Foggy and smoggy and dull... Oh my!

Milan is not the place to be in November - it's official. Cold, damp, foggy, grey and generally depressing, the city appears to have gone into hibernation. Its inhabitants are permanently wrapped up in black coats, black scarves, black boots (they like black here), and everyone has some sort of sore throat / swollen glands / croaky voice issue... And think that when I tell people in the UK that I live in Italy, their first reaction is almost always "how wonderful to live in such a sunny climate!" Noooooooo invece...
On a more positive note, the next few weeks will be packed with days off (many thanks to Saint Ambrose for the long weekend!), family dinners, christmas parties, and on the 23rd December, the annual repatriation to the motherland! The black cloud covering the silver lining, however, comes in the shape of threatened strikes by British Airways staff, starting on December 21st. They should be aware that I will personally hunt down and seriously injured anybody who gets in the way of my christmas trip home... BA, you have been warned!!!
I've started a new project a work which involves contacting hotels across the world to negotiate tariffs on behalf of a client, and I have to say it has (once again) opened my eyes a little bit. I now have a little chart in my head as to the relative friendliness and efficiency of each nation / city. Top of the leader board is Amsterdam, followed close behind by Dublin, and then Helsinki. Nice, friendly, relaxed people to deal with. Where does Italy come? Where do you think?!! HA! Back to the old favourite of Italians having NO IDEA of client care (one place even refused to put me through to the corporate booking office because they pope was due to arrive the following week, and they were all busy praying - or something like that...) and answering calls with a "What the hell do you want from me??" tone of voice...
So, I've complained about the weather, I've complained about Italians... What else?
Ah, I'm planning an Open House christmas party, which is a new concept to most Italians I know (provoking the fear that they'll all turn up at 14:00 and stay til 20:00), but I have no idea whatsoever as to what to cook / prepare. Anyone have any ideas of good party/finger food, preferably with a UK / US theme to it?

Back to school

It's the first day of school - well, work actually, but I have that first-day-of-school-feeling - and I made it in for 9.36. Not bad, eh? Am sitting in a very quiet office (there's 5 of us in total on the sixth floor), listening to Radio 2 from the UK over the internet. You know you're approaching 30 when you choose Radio 2 over Radio 1. English people everywhere will know exactly what I mean...

Happy New Year everyone!! So far, so good - a few kilos heavier, many hundreds of euros lighter (the pound is at 1 to 1 with the euro - it had to be done), and.... back with Luca. I guess that means I won't be changing the name of my blog to Life & Lavoro. Meno male!!

So, bombshell duly dropped, I must get back to my very busy day of updating my Facebook profile and reading the Daily Mail online.... Work starts "properly" on January 7th....

Ciaooooooo

PS - the pic is of one of my all-time favourite christmas movies.... anyone know it?

Back in the habit...

Long time, no blog!! What can I say? When your life does a 180° turn, it’s hard to keep up!

Last Thursday we had our office Christmas party at the Jazz Cafè. This is one of my favourite restaurant / bars in Milan, and even more so when the boss is paying as it’s more than a little priiiiiiicey. It’s also a staple hang-out for models and associated hangers-on / beautiful people, but I find that if you drink enough you don’t even notice their presence, so the wine flowed a bit too much and the following day in the office I thought I might just drop down dead on the spot. Once a year……

A few days previously, T and I went to see “Solo un padre” at the cinema. I’d seen the trailers and thought it looked cute – or rather Luca Argentero, the main character looked cute – so we decided to give it a try. In reality, Luca Argentero isn’t just cute, he’s a figo della madonna, but that’s kind of beside the point. The film was fantastic – probably one of the best Italian movies I’ve seen. Well scripted, nicely thought out and not at all predictable as the story line led me to believe it would be. And it had the cuuuuutest little baby in it…. Sexy man + cute baby = success!

Work has been insane. I was in the office until nine thirty pm Friday before last, and not because I had no social life, but actually because I was busy! I thought that was a record, until last SATURDAY NIGHT, when T & I ended up being dragged down by certain colleagues, who shall remain nameless, and ended up working until 2:30am!!!!! This is for a particularly big contract with a rather important chocolate manufacturer, so in reality I did it in the hope that freebies will be forthcoming, especially given the season and all that! We’ll see….

Driving up Via Farini on the way to K’s on Sunday, I was minding my own business, listening to the radio, going in a straight line, when a cretino decided to pull out right in front of me and attempt a u-turn. It was dark and rainy but that’s no excuse – rear-view mirrors were invented for a reason, people!! The result was a huge dent all the way down the passenger side, and an hour spent in the rain filling out the extremely long, extremely complicated Costatazione amichevole. Names, addresses, tax codes, licence numbers, insurance company addresses, phone numbers, insurance codes, renewal dates, damage details and a little drawing of the incident -  not easy to accomplish with trembling hands and palpitations…. The only good thing about it is that they’ve given me my favourite car in the world as a courtesy vehicle, so as far as I’m concerned, they can take their time with the repairs!

I fly to England for Christmas with the ‘rents on December 21^st. In spite of everything, I’m actually quite excited – it’ll be my first trip home since last Christmas, and I couldn’t imagine spending it anywhere else. I suspect I will feel pretty out of it at first – for example I have no clue who the people from X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing are – but after a few sherries and half a box of Quality Street, I’m sure it’ll all come flooding back to me. New Year will be spent with friends in a villa on Lake Garda. This will for sure be the tough part, as old acquaintances are hard to forget – especially at New Year – but I’m determined to make the best of it. So far my only resolution for 2009 is to try and arrive at the office before 9:30 each day. Now that really will be tough....

Tree!!

It's up! The tree is up!
And not without a certain amount of effort, I have to say... The queue at IKEA was distinctly unfestive - a bit like the supermarket deli counter on a Saturday morning, only colder and with more prickly produce. Just as I arrived, some woman at the front was having a real go at an older guy for jumping ahead to pick out a nice-looking tree that had just been brought out of the lorry. When he protested that he was only choosing - not being served - she started screaming about how if he picked the tree she'd wanted when in theory she was ahead of him, then he might as well be jumping the queue completely, and that he should wait his turn to choose as well as take away.... Mamma mia.... Then a young girl next to me spotted that our receipts had numbers on them, and suggested that we implement a number system. That was fine until someone pointed out that the numbers were only sequential if you had paid at the external till, not the one inside - so that little idea didn't pan out. The guys doing the bagging and tagging were taking no notice, so in an I'm-turning-into-my-mother moment, I decided that if anyone had to sort out these bickering Italians who have no idea who's next and who isn't, it should be the English girl. "Can people not just take notice of who arrives before them and who arrives after? We're all grown adults after all...." was my contribution, at which point they all shut up and waited their turn. Brilliant!

Three cheers for Ikea!!

Ikea have recently announced that this year anyone who buys a real Christmas tree from any of its stores in Italy will be provided with a living tree and instructions on how to keep it alive. After Christmas, you can then return the live tree and you will receive a voucher for its original cost to spend in store. The tree will then form part of a new butterfly farm, to be built in a national park in the province of Udine. This initiative has been launched in collaboration with Friends of the Earth and the Comune di Bordano. The original press release and other information can be found in the links below.

What can I say? If you live in Italy, get your tree from Ikea.... and tell your friends!!!

http://www.ikea.com/ms/it_IT/about_ikea/press_room/press_release/national/com_stampa_io_sono_vivo.html

www.bordano.org

www.casadellefarfalle.it

Festive feelings...

Following much time and effort on my part, we have finally booked our tickets to go back to England to spend Christmas with my family. This will be Luca's first proper trip to England (we spent two hours in London whilst waiting for a connecting flight in April) and I absolutely can't wait to introduce him to my culture and the people and places that are important to me. We spend so much time in 'his world', surrounded by Italian / Sicilian culture and traditions (which is fine but...), that I am desperate to take him to my world for a few days - and Christmas time will (hopefully!) show it at its best. I was chatting to a friend the other day about the difference between Christmas in Italy and in the UK / US. I know that I am obviously biased given the fact that I grew up in England and so have all of those warm, fuzzy memories of Carols from Kings and the Queen's speech every year for the last 27 years. However, as a holiday, Christmas seems to be so much bigger at home than it is here in Italy. Maybe this is because there are so many religious holidays / festivals here, or perhaps the fact that Italian families tend to be close by nature, whereas in the UK it is normal to see your closest relatives only at Christmas, Easter, and, if you're lucky, once in the summer. Obviously this depends on whether or not you actually like spending time with your family...

So, being in a festive mood, I've been making a mental list of all the things that come to mind when looking forward to Christmas at home.

LOVE the smell of pine needles and cinnamon in my mum & dad's house

DON'T LOVE the fact that said pine needles tend to find their way into your socks - whilst they're on your feet...

LOVE the "holidays are coming" Coca-Cola advert!

DON'T LOVE the fact that they start to show it in September...

LOVE my mum's turkey dinner - best meal of the year

DON'T LOVE the stomach cramps that come on around 2 hours later

LOVE "Carols from Kings" & "The Snowman" on Christmas Eve

DON'T LOVE the fact that they both make me cry

LOVE the fact that almost all the houses on the street are decorated with fairy lights

DON'T LOVE the fact that each neighbour tries to out-do the next by putting up bigger and better displays each year

LOVE walking to the pub on Christmas morning

DON'T LOVE walking back from the pub ( gin and tonic at 11:30 in the morning doesn't seem to agree with me...)

LOVE Nat King Cole singing Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire

DON'T LOVE Nat King Cole singing Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire

Yep, I'm really feeling in a festive spirit now - can't wait!!!