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January 30, 2006

miss yasmina

i miss miss yasmina!!
and no, i'm not mr. K (though some people at work tend to mix us up... ;-)

the bloghacker, haha

Posted by at 03:00 PM | Comments (6)

January 27, 2006

snow!

it snowed all day today and milan is covered in snow!

Posted by Yasmina at 12:39 AM | Comments (4)

January 24, 2006

mid-week posting

well, i got upgraded to MT 3.2. since i screwed up the stylecatcher plugin installation and MT reset my template files, i am currently using one of the default styles. hopefully i have time tomorrow to look the css over. :)

i had a rough start of the week. monday morning i took robert to centrale fs where he caught the bus to milano orio al serio airport. it was hard to see him off. i don't know what is happening to me emotionally, but i was functioning fine during the two weeks that we were apart, i was getting along fabulously, meeting new people, hanging out after brain-drain lectures.

then robert comes over for four days and i get used to him being around again, to having a warm body to wake up next to, feeling how life would be with robert in milan. actually, that's how life should be: robert and i, in milano, happily ever after.

so i spent monday sulking at school because i felt life isn't as it should be; robert isn't in milan and i miss him SO much. and it's almost as if it would have better if he hadn't come over at all. i know that sounds terrible. i don't regret robert coming over, sure, it was great to see him again but somehow i feel like that: maybe if he didn't come over, i wouldn't feel so down.

ah, well. i'll get over it soon. anyway, i'm grateful; i have nice friends who are always ready to cheer me up, especially this guy in eindhoven, with loads of skype hugs to bestow upon me ;)

Posted by Yasmina at 08:24 PM | Comments (5)

January 21, 2006

friday night at mine

robert is in milan for the weekend, and we're really ecstatic to see each other. mr and mrs k together again, at least for a couple of days...

friday night, i invited a bunch of people over to my place for a spot of dinner, drinks and socialising. it's just that last week we ended up going out for drinks and this time, i thought it would be nice to stay in and socialise instead. plus, i wanted robert to meet everybody.

turned my bedroom into a "chill-out" lounge, putting cushions on the floor for people to sit on, as well as the double-bed, the coffee table laden with snacks and candles, and with the help of the nice warm glow emitted by the orange nessino table lamp from artemide, which was left in the apartment by dario and barbara :)

music was streamed from my iPod, as well as our home radio station in eindhoven, which robert set up the night before, so now i can make my own playlist from the music i have in our dutch apartment, yippeee :)

together with eva, i cooked a sausage stew with potatoes, and carrots in a creamy red-wine-and-tomato-sauce, saffron risotto, egg tagliatelle with pesto, buttered spinach, a huge salad, and trays of hors d'oeuvres with cheeses, coldcuts and seafood. everyone came over with beer and wine and a chocolate cake and we had a feast!

so the first dinner party (of many more to come) was a success! :)

tomorrow we are planning a day out to como, which hector is organising. we're catching the 08.20 train from garibaldi, omg, what an ungodly hour for a sunday. i hope we wake up in time.

Posted by Yasmina at 11:21 PM | Comments (6)

January 17, 2006

awesome day!

i had an awesome day today. firstly, my class didn't start until noon, heheh, which meant i got to stay in bed till ten. lazy sleepyhead, i know. i met up with joe at romolo train station and we walked over to the off-campus place where the first lecture was taking place.

the lecture was by marina abramovich, and she really had me captivated throughout her talk. she is just so fascinating, speaking about performance art, the time-based performance, about the charismatic meta-physical space that the performance artist creates around themselves during a performance or installation, and all the theories about present, past and future times. totally inspiring.

then, joe and i somehow separated ourselves from the rest of the group while getting back to school, and when we were at porta genova waiting for our bus, i spotted the usual vegetable-and-fruit truck and spotted the weirdest cauliflowers ever. or at least i thought they were cauliflowers. i guess they are a broccoli-cauliflower hybrid.

anyway, they looked cool, and really beautiful in a nature-made-fractal-art way so i bought one, and a kilo of clementines. i still need to figure out how to cook the alien vegetable but we ate the clementines during the afternoon class; i've made it a mission to keep myself and my classmates healthy, eating nutritious food, during this year. :)

the afternoon class was conducted by massimo banzi. physical interaction design and the craft of interactive prototyping. omg, this guy is amazing! this is one guy who completely understands what i want to do and achieve in this MA course.

my entire class was also really excited and we just crowded around massimo after the lecture, asking questions and i showed him some of my work on my iPod. everyone was on a high. even some other guy from the other MA course, something like architecture or other, wants to transfer to our class. yeah, interaction design rocks!!! :)

oh, and both lectures today were done in english instead of italian.

when i got home, eva was in bed, sick. so i made her a cup of tea. she doesn't want to eat anything and i hope she'll eat something soon, otherwise she won't get better. :(

talked to gerard on skype for a while. i miss him. skype was acting up so i couldn't hear him no matter how many times we restarted. so in the end, i talked, and he typed, hahah. weird interaction. i'd ask him something and on my screen, the pen icon would appear to show that he's replying to my question.

anyway, that was the story of my day :)

p.s. the delightful mr k seems to be going a little crazy at home without me. see photos below...

Posted by Yasmina at 10:51 PM | Comments (6)

January 12, 2006

long distance marriage

thanks to the wonders of skype :) but perhaps i should invest in an iSight so i can actually see my husband. he has a webcam but i don't and the video thing doesn't work one-way, probably to prevent all that one-way stalking by freaky perverts out there.

RAWRRRRRRRR I LOVE BEARDY MEN

WARNING: EXTREME SILLINESS

A VERY BEARDY MR.K

A GOODNIGHT KISS FROM MR.K

ZOOLANDER-STYLE PUCKER

Posted by Yasmina at 10:59 PM | Comments (3)

first day of school

only in milan can you pick up a cute guy before your first class of the day.

i took the metro to porta genova. at san agostino the metro stopped and the PA came on. all i heard were the words "ultimo" and "fermata". oops. for some odd reason i could not discern, this train was not going further than san agostino, which was one stop shy of porta genova.

so i leg it out the door and out of the station. once overground, i didn't know which direction to take and i was too vain to take out my map from my bag. who wants to look like a lost tourist at that hour of the morning, right?

i stopped the next person out of the metro station: a guy in a neat gray coat. he looked friendly, and educated, and perhaps he spoke english? si, bene, he replied, when i asked. he offered to walk me to porta genova station since his office was in that direction anyway.

it was a short brisk walk and i often find that in the company of strangers, one tends to disclose certain informations. he was a really nice guy, really easy to talk to. when we got to porta genova, i was almost sad and i was thinking of a subtle-and-not-so-sleazy way to keep in touch with him, and he suddenly said, "oh i have to give you my business card, so we can keep in touch, and we'll go for apperitivo or something, that'll be fun."

what a cool way to start the day. flattering, in any case. his name is antonio, he works for deloitte, and he lives a couple of blocks away from me, and we ride the green line together to work/school. how funny is that?! so we said goodbye and i promised i'd mail him to arrange apperitivo :)

my bus arrived as soon as i got to the porta genova, and while i was on the bus, i saw this guy who looked really familiar. we looked at each other, and i said "rit?" at the same time that he said, "yasmina?"

and omfg, it was rit!!!

rit and i somehow found each other through the internet before starting our course, so we'd been writing each other prior to arriving in italy. it was funny to recognise someone from their internet profile though. i mean, i'm getting good at that because i do meet online friends offline, but yeah, all the other meetings have been pre-meditated and this time it was pure coincidence.

first day went ok. it was mostly speech and introduction. i listened to the talks in half italian and half english, by only using my iPod earphones and only using one earphone. i just really like the way italian is spoken.

there's 18 people in my class; 3 of which are italians and the rest were foreigners from asia, south america and europe, and all of different backgrounds/disciplines. i like this diversity in knowledge and experience. i tried to talk to most of my classmates today, in an effort to get to know them better.

oh and there was a paranoia moment as well. i was a bit taken aback when i was standing in line to pick up my locker keys, and someone said, "oh, you're yasmina."

wtf? what does that mean?

and they said, "oh nothing, we've been talking about you" and muttered something along the lines of a blog. uh oh. does everyone read my blog?

in any case, i'm a blank slate this year. i'm open to anything although i do have certain *personal* goals to achieve on my course. i'm just really looking forward to working with this group of energetic, interesting people.

anyway. in the evening i went for drinks with liliana. i took her to this wine bar i like in corso di porta ticinese. we sat and drank and drew in our sketchbooks until it was closing time. and then, the guys who run the place came over to our table and said something along the lines of, "what are you girls talking about that is so interesting?"

see, if it was the netherlands, they'd say, "can you carry the conversation somewhere else? we're closing the bar."

so instead of leaving, we just sat and talked some more with enrico and alfonso. and i discovered that liliana is a real F1 geek, omg. it was like a scene out of a gabriel garcia marquez book. magic. we each were magicians capable of making magic happen. i love that. i love situations that make me a magician. :)

anyway it's late. it's almost two and i got an early class at 09.30 tomorrow, so i'm going to run away now.

p.s. dear robert, i miss you!

Posted by Yasmina at 12:59 AM | Comments (7)

January 08, 2006

don't panic [me at my most vulnerable]

bones, sinking like stones, all that we fought for, homes, places we've grown, all of us are done for. and we live in a beautiful world, yeah we do, yeah we do, we live in a beautiful world. oh, all that I know there's nothing here to run from, 'cos yeah, everybody here's got somebody to lean on

i'm listening to coldplay's "don't panic" that i've just bought from Apple Music Store and i'm still uploading content into my new video ipod. thank god i didn't get the ipod nano because there is just no way that my music would fit in there... i totally didn't realise how much music i had on my powerbook and in our home server. thank you to my former colleagues who presented me with an Apple Store cadeaubon. :)

i was talking to my advisors last week: gerard, who was on business trip to hong kong but responded to my message anyway, which puts him on the list of "people to call in the middle of the night to help bail you out if you're wrongly jailed for drug-trafficking in thailand" and joão in rio de janeiro. both men convinced me that i was not going to die without robert in milan. :)

i know i'll be going out and meeting new people and enjoying my life in milan. i can deal with missing robert. it's just that i wish i could share this milan-and-domus experience with him. me running around in milan, new people, new projects, fun and creativity, photography, extreme silliness, yummy food, all those bars and restaurants that i've got to try... i want robert to "get it", you know?

ah well. i guess we'll all float along anyway. i'm really looking forward to starting classes next week! :)

Posted by Yasmina at 01:40 PM | Comments (6)

January 05, 2006

robert's pimpy [funky] new shoes

i don't know if it's having to do with us being in milan or what, but robert's been wanting to get a new pair of shoes since we got here. we searched high and low and at first i spotted a pair of the above shoes at the camper store in the monte napoleone district. somehow robert didn't like the soles of the camper ones.

so today, while we walked down corso di porta ticinese, which is probably our favorite part of milan right now, we found a nice little shoe shop called panca's, and they had the same model of the camper shoes without the chunky soles. after debating on what color to get, robert finally decided on black and white.

woo hoo! how pimpy are these shoes, baby? :)

Posted by Yasmina at 11:19 PM | Comments (8)

January 04, 2006

naviglio afternoon with robert

robert was sick last week so he didn't go with us to naviglie grande. today we timed ourselves travelling from our flat to the domus academy campus. 40 minutes if taking metro and walking, or 30 mins if metro and bus from porta genova. :)

then we walked around the naviglie grande. it was sunny outside and quite warm compared to last week's walk. we had a coffee at mag cafe, then popped into a church to steep in silence and i lit a candle. robert thinks it's scarilegous if i took photos in church so we ended up just sitting in the pews for some time.

we were looking for new shoes for robert but he didn't like anything he saw today, and i know better than to tell him what to wear. it was a good day out. tonight we're going out to some bars for music.

Posted by Yasmina at 06:52 PM | Comments (3)