Bad music & British guests

Ciao tutti,

This weekend we had a visit from Matt and Antony, two friends of ours from Coventry. After we had both finished work on Friday, we quickly went to do groceries, cleaned our apartment, got a take-away pizza which we ate standing up and rushed out to get to Mike's birthday party. Mike is my coordinator at CTL and he had been nice enough to invite us his birthday and even though I don't know him that well (all our contact so far has been work-related and he's leaving Italy in a few months anyway), I thought it would be a good idea to pay a little visit from a networking point of view (After all, the boss might have been there, but he wasn't). Even though we really didn't have time to. We stayed there for about an hour and, since Mike was busy greeting his friends and on his way to getting really drunk, we had a good time drinking and laughing with Stefano (CTL secretary) and his girlfriend Elke. We even got a little glimpse of poor, sick Caroline (my boss at Corporate English and one of Mike's friends) who had dragged herself out of bed to congratulate Mike and his friends and who arrived just as we were leaving.

And then we left in a hurry to get to Centrale to pick Matt and Ant up from the bus from Bergamo. That night we went to the birreria and got quite drunk. We had a great weekend with them sleeping late, playing 'Celebrity Identity' (or something, the English version of the Dutch 'Wie Ben ik?'), shopping (or well, window-shopping anyway) in the golden triangle and drinking wine at a hip bar which was unfortunately infested with chavs watching a football game. On Saturday night, we went for pizza at La Padellaccia and afterwards to the already infamous Johann Sebastian Bar with Marta and her boyfriend whom we had never met before. We obviously got completely hammered and I don't remember much from that moment on, except for kissing the crack-head barbie DJ who didn't know what was going on anymore goodbye and Ant falling on top of a woman on the way back. We spent Sunday relaxing and getting a tan in the park, as the weather was incredibly lovely. After a very early dinner at Más we took Matt and Ant back to Centrale and put them on the bus. We were knackered because of their visit and we very happy to be able to go home and watch 'The Queen' - which is really good by the way, I recommend it to you all.

During this weekend, someone at some point mentioned Whigfield and this triggered a trip down memory lane. We listened to her album and started wondering what ever happened to her, as you do (Why, what do you mean? Do you never wonder what's happened to those one day flies from the nineties?). As it turns out she's 37, still in the music business as a singer and a producer and has been releasing songs nearly every year for the past fifteen years. Who would have thought... Her songs are still infinitely childish and nonsensical of which her latest hits 'Boom Boom' and 'Who's your Daddy?' are ample evidence. She's said to be pretty famous in hip countries such as Colombia and Venezuela. Moreover, she has apparently also composed and recorded Panama's new national anthem (we are sure she was paid by the Panamanian government - or at least by the tourism industry - for writing and singing a song of which the lyrics consist of solely one line, the repetitive 'Welcome to Panama'). Isn't that interesting? Who ever knew what happened to her??

To round this post up, I received a really weird call from Elisa, a receptionist from the Corriere della Sera who was really lovely and occasionally used to have a chat with while waiting for my students. Apparently she didn't work for Corriere della Sera anymore, but wanted to send me her mother's love (I have once had a conversation with her mother who was waiting for her to finish work while I was waiting for my student. Se also mumbled something about an incorrect number in their computer system, which I found extremely strange since she didn't work for that company anymore. She hardly spoke any English but didn't want Veronica, the school's secretary to translate but just wanted to speak to me. She kept going on and either she didn't say what she was calling about or my Italian is just still too shitty. The call really freaked me out. It seemed like she had been going through a lot of trouble to get a hold of me and Vero seems to thinks she's in love with me... Anyway, I still don't understand the call.

Oh, and by the way, it wasn't my student who died, fortunately. Although I am genuinely sorry for whoever it was, I'm just really glad my student is all right. That's all for today. Tootles!

Fe