God Jul!
Tomorrow will be the last day of work before the Christmas vacation I'll spend in Italy with my family as always.
It's been a long time since I last saw some of my relatives, almost half a year, so I'm looking forward to spend some time with them again and Christmas is always one of the best moments for a family to get together, and after Christmas my girlfriend will come to Italy as well.
There is a lot of snow on the mountains now in Italy, even too much, so we might decide to spend a day on the snow, maybe skiing...
Anyway it'll be a nice vacation, a needed break from the work and the "usual" life, to spend with family and friends.
I'm leaving Oslo soon, but this year I did some Christmas decorations at my place...
I wanted to do things in big, and so I thought "Why don't put lights on the big crane standing in front of my window for some months?".
So I did :P
God Jul to all! :)
Enclosure:
Home sweet home
Next Wednesday I'll go back home to Italy for a 2 weeks vacation, meeting family, old and new friends, hopefully enjoing them as much as possible.
6 months for me is a long period, I can't wait to see my family, my sister, how much my nephew is growth, and my grandma who is 88 years old and starts getting older and loosing some shape.
People often feel the need to escape from the family to find their way, but when you are far away from the ones who care about you, you realize how much they are important and how much they have contributed to build you the way you are... and you start thinking you should do more for them.
Now that I'm experiencing this, from the big boy I was, I feel I'm a little man, with many questions and little answers.
I will spend some days alone also, I planned a 3 days trip, myself, my beloved motorbike, roads, mountains, nature...
I really hope the weather won't ruin the trip, since is a thing I thought about many times and never did.
Now the right moment has come, for many reasons.
I'm confident it will help me finding some answers and inspiration...
"Life's a journey, not a destination..." so what's next?
Spring... or summer?!
In the past weeks the weather was great, sunny and warm; and now the days are becoming longer and longer, we already have light from 5 to 21:30!
Anyway, it's been a long time since my last post, many things happened and now it's time to write something...
First of all I'm blogging from my new MacBook, I bought it in Italy when I was there for Christmas.
I'm quite happy about it, no big issues for now.
Recently I bought a bycicle also and now it's a pleasure run along the river in the morning while commuting to work.
When it's time to go back home it's another story, but I'm quite satisfied with my performances (24 gears help though).
This week, or the next one, I'm going to buy a second hand Pentax K10D DSLR from Peter and finally stop waste money to buy films and develop ugly photos... a new era will arise :)
Next 17-18 May I'll skip the norwegian national day and spend the weekend in London instead with 3 other italians, it will be fun and hopefully I'll have the occasion to train a bit with the reflex.
Hmm... looks like I'm spending lots of money lately! \o/
I would like to write some more specific posts about this things, so stay tuned!
Sky art
A few weeks ago I saw the first spectacular sky phenomenon since I'm here in Norway.
No, it's not an aurora borealis but something else equally stunning and beautiful.
The norwegian word for them is perlemorskyer: polar stratospheric clouds aka nacreous clouds.
It seems that these phenomena are quite rare, so I consider myself lucky to have seen them live!
I wasn't prepared for them, so I didn't take nice pictures, but at least these photos have the particularity to have been taken in daylight, and not during twilight as most of the great photos you can see in Flickr.
Take a look also to this amazing photos my colleague Claudio took in those days and shared with the mankind!
Now I'm looking forward to see the midnight sun next August when I will travel far north to Svalbard for a short trip!
Enclosure:
Snow!
A few times last week was snowing, at least where I live.
Nothing serious, but it was nice to look outside the snow falling down and start to cover everything of white.
It made me happy like a little child in Christmas time who wish the snow to go out and play... :)
Enclosure:
Am I a true viking?!
Yesterday I made it!
The usual Friday beer at Opera had some special food and drink from Iceland thanks to the colleague Gerdur.
Despite some threatening stories circulated in the afternoon and rich in disgusting details, I ate the original Icelandic Kæstur hákarl (aka rotten shark) together with a shot of Brennivín (aka Black Death).
Well... it wasn't that bad after all... or... maybe I'm a true viking!?
I hope to get soon the photo Gerdur has taken of me while eating the nasty thing, meanwhile I can show you the certificate that proves my hardiness and strenght! ;)
Enclosure:
First months in Norway
It's been a long time since my last post and many things happened.
I moved to Oslo and started work at Opera Software as an Information Systems developer.
My duties at the moment are related to the MyOpera Community, I'm part of the MyOpera Team and we work hard to maintain and improve the community users' experience.
I met a lot of people in the company from something like 42 different countries in the world!
That's great!
This also is helping me a lot with my english since I must use it every time for communicate also with norwegians.
I'm planning to join a norwegian class, probably in August; meanwhile I'm trying to study a bit by myself (without too much success).
I moved to my own apartment almost a month ago and I'm very happy about it. It's small but it's enough for me and is located in a nice and calm place well connected to the rest of the city by buses and also a subway line.
I'm trying to enjoy the outdoors but these days the weather is not so good and stable, anyway I've joined the DNT and I'm planning hiking trips around Norway for this summer.
With bad weather I just exercise in the gym.
A few new blog posts and a lot of new ideas are bouncing in my brain... so stay tuned!
Last week in Italy
This will be my last week in Italy before backpacking to Norway and starting a new job at Opera Software in Oslo.
I'm really excited for this and I hope I'll have a great time within the IS team at Opera and learn a lot of new and interesting stuff.
I must thank my colleagues at Satel Group where I've worked since 2002 (more than 5 years of my life!), especially Lucio who gave me the opportunity to work in the IT world and who has always believed in me; Cosimo who has been my mentor for all this years and for all his help and patience; Giorgio who taught me 1 or 2 things about the analysis process, the attention for details and the user point of view.
Thank you, guys and goodbye to all the others!
I hope we'll stay tuned!
A special mandi! to all my friends in Italy (and around the world) and to all the choristers of the "HARMONIA"'s choir .
I'll try to organize a concert in Oslo... ;)
Anyway we'll keep in contact!
Goodbye my darling
It was 2004 when we met and i fell in love with you.
Since that date we run thousand of kilometers: plains, hills, mountains, every time was a joy.
Now it's time for me to leave and we cannot have fun together for a while, but I won't forget you...
Goodbye my darling!
Enclosure:
