Ready for launch

Goteborg, the Big Wheel on the Opera House square is the only "mobile" thing in town able to stand still under the strong winds of these days. Autumn is already here. The tail of a hurricane, born thousands of kilometers away, is crossing Scandinavia and I couldn't find a better moment for dropping my bones here.

The invisible watchmaker

Now that the echoes of the recent tragedy happened in Oslo downtown and Utoya Island, in Norway, are starting to fade and everything seems to be going back to normality, my thoughts go back to some days before those events, when I was there for my last time.

I fear there won't be any other chance to travel to Oslo in the coming years. The R&D centre I used to go is now closed and people working there have flown away, disappeared, pursuing their dreams to build a new better promising future. I can only leaf through my photo galleries and try to remember.

When I'm abroad I use to take a walk a lot, soon after dinner. I use those hours to be really alone with myself, to get intimate with some aspects of the town where I am that I never would be able to discover while rushing to office in the early hours of the morning and, needless to say, to take light-life pictures.

One block behind the square where the National Theater stands, not far from the City Hall towers and the turists' docks of Akerbrigge, if you walk past the windows of a "sexual gadget" shop, on the window of a small shop a sticker says: "Urmakermester".

I've seen this man working night time for year, but I never succeeded to stop by his window till the very last time I was in Oslo.

New ways of blogging

This is a trial post made from my office Outlook GUI. It could be an option not to miss too much time logging into Blogger, editing and sending my posts out to the world. Obviously this also comes handy for those who have a smart-phone with enough capability to snap a picture and a send it via e-mail.

I will also try to insert a picture I took during a visit to Goteborg's Hasselblad Foundation, two years ago.

Uhm ... the results are not so exciting. What you see above is just the restructured version of what I found once posted my e-mail. I forgot that the background is dark and that there's a limited set of fonts available. These can be easily fixed next time I post via e-mail. Yet, I fear that the image formatting will be tricky to solve.

I have to work upon that but it's good to know that it works.

Eternally connected

Looks like we have no more chances to find ourselves alone. Anytime, anywhere, anyway eternally on-line. Our minds are no longer able to disconnect from the continuous flow of data that crosses thru them and goes by, as silently as it came in. Minutes flow and soon it's time to stand up and queue: boarding begins.

Slow Hand is in town

Oslo, Frogner Stadion:
Eric Clapton has just finished to play his last hit, when some people start walking swiftly away from the mass that still lingers, crams and cries afoot the stage, wishing the old guitarist put his nose out again. I've got my couple of hours of music, standing with feet into a sticky mud, under heavy rainfall. I'm devastated. I'll throw away my jeans in a bin as soon as I'll reach my hotel room. I'll have to get back home tomorrow, before I do the same to my shoes. My watch says it's nearly eleven in the evening. Northern summer magic. I have to hurry: I could miss the last train to Asker.

One third missing ...

Two examples of imperfection

After all, rules have always been made for someone to break them.

Neither fish nor flesh ...

"Well," said Rabbit, after a long silence in which nobody thanked him for the nice walk they were having, "we'd better get on, I suppose. Which way shall we try?"


Sometimes I feel like Rabbit, one of Winnie the Pooh's best friends, in this excerpt. I walk on a path for long time, wishing someone is after me but, then, in a moment of disguise and distraction, I realize that no one is either at my side, nor on my tracks. Neither I dare to say that I wish someone could be waiting for me at the end of the trail. Still, I never give up, as I feel a constant need to find a way to get on ... and dream.
Something like this is happening again in these days of early June: I'm really drowning under a heap of work to do, whereas the heap of things that I'd love to do grows on and on ... They simply heap. I put down notes to stick somewhere and let them get yellow and dusty, day after day, month after month ... year after year.

I haven't been grown and educated in order to be able to manage my time as I should instead, for coping with all the different things I'd like to carry on. The result is this strange kind of feeling of being potentially able to do everything but, when it comes to facts, I throw constantly aside all my passions and projects and bow down my head to work.

I'm in Oslo this week. There are good chances this could be my last week spent in Norway, after six years of traveling up & down. Yet, I've completely wasted three evenings working till late in an empty open space, among cardboard boxes full of dusty books, rolls of disposed cables, keyboards and monitors in wait for someone to take them away.
Curtains are closing and I still linger on the stage, as if this could help me recollect all the wasted opportunities I had.

My photographic experience started here, on the banks of this town harbour, where you can still aim at people walking in the streets without being hit. I have still one night ahead and I can't miss it. I just need to get out of this state of lethargy I have recently entered. This could hopefully be a sign of recovery. The world is waiting for me!
And maybe, at least, a piece of good red herring I'll be.

Northern Green

Closed for lack of clients

This time I can't either say I was late ...

On the sky again

Sunday afternoon, time to move on again.