The Twitter Diaries: Sept 2007

2: just back online after a weekend in Taos. Nice. Lots of art, some of it good. I got myself a fabulous ring.

3: feeling quite sick this morning. Don’t know if it’s yesterday’s BBQ or last night’s email bomb from my mother

more Ross: https://www.beginningwithi.com/Woodstock/rd070831.html

4: @lskrocki Duncan Retreat, B&B belonging to friend of a friend’s sister. Turns out we had common friends in Bangkok in the 60s

talked to both E and Ross yesterday, nice. Ross is in a Bollywood style production of Taming of the Shrew. Must get there in time to see it!

5: last day in Colorado tomorrow, heading on to the Bay Area to see lots of old friends, make new ones, and, oh, yes, work.

finally caught up translating Ross’ fotolog https://www.beginningwithi.com/Woodstock/rd070831b.html

I love online checkin!

6: a bit tired in San Francisco, trying to rest up before a week of complete insanity, followed by a week of likely stressful travel

7: Ross and the American expert: https://www.beginningwithi.com/Woodstock/rd070906.html

chi ci sara’? (aparte me) http://it.sun.com/sunnews/events/2007/sept/jc07/

@delymyth – benissimo! girl geeks forever!

@amandalorenzani at this horrible hour of the morning you’re at the airporrt?!?

waking up to good espresso, getting ready to take a train to Menlo Park. Very un-American, I know.

at a flexwork office at Sun Menlo Park. Mousepad says “Open work -the way we work at Sun” – photo: woman leaping w/laptop on beach. OTT?

8: stuck in the middle with respiratory problems: http://tinyurl.com/2x3erx

@jeffreytaylor I’m actually glad I’m NOT in Italy for the Pavarotti death fest.

a Woodstock classmate and I are startled to find that we now both work for Sun.

the calm before the storm… resting up before an intense week

I’ve been mostly out of the 200 blogs/day rat race for the last month, and glad to be. Now I’m going to sweep out the ones I haven’t missed.

enjoying a quiet day with old friend/former boss, tonight 40th party for another old friend/former boss, tomorrow… madness begins!

9:

“a major advantage of working for or doing business with Sun is that we’re too disorganized to be evil.” http://tinyurl.com/2ehd6q

I don’t like marketing via Twitter. I’m here to hear from friends, not advertisers.

about to settle down and watch TV (something I only do in hotels) – and remote doesn’t work. A sign?

10:

small changes: http://www.fotolog.com/rossella/20740143 when I was in school, there were few apples or pears anywhere in India!

must… stay… awake…

feeling America’d out. Too many “personalities” filling the vapid airwaves & occupying undeserved corners of my brain. Out, out, damned fool

11:

awake since 4 am and I don’t have jet lag!

wash my face, pop a pill, look at myself in the mirror, and – showtime, folks!

12:

another tiring day of filming

some companies don’t allow alcohol at company functions. Fortunately, this is not one of them.

13:

responding to a very harsh email from my mother. Not pleasant.

@michaelverdi – joining us for drinks at House of Shields Friday?

@kekkoz try “American Gods” instead

14:

back in SFO, looking forward to the weekend in the city, though I have some errandy stuff to get through tomorrow

who else is coming to the SFO meetup tomorrow? http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/261606

@scobleizer – congrats to you and Maryam. Have to say, though, Milan sounds to me like a football team. (soccer, that is)

@caseymckinnon I keep seeing people who remind me of you. Fortunately, none of them with Hitler mustaches.

@manfrys – a Halloween ho visto una vestita da “sock monster” – quello che, appunto, abita nella lavatrice e mangia i calzini

@mafe per la prima volta?!? Era uno dei film preferiti di mia figlia, da piccola. Burton e’ decisamente un genio. Anche un pazzo furioso

15:

just had a nice evening with videobloggers and Woodstockers. My worlds collide: I force them to! – mutual interests abounded.

@scobleizer – weird coincidence, a colleague of mine went into labor today, a month premature. Fingers crossed.

16:

had a very nice day, but missing my daughter ferociously just now.

@kitykity your kids have their own media room?

San Francisco Scavenger Hunt: https://www.beginningwithi.com/images/usa/ca2007/index.htm

17:

starting to head home tomorrow, but to a very different life. Scary. Good? Bad? I don’t know yet.

18:

survived the trip back to Europe. no sleep. then 30 mins in immigration at Heathrow and one hour waiting for a taxsi (Dad sent him wrong)

Rossella does Ramadan: https://www.beginningwithi.com/Woodstock/rd070918.html

19:

domani notte torno in Italia, dopo quasi 2 mesi di assenza. Casa senza flgia, ma piena di ospiti (nonche’ marito). E – food!

sooo glad I’m not going back to another year of my kid misfitting and suffering in Italian school.

tutti insieme: Sandoka-an! https://www.beginningwithi.com/italy/lang/sandokan.html

why does Amazon want $90 to ship two power strips worth $10 from the US to Italy?

@amandalorenzani I’m in Milton Keynes myself. When do you head back?

20: @missb – Geddes at every presentation would be a career deterrent for me! Sun mtg yesterday started with “baby with invisible spliff” photo

21:

honey, I’m home!

can I go to sleep now?

23:

cercasi altre candidate a Web Women Weekend, casa mia a Lecco, un weekend (da determinare) a Lecco. Fatevi amiche su Facebook.

I can sense winter already – 6:45 am and it’s still so dark!

24:

Madre Rossella? Dio ce ne scampi! http://www.fotolog.com/rossella/21084298

25:

troubleshooting a probably faulty LAN card. Argh. I hate computers.

network problem resolved by reboots. Mysteries of Windows. Looking forward to new laptop. Sorry everyone, it’s a Dell. In Italy, they’re ok

lunchtime already, no wonder I’m starving!

I don’t get facebook. How do I list someone as a friend when I know they’re already on there?

I think I have really, really worked enough now for the day!

26:

rain at last. Of course on the day I have to go in to Milan.

yay! passport back already with additional pages. Now I can go apply for my visa to India.

so glad Ross keeps her fotolog going – I’d miss her even worse without it.

@ruperthowe Don’t feel bad. All the “excitement” over a game is as dumb as endless Paris Hilton. I wish the media would grow up.

getting ready to go out and film another Sun event. First results of all this to be posted soon. Content won’t interest most people, but…

27: contemplating facing another rainy day in Milan. Ugh

30:

back from a wonderful weekend in Venice with old friends and new. Ate, drank, laughed, but didn’t sleep much!

High Water (Not Hell) in Venice, part 7

Hummingbirds & Other Venetians

Sep 29, 2007

detail on St Mark's cathedral

^ detail on Saint Mark’s cathedral

^ So much for the singing gondoliers. They seemed to spend most of their time on their cellphones (like everyone else in Italy).

^ Alitalia Italian Airlines? Not for much longer…

The scene above took place on the balcony of the apartment, whose beautiful hanging garden of herbs and flowers attracted the local wildlife, including very large black bees and what appeared to be hummingbirds – which caused some debate among us. When finally convinced that they were birds, Enrico hoped that we had spotted something rare and strange (he’d never heard of hummingbirds in Italy). I asked our seemingly knowledgeable boatman later on about the surprising presence of colibri’ in Venezia, and he claimed that they were common.

Turns out everybody was wrong.

They weren’t birds.

They weren’t bees.

They were hummingbird moths. The antennae should have tipped me off. I did notice those, and thought it odd for a bird to have something like that on its head…

Venice 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

restaurant

High Water (Not Hell) in Venice, part 6

Venice’s Bad Karma

On Saturday morning, I learned what a macchiatone (“big spotted one”) is: it’s basically a caffé macchiato (coffee “spotted” with steamed milk), with a bit more milk – so, somewhere between a macchiato and a cappuccino, served in a cappuccino cup. I had it with a delicious little torta di riso (rice cake).

Then Enrico and I explored some more.

^ “In this antique home of the Dario family, Henri de Regnier, poet of France, Venetianly lived and wrote in 1988 and 1901.” Venetianly?

^ This was a mystery. Was the pigeon already dead when someone gored it with an umbrella?

The apartment we were staying in was owned by a Jewish family. On the wall near the kitchen was a framed edict of 1777, issued by a prince of Venice on the orders of an “Inquisitor of the Arts”, detailing horrifying restrictions on Venice’s Jewish community. Sobering reading. The Venetians invented the concept of ghetto, apparently.

Venice is indeed a beautiful city, but it has many centuries of bad karma to pay off.

Venice 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

restaurant

Trattoria Al Passo, Venice – Only Fish!

While we were all in Venice, Jeet’s friend and Andrew’s colleague, Umberto, wanted to take us to his favorite restaurant in the nearby village of Campalto. The restaurant’s card says Solo Pesce (only fish), and that’s all we had – lots of very, very good fish, most of it local and extremely fresh. Umberto and his friend Mauro ordered for all of us, and at the risk of a bad nautical pun, I will say that they went overboard.

Pictured above is the amuse bouche of smoked fish, which was served with Franciacorta (champagne-method wine made in Italy).

Then we had an antipasto crudo (raw antipasto). The object in front that looks like it has two big black eyes is a cavalletto di mare (sea grasshopper). These things have always looked creepy to me. The “eyes” are defensive mimicry – that’s actually the tail – and they have way too many little legs underneath. But I ate it anyway, and the flavor was divine – sweet, and the flesh slipped right down without being slimy. The plate also contained two kinds of shrimp (not raw) and some kind of fish (swordfish?).

I didn’t get a picture of the other antipasto, carpaccio di tonno (because I was too busy eating it): very thinly sliced raw red tuna, served almost Japanese style, but with olive oil. On the plate was a small mound of green stuff; I put a chunk of it in my mouth before I realized it was wasabi, which I’ve never seen served in an Italian restaurant before. Ouch!

Next we had cappesante (scallops), grilled, then served on decorative shells. Apparently this is not the season in which they are large. Didn’t matter – they were tasty!

Then razor clams, also grilled.

Then we finally got to the primi, first polenta with schie, the tiny and flavorful local shrimp. (We did wonder who peeled all these little bitty things.)

And, finally, risotto with clams. Fortunately, someone had thought to cancel the order for a pasta dish as well, and we hadn’t ordered any entrees.

All this took a long time, which we didn’t mind as we were eating and drinking fine things in good company. Pictured above are Enrico, Kiki, Hadi, and Geraldine (shown reacting to a bad joke, not asleep on the table!).

We paid about 65 euros a head for “only fish” (plus quite a lot of wine, coffee, a few desserts, and limoncello) – well worth it!

Trattoria Al Passo

via Passo 118, Campalto (VE)

phone: 041 900470, 338 347 6106

closed Mondays and Tuesdays

High Water (Not Hell) in Venice, part 5

When in Venice, Eat… Curry

In St. Mark’s Square, Jeet bought some necessary props (above).

We returned to the apartment to greet Andrew and Victoria, arrived from Paris. Jeet and Andrew set to work making a fantastic Indian meal.

Which they served in appropriate national costumes:

(Hey, I just live my life, in all its glorious weirdness – don’t ask me to explain it!)

Jeet learned his Indian cooking from Tsering and Tenzing, old friends from Woodstock. While we were enjoying the results of their lessons in Venice, our daughter, on quarter break from school, was staying with them at their home in Mussoorie. Yes, we’re all just one big happy family!

Venice 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 , restaurant

Deirdré Straughan on Italy, India, the Internet, the world, and now Australia