that point.
Only two months before 1994 elections, a new party was created from scratch, and Berlusconi won its first elections. No matter of what his coalition will say, he's the one and only headmaster of the right party, everything passes through him anyway.
Berlusconi claims of having done many good things for Italy and italians. I believe he did something for me too: he pulled my attention back to politics, and as myself I believe more and more people have become interested in their country again.
Something we have learnt in these years is that politics is a complicated affair, a lot of levers to be pulled or released for this or that aim, a lot of interests to be collated together, a lot of voices to represent and many coalitions/fights/words that most of the times confuse and irritate citizens.

I am really scared now, and I mean truly scared, by how the campaign is going: many signals told that Berlusconi's government was collapsing, so the polls and statistics. But now people seemingly will not vote Prodi because he's ugly, and he's a communist, and he will eat your children. I am astonished by the violence of attacks of the right parties to him, and astonished by the marketing department of the left parties, which is saying: "errr, yes Prodi's not that beautiful, but you should see his dog", falling in these traps. Along the internet, people discuss forever about some minor-minor faults of Prodi (who's got a white soul?) and noone is smart or convincing enough to say "hey how do you like the idea of our presidente B. having survived a number of sentences through prescriptions and laws he himself created?"

Thanks presidente for making me feel an active part of Italy

life vs blog

we are camping since a month and a half by some friends who are gently hosting our bags and dirty socks on their exclusive carpet and wooden floors. Our new/old house will be ready in some days, and since the beginning of january, family roca/montrucchio is enjoying our exclusive presence
It's mostly a nice sensation, and teaches you how not to settle down in any place, avoiding to gather objects over the years, which make you both heavy and respectable.
At the end of december I was given a position in the university of Lincoln, which i seem not to be able to speak about: too many things have changed, and we need some time to digest all these new faces, ideas, situations, streets and new paths.
Some blogs are the summaries of a person's life, i like the idea of blog as a place where accepted events are crystallised and will never be changed again