And then it was Boxing Day

It happens every year. November and December revolve around the build up towards the 'festive season', the Christmas break, the time of the year where everything everywhere shuts down and people can slow down, spend time with the loved ones keeping up various family traditions and justify any excess with a smile on their faces.  We (at least I) tend to do more of the things that I want to do less of.

Facebook's walls are filled up with happy declarations of how fat people feel, or all the things that they think they should be doing but they won't do because it's Christmas.

Importantly this is also the time when people take respite to reflect on the year that has just gone and focus on the year ahead. This is a time of rebirth. I have wondered often (and I am sure I ain't the only one) whether the key point of having Jesus being born in this period, apart from the convenient overlapping with previous pagan festivities that Christmas replaced in the ancient Roman times,  is just recognising the fact that people need to think (and do think) about birth as the year comes to a close.  Just like the Big J we are reborn to save ourselves from our imperfections. We are given yet another opportunity to be the better selves that we want to be.

However, we give ourselves some few more days and wait until New Years Eve to really, really cement those determinations. It does sound like a good process, so why the great majority of us fails their New Year's resolutions? I thought about this over the years, investigating theories ranging from the depressing bad London weather to the conspiracy of self sabotage,  and I have formed the opinion that resolution and change should start and follow a different timeline pattern from the one we tend to adopt.

Just like I maintain that starting a diet on a Monday is a recipe for failure, I think that forming great determinations at the very end of the year is not necessarily a good idea. We charge that 1st of January with so much expectations, so much pressure, that when we find out that we are the same people on that day that we were the day before, the anticlimax is very likely to result in loss of drive. In addition, such an obvious starting point just stresses how long the road ahead is and suddenly we feel like we have started climbing Mount Kilimanjaro without the right gear to make it to the top.

Perhaps the solution is to look at the big picture, and see life as a long winding road that goes up and down. Whether the previous years has taken us up or down, that 1st of January really is not a new beginning, but the continuation of where we have been. It is not the day where we stop or start doing something, it is the day where we pick up where we left from at the last turn of the road. Christmas is hence not time to be born again, but just time to look ahead and plan for taking the right turn in our journey ahead. The end of the year is not the time for great determinations, it is the time to stop and set the SatNav towards our next destination. We might surprise ourselves and find that we have kicked off that length of the journey already.

Panino Number 5

Who said that the humble panino cannot be a gourmet triumph? I made this for lunch today and it was just delicious. Try it out and tell me what you think!

Panino number 5 (serves two people)

• Cut a red pepper (capsicum) in half, clear it from the seeds and crap, pierce it with a fork several times and slam it on the grill (one of those press grills is ideal). Grill it until it is perfectly cooked, keeping piercing it and turning it every now and then to get rid of all the water. Once it's done, cut it into strips and toss it with one teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil and some salt. Put is aside.
• Cut a tomato into halves. With a teaspoon remove the pulp and the seeds. Fill up the resulting empty pockets with balsamic vinegar. Grill in the same grill as the pepper until the tomato is soft and squashy;
• Cut a third of a red onion and caramelize it in a small frying pan with a teaspoon worth of butter.
• Put the caramelized onion in a bowl and toss it with two tablespoons of mayonnaise, a teaspoon of mustard and some leaves of fresh basil. Put this aside.  
• Cut some pickled cucumbers in small slices (you will need approximately 5 small cucumbers). Put aside.
• Take a chicken breast and toss it in 1/2 a lemon juice and then your favourite spices. I recommend Moroccan spices, salt and pepper. Grill it in the same grill that you have been using all along. Once cooked, cut into strips and put aside.
• Take a ciabatta bread (or your favourite bread), cut it in halves, butter both halves and add salt and pepper. Put it in the grill you have been using all along to toast whilst soaking up all the flavours.
• Once the bread is ready, take the bottom half and squash the tomatoes on top of it -covering the whole surface;
• add a layer of picked cucumbers;
• add the chicken strips and some spinach leaves;
• cover with the red onion and basil leaves mix;
• cover with strips of grilled pepper;
• Add the top half of the ciabatta.

Share with somebody or be a pig and have it all by yourself whilst shoving  down a few beers. Don't look so shocked. You know you can.

Food, Coffee and Wine

After one year (to the day) living in Sydney I can say that one of the things that I love the most about this place is the gastronomic culture of this city. Whilst I maintain that the (post dinner)  night life leaves a lot to be desired, if you like going out with friends for a great meal and a few bottles of wine this city will not disappoint you.

In a way it is one of the defining features of the Easter Suburbs where we live.  Good places are not cheap, but the ratio quality/price is not a gamble like it can be in other places. I am led to believe that this Food&Wine craze is a relatively recent phenomenon in Sydney and that Melbourne has historically led the charge. A freshy like me would not know.

The influences of a plethora of countries and immigration waves mean that the city is full of places that will leave you wanting to go back. Sydney does 'authentic' and 'fusion' to the t.
For instance, you will find here authentic Italian restaurants serving real Napoli style pizza like there are not left in Italy, together with innovative and adventurous establishments that leave you thinking why someone had not thought about that before. The Asian influence is very strong, which brings delicious flavors and possibilities.
In addition, after having lived in London for a long time, being able to grab great coffee almost anywhere has also been such a nice change.

Here are the highlights of my first year here. For more info and full reviews check out my TripAdvisor contributions at : http://www.tripadvisor.com/members-reviews/youngprofessionalUK

Also, there are still lots of places I haven't checked out - let me know what your favourites are.

HIGHLIGHTS (as of Dec '11)

Best Thai: Longrain, Surry Hills *****
Best Vietnamese: Miss G, Kings Cross ****
Best brunch: Yellow, Potts Point ****
Best coffee: Norton Road (Little Italy) ****
Best homemade pasta: A tavola, Darlinghurst *****
Best tiramisu: Mille Vini, Surry Hills ****
Best pizza: Pizza Mario, Surry Hills ****
Best gelato: Messina, Darlinghurst *****
Best cafe by the sea: Aqua Bar, Bondi Beach *****
Best people watching & coffee: Zinc, Potts Point  ***
Best customer service: Longrain, Surry Hills *****
Best casual dinner: Mad Pizza, Darlinghurst ****
Best fish place: Fish Face, Darlinghurst ****
Best restaurant for lunch in the CBD: The Lane, CBD ***
Best pre-dinner drinks: The Passage, Darlinghurst ***
Best lunch on the go: Saladworks, various ***
Best date restaurant: Concrete Blonde, Kings Cross ****
Best beer garden: Beresford Hotel, Surry Hills (Friday&Sunday) ****
Best gastronomic weekender: Hunter Valley ****

Letting Go

I have very few memories about my grandmother Mercedes. I remember her kind smile, her calm aura, the fact that her kisses felt sloppy on my cheeks. Granddad and granny lived next door, in the house that my grandfather Nemesio built a million years ago.

We would sit outside in the big patio during hot summer nights in Sardinia, and the grown ups would talk about their day, or play cards. They would talk for hours, until it was late and time to go to bed. Battisti's songs about peach blossoms would be distorted by the old radio, still managing to engrave that moment and provide the perfect backdrop.

The adults would talk about the family business, they would talk about the town's gossips or what they would cook that weekend. This is what we did back then. I was four, perhaps five, and I would sit on my mother's lap and listen, or fall asleep like children do. The dogs would sit around us as well, and listen carefully.
Pomegranates would grown red on trees, and the breeze would smell of sea and countryside.

Mercedes wore cheap dresses with dark floral patterns. Her skin was pale because of her anemia, her hair dark with shocks of grey - held together in a tight knot - like pictures from the 1800's that you see in antique shops. She was barely 60, but back then people looked much older after a life of war, work, sickness, Mussolini and the stupor that people back then must have felt to see the world change so much in their lifetime. She had also survived through malaria, because the disease still existed in Sardinia until the 60s, or something like that.

She was a quiet woman with a dry sense of humor. She would find people falling on the street hilarious, and she loved taking the piss out of people, herself and life - in that respect she was just like me.  She had a silent determination and kept the whole family together through that gelling that only mothers seem to be able to do. We all liked her : once I emptied my mother's fridge to bring over all the food cause granny had mentioned that she did not know what to cook that night.

Big Sunday lunches with all the uncles and cousins somehow managed to overcome the dramas and tribulations that small town people manage to create for themselves. From outside, from the eyes of a child it all looked like simple happiness looks like. The dark pink flowers on the porch seemed destined to grow in peace.

I was thinking about Mercedes the other day, about the last time I saw her. It is after all one of my very first clear memories - I was six. She was going to the hospital for the operation she would never come back from.
Her pale skin seemed to disappear in the glaring early September sun and the dark pink of those flowers.

She was so tall, and I was so small. She gave me one of her kind smiles. It is bizarre, but that moment I felt that we both knew that that was the last time we would see each other.

She gave me a kiss, said goodbye and then whispered in my ears something I have never forgotten but I have never told anyone. It was something about letting go. She put it in such a clear way that a six year boy could get it and a thirty one old man still remembers it after so many years.

Then she went, never to return again - just leaving behind her ghost to appear every now and then to remind us that the past is like spilling olive oil on the kitchen floor.

Apple&Apricots Christmas Cake

I made this last night and it was a Christmas cake of dreams......

• Preheat the oven at 180C.
• Butter a circular cake tin (usual size).
• In a container put 4-6 halves of apricots (canned in syrup), 1/2 cup (like a coffee mug) worth of the syrup, 1/2 a lemon juice, a bottle cup of dessert wine (like marsala), 2 apples cut in in slices, a spoon of tricle, a spoon of sugar, 1 spoon of cinnamon and 1 spoon of nutmeg. There should be enough liquid/spices to cover all the fruit - if not add a bit of syrup/spices.
• Beat 3 eggs with a cup of sugar until fluffy.
• Add 1/3 of a butter pannier and 2 spoons of extra virgin olive oil - beat until fluffy; 
• Add the zest of 1 lemon - keep beating;
• Add 1 mug of vanilla yogurt - keep beating;
• Add the juice from the fruit- keep beating until all ingredients have been mixed thoroughly;
• Slowly add 2 1/2 to 3 mugs of self rising flour, carefully beating it in. The cake mix has to be soft but not runny.
• Pour the mix in the tin, cover with the apples and apricots (the fruit has to cover the whole top of the cake);
• Put in the oven (same temperature) for about 35-40 minutes (start checking after 30 minutes) - the cake is cooked when you can put a knife through it and it comes out clean/mostly clean.
• Let cool before eating.

One Year On

Next week we are going to celebrate one year since our flight from Buenos Aires to Sydney took us here on 16th December 2010.

Whilst the flight's path took us through the fringes of Antarctica I remember looking outside the window and thinking that my life felt a bit like that alien world: it looked so peaceful from the outside, but the terrain ahead was going to be possibly treacherous and unexplored. That feeling was both exhilarating and terrifying.

I was wondering the other day how our lives have changed over the last year - what are the biggest takeaways from the beginning of this new chapter.

One of the first feelings that came to me was on the same line of that time I jumped off a plane during my travels: the pleasant surprise when you accomplish something outside of our comfort zone. It turns out the path was not treacherous - just very unexplored.

I am chuffed about the life we have managed to create for ourselves: it is fabulous. Australia feels like the right place at the right time. And not just personally - with the world's epicenters slowly shifting towards Australasia being here really feels exciting. Strangely one of the most remote places now feels like it is in the middle of the action. When I was growing up Australia was a fabled land people like me never visited - having built a life here with Tatz and being in the process of buying our first home over here makes me feel proud.

The other feeling that came to me was the realisation that this year has been strange in many ways - there has been a lot of sorting things out. It was like going to the supermarket and shop for a intricate recipe.

Someone has recently pointed out to me how life is made of small segments - a concatenation of things and stuff that we do, we think, we plan. This year has largely felt that way.

These things included finding jobs (and once found getting comfortable in them), hunting for flats, building a new life, discovering a healthier side of us, etc etc.

It turns out that buying a flat is a job by itself! Seriously, could anyone make the process any more complicated to the naive and unaware First Time Buyer?

Perhaps for the first time I have not thrown myself into a new million things and I just allowed myself to slow down.

Perhaps this is the first time that I have allowed myself to stop since I applied for that government scholarship 14 years ago and I embarked on that weird and wonderful journey that has taken me from a small town in Sardinia all the way to the fringes of Antarctica. It has been great, but so exhausting. I gave all of myself to this during my 20s.  It was quite fitting how the circle closed when I turned 30, and in the same year another cycle started off.

So I reckon this is the biggest takeaway: Sydney has given me space. Space to stop rushing for a while. Space for The Rat to buy all those ingredients with his tuberous companion. This period was necessary and now I feel a bit like I am coming out of hibernation.

As I come into a new year I feel my soul is more peaceful. I feel ready for the new year and pretty excited because there is a lot I want to do.

I am happy here doing the things and stuff that I am doing.

Down Our Bay

You saw the submarine down our bay?
I thought it was an island, but it's just iron,
the moon light on its surface seems too bright,
the sea under its weight just seems to struggle -
like hopes that linger silent on the smooth waves.

It's not the first deceit that this sky brings us,
it's not the first time things sound strange tonight -
whilst life reveals its plans and its next chapters
it all feels kind of peaceful, kind of right.

One year has passed and those familiar shores
have started to feel exotic, almost unreal,
the final night - the rain drops at the Chapel,
are only half exposed under the haze.
Like something which you fear might just go and fade.

And whilst the two of us walk down the Exchange,
and Darlinghurst outside doesn't know us,
I think this year may feel like a surprise,
just like this submarine down our the bay.

Fair Go

Over the last few months I have started picking up glimpses of revelations around the Australia's psyche - some of the key building blocks that make up this society. Australia is such a fascinating place, and I don't think that people like me really get how incredible and interesting this place is until we stop a second and think about it.

The country as we know it was 'discovered' (I am not going into the whole aboriginal issue here) in the later XVIII century. Now, let's face it: once you take out all the time that it took to start colonizing the place properly and turning it into a developing Western- style society we could probably argue that things really kicked off in the late 1800s.  This makes this place seem even more recent to European standards than it really is.

Whilst lots of people see this almost as a fault and the reason behind an alleged lack of culture and all that rhetorical blah blah blah, I see it as a big opportunity. Whilst our legacy helps us describe who we are, it also represents societies' weakest point. Just like a company that has to deal with old IT systems, that determines to some extent what can and cannot be done, societies can be crippled by their history and their legacies.

As I see it Australians' psyche reflects this position. One of the key things that I have picked up is that Australians are very keen about the concept of 'Fair Go'. This is actually more intricate than it sounds, so I'll have to simplify. Fair Go is giving an opportunity to honest people to make a good life for themselves. When I went to the museum of immigration in Melbourne it was pretty interesting to see how a lot of the campaigns aimed at getting the English over revolved about 'giving their children a better future'. A Fair Go. That concept has evolved, but not died.

If you couple this with the constant reinforcement of the 'hard working Australian' image, a country where farming and 'the land' are still predominant, the feeling that since you are so remote you need to put in twice the effort,  you get a place that is the closet I have seen to the romantic New World image and that has given birth to great intellectuals, scientists, actors, travelers and athletes.

I will give you an example. Whenever an Australian actor makes it into Hollywood without fail the interview by Australian press will contain the question :'So how are Australian seen in Hollywood?' and the actor will say 'They like us because we are down to earth and hard working'. I kid you know, Australians love this.

The concept of 'Fair Go'  also means that modern Australia value meritocracy and simplicity. Also it means that the concept of class in Australia is somehow loose, and there seem to be a massive middle class and the upper class keeps somewhat a low profile (more on this in a future log).  

What can I say? There are my impressions, so Terms & Conditions do apply.

Growing up with Berlusconi

I was 13 when Berlusconi came to power in Italy, after a colorful campaign revolving around the promise that his party Forza Italia would create one million jobs. There were a lot of blue banners and catchy jingles.

Back then people wanted to believe that one million jobs could be created, as well as we wanted to believe that Italy was in fact the 6th largest economy in the world.

Berlusconi was already one of the most powerful people in Italy, as he owned significant part of the media and a number of lucrative businesses. During his campaign Berlusconi traveled a lot of the country - a bit of a poor's man American president election campaign. I guess people liked him. One of the reasons must have been the fact that he was a business man who had actually accomplished a lot, rather than just talking about it. There was fluff - there always is in Italian politics, but behind the fluff there were results. Even if these results he had been achieved for himself, they were still results. That appealed to the Baby Boomer society.

What we might have failed to see is that Berlusconi was indeed a great achiever, however like many great achievers his desire and drive was more rooted in the selfish pursuit of self validation than a genuine care for the country he was supposed to lead. Someone who tries to change the law in preposterous ways to escape persecution himself is certainly not driven by selfless principles.

That is no news: Italian politicians have carved a delightful little niche for themselves over the decades...They come to power and there they stay, until like defeated geriatrics dinosaurs cannot do it any longer.  They seldom resign, never mind how insane the scandals they get involved into - or how detached from modern life they become because of their reverend age. There they stay. Whilst their international counter parties step down over what to Italians seem to be minutia, there they stay.

In Italian we say that they are glued to their armchairs.

They don't care. Inside their bubble they are powerful, untouchable, they are beautiful, they frolic with attractive young girls, they are politically incorrect, they are above the law, they are rich....In a word the own the country. The reason why they are so powerful and the normal people are so powerless is simple: there is no such a thing as meritocracy in the country.

I remember being more than shocked when I won my government scholarship for boarding school. In fact, everyone I knew was shocked that a nobody like me could have such a lucky break, beyond the corruption, the favours and the crap that go with anything that has to do with the government. It was like a small miracle, a Deus Ex Machina moment that allowed me to transcend my own destiny.

Meritocracy is a foreign word in Italy, where merit is carved through obscure networks and where power is like some sort of golden inheritance which is passed among a finite number of families and names.
So the dinosaurs stay up there, while the rest of the people wine Nietzsche's retaliation theory- style, alas they do nothing to drive change. The don't do anything partly because the dinosaurs don't care - there is hardly a scandal which is big enough to overthrow them.

Hard to agree that this is a First World country - more like a Third World Country which has been pretending to be evolved. The legacy of a great past has become a crippling baggage of self destruction. If you go to countries like Argentina, beyond the beauty of the country you recognize the same underlying issues that have taken Italy to the place it is now - well Argentina is full of Italians after all.

Berlusconi represents all the reasons why I have left my own country and why I would not live there again. In Italy I feel like a cripple, I feel like half the man I can be. I feel the weight of the dinosaurs, the weight of that baggage of self destruction. I feel powerless.

Italy was a disaster when Berlusconi took it over. I was 13. Now I am 31 and things seem to be pretty much the same, which makes things worse.  So whose fault is it? Is it Berlusconi, for making the most out of it, or is it the Italians' for doing nothing about it for the last 18 years? I do not know. What I do know is that the country is so entrenched on this journey that 'more of the same' is not the answer.

I wonder why the EU countries do not police each other more intensively - why don't premiers provide independent oversight to what happens in other countries? Each premier could be allocated a country to monitor. And by independent oversight I mean real scrutiny of policies and progress against them, not just summits. Independence is the only thing that can cut through the bullshit, through legacy, through the 'we have always done it this way'. If you don't get a person that is not part of that roundabout of crap to see through the crap and identify and address the real issues in a timely manner, you will only end up with yet another horror story.

I was 13 when Berlusconi came to power in Italy, after a colorful campaign revolving around the promise that his party Forza Italia would create one million jobs. There were a lot of blue banners and catchy jingles.

That's why I only smiled

[Feb '09]


I wanted Revolution but I got Silence.
Perhaps my penitence was blatantly insufficient.
I reached out to the memories
of tense-less strident verbs
and perfectly round rocks on a free fall;
I did it to recall
the elusive consistence
of long lost strange philosophies,
of my anarchy.

You thought I would have made it,
you thought I'd do the things I promised to you that day
on a cliff path.
You see, I could have made it,
I guess it was too tough to play that part.
Perhaps I could do nothing,
that's why I only smiled:
I knew I'd drift apart.
And hence my Revolution became Silence,
and hence I am left here wondering if I have lost.

The next phase is slowly nearing.
I fear the cost to pay
to honour such a role.
These things demand a miracle, and strength beyond my own,like excellence requires a restless soul.

 

Familiar Shores

My trip to London/Italy/Singapore has come to an end, and I am about to jump on a plane back to Sydney. I am feeling as I hoped I would feel: excited about going home, after what have been an incredible and fantastic 4 weeks. London was a lot of fun. Meeting everyone again, Laura and Baz's wedding in York, a couple of big nights out at Brewers, a flat date at the Sanderson's, a lunch in Regent's Park, a bad rendition of Bad Romance at a Karaoke Bar, too much pasta in a basement trattoria, a Cheeky Tuesday, a toasted sandwich at Starbucks, a jet lagged drink by a rooftop pool, rude waitresses at Paul's, a trip on the 607 (Express), a few day long sessions at the pub or just hanging in the flat of dreams (the place where I spent my last 3 and half years in London) have been just amazing. I haven't eaten and drunk so much in such a long time!

Going back has reinforced my love for London, for the city, but most of all the people that mean so much to us there. It all felt so comfortable, natural, like I did not dare to hope it would.

At the same time it's like being back closed a circle. It was always going to be the validation on whether the move to Sydney had been the right thing to do, and I would lie if I said knowing this did not make me nervous.  I knew I would love being back, as I did, but I also wondered whether part of me would have felt like there was more for me to do in London before moving on. Now that would have been troublesome.

I felt very happy in discovering that London feels to me like family: a place I love and I will go back to, but that I do not need to be around all the time.

As for the people, I just realised what I already knew: it doesn't matter where you are or how often you see each other, good friends will always be good friends. Good friends always meet and recognise each other.

The truth is that one is never really ready to leave London. One takes the plunge hoping it was indeed the right time. It is easy to get it wrong.

The other day I was thinking of when I came back to London after a year travelling, in 2007. I went back to no job and hardly any money and certainties. The same day I arrived I went to a BBQ at my friends Emma and Damon's.  Over a roasting leg of lamb Damon had provocatively asked me: 'so why are you back?'. My answer was "I haven't done with London yet". I was right: I had not.  Now I feel I have.

So here I am, waiting for my 20:10 to Sydney, looking forward to seeing Patata and feeling like now I am fully ready for my life Down Under.

Returning

I am writing these first lines from the airport in Sydney. Destination London, via Singapore. The day: 2nd September 2011, about 1pm.

Over the last few days the excitement of our upcoming trip has gained momentum, manifesting itself in a myriad of emotions, ranging from stress (to get everything done at work etc before leaving), excitement to see all the people and the places that we love so much, apprehension (for not knowing how we will feel about being back), delight at the thought of all the fun things that we have planned, a twinge of fear (of not feeling 'at home' in a city that was very much our home for a long time) and just pure plain holiday happiness.

I have always believed that London is a city that forgets, and now I am about to see how it has forgotten me.

It feels like the right time to go back. Building a new life in Sydney was not a walk in the park, and I would be laying if I said that the beginning wasn't tough. Starting again felt like a mammoth task, and we just missed our friends, our city. At the beginning it just felt like I could not be arsed.

However, in many ways that was a process that we had to go through. In many ways now Sydney feels like London did back in the early 00's: new, puzzling, full of possibilities, exciting and just right for the stage we are in our lives.

I recall very clearly that it took me 3 years to feel part of London. I remember a day when I was walking down Glocester Road towards Hyde Park and I suddenly thought that I felt like I knew this city, like it had let me into her secret. It was like an epiphany.I was walking by a little church on Gloucester Rd that will always remind me of that moment, the spring breeze on my face, the brightness of an early summer sun, the traffic noise almost disappearing for a microsecond. It was one of the most important instants of my life, that specific instant, because that feeling of 'belonging' served as the basis to defining myself over the coming years.

In moments that I did not know where to go, or when I felt lost, in the many moments I would doubt myself,  I still felt London protecting me, accepting me for my flows and insecurities. I felt like I knew the rules of the game and I could play pretty well. 

I am no fool and I know that that feeling towards Sydney is yet to fully manifest itself. In many ways, after 8 months, we have just began. God knows I can hardly pronounce many of the suburbs' names.

However, if I look back at the Piero and David that landed here last December and the people we are now, and our lives, the difference is astounding, We have definitely embarked on a life's great adventure, started a new story that we are excited about and want to see through. We have been given the gift of reinvention and discovery. Personally I feel like I have also started a process of 'consolidation'. By this I mean that I have never felt so comfortable in my own skin, and calm inside.

I have recently stopped to think how fortunate our generation is, for (compared to many of our parents) we can lead completely inorganic lives. Rather than being born and organically grow within the same environment/conditions, we have been able to start new chapters, new destinies, in our case on the opposite sides of the world. And what is life as a great exercise of exploration (both internal and external), of challenging ourselves on what we can be, what we can become.

So yes, it feels like the right time to go back to London.  To go back and discover how London has forgotten me.

The Strength of Fighting

January 2009

Memory.

We are driving back home. Outside, the sky is moody and strangely expansive, mixing the natural light blues with clouds. It is afternoon, but I feel tired. I feel tired as though I haven't slept for years. It is only afternoon, but I feel tired as though my tiredness is trying to mask other feelings that I sense in the perifery of my conscious thoughts. It's only me and my mother in the car.

The news of my father's condition hit me on a sunny roof of a cold Milanese Thursday. 22nd of January 2009, just after lunch. My father has not been well for a while, so somehow I should be ready, but I am not, and when my mother tells me that things are 'complex' and I hear in a far away corner of my mind the tears she has just cried and she is trying to hide from me, I suddenly realise on a rooftop of Milan that things are not as I had hoped they were.

When I walk into my father's hospital room, the room feels too big for him and he feels too small for the room. He has lost 12kg since last time I saw him -when was it?- eighteen days ago. He looks at me, and I see surprise, but not at my visit- he knew I was coming- surprise at the way seeing me makes him feel.

He has got small tubes coming out of his nose, and the tubes are attached to a bottle full of bubbles. I push the need to cry away, and we hug, and I let him cry. My father has never been as human to me as in this very moment, and we are both genuinly happy to see each other. We talk about nothing and we exchange empty promises that things will be alright. My role is to bring some strength to my family, and I play it well: I am confident, I make fun of morbid things, I look like I know all this is futile and we are about to find out that it was not even necessary in the first place.

On the way back home it is only me and my mother in the car. We keep saying that things will be fine. We drive under a blue sky and clouds made of iron. I look at my mother and for a second I marvel: somehow she looks younger today, as though the strength of fighting, that determination that only comes when we want to save somebody we love, has given her some of her youth back.

I look at her and she looks younger, and I think that perhaps she will do it. She will save my father and the whole family. Perhaps we will be alright.

I say goodbye to my father at around 11 in the morning, on the 27th of January 2009. He cannot push away tears when we say goodbye. His last words are : when I feel better we will have roast fish. I smile and tell him to be strong, and that things will be ok. He looks like he believes me.

The reality is quite different, and when I jump on a plane to go back to London I discover myself wondering whether I will even see my dad again. One day later my mother calls me and tells me that the cancer has been diagnosed, and the way it is it cannot be operated. We let the news float in mid air, and we look at it, like we would look at a painting we do not fully understand.

I look at it, and I try to understand, but I cannot.

Just like I could not fully understand the moment when I had looked at my mother in the car and I had thought that the strength of fighting had made her younger.

The People We Were

Sometimes when we look at ourselves it’s like looking at a family picture. All the people, all the characters that we are and that we have been are like familiar faces that come from the same stem.  Even the characters that we could have been are there – though they tend to be more aloof, and their faces might be blurred in the photo. 

You can almost imagine them all, having Christmas lunch perhaps – a fire crackling in the fireplace, the turkey finishing cooking in the oven, snow falling outside, all those ourselves sitting and chatting at the table. 

They chat about the present, the past and the future. Some of them know more than the others do, some of them judge the others in disgust, some of them are just glad to be there. 

You will recognise these people: they are the insecure teenager on their way to discovering life, the determined cousin that just went for it and now lives in America and has a big house and a fast car, the selfish brother that doesn’t give a crap, the fat uncle that drinks too much and ends up upsetting granny towards the end of the meal, the generous hearted father that keeps the family together.  In my case they might all have big ears and eyebrows in common. 

We spend a lot of our time in life being those people, sometimes trying not to be them, but in a way or another – just like in a family – we are all related. And we all recognise each other, we know where we come from, even if nobody else in the world does.

Each of us has an innate potential to be many things at the same time and the way we deal with this perhaps holds some special meaning.  The person we are now might be tempted to judge what we were yesterday, looking at those people as imperfect, as not actualised yet.  

However, I think that feeling ‘comfortable in our own skin’ means going to that Christmas lunch and appreciate all the people that are there. They might not all be exactly our type of people (‘what is he wearing?’, ‘Gee how rude!’) – Nonetheless we like them, we even love them, because they are us, because they come from us. We know their history and crave to know their future.  

Being Found Out

When I was 9 and on my fourth year of Elementary School I went back to class after 3 days absence due to a cold. My fellow students had learnt how to do long division during those three days.

The teacher ('Maestra Paola') asked one of my friends to explain to me how long division worked , whist she left the class for twenty minutes or so (to do God knows what).

Those were tough times in my class: Paola was going through some sort of family drama, and although we all were far too young to really understand what was going on - we all knew that she was always in an awful mood, and slaps had flown around the class pretty freely in the last few weeks. It got so bad that some of the students had faked illness the week we were being tested on the Italian verbs' structures. I seem to remember that I did too, but I am not totally sure.

That day Maestra Paola left the class and my friend Maria Ignazia started explaining to me how to do long division. I listened to her, silently, thinking that it was not so easy. I also thought that it was strange that the class was so quiet whilst the teacher had left - those really were tough times and we were all scared.

Then suddenly the door opened and Maestra Paola was back, that sour expression still on her face like she had some great worry on her mind.

When she came back the first thing she did was asking me if I had understood it.

' Getting there' I lied. I had in fact understood nothing about long division - I am not sure whether because my fellow 10 year old student had not been an outstanding teacher, or whether I could not get it first time around. Little did I know the price I would pay for giving that answer.

'Ok, let's see' Maestra Paola summoned me immediately to the big blackboard in front of the whole class to test me on long division. When she called my name I almost fainted: my heart started pounding in my chest, I started feeling weak in the knees. I slowly walked to the blackboard as if I was in a dream, took the chalk with shaky hands. I was a small child against a huge black background. I felt exposed and scared.

'Let see' she said ' 1256 divided by 17'.

I wrote 1256 : 17 on the board very slowly. The numbers appeared in front of my eyes like I had written them for the very first time. I underlined the 17 as though I was about to carry out the long division.

Then  I froze. I had no idea of what I was meant to do. I just stood there, my back to the whole class, looking at those numbers in a state of trance, my mind completely blank.  I might as well been in that state for five hours, rather than only a few seconds, for it felt like time had stretched.

I remember very clearly what happened next. Maestra Paola gave me a disgusted little smile. I looked at her, my face apologetic, tears threatening to pour out carried by the humiliation I felt.  I thought she might jump up from her seat and come and slap me. But she stayed put, her face like the face of someone who is experiencing something outrageous.

'Getting there?' she said ' Don't think so'. The whole class was mute. I felt one million eyes looking at me, pitying me. I just could not move. So I just stayed there.

There is very little doubt in my mind that the precise moment laid the foundations of the events that eventually drove me to become a Mathematician. Also, that day was the beginning of me freezing when someone asks me to divide the bill on the spot, or that nagging feeling 'of being found out' when I deliver something at work. I have learnt to manage this over the years once it dawned on me where it all came from.

It is very strange to realize that what we have become in adult age has been greatly influenced by 'Point in Time' experiences that we had had in the past.

Sometimes the big decisions we take or the way we live our lives are driven by desires such as 'proving people wrong'.
Whilst in this particular case the end result has brought ultimate positive change to my life, for many people those 'Point in Time' moments become traps they might not be able to escape for their entire life.

People that have been bullied, or have had some trauma in their childhood, or whatever - might feel the same. Sometimes those events were not even that traumatic, but perhaps back then we were not equipped to see things under the right light. These blocks might be very hard to overcome.

Unless. Unless we recognize them for what they are and find a place for them inside of us. That is why Self Awareness is so important in my mind (as I mentioned several times in this blog). Whilst traumatic or challenging things do happen, and some of them are outside our immediate control, it is very important that we know where we come from and why we are what we are. This is the only way we can gain perspective on why and how past events have affected us, and move on accordingly.

In other words, we cannot allow that 9 year old self (whose reactions and feelings are the feelings of a 9 year old child) to dictate forever how we will be twenty years later. We need to 'make peace' with those events and move on in the most positive way possible.

I read in a book that a good way to do so is to imagine our current self transported to that day the events took place and then imagining having a chat with ourselves from back then, telling them that everything will be ok and not to be so sad. In other words, reinterpreting those events as adults.

Whilst most of my regression fantasies from that day involve kicking Maestra Paola in the ass, I have also managed to stand by that froze and humiliated 9 year old, hold his hand and helping out solving that long division. As cheesy as it sounds - it helped me.

Point in Time events are like crossroads. They might lead us to take a direction we don't like. It is up to us and within our remit to recognize it and rectify, for we are ultimately the ones in the driving seat.

Coming From

Today I jumped on the 10M red bus on Oxford Street, near Taylor Square - destination Leichhardt, known for being one of the epicenters of the Italian community in Sydney.

It takes a while to get there, and whilst the bus was negotiating its was through the lower end of the CBD and the soulless expanses of Paramatta Road I wondered whether it has been a good idea after all.

However, as the bus stopped in Norton Road I was pleased I had made the 30 minutes journey. This area is lovely, and full of nice Italian cafes and restaurants where one can have some nice Southern European grab whilst people watching. The community here has gone at length to recreate a true Italian feel but somehow managing avoiding being tacky. This area includes an Italian Bilingual School for children and an Italian Forum: a Mall-like complex built around a courtyard where the architecture and everything else resemble Northern Italian towns. Gelaterias, Pizzerias and all the other -rias you can think of can be found in the area.  Another thing that I noticed was the travel agent showing a massive 'Alitalia' logo - perhaps people here are the last on Earth that opt for the disgraced airline! :-)

The Norton Road itself is buzzing with a relaxed European feel to it and I must say the locals really look Italian. The soft May light only added to the feeling of serenity.

I sat down at the charming Belli Bar and read my book in the autumnal sun, whilst sipping a velvety cappuccino and eating a lovely panino (roast chicken, tomatoes and spicy caramelized onions). Bliss. There I also started thinking about immigrant communities.

One interesting thing I've noticed when I moved over here (but that also applies to other emigrants' communities elsewhere) is how strong the identity of the different communities/social groups that have established themselves here is. Italian seem to be more Italian than people that currently live in Italy, The Chinese community in Chinatown is very strong, Christians seem to be more Christian, sports fans more macho fanatic, etc etc.

Starting from scratch in a place far way from where we come from can accentuate that longing for belonging that people feel. This must have been even more so when the significant waves of immigration started after WWII, bringing numerous hopefuls who endured a arduous journey to start a new life here. Back then 'being Italian' was probably one of the most important points of reference and certainties they had, and it opened up doors and networks upon arrival. In a way, those people represent a snapshot of Italy from the day they left the country.

The question of identity is something that has always fascinated me. When I went to boarding school it felt like any Italian patriotism was zapped out of me and replaced with what we called International Understanding. This is the simple and banal discovery that it doesn't matter where we come from: people are just people and more or less we all have the same basic needs and the same aspirations.  These needs and these aspirations are then shaped by the environment that we live in.We all eat, all work, all love, all hate, go to the toilet. We all desire happiness.

I always thought that the story of Babel's tower always exemplified how men are similar, and that the biggest walls between them is communication. .This issue has become over the years less of a determinant, thanks to the introduction of lengua franca such as English, Spanish and no doubt Mandarin.

When I was 16 at school it was like I stopped being Italian and I just become someone who had lived in Italy and had been shaped to that date by that environment. If you add to that 11 years in the UK and a couple of years travelling the world the end result is a man that does not feel like he is from anywhere in particular but that shares and buys into a lot of elements from the different cultures he was exposed to. To this day I never fail to feel anachronistic when I go back home. The strange thing is that back home people regard me almost as a stranger, whilst abroad people think of me as an Italian - I tend not to identify with either judgement.

I am obviously not unique in this: as we live in a world when people live everywhere and have simple access to knowledge, strong displays of identity and traditions (whether religious, cultural etc) become more and more misaligned with the overall melting One World trends.

Some people regard globalization as the negative process through which we are losing ourselves - however history seems to suggest that this is just the next stage of a process that has been going on forever. An example I can think of is the way the Roman Empire merged together so many different traditions (geographical, religious, cultural, etc) and then went on to dissipate (including the total death of its language: Latin). We have lost so many traditions, languages and religions through history and the underlying reason behind this is people and cultures melting together (albeit forcefully in many cases). Technology and modern life have only accelerated this process to the point that we can see it unfolding within the same generation rather than across several decades.

It's funny though as how we 'melt together' and become closer, we also become more lonely. Simplistically put, an Italian that emigrates now won't probably go to Little Italy as the first point of call - he or she will be able to access the resources they need anyway. They will also be able to communicate and overall they might find that things generally work the same way than back home, if not better. However, as their options expand they also shrink because they do not have any longer access to the comforting reassurance of belonging to a specific community. Their story is not of much interest and it probably resembles the story of so many people before them.

Whilst the lack of traditions does not bother me that much, from another side it does feel like I am missing something - Identity is after all a great place to hide when you don't want to define yourself by yourself. Perhaps that is all it is : a place to hide - a fancy dress to wear for a party where other people in similar fancy dresses are going. The easy option.

Loneliness might be the ultimate price to pay for togetherness.

As I sipped my cappuccino in Norton Road in Sydney and once again I failed to feel at home among the Italian community I let these thoughts bounce around in the autumnal sunshine, as though wishing for some clarity that was not to come.

Theory of Reinvention

In one of my previous entries (http://365daysoflondon.blogspot.com/2009/11/transitions.html) I explored the way people's lives change by moving through possible 'fates' that are defined by our own potential. Potential is meant as the collection of all the things that we can do or become, whether we fulfill those opportunities or not.

For instance, if we are very good at cooking (or we have a cooking qualification) it might be feasible for us to become chefs - i.e. we have got the potential of becoming a chef. This does not mean that we will, but still we could. The sum of all these potential is our destiny.
In a way, I argued that destiny is more or less a board game -like process, where the cells on the board represent the range of opportunities and potential that each of us have.

In the last few days I have been thinking about the process that we follow to move from one cell to the next in this board game. We can call this process transitioning.


It is obvious that moving from one state to the next does not happen within a second. Itself is a process through which we leave behind what we were and kick off our new phase.

If we were to distill the key elements that form this transition process we might be able to aide and accelerate it, in turn helping us moving forward more efficiently in life.

I thought about it in my own context: as we have moved from London to Sydney it has taken  us a few months to fully implement the change, i.e. leave our previous board game cell (life in London) and  fully start our new cell (new life in Sydney). These months were all about setting ourselves up for the future, but also closing a few chapters with the past.

The way people react to change that has been imposed on them has been largely documented in business literature through a 7 phase process.

However, here I am interested in how does one adapt to a voluntary radical change, and are there any ways someone can facilitate and speed up the process?

The first thing I have noticed about transition periods is that we do not know that we are experiencing one until it is over. I am obviously generalizing this to my own experience - but it seems natural that we don't know we are transitioning because we haven't yet experienced what the 'end of the tunnel' looks like or feels like, and hence only when we get there do we see what we have been driving towards. In a way, when we are transitioning we are buying lots of ingredients for a recipe that comes to life only at the very end.

In my own example, David and I have spent quite a lot of time opening bank accounts, finding a flat, figuring out jobs etc etc. Bizarrely, during our first few months here we did not dedicate a great deal of time partying or light heartedly go out there and explore - it almost felt like the time was not quite right yet until we were completely set up. Now that we are set up, I marvel about how little in many ways we have done during our transition period, waiting for the eggs containing our new life to hatch. We have recently done a lot of exploring as a result of having family guests staying on holiday, and it was interesting to see how many things we were doing for the first time ourselves.

You might have a similar feeling after you come out at the other side of life changing times, for instance whilst you try to change jobs,on your way back from a gap year, whilst you are training for a marathon, or dealing with the loss of a loved one.

The other thing about transitions is that it is very easy to lose the long term perspective of things. In my example, you might get overly frustrated about minutia like opening a new bank account. However, it is important to remind ourselves what really matters and what the end goal is. What will you remember of these days in 20 years time: surely not the frustrations in sorting out your electricity bills. Sometimes I find it useful to think how I will be telling this story in 20 years time - what are the things that will matter to me then? Probably the excitement of starting a new life with my dear Patata, of travelling through regions that I do not know very well, making new mates for life etc etc., rather than how upsetting and incompetent Sydney taxi drivers are!

Overall, I realized that often people put off positive changes they crave for because they are afraid or too focussed on that required transition phase, rather than the resulting new state that awaits us at the end of that process. We might become so focussed on the transition that we might lose track of where that transition is taking us - to the point that the transitioning and the end result might become the same thing in our mind. We call it losing weight, moving cities, changing jobs, saving money, etc. We need to remind ourselves that what really matters is a healthier life, enjoying a new city, feeling great about our new job, buying a new house, etc. that comes at the end of the process. So perhaps the most important thing in implementing positive change is having vision - i.e. taking time to fully understand where we are directed and why we want to get there, before putting our heads down and do what it takes to make it happen.

City Personalities

One thing that I have soon come to realise is how the different areas of Sydney have got their own personalities. These personalities are made of the specific lifestyle, type of people, environments, landscapes that each of these areas presents.

Whilst this is probably true for all major cities (London for instance is definitely divided along its N-S-E-W boundaries) in Sydney this is even more striking, and sometimes you feel like you are not just moving between different cities but more like different countries as you explore the different areas.

When we arrived to Sydney one of the first things we had to do was deciding where we would live. It was a pretty important decision (a) because we wanted our new life to give us stuff we could not get in London (b) because the area where you live really defines your lifestyle.

On a macro level, Sydney is divided between Western and Eastern burbs. The Eastern suburbs are the ones where it all happens - this is the area where young professionals, wealthy families, hedonists or simply urban chic lovers tend to live.

Within the Eastern burbs there are a number of neighborhoods ranging from the sea resort village feel of Bondi, to the cafe' culture paradise of Darlinghurst, to the soulless CBD, the chic and trendy Potts Point, the beach wealth families paradises of Double and Rose Bay, and more.

We ended up opting for Rushcutter Bay. This is a lovely en-cove of the meandering Sydney Harbour, characteristic for its lush park (alive with people playing rugby or having picnics) and a buzzing yacht club. It is located minutes from the chic restaurants and cafes in Potts Point and only a 45 minutes or less walk to the CBD where we both work. That walk is great for clearing your mind before work or processing the day just left behind.
It is also walking distance from the night life of Surrey Hills and Darlingurst, and the closest beach (with shark nets) is Redlef Pool, a mere 25 minutes walk towards Rose bay. Rushcutters Bay is lovely, and as many lovely things it does come with an inflated price tag. However, we have found this the perfect place to set up our new life in Sydney, for its 'personality' seems to match ours just fine.

Whether you live here or not, whether you are only visiting Sydney I advise to explore this area.

For tips on bars and restaurants in this area check out my TripAdvisor contributions at: http://www.tripadvisor.com/members-reviews/youngprofessionalUK

Builders

'We are all just like builders'.

 I told myself the other day, the winter sun at the same time framing me and annulling my contours in my balcony window. You know what I mean - when the sun is so brilliant and warm and the sky so blue that things seem almost to blur together. I closed my eyes and let the feeling take over. Rushcutters Bay was shimmering in the sunlight in what could have been a Montale's miraculous moment. Montale was an early XX century Italian poet I truly adore. He was a good mate of TS Elliott as well. He wrote cryptic verses to a hypothetical yet very real female listener.

The core of what he said is that we are all trapped in this reality of limits and boundaries. However, when the sun shines really hard, or when a day to day object manages to be charged with the magnetic strength of fate and things around it become almost ethereal, then the fabric that makes our prison might tear a bit- just a bit - and we might be able to jump out to a reality of inner peace and strength.

When I let the sunlight annul me on my balcony the other day I felt the clarity that I imagine might come in a moment of Montalian trans pass.
David and I have been in Sydney for about 5 months now, after a few weeks travelling through South America. It has taken a long time to start setting up our new life in this new city. The shadow of London was very real at the beginning, that lingering feeling that reminded us that we had a very well set up show there - whilst here it was all back to casting.

I missed the city that knew me, missed my friends and at times I doubted whether I had already spent my quota of adaptability in my 20s. However it has become apparent that whilst I had wanted the journey of my new life to start on a 'sit-com-style' high, journeys like these are journey's of self discovery. And by definition, in order to discover you need to negotiate your way through unknown equations, which are often not easy.

However, whilst the starting point might have been in some shady valley, the path was to take me all the way up to a sunny balcony.
We spent the first couple of months trying building an elusive routine made of basics: a place to stay, new jobs, meeting new people, discovering a new city and a new society. Day by day the pieces came together in terms of understanding where things where and how the different 'bits' of Sydney (starting from Potts Point, Bondi and the CBD) formed the overall picture. In many ways we naturally re-invented ourselves - evolving to the next stage as individuals and as a couple.

We made a point of building a life that could not be compared to what we had in London - a life made of stuff that only Sydney could offer: sea views for breakfast, walking to work, hours spent in sunny cafe's reading the paper, healthier bodies, walking to the beach. Suddenly that first phase had finished and we were happy and had a new show going on.

'We are like builders' I told myself the other day.  It's true. It seems to me that we spend our life building lives. Now the dilemma is that we are often really bad at predicting what will make us happy in the future. In our 20's we might think that a cabin by the lake by the age of 40 might be what will make us happy - so we might spend years saving for that cabin - but then when we turn 40 we might be totally different people and despise boring weekends by the lake.

So I was thinking that the trick might be making always sure that we focus on something that our 60 year old self would not regret having done (whether because of the resulting joy or the lesson learnt). The other day when the sunlight was engulfing me and Sydney was shining and everything in my life made sense, I thought that the 60 year old me will look at these days and smile.