Wow, how dead is this blog? I've been terrible... There is just so much going on and there's so much to write about but the words don't come out.

In the 6 months since my last entry, the husband and I have (jointly and separately):
- visited Kathya and David in Wiesbaden (twice!)
- eaten at Taco Bell's (wow yeah, a Taco Bell's in Europe!)
- binged on American junk food
- done a workshop on Public Toilets in Amsterdam
- travelled to India to attend the wedding of our good friends
- had a lovely reunion with old friends (once upon a time we all lived in the Netherlands) during our week in India
- had a 3-hour detox-relaxation-reinvigoration Ayurvedic treatment every day for a week
- wave-dived into the Arabian sea
- found a lovely beach to stroll along on
- eaten ridiculously good South Indian food (a sustainable way of eating: on banana leaf and with our hands)
- fallen in totally love with the crazy, chaotic, bursting-with-life and positively colourful experience that was India
- travelled to Indonesia to fulfill our obligations as daughter and son-in-law :-D
- visited one of the oldest and largest Buddhist temple complex in the world
- stuffed our faces full of yummy Indonesian comfort food
- spent quality time with the people we love over the holidays
- got close to nature and loving it in the family mountainhouse
- drunk fresh mango juice every day that I practically turned yellow!
- spent New Years Eve in tropical Singapore (a bit tame partying, actually)
- ate ridiculously good Taiwanese dumplings
- gone to the Turin chocolate festival
- moved into a lovely new apartment in a typically Italian "ringheria" apartment block
- promised ourselves to purchase consciously and cook and eat healthy organic foods

I don't know why I have more and more problems expressing myself in writing, especially with things and events that have happened to me. I have no problems talking about current events in the news or my thoughts on work-related topics, but when it comes to the every day personal life things, I guess I just internalise.

Anyway... I will post more here for sure. If you need to know my up-to-the-minute updates, I have a Twitter-enabled blog too.

We're in Singapore now but tonight we will fly to Trivandrum, India. Woooo!

But when they call and call and call again, that's scary. Please just go away.

The man had bought the shirt in Malaysia, he spoke basic bahasa Indonesia, and I was the second person in Milan that morning that had asked him about his shirt. They are Swiss Germans and were heading back home that day after spending time in Italy.

I love seeing older generations actively traveling; this couple seemed to be in their late 60s-early 70s and although they seemed active and healthy and independent, I wonder if in some ways they had needs still unfulfilled in today's travel context. Interesting subject to explore further. I hope when I'm their age, I'll still be traveling around like them.

In the meantime, I'll be digging up old posts on the elderly on the Putting People First blog.

The lady sitting in front had been watching me with a kind of amused look on her face, and she finally snatched my yarn, held it in her hands and said to me, in an exaggerated but amused tone, "Vai vai..."

How nice of her to help! So I rolled up in no time. And I started knitting the scarf, during which she stole glances at me, as if to check my progress.

At work, Andrea helped me deconstruct the scarf-in-progress since I decided it was too wide, and on the train home, he became the yarn-ball boy, holding the yarn and easing some yarn whenever my working yarn ran short.

And tonight, I came back from a lovely dinner with friends, to find an email from this guy properly titled "Sweet treats for the knit-minded" with a related article.

It's only Monday and people have been so nice. I hope it doesn't go downhill from here.

In any case, I couldn't stop thinking about D. He was my second cousin, and counting all the years I've been away, we'd hardly seen each other. My memories of him are few, but vivid.

Like that one rainy afternoon with a family party going on and I escaped the clutches of genuine-yet-choking family warmth, seeking refuge in the empty terrace overlooking the small fish pond (a malaria source, if anything!). Not long after, D came to join me. We didn't speak, much. We sat there in our silent understanding that family gets too much for us sometimes. I was glad for his company.

I remember the pitter-patter of the gentle rain, the light of the approaching dusk desaturating the colors of the day, our bare feet on the tile floor, the tip of his cigarette glowing orange in the semi-darkness, the smoke dissipating into the air like ghosts of our past, his white teeth as he smiled, the breaths we took almost in synch.

I wish I could have captured that moment, tangibly, somehow, and then D would be alive in more than just my heart and mind.

Akhirnya, sebelum suami berangkat, gue nyuruh dia empty out all the trash bins in the house. Gue tau it's bulan puasa and all that, dan katanya para setan di-lock-up, tapi does that apply to makhluk aneh-aneh?

P.S. Mas Ote ngga usah komen yang aneh-aneh yang bikin gue makin takut yah...

So I saw this video podcast on Knitting over at Craft Zine, and I learned to knit... yippeeeee :) You can also download a pdfcast from their blog.

The first scarf I knitted was an experiment piece with different patterns. The result was a bit of a mutant scarf especially when I started out with 12 knits per row and in the middle I ended up with 15 knits, then 18 knits per row... ack! But I brought the amount of knits back down again and it's somewhat symmetrical now.

I thought that since I spend hours commuting between Milan and Turin, I could knit on the train. Sometimes I do work on the train and am quite productive on the train, mostly in the mornings, but I think knitting would be nice, and I get to make a nice scarf for someone.

I was looking for yarns to make scarves with, and because I have particular people in mind, I become quite picky with the colours, weight and texture of the yarn. I want it to match the person(s). It's funny to actually see what colours and textures I associate with certain individuals.

Mmm... let's hope this is really something I can keep up, and not just a temporary thing. People have been pinging me on Skype and Facebook asking for scarves.

Found these four sunset scans while I was looking for old project files. Karen had scanned them in for me.

It was us on one of our random roadtrips. João, Laszlo, Karen and myself. We ended up in Brugge and Zeebrugge this time. It was frikkin cold on the shore that day but the sky was eternally blue and Karen's jacket was so bright, this visual memory still freshly etched onto my memory. I had a very tasty French onion soup that afternoon, on a beachside bistrot.

I miss us. I do, I do.

Memasak
Kemaren chatting sama Mas Ote yang memang sudah lama ngga ketemu. Paling saling ketlisut di forum saja. Chatting sambil masak, seperti biasa. Kalo musim panas gini biasanya appetite kita menurun; too hot too eat jadi kita banyak makan yang light aja, seperti salad, sandwich, kadang zarusoba. Banyak makan gelato juga sih.

Gue kangen makanan Indo. Pengen makan rawon. Pengen makan gudeg. Pengen makan daging empal. Mmm, apa lagi ya? Ketoprak sayur. Ini kok masakan Jawa semua ya? Kadang gue pikir bahwa I would probably be better at cooking Indonesian food if Robert had been Indonesian, then he'd want me to cook Indonesian dishes.

Little green dots
So Skype was down this week, but it wasn't what I was really missing. Everyone's gone off on holidays, and I miss my "dailies", the people I work with, usually translated into little green dots and Growl notification bars. Andrea and Tal (who I miss physically too, because the three of us made up the 'Milan team'), the terrible twins Dona and Halli, and oddly enough, Mark.

Gue juga akhir-akhir ini kan sering ngobrol sama Gaya dan Karen di London. Walopun ngga lama, dan isinya paling cela-celaan tentang orang lain tentunya, ahahaha doang, the words across my screen provides me dengan semacam emotional tanda sayang.

It was getting depressing, so in a way I was glad Skype went down and I didn't have to think about the gaping void that was my main communication and presence channel.

Teenage kicks
Pernah liat film 'The Virgin Suicides' ngga? I think the opening shots captured perfectly moments dari summer kita di tahun 1992. Masa-masa angsty, tapi full of lust for life, awakening, discovery.

Gue ngga tahu apakah gue merasa flattered, touched, awkward atau gimana, ketika someone from my blurry past mengatakan bahwa dia selalu berharap akan bertemu gue lagi ketika gue pindah dari US, Gue ngga tau apa mungkin dia punya unresolved issues atau memories yang membuat dia confess itu semalam. Anyway...

We lay on our backs in the grass
Silently watching the rain clouds move by far too fast
You said it was a night where anything could happen
But nothing was gonna last
And we're doing fine now yeah we do
We don't feel sad or bad or blue and you know
We ain't never defeated
Not broken inside all that is fine
Yeah all that is fine
- Beth Orton, Daybreaker

I can almost see the panic thought bubble appearing above his head: "Oh, how can this be? We're married, how can she be more musically compatible with other men?"

Add to this paranoid mix the fact that I've been telling R about a certain man at work whose iTunes collection has been rocking my socks. Poor baby... the handsome and talented husband went straight into last.fm, started to audioscrobble my radio station and tagging random tracks as his favourites.

And actually, it works... After a while, our compatibility rating went up, from low to high. I guess this post becomes an entry on how to commit fraud on last.fm.

Gaya came to visit last week. She stayed with us in Milan from Friday to Tuesday. Milan was warming up again after a couple of weeks of dubious weather, and it gets quite unbearable in the city when it's hot. So on Sunday we took a trip to Lake Como for a Sunday swim. We took the train to Varenna and then the ferry across to Menaggio.

There was a Vespa club convention in Menaggio and the road between the ferry pier and the beach was lined with colourful Vespas. I love the colours, design and details of some of them! We fantasised about getting our own Vespas with matching helmets (orange or lime green with white racing stripes down the middle).

We arrived early, just before noon, and spent the entire afternoon sunbathing. When it got too hot and we were basking in our own juices (eww!), we jumped in the water. The water was so cool and refreshing and we could see schools of fish swimming below us. It was lovely!

Maybe we should come here every weekend until August. I love the smell of skin after a day of swimming and sunbathing, kind of a mix of sun lotion and water and skin scent. We were fairly brown by the end of the day; Gaya tans so well, I've never seen anyone bronze quite like that after just a few hours. We were sleepy and tanned and relaxed.

In the evening, we had cold beers and sandwiches in Varenna before catching the train back to Milan.

I'm thinking of taking Gaya to Venice sometime this year, maybe September. It would be super cool, except Robert would get jealous that I travel without him.

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.

The last 2 weeks were hectic-mad... Between finishing up my own work deadlines, working in Torino, hosting friends from the Netherlands and London who have flown in for the Salone and then running around all the exhibits, breaking not one but two Canon cameras (yes, the G5 and the 300D), then having to write design articles afterwards, I scarcely had time to breathe or do anything else...

Plus the Milan spring pollen is seriously killing me by making my body produce copious amounts of histamine.

So the husband and I are running away this long weekend to have a well-deserved romantic break together :)

Here's a picture of who came to visit last week. No photos of Jo, but I included a pic of Lesh on Jo's giant crocheted black roses.

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....