Lox - Archived Entries for 2010 / 1

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500th POST and counting....: [Wednesday 27th January 2010]

And so it happens that today I reached 500 posts in this blog that I have started quite some time ago...

Data shows that it was the 5th of June 2005, FIVE YEARS AGO, when John introduced me to the wonders of the blog that he was having on Maison de Stuff. I have always been an active member at the Maison before, but I never really had my "bit" of space.

As it turns out I have written 111.11(periodic) posts in the 4 and half years that I had the chance to do it, it's a shame that we do not run one of those sophisticated blog engines that let you check a whole bunch of statistics (of which I am quite fond), but it has been a great experience so far.

At the beginning of my blogger career I wrote a lot of personal things, then mostly because of harsh comments from people that were close to me at that time I stopped that trend. I miss it a bit to be honest, but the reasons stopping me to continue doing it are probably better found in the fact that I do not feel completely free in my present situation.

Anyways here go some facts about Lox's BLOG:

-- 500 posts (this we know now)
-- Most prolific months have been December 2006 and November 2005 both with 20 posts in the month.
-- Top five most commented posts: Fight Club(32) - Day Three - First Cracks(28) - Pretending(25) - ...and then there were NONE!(17) - Bitter Truth(16) - Paris NOT on a Business trip(16)
-- I wrote a poem/post: Crawling
-- Probably one of the most "heartfelt" blogs: Snorting Cocaine off the ass of an Hooker
-- Top Visiting Countries: UK, Italy, France, Greece, Japan, US, Brasil, Belgium, Argentina, Canada
-- Top visited page: Here
-- 7th August 2008 was the day where the most access were made to my site, 25 unique visitors.

Ok this is getting too boring, but to me it's a great success to have been able to keep writing for such a long time. Although I am considerably slowing down in recent months, I still like to write my blog and post my weird pictures. I'd love for it to be nicer and easier to access and comment (especially the pictures), but maybe that will come in the future...

Thanks everyone for reading and coming to visit the pages, without readers, I probably wouldn't have continued... :P

[7 comments]
Dinner with Murder and the weekend: [Thursday 14th January 2010 + W/E]

Me and Federico set off quite late on Thursday to go to Poggibonsi, a little village in the Siena province where we had to meet some of Federico's friends to go to the long awaited "Dinner with Murder" event that we tried to go to many times failing to do so.

The whole setting is quite interesting, a theatrical group rents a restaurant, that will be the actual stage, and that night the people who come to eat know that there is going to be a play that will end in a murder.

During the dinner (that wasn't certainly the highlight of the evening), the actors play their roles and you must be very careful at each thing they say and each behaviour that they have.
Then after the murder the first set of clues is given (medic report, some pictures, maps) and then the questioning of the suspects starts and everyone can ask any question related to the murderer, the history of the character that you are interviewing and so on.

Then another set of clues is given and you have 20 minutes to solve the case.

Well, believe it or not, our table WON and we guessed the right assassin and gave a lot of details that made us win 2 bottles of wine.

A nice night out, that I am looking at doing again if possible because it was really nice!

Then the weekend came, after a very very long week at work which really drained all my energies. Saturday night ended up very late, around 3 AM as I got talking to Alberto, the friend with whom I play Cuban Percussions, and Sunday was devoted to computer work (a little) and the usual football match (that ended very badly with Fiorentina loosing).

Next week is about to start, the issues at work are still there so I try to concentrate on other things, not work related...
[2 comments]
Negative start: [Tuesday 12th January 2010]

Not the best start of things at work. I am not feeling well after the flu, and that probably doesn't make things any easier now that I am back to the office.

The there is still this uneasy feeling about the new boss that came, I cannot put my finger on it, but I do not have positive vibes. Skin feeling? Maybe.

The season is about to start and the company is riddled with the usual throng of problems that had before, like a sieve. But instead of addressing those it seems that it's easier to look at other things, like a man in the middle of a starry night, who stares at his finger without noticing the moon behind.

Downhearted, that's the best I can describe me. Once again it's probably because I am in a real crappy physical state, and because the fairs are coming up and stress levels are going to sky rocket very soon!

Oh well, another downbeat post, I promise than on Thursday after I go to this "dinner with murder" I will have nicer things to talk about! (if I am not the one being murdered of course!)
[6 comments]
Flu Remastered!: [Friday 8th January 2010]

There you go, it seems that the last part of 2009 and this beginning 2010 had to be stamped with the mark of diseases and generally feeling shite.

As it seems I have got the "other" form of flu that is going around now, much lighter than the precious one that I have had, but still enough to prevent me from going out today and probably for the rest of the weekend.

I really hate being sick, that it's pretty common I am sure, but I doubly hate it when it happens on holidays and when I really do not feel terribly wasted, but it's rather a mild form of nausea/headache/weakness that makes me feel as if I could do anything I want but then in reality I can't.

Met a friend from my first company, Marco, we managed to keep in contact through the years, and since it was a long time since we didn't see each other we met at my place to talk about several things. It turn out that he's doing a great job at making sushi (yes you read correctly!), self taught but now at a level that it's extremely advanced from what I could see. Will try to make something together, maybe for some parties or simply for a dinner with friends, it would be nice.

I find that more and more I am looking at external hobbies (such as cooking for me) as a possible escape from the shaky ground where I am stuck at the moment at work, I know that anything that springs to mind is completely absurd but it keeps the hope alive that there can be something better in the future, out there.

Certainly the moment that we are living is not helping, my scope at work is limited to the end of the month, this means that any important decision such as buying a house or something like that gets postponed indefinitely, which in turns puts stress on a lot of other things.

What am I going to do with my life? Where do I want to go, how do I see myself in 10 years?

I met Marco 10 years ago, I just came back from Uni, I wouldn't even dreamt, at that time, that I was going to become a solitary international traveller all around Asia...

So in a way there is no point in trying to envisage myself in 10 years time, I must certainly hope to be alive (if the decade starts with so many illnesses I wonder...), but as to the other questions it's not good to try to answer because if I have learnt something since I left Italy when I was 18 is that life is totally unpredictable and that any attempt at making plans is just wasted time.

Maybe it's not always like that, or maybe it's exactly where I failed to become the "Miller" or the "Cromwell" mentioned by Gray in his Elegy written in a Country Churchyard when he speaks about the people from the village buried in the churchyard and about the potential that they never managed to get out (by becoming great poets or politicians, i.e. to have success).

[...]
Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.
[...]

and with this last thought I leave you today!

[2 comments]
New Year in Berlin: [30th December 2009 - 3rd January 2010]

First of all HAPPY 2010 EVERYBODY! :D

This year instead of the usual dinner at some friend's house, it was proposed to go to Berlin for New Year and spend the night roaming around the streets of the German capital, just for a change.

Although preparations to the trip were quite hard (I was in Asia when we were deciding the details), we managed to set it up and on the 30th we jumped on our Lufthansa flight bound to Frankfurt and then Berlin.

The city was (and probably at the time of writing "is still") under an heavy snow fall. I call it heavy from Italian standards, but probably is all quite normal if you live there.
Anyway, that was certainly the most annoying point of the trip, as made moving around the city more difficult, as we walked quite a lot around the buildings and museums that we wanted to see.

The New Year's eve was quite "normal" if I compare it to the one I had in Edinburgh some years ago, Hogmany is certainly one of the best "open air" New Year's eve that you can possibly get.

Anyhow, fireworks, hot wine (with brandy), wursts and several other delicacies made the night very warm and all in all it was a nice experience.

The city itself was rebuilt extensively after the war, there are several buildings worth of notice, but you can tell that they are quite new. Museums are really nice, we went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum (Berlin wall), the Jewish Museum, Pergamon Museum (absolutely fantastic) and inside the Berlin Dome.

Food and beer of course have been a great highlight of the trip, as the beer is certainly nice, but I was surprised to see how much food they brought us every night and the relatively low price that we paid all the times, much less than what we pay in Italy for a similar meal. Pork Legs, Boulettes (meat balls), all sorts of potatoes, strudels, creams, duck and many other dishes that left us VERY FULL and VERY HAPPY.

All in all a great idea for a short break, I'd love to see the city in the summer because as I said the weather did spoil the experience a little...

Let's hope that this 2010 is going to be good, the last decade wasn't all that good for me, so I really look for a different pace in the next one. Let's keep finger crossed! :D

Almost forgot HERE are the pictures...
[2 comments]
Asian Business Trip in November: [Tuesday 5th January 2010]

I know that the business trip was in November and that I should have posted the pictures before, but let's say that I was busy...ok? :D

Anyways here is the link to the page I hope you like them, this time I visited the Philippines for the first time in my life, quite a great experience if you ask me, the country is very poor, but the people are real nice.

Enjoy!
[No comments]

Lox, Lorenzo... ME!!: A little introduction about the author and the blog itself. Plus contacts and CVs... You never know!
Pictures: A Selection of the best pictures that I have taken all over the world during the years, all nicely indexed by year and geographical area. Jolly good!
History of this Blog: A collection of all the articles that I have wrote so far, divided by month/year.