Boxmeer

Tonight I am sleeping in a monastery. After all these years of excitement and fun, I needed some rest, and some time for myself. Not for meditation, or for fastening, or for introspection, because I have been a teenager already. But to discover, once again, boredom. Boredom is a state we do not allow to ourself nowadays, still is the essence of every dog's day in this world, of every military servant. Boredom is embedded in every mediterranean afternoon. Boredom is the knowledge of having nothing better to do than doing nothing, and being unhappy with it. So, I am sitting here, completely, fully, exhaustively bored.

Border

While being in Italy, I discovered that my body passed one of those important psychological borders. My weight is above 100Kg, and more exactly my measurement showed 100.7Kg. When passing such a border action is required: in this case a celebration could be appropriate, but I am opting for a change in habits, such as to pass this border once again, but in the other direction this time. The plan includes:

• eating a lot of vegetables and fruit, on top of all the other things I already eat
• limiting the quantity of food. A rule prescribes that one should finish a meal with the same feeling as finishing an intercourse: satisfied, but wanting for more.
  
• more movement and sport. I will bike, play football and type faster.
• eating regularly (i.e. following a rule, the best one being when you are hungry)
• reading one copy of the magazine Libelle

A plan needs a goal to justify itself. My goal, who will keep me motivated in the coming months is: to have a weight of 95Kg by the end of the year. To add some scientific method, I am allowing a tolerance of +/- 5%. For the repeatability of the experiment, the target weight in December will be measured with a different weighter than the one used for measuring the starting point of 100.7Kg, and in a different location.
When target will be met, the axiom of Mass Conservation will be violated.

Vacanze in Toscana - Parte IV

Wednesday 9th, Pistoia

Pistoia is a nice town, a bit too close to Florence, which means it does not get a tourist flow, since all the tourist prefer the more famous Renaissance capital; it's a bit too far from Florence to get tails of tourist who are visiting and want to make an excursion. Therefore, in spite of its beatiful center, build around the Via Cassia - a highway dating the roman times, you will find an authentic local life. Pistoia is worldwide famous for the invention of the pistol, which owns its name to the city. The mechanical tradition continued, and nowadays Pistoia is an important train manufacturing center. Most of all, Pistoia is full of shops, and those need to be visited one by one, looking at every single good; buying and carrying staff around, with three annoyed kids, is the best way of spending a day there. Especially drugstores are characteristic. We entered one, looking for some eye-drops for my famous allergy - in the shop there was a water distributor, one of those you find in every waiting room over here - only there it was surrounded by advertising material. My children, in their dutch ignorance, started pouring some water at it, with immediate reaction of the clerck, who explained us that that water was not meant to be drunk, but only to be dispensed to customers willing to buy it. Embarrassed, I returned the filled paper glasses to the clerck, and invited him to drink it - better him than us.

Vacanze in Toscana - part III

Monday 7th May

Pisa has an irrestistible attraction power. His tower, dramatically pending, does not get straight in spite of all the tourist attempts. Il Campo de' miracoli is an authentic wonder. Everything is actually pending, not only the tower.
We entered the cathedral, where Loes had to cover her shoulders, which were clearly not made by God, and admired it breathlessly. It's a wonderful place where to spend a monday afternoon.

Tuesday May, the 8th - Saturday, the 12th, Monday the 14th

The mediterranean sea is a sea in the middle of lands, as the name says. Italy is a land in the middle of the sea, so everytime I get there, I need to go to the beach. The kids loved it. Finally some real sea, with some real salt taste in it, and waves and german tourists. In spite of the sun there was a limited collection of tits exposed; all of them were obeying to all the physics laws, the gravity one with particular abnegation.

Gli Uccelli Di Bangkok

Pepe Carvalho is pretty busy those days. Three cases are filling his time and keeping him away from Charo. A comic case, made of family arguments; a tragic case, where riches and poors are confronted by love, and in which for Pepe is more important to know which brand was the champagne bottle that killed Célia; and a redding mission, in the hearth of Asia, going after a naïve Teresa.
At the end of the trip, it seems that the only important thing to know is what kind of birds are resting on the electricity lines in Bangkok.

Holidays in Toscana - part II

Sunday May 6th - Le cinque terre

Le cinque terre, a beautiful natural park inscribed in the UNESCO world heritage fund, was our destination on sunday. We drove to La Spezia, an important NATO harbour, and took the train to this magnificent place. Monterosso and Vernazza were our destinations; Le Cinque terre are 5 small villages, carved between the mountains and the see. Reacheable only by walk and train, they constitute an oasis in the automobilistic Italy. The sea has sculptured beautiful designs on the rocks, man has build pictoresque villages facing south.




We ate icecream and enjoyed a powerful shower. Milo and Kyara climbed some of the rocks, and Julia got mad. It was difficult for Milo and myself to give an explanation to the sudden change of mood of Julia. Maybe the taste of the icecream, or the rocks, breaking the waves. We medidated about it, long enough to allow another change of mood and forget the problem altogether. Julia collected items which are difficult to find in the Netherlands, especially stones, Milo and Kyara went playing with the see.


Loes took pictures, and most of the ones in this post are taken by her (the rest can be found here). In those I look older than I used to be. More wrinkles, less air, and an uncomfortable feeling of being in a beautiful place only for visiting it, and not for staying there.

You can hardly say the same for Julia and Kyara, who posed for a session. They look bigger, but still very young.

Holidays in Toscana - part I

Friday, May 4th

It's amazing how these new cheap flight companies changed the way we travel nowadays. We went from house to house, Eindhoven to Montignoso, in just 8 hours. The flight itself took about 2 hours, the drive about 1 hour and a half. The remaining time was spent waiting. Waiting at the check-in, waiting at the passport and handbaggage screening, waiting at the gate, waiting at the stairs of the airplane, waiting in the airplane, waiting for collecting the luggage. Nowadays they do not allow you to bring any liquid with you any more, except for the ones you buy at the airport, or in the cabin itself. Clearly a way for them to earn the money back!!


Saturday, May 5th - Montignoso



Driving to Montignoso was difficult. Montignoso is not a place, but is a set of places, starting from the bold mountain, down to the beach some 20km below it. Cinquale, Piazza, Prato, Cerreto, are all part of Montignoso, and they are randomly indicated on the signs. To drive there from Pisa, it took us 90 minutes, instead of the 40 needed to cover the distance. The part in which we were hosted - we stayed at my sister's place, is on the mountain. It's not very high, but it maintains the steepness of a mountain. The village is very nice, though it has nothing noticeable. My sister's place is a house that my brother in law is restructuring. The front door is on the third floor. Via some staircases you can descend to the 2nd floor and to the ground floor. Thanks to the mountain geometry, levitation is not needed to enter the house. The 3rd floor is ready and inhabited by my sister and my brother in law, whilst the ground floor needs still a lot of work. The 2nd floor is almost ready, there are doors and windows, floors and walls, there is even electricity and water, even though the latter is always cold. Walking to the village takes 5 minutes one way, and 15 the other way. Driving takes about 10 minutes both ways, since the only viable road has to climb the other side of the valley and cross the pass some 3 km further away. We decided to descend walking to the town-hall square, where some parked cars, a marble fountain and some tables and chairs delimited the borders of a children's football field. The goal was formed by the townhall wall, delimited by a pillar on the left, and by the municipality door on the right, which when open offered an undoubtful evidence of a missed shot. Some children invited Milo to play football with them; Kyara was eating a icecream, whilst I was pretending to listen to my sister's monologue about her life problems. When the townhall clock ratified the end of the ootball match, we walked through the village, and eventually climbed back home, where Loes and Julia were still enjoying their siesta.

Julia's birthday

Julia is a girl. As any girl, she does not like getting older. Even when you celebrating her birthday in Italy didn't make her keen on blowing out the candle, as the picture shows. She expected a lot of presents, that she got. As present she requested pistaches and candies, as relieve for the feeling of getting older. Dutch celebration this saturday.

Mondanity in Eindhoven

A surprise party has been organised that celebrated my birthday! I have been surprised and happy to meet with all these people who claimed to be my friend. The company was very diverse, and represented surely the best that Eindhoven society can distill: physicists, mathematicians, pedagogs, musicians, engineers, architects. People came from all over the world, we counted more than 10 nations and 2 continents. It was just fantastic. A man in the logistic business defended the dutch way of playing football, whilst a ferocious debate concluded that monarchy is not the perfect form of democracy. While listening to the sound of a salsa band playing Felicitaciones, we drank sicilian wine, and dined deliciously. Some people could not attend, their fame blocked them elsewhere. A former manager phoned to congratulate me; a Vice-President sang happy birthday in Turkish to me (ikku kuddu....), he and his wife got trapped by climbing Arhem's mountains. A phylosopher left a message in my mailbox. A banker, unfortunately ill, left a message in my answering machine. A dancer sent an SMS, as did a former secret agent. A painter sent a messenger with presents, as a journalist did.

Presents were marvellous, including mp3 players, postcards, oils, books, money and sex. I want to thank all these persons, and especially the President who secretly and succesfully organised this.

(*) For clear reasons of discreteness, I avoided mentioning names.