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.
đź”»
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.
(Made and sent from my mobile)
