May 05, 2007
Labour Day Weekend
A bit of a delayed post since this week the handsome-and-talented husband and I were both working away from Milano.
Tuesday, May 1st was Labour Day so we ran away to Riomaggiore for a 4-day adventure on coastal fishing villages. We didn't do much. It was a weekend of waking up late, having coffee, orange juice and croissants on our large sunny terrace that looks down on Riomaggiore's main square, then going down the smooth pebble beach for sunbathing and swimming in the sea for the entire day, before heading home and dressing for dinner, either taken in our balcony again or at the quiet trattoria by the train station.
How wonderful it is to swim in the sea! I'd forgotten how nice it is to plunge into cool blue waters, how the salt crusts on hair and how afterwards our skin would smell of salt mixed with sun lotion. For three days, we parked ourselves on large smooth boulders on the waterside, so we could lie with our feet in the water and watch crabs mating.
On Tuesday, our last day, the sea was the clearest it had ever been. I could see straight down to the rocky sea floor, and see the fish swim in between my feet. By this time, Robert had turned a lovely shade of brown, his eyebrows slowly turning blond. He's all shiny and smooth, swimming between the boulders, like an oversized otter, and he struggles to climb on the jutting rocks only to dive into the cool waters again.
Unfortunately this week it was back to rainy, gray weather in northern Italy. Robert was in Germany for work and I was in Torino working for three days until Friday. It rained almost non-stop and this depresses me; after a lovely weekend full of sun and love, it was hard to be away from Robert and having awful weather.
Posted by Yasmina at 12:33 AM | Comments (1)
April 09, 2007
Pasqua 2007: Firenze
This Easter weekend, Robert and I ran away to Firenze. Unfortunately, Robert was feeling poorly and by Friday evening, when we arrived at the Alberghino, he'd developed a fever.
After spending a delirious Friday night in bed, Robert felt somewhat better on Saturday morning to go on a relaxed walkabout. It was perhaps a blessing in disguise, because it we ended up taking things easy and discovered the quieter, untouristy parts of Firenze.
Firenze
I think Firenze should be renamed to "Little America" or "Little Britain" during Easter weekend. Il centro storico was full of domestic and foreign tourists. On Easter Sunday, you can clearly differentiate the Italians from the tourists: the Italians were dressed impeccably in their immaculate Sunday best. The tourists were all either L.L Bean catalogue variety or MTV Springbreak special; unfortunately, not all dependent on age.
It's a lovely city, but it's way too touristy. Just as I hated London during the summer tourist season, and why I prefer Rotterdam over Amsterdam, I didn't like Firenze for precisely this reason. Milano can get quite touristy but I've never had shopkeepers in Milano greet me in English. Hummm, maybe I'm developing this Milano-vs-other-Italian-cities complex...
We gave the main sights a miss and headed to Giardino Boboli. First tip of the day: queues to Palazzo Pitti and the main entrance of Giardino Boboli can get extremely long. If you go up Corso San Giorgio to where Giardino Boboli and Bardini neighbour one another, there is another entrance with a biglietteria and hardly anyone queues there.
Robert and I lay on the grassy hill overlooking Palazzo Pitti and Firenze. It was wonderful and we fell asleep in the sun like lazy house cats. The park started to fill up around lunchtime, so we left and went to Giardino Bardini, which was smaller and quieter and had an equally stunning view of Firenze.
Sunday morning, we went to the Duomo to see the Scoppio del Carro, an Easter ritual of blowing up an elaborate wagon decorated just for this purpose. Loud bangs, lots of smoke and sparks of fireworks ensues. It was all fun and good to watch, as the crowd gets really enthusiastic. This is followed by a procession around the city center.
After a heavy Sunday lunch, Robert and I hiked up to Villa Strozzi. We found the lovely gardens and again spent some time lazing in the sun. There were families on their Sunday afternoon walks and I noticed people were a lot friendlier and interactive; there were eye contact and cheerful greetings of "Buona Pasqua" and "Buona sera".
We then walked through the hills and olive groves in the dying Sunday sun, with breathtaking views. It was such a lovely Sunday stroll that I felt better about not renting bikes and cycling through the countryside as I had originally planned.
The food
We received a lot of recommendations from friends (thank you Tango, thank you James). We did find all of those places in town, but in the end we didn't eat there. We'll save those places for our next (more) museum-oriented visit, in the fall.
Too bad Robert was still sick so he could hardly taste and smell any of the food he ate! That's torture of the worst kind (for me).
We ate wonderful Tuscan dishes: faraona all'uva con crema di patate (guinea fowl stewed in grapes on creamy potatoes), polenta con al ragu di cinghiale (polenta with ragu of wildboar), ravioli di zucca con amaretti (pumpkin ravioli with amaretti), sformato caldo di patate con ragù di carni bianche o pomodoro (a molded potato flan with a tomato and meat ragu), bistecca alla fiorentina (yay for extra-rare beef!)... Everything was SO good, I was very happy...
Back in Milano
We're still glowing from the weekend we just had... April will be a busy month with Salone del Mobile Milano and plenty of our designer friends flying in and crashing at our place... I love having friends visit...
I'm looking for our next little holiday at the end of April: we're going to Riomaggiore in Cinque Terre for 4 days! Yippeeee....
Posted by Yasmina at 09:35 PM | Comments (5)
March 06, 2007
got.the.bug.must.travel.
Oh man, I have to leave Milano. For the past couple of days, I've been looking for Easter-Pasqua getaways (a bit late for that, actually) and I was really hopeful on getting a long weekend in Sicily. I thought of flying to Palermo, and taking the ferry to Cefalu, or the autobus to Trapani. Or fly into Catania or Reggio Calabria and get a ferry to Messina.
Ma non trovato(-re?) speziali offerti Pasqua, boo hoo!
Another option was to take the trains on the Milano-Venezia-Firenze-Milano route, which I could find for cheap. However, the accommodation prices are ridiculous for that Easter-Pasqua weekend, and being dependent on Trenitalia means we can't stray far from the centro historico.
I think we'll end up renting a car and driving down to Toscana. Yeah, Toscana would rock our socks.
Then, I started to randomly click and Google destinations and started looking at tickets prices for Indonesia. We're planning to go sometime in August-September. After our Hungary and Turkey trips in June, we figure we still have 20-25 holiday days so we were going to spend 4 weeks in Indonesia, where 2 weeks is spent with family and going to the mountain house, and 2 weeks can be spent elsewhere.
It's always hard trying to decide between a cultural experience or a beach holiday. We'll skip Bali this time and head straight for the white-sands-clear-blue-sea of Lombok. My dad had always wanted to take us to the Bromo crater; Unfortunately, it always erupted shortly before our visits, so no tourism allowed. I also want to take the handsome-and-talented husband to the Borobudur temple.
Oh man, I am so excited about all these trips and I'm annoyed that we can't go earlier. Well, at least next weekend our friends K&D are coming down from Germany and together we will spend a weekend in Torino for la grande festa di cioccolato! Yippee! I am so looking forward to that.
Posted by Yasmina at 06:36 AM | Comments (2)
February 06, 2007
Pastry-Eating Frenzy
I love the pastries they make in bakeries here... I swore off pastries for this week but then Eva came over this afternoon with a plateful... How can I resist?
Nearby our flat are a couple of really great panificio/pasticceria/bakeries, where we usually stock up on fresh bread (if the husband doesn't feel like making his own), get our focaccia for our soups and salads, catch a morning coffee with a freshly baked brioche, and getting seasonal pastries.
I love the selection of seasonal pastries, like chiaccere (sp?) which is a crispy fried dough sprinkled with powder sugar that you can find only during carnaval season. As well as pastries and pies that use seasonal fruits like mirtillo (blueberries) and fichi (figs) and lampone (raspberries).
Posted by Yasmina at 10:03 PM | Comments (1)
February 02, 2007
VOX QotD: Next On My Itinerary
What's the next country you want to visit? Submitted by Schomer.
Braziland India. Japan is pretty high on the list, too.
However, this year, we are already planning+booking trips to:
1. Hungary in June: I've been here before, but the husband hasn't been, and we're going for the wedding of our friends, Laszlo, who's Hungarian and Lesh, who is British-Indian.
2. Turkey in June: we both have never been here, so we're excited to come; also for the wedding of our friends, Anton, who's British-Turkish, and Kata, who is Hungarian.
3. Indonesia in August: family visit to fulfill our duties as daughter and son-in-law, but we are also hoping to travel a bit rather than just seeing family and friends in the city.
4. Singapore stopover in August: how can we go to Indo without visiting friends in Sing?
5. India in November, still tentative: the continuation of the Hungarian-Indian wedding of Laszlo and Lesh.
Sounds like a good year.
I wish every year I can visit at least 2 new countries. It's hard because we're in Europe now and we've been to most places here. I am getting a bit sick of Europe, although I love Italy. Scandinavia is definitely interesting, but I see them as more of city-weekend breaks, rather than a place for holidays.
I feel terrible about Brazil because one of my good friends, João, lives in Rio di Janeiro and he comes to visit us nearly every year. The visiting score right now stands 4-0. We keep putting off Brazil for other travel plans. I really hope we can go soon to Brazil for a vacation there and see him.
Posted by Yasmina at 04:34 PM
January 29, 2007
idlehands
Milan is a great city to live in if you're working hard, and you love your work, and afterwards you and your friends go to apperitivo-dinner-dancing to celebrate or commiserate.
Milan is not great when you don't have anything to do. There's only so many times you can go to the Triennale or other galleries. Not to mention that my social life has shrunk in epic proportions since everyone graduated and buggered off to their next destinations. My friend M has started a Tuesday night get-together to exchange information on the intersection of design and culture and prototyping (he's a technologist), so I'm starting to go to that and meeting new people that way.
I did spend a couple of weeks lost in transition but that's all over now. I spent some time working on my good friend Kathya's website; she's a photographer. It was fun to do, and I'm just finishing things up. I've also been talking to a few prospects on possible collaborations and they've all been mostly positive. Work is starting to snowball around me... Exciting, and I'm feeling really positive, energetic and enthusiastic towards anything that comes my way.
Posted by Yasmina at 06:58 PM
January 14, 2007
lost in transition
I'm getting used to seeing friends on Skype and knowing that I won't be seeing them for lunch, or apperitivo, or Sunday movie night. I'm getting used to being able to just work on my own projects (namely, knitting, *which is going horribly* and soldering robots and electronic kits *which I'm better at*). It's been a week since we got back to Milan and it's a new kind of daily routine that I'm trying to get used to; even if only for a little while.
Last week, I was updating my website, and talking to some people about possible collaborations. I can't talk too much about that yet, only that I'm fortunate to know so many people who are happy to open their doors for me. In the meantime, I am keeping myself busy with new ideas and projects, and making new friends.
I'm glad we are staying in Italy for longer. I like my life here, with Robert. Hooray for 2007.
Posted by Yasmina at 05:18 PM
December 17, 2006
it's done!
So last night we had an informal graduation ceremony, and the final exhibition. It was packed and soon I was tired of talking about my project; I should have prototyped a repeat button with a voice recording on it. Oh, it felt, somewhat anti-climactic.
My Arduino blew up at 3 am that morning (after I thought everything was done), and without my knowledge, Robert had taken the spare Arduino to his office in Monza. So in a panic I had to email Massimo and Giovanni, asking whether they had a spare Arduino lying around at the studio.
Luckily, everything turned out OK. Here's some photos... taken by Hector and Mika...
We skipped out of the exhibition early. Giovanni, Robert and I went to Rosso Pomodoro to celebrate with Napoli-style pizzas and beers. It was delicious! I'm glad Giovanni was there to celebrate with us. Afterwards, we were supposed to party with the rest of the graduating class at Trattoria Toscana but dinner didn't finish until half past midnight and we were knackered so we went home. :-)
Yay me! It's over! It's been an amazing year, learning so much, meeting creative people... I'm sad because everyone is leaving and thinking about life in Milan without them is painfully unbearable...
Another chapter begins, I guess... :-)
Posted by Yasmina at 01:29 AM | Comments (5)
December 03, 2006
Monza, Sunday Afternoon
After waking up late on this very gray Sunday, and breakfasting on chocolate panettone, vanilla yoghurt and coffee, we caught a train to Monza. The initial idea was to walk around Parco Monza, but when we got there, we decided it was too cold and rainy to walk in the park. We ended up walking around the shopping streets instead.
We found a Citta del Sole so we bought an inflatable globe, a toy airplane, a wooden car and an Il Piccolo Principe memory game for X. On the phone, X asks us for a toy hammer... but I can hear his mom (my sister) in the background shouting to get him educational toys instead. So it's a sort of compromise.
We keep thinking we must go to Indonesia and see him before he gets too big (to be tickled, held upside-down, spun around and all that good stuff). We spoke to him on the phone yesterday and he keeps asking us where we are. Hence the idea of the inflatable globe, so he can see where we are in relation to his position.
Anyway, I hope next weekend it will be sunny so we can go to the park. :-)
Posted by Yasmina at 07:18 PM | Comments (1)
November 02, 2006
Musical Neighbours
Ahhh... finally. The piano kid living in our building learns a new song to play. For weeks, I've listened to the soft sounds of Beethoven's Für Elise in the distance, somewhere in the building. I thought the kid lived upstairs, but now we actually think the kid is downstairs and the awesome rock guitarist lives upstairs.
The kid often practises on Sunday mornings, not too early, around 10 am, and sometimes during the weekday evenings. The rock guitarist plays mostly on evenings; sometimes we don't hear him for a while, but then he/she would play a couple of nights in a row, around 8 pm.
You might think having a piano kid and a rock guitarist in the building is a hassle and makes a noisy living space, but we actually quite like listening to them (within a repetitive threshold).
And what song has the neighbour kid learned to play this time, you might ask? Heart and soul, of course.... ;-)
Posted by Yasmina at 07:25 PM
October 18, 2006
Guitar Guy
Most days on my daily commute to school, I see him, jumping metro carriages every two stations, toting his guitar and his paper cup with change. He's probably my age, South-American looks, long dark hair tied into a ponytail; sometimes he looks sad or nostalgic but his voice always carries clearly, floating across the carriage, above the din of the train travelling on rails in the underground.
His eastern border on the green line is Lambrate FS, my stop, and he would exit the northeast-bound train, cross the platform and catch the train going back into town. In the other direction, I've seen him as far as Porta Genova station, also my stop.
The thing that drives me a little bit crazy about him is that he's always either singing "La Bamba" or "Guantanamera". Just those two numbers. Nothing else. Or at least, I haven't heard him sing any other tunes. It's getting to the point of recognition when I put a coin into his cup and we'd smile, nod, an acknowledgement of presence, and I swear he looks embarrassed sometimes, as if thinking, "Oh, she heard me sing that song, again..."
Anyway. I haven't spotted him since school started. I hope he's okay.
Posted by Yasmina at 12:10 PM
October 09, 2006
Trespassers of Social Boundaries
Referring to this post of mine, I ponder upon ideas of social boundaries and its trespassers in online communication channels.
In response to the above post, A talks about giving 3 strikes before they're out... My good friend, M, once talked about only continuing friendships only with people who keep up the same effort and block out the others... My final project talks about the emerging behavior of scopophilia (combination of voyeurism and exhibitionism) in social networking and developing solutions for revealing, concealing and camouflage: opening up, closing and hiding communication windows.
All deal in some ways with trespassers of social boundaries...
The more I analyse it, the more rules and exceptions I come up with in social interaction, specifically in my case of last week: like, I don't expect a reply when I send out a mass email with general news or so, but I expect something when it is an individual email with specific personal questions.
Also, if the online relationship mirrors the offline relationship, upon which the online contact is based, I tend to be more forgiving. For example, my friend L is terrible at returning calls when we were living in the same city, so it's OK if he doesn't reply to my message now that we're in different countries. But when it's someone who is dependable and constant with the offline relationship, and their online behavior is the opposite, I become puzzled and stumped. Especially with the ease of emails/Flickr/IM these days, it's easier to offend by a non-reaction.
During the Applied Dreams workshop this year, one of the teams came up with a project on Social Boundaries, certain rules that apply and get broken. Shame I can't find it as reference for now, but if I find it, I'll link it.
OK, back to the project drawing board.
Posted by Yasmina at 10:31 PM
October 03, 2006
Herd. It could sound like 'Hurt'.
Jillian is probably a pro at analysing this kind of thing. I'm just beating myself up on why some of the people I knew back in the Netherlands haven't replied to my emails. Even with all the easy communication channels, there's been no initiation from the other side. Amazing. In a really weird and pathetic way.
Forget asynchronous communication; this is like person-to-brick-wall communication. Maybe they've got that whole swarm, herd behaviour going on: once I'm out of their immediate circle and vicinity, they go and herd elsewhere.
Posted by Yasmina at 04:20 PM
September 17, 2006
Vox QotD: This is What's Up
Sorry, Vox addiction. Crossposting from Vox.
From Vox Question of the Day:What's up?
So tonight I am meeting friends for coffee/apperitivo first, then we're going to see "Carbuncle" at Theatre Strehler in Lanza part of Milan. It's one of the few full-feature films of the festival, and it narrates the story of an alcoholic’s relationship with a mentally challenged woman in a mobile home park, and it was based on the director's own experiences of living in a trailer park. It's made by these guys.
The festival isn't just screening multiple international short films, but also hosting animation workshops, music concerts and DJ sets. There's a couple of screenings I want to catch later this week, and maybe go to one of the parties.
Ciao, I'm off!
Posted by Yasmina at 06:36 PM | TrackBack
September 11, 2006
Vox QotD: I Get Around
Sorry, Vox addiction. Crossposting from Vox.
From Vox Question of the Day:How many places have you lived in your life?
Six countries, about a dozen or so homes between parents, housemates, and husband.
* 6 years in Jakarta, Indonesia: in 2 different homes
* 2 years in Bogor, Indonesia
* 4 years in Geneva, Switzerland
* 4 years in Washington D.C, USA
* 6 years in London, UK: in 5-6 different homes, a new one every school year
* 5 years in Eindhoven, Netherlands: in 3 different homes
* currently 9 months in Milan, Italy
Up until London, it was for my dad's job. He served on the diplomatic corps. London was for education; finished highschool and undergrad there. Netherlands was for work. Milan is for my graduate degree, which should be finished in 3 months! Yippee! After that, who knows?
Posted by Yasmina at 03:16 PM | Comments (1)
September 10, 2006
Back from Ars Electronica 2006
Wow. What a week! I had a fantastic time. So good to get away from Milan, disconnect and immerse myself in symposiums/lectures and interactive exhibits and music parties...
This week I have:
* taken over 1Gb worth of pictures and video
* met a lot of interesting new people
* ran into an old friend by accident
* gotten to know some of my classmates better
* walked in my bare feet in the grass
* fallen asleep twice on the grass; once on the sunny banks of the Danube, and another in an Austrian countryside monastery
* browned in the sun
* attended an Arduino workshop and sat next to an overenthusiastic American, who turned out to be Golan Levin
* bought the new Arduino board
* gotten the Arduino board to work
* been told by John Maeda that he liked my work and ideas on 'simplicity'
* got a signed copy of his latest book
* read half of that book
* been completely star-struck after meeting Golan Levin and John Maeda
* sent my husband photos of myself through an internet phone booth
* drank a lot of Austrian white beer
* drank a lot of bad coffee
* eaten a lot of sinfully yummy Austrian cakes and pastries
* eaten a lot of healthy vegetarian, bio meals
* not gotten into bed at a reasonable time due to self-inflicted party-abuse
* not gotten out of bed at a reasonable time due to self-inflicted party-abuse
* worn a Threadless t-shirt every day of the week (not the same one)
* only seen 2 other people wearing Threadless t-shirts at the festival
* thrown some LED throwies at a passing tram
* painted with light with friends at Hauptplatz
* burned my eyeballs at the Ars Electronica Animation Festival
* attended some pretty amazing (digital) music performances
* played with some really cool tangible and embedded interfaces
* seen more interactive art exhibits than you could shake a stick at...
* been to a wine festival
I'm still editing the videos, and also trying to catch up on the Siena Design Project report which needs to be handed in before the new semester starts next week, plus some client work so now I am back to work mode in Milan. Busy bee but happy to be together again with my lovely husband :)
Posted by Yasmina at 02:51 PM | Comments (1)
August 07, 2006
Ars Electronica 2006
Cool, the Ars Electronica 2006 festival program is up. Annoyingly too late to signup for the Arduino workshops. On the other hand, the Arduino workshop is an intense five-day ten-a.m-to-seven-p.m activity and it seems a shame to miss out on the other bits of the festival.
The events that look quite promising are down below...
Conferences:
- The Simplicity Symposiums Part I (a.m) & Part II (p.m.)
- Goblin City
- Redefining Public Service: What is Public Value and What do Community Media have to do with It?
Hauptplatz/Mobile City
- As If We Were Alone...
- Mobile Assassins
- Regrets
Also, the play The Electric Grandmother by Franz Schwabeneder, based on a short story by Ray Bradbury, sounds good. Would love to catch that while I'm there...
School will only be paying for 2 days' accommodation in Linz, and I know I want to stay until Sunday, so I am now looking for 3 days' accommodation, possibly sharing with Huie. Need to find train or air fares as well. I like the idea of travelling by train and looking out the window. Wonder if the prices are sky-high though, and what kind of student discounts they'll have.
Also published on my vox.com.
Posted by Yasmina at 01:16 PM
