suspicious breakfast

Besides the skin colour, I again shocked my mamma. How can I eat a sandwich filled with feta, olives, salad and onion for breakfast? The worst thing is that it was with caffé latte.

sun and skin

I am sure that my lovely mom brought the sun here. Days are so beautiful.
This morning we were comparing our skin colours and she said: "you are turning Finn, look how white you are!!!"
Indeed, I need to find a way to get a little bit tanned :)

Brain Drain

Italy, the country where nothing works, but where everything works, at the end.

This is what they say abroad, about my country.

When yesterday I read on the newspaper that the government has decided to give a 300 shiny million Euros gift to Alitalia, a company that looses approximately 1 million every day, I was not disappointed. I was pissed off, indeed. Why didn’t they give instead the same gift to researchers or research centres? 300 million Euros! For what? For the corpse of an airline that has been raped for ages by the influence peddling of politicians, unions, recommendations. I hope that at least this gift would give Alitalia a good funeral. But why is the system protecting losers, instead of encouraging winners? There is nothing left than passion. The passion that makes people do what they like, no matter what. And everything works, at the end.

The dark side of the moon

I was afraid I was going to behave as Charles Bukowsky character in "tales of ordinary madness". In the book, the guy is a poet and he is going to make a public reading of his best works to a group of students. The day before the event, he goes partying and gets wasted drunk. Obviously, the day after, he is super-hangover and he can barely stand. Of course, before the reading, he pours all the content his whiskey flask into the coffee thermos. And he gets drunk again.
Fortunately last night I went to a party, but I was totally sober, so today at the presentation of my paper, I was awake and I did not have any Bukowsky moment. Quite a surprise. I had more fun than at last night’s party. At least here people do not suffer from Napoleon Complex .

I don’t want to sound polemic or snobbish, but I am really glad that my studies encourage me in using my intellect. I do not have too much to share with those who need to display their appearances, the same people that need to be rude to be cool. I am sorry. I am glad that I am having my first work experience in a research institute, where people are really trying to make the world go round and do not speak just for their voices sake.

PS. Just to show the mean side of me, I report here some of the thoughts that flashed in my mind last night:

1) It would be nice to apply a volume-control knob to some people, whose voice can cover the music in a club, but never make it when they have to say hello.

2) Some women have a case of Napoleon Complex. Maybe having a sausage between their legs would make them feel better.

PPS. I feel sorry that I have just two weeks left at my workplace. I have learned a lot and I have been lucky to be offered such a wonderful experience.

PPPS. Congratulation to Emma Marcegaglia, voted with 103 votes out of 105 disposable as president of Confindustria. Some would say: that woman has balls. I wonder: what they would say if she was a man: that guy has tits!?!?

The pink panther strikes again

There is a guy from Belgium that works in the upstairs of the company I work for. We sometimes drink coffee together and the others have fun in teaching us the most futile Finnish words that they figure out. Today we were peacefully having coffee in the kitchen and having a competition on our pronunciation skills. Imagine. We were repeating lyjytäytekynä and having fun of each other, with our Finnish friend judging on who the best was: “Lyjy!” “No no no, repeat again: LYJY!!!!”…Suddenly, a guy from the next-door room whispers to us: “hey guys…could you please go and drink coffee somewhere else?”

They were recording an interview for a radio. And our voices are in the background for the first 2 minutes.

RAMBLE

Milling around, tired.

This has been my day, so far.

I wonder when the spring comes here, waking things up from this long lethargy.

I miss the joy of feeling the warm wind blowing on my clothes while I descend some hills by bike and sunrays are not yet burning. Those late afternoons after an intense study session, in which my mind can flow, freely. In those occasions, there are always so many things in my mind that it seems there is nothing. Spring.

In the crowd of my cogitation sometimes something prevails: for a second, I am happy because the Italian communists have received a nice kick in the teeth and are now out of the parliament. Later, I try to figure what I could do on Friday night, besides going to the modern art museum to delight my eyes and my palate. Then I have noticed that every time my hair is messy, my clothes are just taken randomly from the wardrobe and my eyes are nicely framed by deep dark rings, I meet my pinpoint colleague, 1.80 tall super slim and I cannot avoid associating my character to the one of Bridget Jones. I remember the time I went to Brussels for my first job interview in an important pharmaceutical company: flight (Alitalia) one hour late, then I arrive there and the door handle of the main entrance remains in my hand. What is more Bridget than that?

I would like to go home, but home is so small that I would feel like a snail. Actually…in the recent movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, the latter actor asked an interesting question about snails and Buddhism. I recommend the movie, even if I consider it a more entertaining version of The Barbarian Invasions of Denys Arcand (2003). Uff, the citation brings me back to reality and makes me think that it might be better to go back to work instead of just making my brain a ballroom.

Melancholy

Sometimes at nightimes

I feel withering

like a flower whose seed

came with the wind

in an ill place.

“Is the Italian population NOISEinking?”

“Drinking???”

“No! Shrinking…mmm….declining!!!”

Ah, ok. I might have seemed dumb, but I really did not hear what my colleague was asking.

I was ready to explain that, differently from here, Italians don’t drink to get drunk. They in fact enjoy a glass of wine because it tastes good with food, or then they might have a pint of beer just while chatting with friends and having pizza (WINE + PIZZA: never). I was ready to say that I first tasted wine when I was around 3 and still I have never been drunk, that I can freely buy alcohol at the supermarket, that I have always had pizza and beer since I was a teenager, but I am not an alcoholic. However, the discussion touched other issues concerning migration, birth rates and so on. Indeed, I should go and test my hear.

Summer

Finally sure about the destination of our summer holidays

Lucky bastard!

These are the words that the rock n roll granpa told my boyfriend last night.

NOW: saturday night, but no fever.
Rewind: Nice friday. After dining in the drunk neighborhood of Helsinki, we manage to grab a tram towards downtown. It feels like riding a dragon with hiccough. I look at the driver and I understand why: women driving!
>>We meet a rockstar. I am the only one who does not recognise him. He starts to talk to talk to one of us and he sits with us. He is famous finnish guitar player, but he introduces himself, shaking our hands and asking where we are from. He tells us he just comes from a gig, that his wife has lived 20 years in Rome and it would be nice if I could meet her. He asks what brings me here and I say: "love". He looks at my boyfriend and he says: "you, lucky bastard!". It is nice to observe the guy and listen to him. His eyes are sensitive and sly and his tapered hands take the beer glass every now and then. He loves alcohol -he drinks beer and wiskey at the same time- and he tells us the magic story of when he knocked at the door of REMU (the voice of the Hurriganes) and the guy gave him a blue jacket 5 sizes less than the appropriate one as a sign. He is one of the guys. Every time one of us say something that he likes, he smiles saying: "now you are talking!". He blurts some secrets about some other guitar player of some other famous bands: "Yee, that guy wears a wig!". Time passes, time to goes. He walks out with us, then finally greets us saying: "tomorrow I will sweat in my hungover. But, hey, let's meet sometimes..I mean..we don't have to agree on anything, but I live nearby and I often come here for a beer... and you should definitely meet my wife."...then he staggers away.
>> saturday, sunny saturday. I got angry cos in a bar I ordered a beer and they asked my ID. Do I look like a teenager?
>>evening. After a series of gags exchanged with my boyfriend about finnish girls, I understood why he is a lucky bastard.

Working out...

My knowledge of English is quite good, but this does not save me from awkward gaffes.

We were having a tea and these friends started discuss about having babies. Then they started to talk about “working out”. In my dirty mind I thought that “working out” meant something related to the “process” of making kids, so when they said: “well, lately we did not have too much time to work out, since we are so tired in the evenings” or “we are going to visit out parents, so there we cannot work out”, I got a little suspicious. They were talking about it so naturally…“it is so nice to work out! It makes you sweat so much..” . Then, in a song of Husky Rescue I heard about a “summertime cowboy….working out…for me…”. Some days after this perplexing conversations, we went for breakfast. Again this working out thing. They invited us to go with them. I must confess that I got really suspicious. Fortunately, it turned out that working out means exercising at the gym!

parody ?

Maybe it is to early to draw conclusions, but still, I would like to draw some sketches of my life into finnish shoes. Well, I think I do not belong to here.

1. Clothes

I look pregnant with every shirt or dress I try.

2.Shoes

Actually impossible to find a decent pair, unless I want to look like a granny. High heels are not for girls that want to kick men's asses.

3.Military service

Ok, equality is important. Why then military service is mandatory for man and voluntary for women?

4.Hunting

Apparently, all the energy that girls have is used to chase a boyfriend (usually in bars). Once the chicken is plucked, he has to clean, iron, cook, stay home. Then he is accused of being a pussy.

5.Drinking

I wonder how certain people can wasted drunk, wear a miniskirt and not feel embarassed.

6.Shopping

How can girls go shopping if shops close everyday at 6...and on saturdays before 4? No wonder they drink. Bars are the only places open.

7.Accompanied male friends

If a single girl is out and sees a friend, she hugs him pretending not to see the girlfriend, or then she acts as if she wants to be her best friend, in reality making her total body scan without missing a detail. But this happens everywhere. ;)

Abbreviations/2

How is it possible that in my paper I have to quote somebody whose first name initials are F.A.G.? The last name of the guy is also interesting, not to mention the colleague with whom he worked: Cock. Is it a joke?

Abbreviations/1

Yesterday, talking about Finnish student unions, I could not come up with the abbreviation for the Helsinki School of Economics one. I remembered it started with K, so I just said the first abbreviation beginning with K that came to my mind: KFC! I apologize with KY. But at least, the conversation with the colleagues became entertaining!

Shortcrust pastry hands

Sun shines. I feel the spring warming my senses.

This morning, in a couple of hours, I managed to:

- Transform my breakfast spoon in a catapult. Result: breakfast all over the place and an astonished boyfriend wondering how I can always be so messy.

- Wedge one of my high heels in the pavement porphyry…the shoe remained there. Huge effort to pick it up.

- Once at office, write a complaint to the Helsinki public transportation: some smurffit made me miss the train.

- Pour a cup of green tea on the book I borrowed from my boss. The book does not look too ok.

- Back in the kitchen: some idiot cut the milk pasteboard in a weird way. I noticed it when all the milk was already on the floor and not in my cup.

-While cleaning all the mess, notice that someone put some cute colourful little candies in the Iittala bowl next to the coffee machine. Why not taking a small handful? Good. I bet they were the Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans in disguise and I managed to pick the vomit, booger and earwax flavours!

Bright day! It is only a quarter to 11.

british summer

Two sunny day have been a really nice gift. Not too warm, though. Like a british summer, as the librarian today told me.
Weather. A safe conversation topic. The thing I talk about with all the colleagues.

I have been asked: Is it true that finns are cold?Is it true that it is difficult to get close?
I think it is the same everywhere. No matter where you are, but it is always not too easy to meet new people. And if you meet new people, with how many of them you go beyond the weather conversation?

you've got a friend....