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.

Echoes from the Last Summer

 This is the time when we're in between looking forward and looking back ...

Far from the madding crowd

My last day in office, my last day in Milan, my last run to catch the earliest train and make the "scrum" in the underground, my last team stand-up meeting, my last speech and recommendations to my colleagues, my last lesson at the whiteboard, my last watering to my plants, my last packing and my last goodbyes ...

(Made and sent from my mobile.)

What is left

I'm spending the last days of my professional experience in Milan. This is my last week in Vimodrone, where I landed in a hot and humid June 2000 to start a new life with my wife, and I strive to think if I'll ever come back here again, once I'll be out of office next Friday.

Never say never. No one can tell what will happen to me and my family in the coming years. Only one fact is sure: in a few weeks I'll be working abroad, no longer as a business traveler but as a real expatriate. "Man gewöhnt sich daran!", You get used to it! This is what I've been silently repeating to myself in the last weeks.

When I first came here I told to my interviewer that I was going to stay at least for a couple of "seasons". As a matter of fact, I settled and stayed here for sixteen years and I grew up a family. I've dedicated all my freshest and best energies to the company and the people I'm about to salute.

I have no regrets. If I turn back and look at what I'm leaving, everything looks like an old "Cascina" still functioning and full of life when I arrived and left falling apart among the multitude of industrial buildings that covered the countryside in the meantime.

(Made and sent from my mobile.)

N.C.

A Step into the City

There are two kind of weather that make you really appreciate the skyline of Milan. One is the "typical" foggy day, but it's not the best for the City. The other one is the January wind swept sunny afternoon.

The Naked Fig Tree

The last showers of these days have completely undressed the fig tree in the orchard under my window. Now, there's anything more left to cover its nudity. Could it be a sign that the "never arrived" Winter season is really gone till next year?

Written for the Wind

I don't remember by heart having ever listened to some peg music ...