There, she blows!

From the heights of Monti Lucretili, above Tivoli, the sight spans from south to north along the hills and the flat lands around Rome and much beyond, till to the beaches on the Tyrrhenian Sea.
This time it's been up to me to pose as an improbable Captain Ahab. The picture was taken by my son Flavio.

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Following the Sun

Following the Sun

You Should Not ...

There's always something we would like to do that's forbidden from the people around us.

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MicroLandscapes

This text is a post-publication add-on. As I explained my friend Marco, in these days I can't do any better. Time is very short: mostly absorbed by work, the rest by my family. In such conditions even a weird eggs-box can be a source of inspiration. And it's nice to see how my mobile doesn't fail with macros.

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Peppone e Don Camillo

When I (or as I'd better say "we") opted for the biggest change made in our lives, I was pretty sure that my personal work-family balance would have benefit, thanks to more than one reason. Commuting to work in Milan took me circa two hours and a half per day, whereas here I don't spend more than half an hour. When I was lucky, on the Italian means of transport I could read, entertain myself talking with someone of my circle or even sleep. In the bad days, instead, I could only hang my arm on a handrail and try to keep myself upright, while pressed among hundreds of other passengers. In Graz, thanks to the location I found for our apartment, I put my buttocks on the car and drive for eight kilometers until I'm under the window of my office.

Alas, what I hadn't calculated is that the chip-makers life is a bit tougher than the chip-consumer's. Now I'm working for those who used to be my former components providers. Before I just had to pick a component from a virtual shelf and use it, now we have to run like hell in order to give our customers the best in class products and keep the competition much behind. I'm not saying that the telecom system developer's life is much more relaxed: it's just that there are different kind of challenges, a wider and smoother distribution of responsibilities and consequently a lighter felling of urge.

I don't complain about this last point. I've spent my last ten years complaining and listening complaints about useless managers and those who could easily hide themselves in the shadows of our organization and live on others' shoulders. On this other side of the world it seems there's no shadow, no twilight. You can't hide, neither you can take long breaks and breathe. No alternation of rest and diet seasons, in other words you have to be always fit and ready to perform. Which is good, thrilling and in most of the cases exciting.

The only drawback is that those two hours that I wished to have on my side, now that we're approaching the delivery time, just before Christmas, are being consumed "walking the extra-mile". As a result, in the last months I haven't been able to do all the sport activity and photo shooting that I was wishing. I started using massively my mobile phone to capture, edit and send pictures from the most inconvenient and uncomfortable places, photographically speaking, like bus stops, parking lots, rest areas on the highway or from the cozy seat of a tram, while taking my daughter to school.

In these conditions quality is no longer a reasonable target. It helps to improve your pictures, for sure but it doesn't help at all at looking at the world. I have to be happy of the immediacy that technology provides and keep my sense of "hunting" always fit, for better times.

🔻

So, this morning while walking quickly by this long and narrow square behind the central Franziskaner abbey, my eyes fell on the name of two restaurants, presumably lead by Italians, facing on both ends of it and I couldn't wait for better times and better light conditions before taking a picture. Chances are that I would never find the time again.

For those who have never heard about Don Camillo e Peppone, here are a couple of helpful Wiki-pages about Don Camillo and his author Giovannino Guareschi.

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A view from the tram

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Cool

A strong and chilling northern wind has come over us during the day. The grey sky that we had until yesterday was swept away during the night. Bright light, barren trees, woolen hats. They say tomorrow it's going to be even colder than today. I'll finally feel by myself what it means to be at the feet of the Alps. I'm ready, my gears as well.

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Different perspectives

Some prefer to look at the tips of their feet while others are always shooting at the stars.

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Arrivederci

Driving back to Austria after a short stay in our family town. The longer the distance the coarser our sight. No time for taking many pictures. Maybe a better chance next time. Aufwiedersehen.

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Tono su tono

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Old Gears

Eventually, about two months after my relocation, I managed to have two hours to dedicate to myself and take a ride on top of the hill behind our new apartment. And there, on top of the mountain, I found this rusting bicycle with an amazing front lamp I couldn't leave out of my records.

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Rebel

In every group of living beings there's always someone who turns his back to the mass, a divergent, a rebel, someone who seeks light looking in a different direction. This happens beyond every logic, as if some kind of natural principle ruled behind this generation of variants. The mass, all those who comply to the rules are just the evidence of the affirmation of a series of these mutations that grant the evolution of the species. The mass does not evolve. Variants, on the other end, succumb in largest majority of the cases. Few only succeed and are the cause of changes in the coming generations. This is why we have to have the bravery, the pride and the courage to make changes.

Late Crop

There's not only pumpkin seeds oil, then, around here. Winter is approaching quickly but still the meadows close to the city are ripe with goods to harvest.

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Cappuccino & Cornetto

Before leaving Italy I couldn't make without a good breakfast at the bar on the main square of Saronno. Needless to say, cappuccino and cornetto (or brioche, as the people from Milan obstinately pretend to say) couldn't miss on the table.

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The night before

Last Friday night in Saronno. After a long and extenuating working day, gone scrubbing and painting walls, unmounting, packing and heaping the few things left in the old apartment, my brother and me went out for something to eat and a short walk. Pizza at Pontello was really tasteful, as usual. So the ice cream we took not far from the city's main church. If it wasn't for the crowd standing in front of the Mondadori bookshop, few minutes before midnight, we would had already been sleeping in our bed. But it was the Harry Potter's night, and we decided to wait sitting on a bench until the church's bell rang the new day and grab a copy of the latest adventure of my children favorite fantasy character.

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Autumn is here

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Images from the Past

I Stop Here

A Look Upward

I'm not disregarding this pages. I'm only in the middle of the relocation process and I can't move my focus away from the main goal for this summer. My family has just arrived in town and it's time for me to drive them around to discover the opportunities it is able to offer. As soon as every single thing will be in its own place, there will be time to raise the eyes above and be more distracted than now.

And What Now, Europa?

As I went out of my residence main door, today, I picked up a new copy of the local newspapers from the stack that I found every morning on the hall table. I'm getting used to read few sentences, titles and captions at least, while I walk to the parking lot to take my car and get to work. A homeopathic training: few words per day. You never know, my German could improve a bit.

So I got the picture of the happy "prime" couple coming out of the polling station and made all my best to understand what had happened in UK the day before. I was actually wishing a new last-minute miracle could have taken place during the night. Just like the one occurred two weeks before here in Austria. And I actually mistook the message and went to office relieved.

I discovered only after lunch, when an English colleague came to say "Hallo" on his way back to Cambridge, that I really understood what had happened.

I don't know what to think. The Old Continent is putting so many question marks on its future, that mine would be totally insignificant. Still, I have my list of open and unresolved action points to take care.

Landmarks

The door to door distance between Graz and Milan is exactly 700 Km. The first time I drove it appeared to me as never ending. I had never been up here and everything was new. The uncertainty, the unknown behind the bend, beyond the tunnel were at highest levels. 

With time, I have learned to split the track in several fractions, each distinguished by some kind of recognizable landmark: a refueling station, a route change, a long tunnel, a lake, the billboard of a selling point, etc. I concentrate on these to make the trip seem a bit shorter.

On the Road

In the hall of the students' residence where I'm staying in this beginning of this experience of mine in Austria, there's a large bookcase where people passing by are invited to drop something from their latest readings. The shelves have just begun to populate, as the building was only built one year ago. Yet, there are already some good things to pick and read, provided you had time and you were able to read from German as well.

I'm not used to stop by, as I'm always on the run or because the hall it's always crowded with so many young exuberant students that stares at you from the moment you get out of the lift, as you were a freak or a martian. Still, there are times that I have to go downstairs and wait for the laundry to finish its job. Then, in the attempt to show indifference, I stop in front of this new born library and begin listing one title after another, till I find something interesting.

So I came across this German edition of Kerouac's "On the Road" and started reading the well known opening ... and taking notes.

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Under the Bridge

You would expect to see something else. Instead I found the local Art Academy training ground, as well as thousands of padlocks and the face of an astonished Beethoven. Can you spot it?

Better to wait

On the way back from my first "visit" to Saronno, after my recent relocation in Graz, I pulled down the backseat of my car, turned to pieces my mountain bike, gathered in a box all the accessories required for long and safe bike tours and took everything with me in Austria, where I put the pieces together again, far from indiscreet eyes, in my residence apartment.

Unfortunately, the first week after my return was so cold that there were even snowfalls for two days and all the hills around turned to white. I could not imagine something like that when making my packs. April days were so hot. All my winter equipment had been left in Saronno and I couldn't afford to go out and take a cold. So my MTB stood on the corner in front of the window, like a patient dog, waiting for better times to go out.

Museo Alfa Romeo - II

More than one month ago, before I left for my "Mission to Graz", I took my children (as well as myself) to the Alfa Romeo Museum in Arese, the place where the Mechanical Myth was born. Quite understandably, my arrival in Austria made me forget all the "work in progress" and only now that I'm back in Saronno for few days, I was able to look into what I was doing before the departure (or should I say ... the "migration"?) and I found some pictures, ready to be published, taken at the museum that morning.

Those who are used to read this blog well know that I'm not used to publish color pictures. Honestly I think that turning these into black and white wouldn't yield the same results. For cars like these color is an essential component of the whole design.

What happened?

Here I am again. I did not disappear. I just had to cope with the beginning of a new course of my life. Beginning of April, exactly one month ago, I moved to Graz, in the Austrian region of Styria, where I took a position in a new company, a world market leader of the semiconductors industry, after almost eighteen years spent in the telecoms industry.

I arrived in Graz in a sunny and warm holiday with my old car full of bags, cardboard boxes and lots of doubts and fears: a new country, a new job, a new language to learn.

The first days were not so nice. Italy is just 200 km far from here. Yet everything is so different and I couldn't say if I would had ever been able to "get used to it". Now, after four weeks, things are beginning to look better than before but the greatest challenge is far to come. Later this year my family will join me and then we'll see if all will be as I've wished so far.

I made my first tour on my mountain-bike today: hanging from my neck my old camera. I don't have tools for post-processing. All my pictures that I'm going to display from now on will look a bit different from my previous one. A new tool requires time to get used and get the same results I've always wanted. Let's wait and see.

Man gewöhnt sich daran.

Follow the leader!

On my last day in office we celebrated my departure with a team/project pizza at "Donna Carmela", a true Neapolitan enclave in the metropolitan area of Milan. The funniest moment was not during or after lunch, when the beer starts to make effect, but before, while parking our vehicles ...

A Thinking Spot

One of my favorite thinking spots is the window in my children's room. From there I can look into the courtyard of the "court" next door, where another thinking spot is found. Leaning on the mast of an old barn no longer in use, someone put a couple of chairs pointing at the direction of the sun before sunset. The position was not taken by chance. In wintertime, our nearest star is so low on the horizon that a small piece of meadow surviving among the walls of a typical Lombard village center has little chances to be lit on a sunny day. When the sky is clear there's a short time frame in every single court for sitting somewhere and soaking with light.

Until not so long ago, from time to time, I could see an old woman sitting on the bench and smoking her smelly cigar while staring at the sun. I like to think that from that seat it is possible to look at another thinking spot, somewhere among the roofs of the surrounding houses.

Alfa Romeo - I

Before leaving Milan I couldn't miss to visit one of the seven wonders of this town: the Alfa Romeo Museum, in Arese, not far from where I lived so far. The original production plant of Portello has long been dismantled. Same destiny fell on several others historical brands that made the recent history of this town.

Not so much surprisingly, the first section of the exhibition is devoted to the early stage of the company and to its aviation motors design.

Cheers!

So, yesterday evening I met in Milan with my (former) colleagues for the last time before leaving this country for a while, and had a good deal of beer and laughs with them. It takes a while to get used to it. I thought it would had been easier to get away. Still, it seems that all the time spent together can't be thrown away in the attic all at a sudden.