Another home.

It is funny to realize that I know Helsinki better than Milano.
It has been nice to go to my former workplace and meet everyone there, go to my favourite shops and realising that people there start to know me and welcome me with a warm finnish smile. In the metro, I just read my book and realize that I don't need to pay attention at the names of the stations: I just go out automatically. I'm not feeling too cold and tomorrow I'm seeing a friend for lunch. The first friend I have made here, who has not seen me for 3 months but that has started to jump towards me when she realized it was me who rang the doorbell.
In the supermarkets, I know what is the brand of toilet paper or of detergent that I need to buy.

Does this all mean that I am ready to call this place home?

colorful death

Orange and yellow and red and green and brown and blue. I love this explosion of colors. I love the autumn in Finland.

P.S.:

soon departing to Helsinki.

Bye bye, summertime!

anal_deriv.m

was the name a researcher gave for a Matlab toolkit. According to her,
"This program computes analytical first and second (if approx=2) derivatives of the function f(yp,y,xp,x) with respect to x, y, xp, and yp."
But I had to think 10000 times before opening the file: at first it sounded quite nasty.
Do you think she has done it on purpose?

How much I pollute when I commute

facebook miracles

"NOOOO!!! Is that really you???"

"Hi old betsy, whassup? I haven't seen you for ten years!" "I wonder if you have a boyfriend now. No, it can't be, you are so crazy that nobody could stand you"

These and other messages cropped out from my facebook page. Besides being happy of being in touch with people I did not see for ages, I become aware of the fact that I'm becoming old. We sound so much like grannies when we say that we didnt see for ten years. But still it's good.

Why do dogs like to pee on car tyres?

At least, my dog finds it irresistible.

Why every time I carry an umbrella, the sun starts to shine? The bigger and the most unconvenient the umbrella is, the brightes the sun is. Seriously, I have noticed that the events carrying the umbrella and sun shining are correlated. Is there a causality? Well, I start to suspect so!

Another inexplicable correlation is the following: when I go out in a rush, without make up and with the most random combinaiton of clothes, I happen to meet someone that does not know the "messy side" of me. Some days ago, with my hair full of stains of paint (we have painted the house) I meet one of my uni professors, that recognised me and even stopped for a chat.
Of course when I happen to be tidy and pretty, I meet nobody.

How the hell can horses jump and fart at the same time? Or run and shit? Fortunately, I don't do horseriding, otherwise my horse would end up to be really nasty in every competition. (considering that my dog has the amazing ability of understanding how to spite me whenever I happen to be barefoot in the garden).

Quiet night of quiet stars.
Quiet voice from my guitar
Floating on the silence

Quiet thoughts of quiet dreams
This is where I want to be
here with you so close to me


If I stay to long in a place, melancholy starts to take a shape.

Break a leg!

The job of a friend of mine is to ride horses. She has competitions every weekend, and at each competition she rides seven horses.

A couple of months ago she had an accident during a competition: she fell before a hurdle. In the ambulance, she was trying to convince the nurses that she wanted to ride the last horse, but they did not let her go. The leg was broken and they brought her to the hospital.
There, after some time, they put her a plaster and then she was ready to go away: she was wearing the posh white shirt for competitions, the black jacket, one boot and...a thong. The trousers remained in the ambulance!
She then smuggled a piece of green-hospital sheet and used it as a pareo and went home by taxi.

No wonder I miss my friends when I'm away: they are quite entertaining.

enough

Pudgy, short, bald. At a first glance, my father looks a bit like Mussolini.
When you get to know him a bit, then you realize he really is a little Mengistu .

My best friend remembers when we were kids and the little Mengistu did not allow me to go and play or study at her place because he didn't like the idea that I could have some fun with her and, in that way, waste time. He didn't want to bring me to parties because it was a waste of time. In the rare occasions in which I was exceptionally free of going somewhere, I had a curfew that you would normally give to 5 years old kids.

I thought I could finally have some freedom when I started to shoot arrows seriously. I thought I could have just disregarded his harsh comments and listen just to my coach. I was wrong.
Not only he was insulting me heavily during competitions, but he even left me in Baselga di Piné (300 km from here) as a punishment because I did not have a good score.
He managed to argue with everyone that was trying to make him stop treating me like that.
As a resutl, I started to loose hair and to get full of red spots on my skin, due to stress.
When I won a silver medal at the European championships (he could not come as a spectator!) he called me asking why the hell I was not able to get the precious gold. I was anyways happy about my result and since he was not there I enjoyed really much the celebrations with my friends, but that is another story.

When I finally got the drivers licence, I could decide a bit more about my destiny. I thought that the only thing I could do well without his interference, was studying and doing well at school. The last year of highscool I took the painful decision of quitting archery and to devote my time to learning things that where taught in school.
He was too busy in flirting with teenagers and other women to realize I was finally doing what I wanted. I caught him, several times. When my mother discovered everything, he left. He went to live with a girl that is my age. He told me he was leaving when I was under the shower. Whas he afraid of my reaction? Chicken!

The last news is this: now that he cannot control my life anymore, he is asking me what is the reason why I study, because it would be better for me to be a plumber.

I am just bored of being asked why I don't shoot anymore and why I never talk about my father. I hope I satisfy your curiosity.

Snake in the grass?

I went to the golf course 2 times in 3 days. I feel guilty: my bow is probably crying in the cellar.


PS: Now that I tried both, I can say that Golf is much easier than Archery. I still prefer shooting arrows...afterall I'm not a traitor. (?)

revival

Some friendships are rare, some are unique. Despite living in two different towns 650 km from each other for 5 years, R and I are still best friends.
And today we managed to spend a day together, remembering when we were eating cherries from the tree and then having a competition on throwing the cherry stones in a small hole that there was in the window of the neighbor. The hole is still there, as well as the neighbor. We were having fun with small things.
We were always playing outside and in class we used to play with erasers: it was nice to build hurdles with pens and pencils and then make the rubbers jump them. When the teachers discovered how we were spending time in class, they didn’t allow us to seat next to each other anymore.
She was the only one with whom I liked to play with Barbie. She had many of them and we liked making clothes with whatever we happened to find.
We talk almost every day on the phone. We always have so many things to say that we manage to talk for a good hour.

Third year of elementary school: a new girl came to our class. Nobody wanted to play with her because she was from south. I have never cared about the opinions of my classmates, always teasing me for my round shape and basing all their criticisms on prejudices. Children are mean. (Sometimes really mean.) I just asked her to come and play with me after school. She was cool. She became my best friend. And she has been my best friend for 16 years.