Where does the time go...?

Where does the time go? With the blink of an eye another month has passed and I haven't published a single thing on my blog. Man, my life must be boring if nothing interesting has happened to me for a month...

Fortunately, this is not the case. I've just been too preoccupied with other things to update my blog. It's not that you're not important, really, you're just... not that important! And, in addition, I'm trying very hard to build a real life and I don't want to become one of those people who's completely taken up with his computer and misses all the great things in life because of that. Oh, and I got myself a little computer virus which took me some time to erase!

Anyway, what have I been doing the past couple of weeks? Hmmmm, let's see! I spent a couple of days alone when Olaf was in Cordoba - where he had a great time by the way, although I do think he enjoyed himself much more than he actually learnt from the winter school and the lectures. But then again, getting to know new people, doing sightseeing, eating loads and drinking too much is a very important part of the academic world! We call it networking... Anyway, all this time I was alone and lonely in our little house. I was scared and homesick and actually considered killing myself out of sheer misery...

Well, no, just kidding. I loved finally having some time to myself. We'd been having so many visitors that I really needed some privacy, so Olaf's leaving for a couple of days couldn't have come at a more perfect time. I watched all the movies he doesn't want to watch and, for once, I was allowed in the kitchen! Although I naturally f**ked up everything I tried to cook because I hadn't been in a kitchen for such a long time! As it was a regular working week I didn't do anything special until the weekend. This was the weekend that my father came by and we had a lovely time again. We had some good talks, great food, wine, smokes and did a lot of sightseeing. As my father had a new digital camera, we acted VERY touristy! And to top that, we finally went to see the famous Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. As was to be expected, it was a total and utter disappointment and not worth the money it costs - the extortioners actually wanted E 8,- per person for 15 minutes! - but you can't live in Milan and not have seen it. If you don't know which fresco I'm talking about, here it is

Nothing very interesting happened the next couple weeks my after father left again. Olaf returned, of course, and worked pretty much consumed me. I've got a new extra job now. I'm the 'Hardware and Teaching Materials Coordinator' at Corporate English. This meant that had to do an inventory of all the additional audiovisual and reading material the school has, design and manage a signout system for the hardware, and sort out a lot old folders with teaching materials in order to make them easily available to all the teachers. Now that this is done, my weekly job is to develop new lessons to accompany our DVDs, magazines and newspapers so we'll always have lessons based on current events articles which all teachers can use whenever they like. This is kind of cool, because it means I get paid to watch DVDs and to improve my own knowledge of the news and current events (since I usually don't read the paper or watch the news). And besides this, I also got an offer from one of my students, the editing manager of the Milan branch of a large publishing house. She asked me if I wanted to become a trial reader of manuscripts they are considering to publish. They've got a large group of trial readers but they're mostly female, so I'm supposed to provide them with the male perspective... Well, we'll see what happens! Anyway, it doesn't pay much but it would mean that I'd get paid to read, and read things that are not even available to the public yet!

Last weekend Jorryt and Lilian, Olaf's friends from Groningen, came over and, since they'd already visited Olaf last year and had already seen Milano, we rented a car and went on a two-day road trip! We left quite early on Saturday and drove to Pisa through the Apennines, which is a beautiful piece of Italy. Although you're on the freeway, it seems like you're standing on a mountain side in a grassy meadow with no one around, because the road meanders through the mountains and there wasn't a lot of traffic. Afterwards, we arrived in Pisa where we made a lovely stroll to the central square with its church, baptistry and of course its famous campanile (bell tower), the Leaning Tower. After we had checked the tower on the list (the Tower being one of the wonders of the world was really our only reason for being there), we got in the car again and drove to the neighbouring town of Lucca. Lucca is a lovely well-preserved medieval city with its city walls completely intact. After having some lovely cocktails, a pizza and some more lovely cocktails, we turned in a bit drunk.

The day after we started our way back to Milan, but we didn't take the shortest route. We drove down to the Tuscan coast of Cinque Terre, where we visited three of the five Terre, old fishermen's villages built against the cliffs of the Tyrrhenian coast. It was sometimes really scary to get there, because the roads were really small and the hills very steep (the villages were only supposed to be reached by boat), but fortunately Jorryt is a very good driver. However, overcoming our fears and making it down to each village was completely worth it. The beauty of the towns is indescribable and it's a region I would definitely like to go back to some day. Here are some pictures

Aren't we cute?

I know it's tacky, but you can't go to Pisa and not take this picture...

Sitting on one of the machines the locals use to harvest the grapes from the rocky slopes...

Riomaggiore, one of the Cinque Terre

Manarola, another one of the Terre

Manarola again

Corniglia, perched on a rock high above the sea

A lovely sunset, observed from the little harbour of Vernazza

This week was a short week, as Thursday and Friday were a regional and a national holiday respectively. Thursday was Sant'Ambrogio, the feast of the patron saint of Milan, St. Ambrose (the famous church father), and on Friday it was the day of what Olaf refers to as "The Immaculate Collection, the day Madonna released her 'best of' album" - in reality it's the Immacolata, the day of the Immaculate Conception of Jesus by Mary (only seventeen days before he was reportedly born!). So on Thursday, we went to Oh Bej! Oh Bej!, a famous regional market traditionally held on Sant'Ambrogio with Belinda (who returned last weekend) and her friend Melina. I ended up making a day of it with them, because - while Olaf wanted to go to Arte sul Naviglio (a regular art exhibition around the corner from our house) and the Christmas market - I went to l'Artigiano at the fiera (fair). This was an exposition of hand-made objects and food from different countries from around the world, where we tasted some cheeses, some sausages, some candy and some beers. And I spent hardly any money, except to buy some Egyptian candy which I hadn't had since my last trip to Egypt in 2001...

This weekend, we don't have any visitors so we are spending our time wisely buying Christmas presents, preparing Christmas dinner and writing Christmas cards. Next weekend, Margo and Marieke are coming over and we're going to have a blast! After that, Christmas will be here already! In the words of my boss, 'where HAS the time gone...' We've been playing Christmas music non-stop for two weeks now and I'm ready for the holidays. All the favourites are here again 'Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer', 'Santa Baby', 'Baby, it's cold outside', 'Frosty, the Snowman', 'Little Drummer Boy', 'Come, all ye faithful' and 'All I want for Christmas is you'. How can we spend the rest of the year without them... If you're not playing Christmas music yet, you should start now! There's no better way to get in the mood... Just two weeks more, hang in there! You can do it! It won't be lonely this Christmas!

Ciao, Fe