Marathons and Sprints

The time has finally come to get rid of the running shoes I used in April 2005 to run the London marathon, and that I insisted to keep and use out of affection and nostalgia ever since.

When I took them out of the wardrobe and I looked at them it once again hit me what these shoes have meant for me.

I decided to run the marathon on a spring morning in Nottingham, after having gone for 'my first run in ages' with my colleague Claire and realising I could not jog for more than 5 minutes. I had always declared that I could not run to save my life and eventually I had turned that into a reality.

It is so true that we create our own world through language, by telling ourselves and others what 'we are good at', 'what we are crap at', 'what we can or cannot do'. We literally speak in or out our own limits.
By creating and reinforcing those limits we make them true.

And here I was, a healthy 25 year old who could not jog for a minute without having to deal with a myriad of physical and psychological blocks.

That morning in Nottingham I declared a totally different future, a future that I could not ever have imagined until a few seconds earlier. Just like that - I created the possibility of that future.

I would run the London marathon.

Training for the marathon was such a mammoth task 'for a bad runner' like me. It took everything I had. The biggest part was to learn how to think that I could do it. My body followed.
That 2005 winter I trained through the snow, through the long Saturday runs by the Thames in Hammersmith, through giving up a big chunk of my social life.  

The day of the marathon came and went. It was a great day.

So much has happened since that April 2005, and when I looked at those shoes for the last time on a Sunday morning in Sydney in August 2013 I could not help but thinking about the marathons and sprints of  life - of the great challenges we face or willingly take on to become better, and how this change sometimes happens at a sudden, sometimes it happens over time.

These shoes are like relics reminding me of all the extraordinary things that have happened and the adventures that are yet to come.

And Never Rain.

I guided you through fifty broken valleys,

pretending that I really knew the way.

We saw some rabbits eating bears and flowers;

and cats drinking sunshine and never rain.

You never looked surprised

                                        or frightened at those sights.

You never seemed to care for good and evil.

I found the shades too cool – the sun too hot.

Our breaths were weak and feeble -

the air a hazy stench of honey and rot.

Yet still we kept just walking,

in silence – or barely talking,

as though nothing could touch our lonely embrace.

As though nothing could quench our endless thirst.

We went through fifty valleys,

You and I, through fifty valleys,

our path barely defined

by loud church bells on a Sunday in Darlinghurst.

Piero Bassu, August 2013.

Coming from a place of 'can'

I have recently started distinguishing what I see as a fundamental thing when it comes to achieving a goal in life i.e. 'the place where you come from'.

What I mean by this is the backdrop to one's actions and intentions. Just like the stage and setting of a theatre production brings forth the type of play that stage is supposed to host, the background to our life ('the place where we come from') can determine what and how we achieve our goals, independently of the circumstances or challenges we face to get there.

This requires us to let go of our tendency to tell ourselves 'I cannot do that', or 'that cannot be done'. If we look long and hard into what makes us feel that way we might well conclude the most of the reasons we have come up with to corroborate some unmmovable axiom are full of crap.

If we create a different backdrop - a backdrop of 'can', we find that the things that happen within that space are geared up to bring forth that very thing that we feel we can do. The key thing is that this backdrop creates freedom. It frees us from micromanaging or worrying about the minutia of how those things need to happen, for those things can now happen in a number of ways, but each of these way still leads to the overaching result that we long for.

So, by looking at one area in our lives where we have attached a lot of'can'ts' and simply turning them into 'cans' we will find that our attitude (and hence actions) towards that goal will change.  This power is merely the fuel to get there, and actions are still needed to get there, however with no fuel we might not get very far at all.

Indian takeaway

I am just back from my first ever trip to India. It was a quick business trip to Mumbai and Chennai, and it all went very fast. It was a bit of a fishbowl experience : from airport to hotel to office and so on, gliding through the reality out there in the comfort of my company car, eating at nice restaurants and been looked after.

For someone who experienced India like I did it is quite hard to go past the chaos, the poverty, the traffic, the open air landfills, the divide between the rich and the poor, the tragedies unfolding in front of your eyes out of the window, out of the fishbowl. It is hard not to look the other way, and to some extent I did.

However, below the surface I sensed the charms of India that so many travelers talk about. I tried to understand what was that charm, where did it come from.

Was it the intoxicating mixture of colors, spices, chaos, untold history that I know so little about lingering underneath the surface? Was it that 'matter of fact' attitude about life that has gone lost in many other places? Or was it just being confronted with being closer to the core of humanity that attracts one so much - a glimpse into what being human really means and the realization to what extent sometimes we go to dissociate ourselves from that mess that somehow seems to always work out at the end.

The size of problems

I have recently come to realize that I used to spend an awful lot of time trying to eliminate problems in my life. Everything I did was geared towards having a life with no problems.

A lot of New Years resolutions are born in this space. Eliminating problems.

What if life is not about not having problems, but having problems worthy of our lives. We spend so much time worrying about crap that we never give ourselves the chance to try to solve the important issues that affect ourselves and the communities we live in.

So for me 2013 is not the year of no problems, is the year of things worth caring about.

Goodbye 2012

2012 has certainly been an important year under many fronts.

On the personal side the engagement under the full moon in Santorini in August was definitely the key highlight, so looking forward to the big day in 2013! Bridezilla in the making, and I LOVE it!

Buying our first flat (a flat of dreams I must add) was a big step as well (so grown up!) and we have been very happy living the village life in Darlinghurst.

On the fun front we have had a lot of partying and travels, kicking off early in the year with Mardi Gras during Luciano's visit, a fantastic trip to Tasmania in February, a reality TV show stint in Mykonos in August with Jaimee, Gavin and Mishail's wedding (plus hen night with me coming out of a box) in June and August, Hunter Valley a couple of times,  and the build up to Christmas and New Year with visitors and friends. There has certainly be a lot of exploration of Sydney foodie scene - with some new gems being discovered and reviewed.


New friends were made in the year - Darlo coming to mind - and 'old' ones were cemented even further, both here in Oz and obviously back home in the UK. I love the fact that even though I might not see the people I care about the most very often, whenever I do the love and affection are always invariably there.

When we moved to Oz part of me was freaking out that the sporadic phone calls were going to be the things which would keep the friendships alive and I always felt 'performance fear' every time I spoke to someone - I let go of this and happily discovered that people connect on a level that goes beyond how good a phone call is. And that connection is not something you turn on or off. It's there, and distance and time only affect frequency of interaction, rather than the underlying feelings people have for each other.

I was lucky enough to go back to London a few times, and had a great time catching up with a lot of my friends (unfortunately not all!). A dinner in Bermondsey with Marta, a few flat dates, a Sbari searching meal etc etc were a few of the highlights. Love you all!


On the business front I have enjoyed a promotion to the APAC senior leadership team in May and a number of trips around the globe, including Hong Kong, New York, London and Singapore. Work has been good and despite I don't wake up wanting to skip into the office, I feel that I have grown professionally and I am excited about where I am taking things next year. I have certainly learnt a lot about Asia. But perhaps the most exciting thing under this front is the possibilities that both Patata and I have been building for ourselves and our life, especially following the Landmark stuff we did and Patz saying 'basta!' the the bout of crap work experience he had.

As usual my family has been there for me, always being the rocks I can always count on in my life. Grazie mille! Interesting to see that a few years after dad passed away we are all still going through the process of processing it all, a step at the time.

The fitness front has been good - I think I have managed to average 3-4 training session a week, and I managed to bench 80kgs which for me is great. The love for party and booze being the 'only' obstacle to my beach babe look (ah ah).  Planning to look delicious for the wedding!

So, all in all 2012 has been a year to remember, with both its pleasures and challenges! Bring on 2013 - the year of possibilities! 

Two Years in Oz

In a few days we will mark the second anniversary of our move to Sydney.

Almost two years ago we were queuing in Buenos Aires  for that Qantas flight that started our new life here. I still remember that feeling of fear and excitement whilst looking out of the plane window onto the endless alien expanses of Antarctica as we made our journey here.

And so here we are, two years later. Whilst from one side it would be easy to fall onto the usual 'I cannot believe two years have already passed!', from another it feels like a lot of things have happened and evolved over the last 24 months.   Time often seems to have two speeds - the one we recognize, and the massive portion we don't or choose not to notice.So, yes, it does feel like 2 years.

Starting a new life in Sydney has been both a challenge and an opportunity.

The main opportunity was personal growth, which often does require challenge to occur.

In other words, when we are settled in our business as usual our rate of growth more often than not slows down. On the contrary, a move to the other side of the world, where we only knew a handful of people and were not really sure how anything worked proved to be a steep learning curve.

It was not easy to make the jump and turn will into reality - but I have always thought that decision making is a waste of time if there is not a decision at the end of it.

So we did it.

Not all of it was exhilarating: I still remember a very long time spent at a HSBC branch trying to convince a woman who could barely speak English that I was worthy of a bank account. All those manual forms still haunt me in my dreams. Not dissimilar to the same conversation I had with Natwest at the university campus in 1999!

Since then it has been a roller coaster, made of exploring this new city and falling in love with it to the point that it now feels home, missing our good friends back in London, buying our very first flat of dreams down under, starting exploring Australia, New Zealand and Asia, trips back to Europe, having friends over, discovering our healthier selves, making a life long commitment under a setting Greek sun, going from not knowing Singapore at all to going there all the time, working hard and learning how to take 11pm work phone calls with England without falling asleep, getting closer to the family here and little Jack.

All in all it has been amazing. Do I feel different? Yes I do. Calmer I would say, and different in many other ways, but then  again I am not sure whether it is because of Sydney or it would have happened anyway.

I was asking myself how life would be like if we had never made the move. How would it feel like?
The reality is that we are fortunate enough that life would have probably been great anyway.

I imagined that 'other life', those Ratz and Patata - possibly still in London, having bought a flat and getting ready for the big day. Complaining about the weather and the tube no doubt like all other Londoners.

Not knowing how this life would have been like, possibly not doing all the new things that we have done (somehow going to a strawberry farm in Tasmania pops into mind as I write - of all things!).

It was strange to think that this Piero can so easily imagine that Piero - whether or not things would have really turned that way or not- but that Piero could have hardly known or imagined the life this Piero has made on the other side of the world. If the two of us met, what would we tell each other?

The thought made me smile - it's like we have lived two lives at the speed of one.