Deve’s Blog

After… way, way too much time… still following my good intentions, I’ll get back to the travel diary of my trip to Canada, 2007… maybe my memories will be a bit blurred by now, but let’s try, also with the help of the usual pics.
So where were we? Kamloops, a stop between Whistler and Jasper.
As I woke up I felt a bit of fever… just on the day we where supposed to go rafting… And, for a change, it’s still raining…
We left, and travelled the whole morning, going from British Columbia to Alberta (on the notes of “Alberta Bound” by Gordon Lightfoot). The bad weather even spoils the view of the tallest mount of the Canadian Rockies, Mount Robson, of which otherwise we could have had a great view from the rest stop where we had lunch.

That’s where the rafting guys came to pick us up and take us to the Fraser River, the same river that flows into the sea by Vancouver, but that to the north-east is good enough for some medium-levle rafting.
Getting “dressed” in the rafting wetsuit and boots was curious… they made us change under the rain (a light rain, fortunately) withouth ceremonies… and the inside of the wetsuit was not dry at all…
Oh well; I still didn’t feel very well, but we got a paddle and split on several rafts, starting the navigtaion… I must say the experience wasn’t so great for me, maybe also because of the rain and cold… but still, there weren’t many exciting rapids, and a good part of the navigation was a bit boring. We even had to walk around the toughest rapids, because they were considered too dangerous… Near the end we also had the chance to jump in the river for an icy bath, but considering my conditions I decided to avoid that…

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Damn it… I didn’t like Venezia much as a city (see this post)… but now it’s official, I also hate Mestre and its fucking storms that come out of nowhere in an hour…
At least not everything was a disaster for this Heineken Jammin’ Festival of mine…

Saturday, July 3rd, we entered the park around 2.30 pm, relaxing under a little tree, then walking through the (useless) water atomizers, then Stereophonics (I didn’t know them but they were not bad at all), then we get closer to the stage for the Cranberries. Dolores was in great shape, excellent concert, and having heard Zombie live is a nice “kill notch on my rifle”, so to speak…
And then Aerosmith… we were all worried about how Steven Tyler would sing, as it seemed he was going to leave the band just a few months ago… then he went to a clinic to “clean up”… 62 years old…
So I think everyone shat their pants when, at the end of the second songs, he screams a high note… and begins coughing heavily… … “oh fuck”… but he waves to us to hold on… catches his breath… AND BURPS LOUDLY IN THE MICROPHONE!!
He was having fun with us all… and from then one he pulled off a brilliant performance to say the least, with the highlights being, for me, “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing” and obviously “Dream On”; he sang them perfectly, as if they were recorded… shivers and goose bumps… The setlist was almost complete, maybe it missed “Dude” and “Crazy”, but almost everthing else was in there.
Awesome concert.

Sunday, July 4th, same routine, resting in the shadow of another little tree… Rise Against played a decent music, then Editors, sounding like Depeche Mode clones (and I don’t like Depeche much), then the horrible 30 Seconds to Mars, really awful. Unfortunately, during their concert a huge black cloud got closer and closer… the wind was crazy continuously, changing directions, and for a while it seems like the cloud would avoid us and head straight for Venice… but then it goes back and the first raindrops come down. The 30 Seconds must stop the concert, and so we ran for cover, just in time, under one of the food stand tents.
One and a half hour of downpour, with a moment of real violence (they said 80mm of water came down in half an hour). At 9.30 pm we finally left the tent, but there were 10cm of water in front of the stage, and the concert was cancelled… we walked through water and mud, got a bus to Mestre, walked to the hotel, had a kebab, a shower and went to bad… huge disappointement…
For the time being, Green Day will keep playing only in my iPod… but we’ll try again…

Good intentions. Again. To write more on the blog. Work is not an excuse anymore; it seems unreal, but after May 15th if I’m not just fooling around at the office, I’m quite close to that.
And so I’m writing.
I’m writing about Ligabue’s new record, “Arrivederci, mostro!” (”Goodbye, monster!”). I must confess I wasn’t expecting it with a lot of impatience, maybe because I felt it was going be a certain kind of record that wasn’t going to amaze or elate me.

A little introduction: my love for Liga dates back to secondary school (1995) and, as many others I think, to the timeless “Buon Compleanno, Elvis!” and its “Certe Notti”, which was for many the initiation to Ligabue. From there I began discovering the older records (which ended up being my studying companions, together with Litfiba), then the wait for the double live “Tra Palco e Realtà”, then the subscription to the Fan Club… and finally the first concert. My first Liga’s concert, my first concert overal, maybe a bit late: 2002, San Siro. First we endured the rain shower, then we enjoyed being right under the stage… and from there I started following Liga in a string of concerts… Palaignis in Varese, Palamalaguti in Bologna, Teatro Medica in Bologna, two fan club meetings in Modena, one at the Festa dell’Unità in Reggio, the humongous Campovolo, then the Alcatraz, San Siro again, the Arcimboldi, Assago Forum and the marvellous frame of Verona Arena…
Sure, some are waaaaaaay crazier than me, but I can say I hold my own.

Lately, though, I must say my passion for Ligabue has decreased a bit… who knows, maybe I had too much of it… but I can say that I didn’t find “Miss Mondo” as good as the previous records… “Fuori Come Va?” was better again, I liked it a lot… but “Nome e Cognome” didn’t capture me much. Yes I have to say it, musically speaking Liga doesn’t convince me as much as in the past… less rock, more melodic/pop… less new stuff, more similarities to old stuff…

That’s why I didn’t expect much more from “Arrivederci, mostro!”. And indeed it isn’t more. After the first listen I didn’t notice anything especially new, with the exception of the marvellous and at the same time terrifying “Quando Mi Vieni a Prendere”, which tells about the tragedy of Dendermonde nursery in Belgium, from the viewpoint of a child. A very unusual track for Liga, but it really turned out perfect.

And still… and still, Liga is Liga. Just in the same way as I rediscovered “Nome e Cognome” after a few years, also this record, after listening to it more carefully, can pull out that special something…

It can’t be helped, Liga can always catch me, and I realized why.
Because when he wants, even if sometimes it’s only in parts of a record, he can write that kind of music that gets inside you and can touch the right strings… a solo, a chorus, a verse…
Because, even if he isn’t creating many new things, he always pulls off those catchy songs you end up singing in the street or under the shower…
Because even if his music hasn’t always convinced me recently, his lyrics always strike… sometimes they might seem trivial, but it’s rare when Liga doesn’t sing little big truths…
Because his tracks have that feature that I think is fundamental to make you fall in love for a song: they can be universal. They had a meaning to the one who wrote them, and it shows… but at the same time they’re indefinite enough to allow everyone to “wear them”… to make them his own… to live them in a way, and relive them in another way after years…
And exactly because of this, because Liga is always there when you need him… when you think too much and you want to keep hurting yourself (metaphorically speaking)… when you don’t want to think, but to smile… when you want to scream towards the sky…

Oh yes, Liga is Liga.

Objective vote: 6/7
Vote for Liga: 8 e 1/2

It’s time to dust off my blog, taking advantage of the unusual five-day holiday “bridge”, to briefly write about last Saturday’s ASP Event, a visit to the Fortress of Fenestrelle.
Well, I certainly had no idea that in Italy, about one hour from Turin, we have the largest fortified structure of Europe, also called “the Great Wall of Piedmont”, as it seems it’s the longest stonework construction, after the Great Wall of China (even if we’re talking of completely different order of magnitude).

5 brave people from Milan (unfortunately the number of attendees was quite low overall, especially from Milan but also from Turin), we entered the highway around 9 am and soon after that we entered a huge downpour… fortunately when we got there, around 11.30 pm, the weather in Fenestrelle as more than acceptable, with some passing clouds and some wind that alternated with a nice warm sun.

A sandwich and a “siesta” around noon, and at 2 pm we began our guided tour, with the great tour guide Ezio Raviol. We went first inside the fort (the kitchens, the cellars, the reservoir…), in the ex-church (later used as an ammo depot), and then we began climbing, partly outdoor and partly on the famous Covered Stairway (4000 steps for 600 metres of height difference!!!). We stopped around 1/3 up (counting the height difference… we only took around 250 steps up…), at the Garitta del Diavolo, and then we came down along another course through various casemates, where the many cannons of the fort used to be placed.
Well, it was really a nice visit… we should evaluate, in the future, the 8-hour visit, that leads all the way up to the fort.

Anyway, around 6.30 pm we head for the Pian dell’Alpe agrotourism, even higher, for a great dinner with cold cuts, carpaccio, zucchini with a secret recipe (bah… they seemed to have oil, garlic and chili peppers to me…), polenta, cotechino, fondue and mixed cheese…
We left around 9.30 pm as we had to drive 3 hours back to Milan, but I read on Facebook that those who stayed a bit more engaged a snowball battle in the dark… yes, because nearby the agrotourism there were still some patches of snow! Great…

The pictures are in this set on Flickr, I’ll leave you with this nice panorama of the Pian dell’Alpe…

After the now usual months of silence on the blog, I’m back with a post about my latest two holidays… Now, writing on this blog feels a bit like trying to inject adrenaline in a dead body… but anyways…

China. 3 weeks (and something more), leaving everything behind. Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, Chengdu, Yangtze river cruise, Yangshuo, Hong Kong… a marvellous tour, only young people in the group (all between 22 and 33 yo), we really had fun. 4 trips on night trains, chinese food (spicy!), the Great Wall, the skyscrapers in Shanghai, the Terracotta warriors, pandas, the bike ride through the countryside, the light show in Hong Kong… It would deserve a nice travel diary (I took notes on my palmtop during the trip), but for the time being it will reamain a good intention… Here a few pictures with my new D90…

Egypt. For New Year’s Eve I found this tour, managing to squeeze it in the vacation days I was given… I was a bit doubtful, but I didn’t really have many options and so I tried.
Well, I ended up in the first egyptian tour sponsored by Discovery Channel, with the best guid/egyptologyst ever (I dare anyone to disagree), the great Mayer (here if you scroll down a bit you can see him in a plastic pose on the Discovery website). The tour had some crazy timings (almost always waking up around 5.00-5.30 or worse!), but we visited some amazing places and temples, all supported by Mayer’s great explanations and a heterogeneous group that managed to get together with no problems at all… Highlights: dawn at Abu Simbel, the Valley of the Kings, Karnak… Maybe the best GAP tour of my four so far… even if all of them were great in their own way…
Here the best pictures…

Let’s see how many months till the next post…

After many devastating months I’m back on the blog… DOF has been migrated… the Integrazione DOF project is substantially over, except for the follow-up (”live” defects on the production environment), which won’t be easy at all, but which I won’t see…
And finally, holidays… Far East, China… from Beijing to Hong Kong, 3 weeks… taking off.
Yesterday and today I tasted a bit of a “normal” life… left the office around 5.30 pm… tonight I had a sort of goodbye dinner with my colleagues…
I hope this keeps up when I’m back.

But now there’s only China…

Mental state: confused.

Peculiar signs: 360° confusion.
Aggravations: variable mood.

Unsolvable doubts.
Hypothetical Hypotheses.
Some pleasant.
Unlikely.

Something good.
Something coming, not so good.
But somehow good, from another point of view.

Total uncertainties.
Maybe mental masturbation.

Rationality in trouble.
Swimming helps unwind.
But it leaves time to think.

Insane situations.
Or are they?

Desire to sleep as soon as you’re up after an 11 hours sleep.

Mental state: confused…

English maybe later…

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Italian only this time around. Don’t feel like translating this one. Ever, I think.

Non è tempo per noi
(Ligabue)

Ci han concesso solo una vita
Soddisfatti o no qua non rimborsano mai
E calendari a chiederci se
stiamo prendendo abbastanza abbastanza
Se per ogni sbaglio avessi mille lire
Che vecchiaia che passerei

Strade troppo strette e diritte
Per chi vuol cambiar rotta oppure sdraiarsi un po’
Che andare va bene però
A volte serve un motivo, un motivo
Certi giorni ci chiediamo è tutto qui?
E la risposta è sempre sì

Non è tempo per noi che non ci svegliamo mai
Abbiam sogni però troppo grandi e belli sai
Belli o brutti abbiam facce che però non cambian mai
Non è tempo per noi e forse non lo sarà mai

Se un bel giorno passi di qua
lasciati amare e poi scordati svelta di me
che quel giorno è gia’ buono per amare qualchedun’altro
qualche altro
dicono che noi ci stiamo buttando via
ma siam bravi a raccoglierci.

Non è tempo per noi che non ci adeguiamo mai
Fuorimoda, fuoriposto, insomma sempre fuori dai
Abbiam donne pazienti rassegnate ai nostri guai
Non è tempo per noi e forse non lo sarà mai

Non è tempo per noi che non vestiamo come voi
Non ridiamo, non piangiamo, non amiamo come voi
Forse ingenui o testardi
Poco furbi casomai
Non e’ tempo per noi e forse non lo sarà mai…