Sabato 23rd Gennaio

Where did it all go right? Where did it all go? Where has it all been? Where will it all go? Those are the questions on my lips today people. Well, it's been two weeks and being brutally honest I have been working working working and very little else - appalling behaviour I know.

I'll start today and work backwards. Today is a very sunny and beautiful day, and very crisp and clear is it is just a degree or two above freezing. We were planning on going to buy some bike stuff near Pisa today, but that got put on hold by the car dying on Thursday. A couple of weeks ago I called our car "boring" - this upset Dawn, but seemingly it has really upset the car. Since then we have had a flat tire, and then on Thursday the battery went completely dead. We live a little way outside Siena, so we had to get taxis to and from work and garages don't seem to open late here. Thankfully someone at work kindly got the correct battery for us and this morning our neighbour Guiseppe helped me fit it (I don't have any tools any more!) and it is A OK, fingers crossed. We are not risking it though, so only going to local trips for the next while. And I shall certainly not be calling the car "boring" ever again!

After fixing the car, I have been on a bike ride - just a simple trot around the local hills. Went to the Basilica Osservanzo - kind of an old monastery with an amazing view of the city - and just sat around in the sun for a bit. I got a bit freaked out by all the insects that are around. I guess that in the UK the cold weather kills off all the insects every year but that just hasn't happened hear. Today I saw a whole load of scary red beetles, a slightly demented wasp, and the last few weeks I am still seeing bees and spiders. Feels strange. Up by the Basilica I saw a lizard basking on the wall in the sun - I tried to catch it but it ran away. I tried to take a photo when it came out again, but it was too quick!
Tried out my new knee warmers today, they worked well - basically like big tights for cycling in that cover your legs. Smashing.

Yesterday, KLF finally had the twins - a boy and a girl, the boy being blessed with ginger power! And Brendy is a father too - it's all going on. Congrats to all. And it's Annie's birthday too - have a doggin' great time.

Work has been good, but tough as ever. Long long days, but I am still enjoying it, so all good. We, the company, is expecting an European audit in April, so we are having a general audit in February - the upshot of this is that we have to spend the first two weeks of February at our German site - getting grilled. Busy busy. But good busy!

Whilst we're on the subject of exciting (!) cars I shall tackle a little about Italian driving again. The rules for Italian driving are different to the UK, and it takes a little time to adjust and then things are fine. Roundabouts are really just a filter, rather than waiting until there's a gap - people just pull out, and once you are used to that then everything is absolutely fine! I was ack in the UK at the weekend and the driving style is very different, and it took a while to adjust. At one point I was trying to get out from a service station onto a roundabout off the M25 and it took 10 minutes to drive the 200 yards due to the bad set up - it would have never happened in Planet Italia!

So yes - I popped back to the UK at the weekend. It was Tannaz's birthday and I was doing a combat class too. It was great to see everyone, I had a great time, had a fantastic Indian meal - which just does not exist here! - and a good combat class, but I must say it felt quite odd being back, and I was quite pleased to return to Italy. Poor Dawn had been horseying near Milan the weekend and had waited to bring me back to Siena from Pisa airport, I didn't land till nearly midnight, and we didn't get home till nearly 2am! Bless her.

Italian lessons are progressing. I am certainly understanding a lot more now, but not enough, and I am not practising enough. I had an Italian lesson yesterday, in the morning at the end of a long and hard week, and I really had had enough and absolutely hated it. I am looking forward to being in Germany and not having to speak any Italian for two weeks!

Olive update! About 5 weeks ago we decided to prepare some olives. We picked some olives off the olive trees on our land and put them in salt. We have now taken them out of the salt and they are like tiny shrivelled dried things! Taste good though. I have now put them in water, to see if they rehydrate!

Sunny pictures are of dawn creeping over the Tuscan hills out the back of our place.

Sabato 9th Gennaio 2010

Some photos:

Another obligatory amusingly named item - a "spank" pen

Snow on the drive to work

The city of Lucca - snow covered mountains in the background

Snow over the UK

Snow over Europe - none in Italy!

Venerdi 8th Gennaio 2010

Mmmm food lovely food. Today I shall be talking about food. I am doing a lot of it here. Am totally settled in to the big lunch crowd with courses and bread steeped in balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

Speaking of olive oil I was discussing with an Italian about how we couldn't find margarine in the supermarket. There is some sort of whiteish butterish margarine in a tub, and there is a selection of I think 2 in the supermarket we tend to use. Contrast that with almost an entire aisle of olive oils. Whilst discussing this with the aforementioned Italian I mentioned how there would be just a couple of olive oils in the supermarkets in the UK and he shook his head and a grave look of sadness came over his face, as though he could not imagine a land where there were only a couple of types of olive oil.

As snow rampages through the UK, leaving people like special T using their car boots and back garden as refrigerators, we are back in the rain. Torrential rain again, every day. Lisa was definitely right, even if she's too lazy to squeeze out a couple of babbies. It was cold yesterday but not cold enough to snow unfortunately, a few degrees above 0C, whilst UK was getting to below 0F.

Food. Lunch. So yes, every day I go to the Villa for lunch. It's called Villa Borghi and everytime I go there I think of the Blur song - "Villa Rosie"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvzRmi6KqzE
"When work is done, go to Villa Rosie every night - so tasty"
It really has got locked into my head that every time I walk over singing that tune and laugh to myself like a proper mental. Eccelente.

Pears. The Tuscans seem to think that pudding consists of pears. I don't really understand this, pears being one of the foods that I do dislike. Boiled pear, poached pear, drizzled with some sort of whallop. Who knows? Who cares? The Tuscans - that's who!

Speaking of fruit, yesterday evening I went to dinner with my boss who was over from the US, and a couple of consultants who were over helping us prepare for an impending audit. We went to a lovely restaurant in the old town called "Guidos" which according to Dawn is a rude slang term for Italians in the US.
http://www.ristoranteguido.com/
Don't try to click on the English section - it doesn' t seem to work. Mind you, this is one of the few shops, restaurants, anythings, in Siena that seems to have a website - complete opposite of the UK where everything has a website, pets, lamposts, everything.

So, in the restaurant as we walked in there were a couple of old codgers, well past retirement age sat there at a table eating a huge bowl of satsumas. Odd. And the restaurant was quite a clash of opposites, incredibly attentive and knowledgeable waiters, contrasted with a front room kind of atmosphere. Photos adorned the walls of people who had visited - including Pavarotti, loads of random Italians, Mel Gibson, Daniel Craig aka the new James Bond - the latest James Bond film opening sequence was in Siena, Claudio Ranieri etc etc. Oh and a lot of footballers, signed football shirts, and some signed basketball shirts. Siena's football team may be in trouble, hanging out the bottom of Serie A at the moment, last weekend losing 1-5 at home to local rivals Fiorentina, but the they do have the best basketball team in the land, and somewhat bizarrely, basketball is a really big sport here. The basketball stadium is near the office and the evenings when the games are on the place gets incredibly busy. Anyway, the food was excellent. I had a sort of linguine with cinghiale - wild boar (they, whoever they are, do seem to spend a lot of time shooting them around our place, hear a lot of gunshots) for primo and then for secondi I had something that was quite exquisite - guinea fowl with pistachio, grape and pomegranate. Delicious. Fantastic wine too. Broccoli was something else too - I had never seen broccoli of the same shape, but it was absolutely delicious.

Speaking of the audit - we had a 6 hour meeting today preparing for the forthcoming fun and frolics, and one of the Italians said "mama mia!" at one point - and I had to work extremely hard just to keep it together!

During the same meeting, my boss requested that we have a "working lunch". This contravenes all rules in Italy apparently - it was lucky she got out alive! Working lunches are NOT possible, food in the rooms is not allowed, and we had to get special dispensation from the ancient gods of Italy to have tea (I'll come back to that) and coffee in the room. No biscuits or pastries, naturally. The tea was VERY strange. Looked like normal teabags, but they produced a strange tasting, caffeine-free bright yellow liquid when brewed. Maybe lemongrass or something. Odd. Mind you, as I've mentioned before, it is against the law to not drink very small extremely powerful coffees.

Avanti!!

Martedi 5th Gennaio 2010

Excellent stuff - been back at work a whole two days and time for another day off - result! the reason this time is that tomorrow is Epiphany and so no early start but a leisurely trip to Decathlon, the largest sports retailer in Europe with a branch near Florence is called for, bike shopping for Dawn and sports stuff for me. Then sadly I have to pop into the office in the afternoon as my boss, who is based in the US, is over for a few days and we need to catch up whensoever we possibly can.

Today I was given my carte bancomat which means I will be able to take some money out of the bank - yay! Only a month and three days after opening the account - mind you, it did require me a) having an Italian mobile phone number, and b) having some money in it! Naturally the process was complicated, and required me filling in yet another swathe of forms, interestingly this time it seemed that I had to sign each one thrice, and sign some for online banking, oh and you only get one pin number for the life of the carte bancomat - if you lose the pin number then you have to apply for a new carte.

This week we had snow again! Never previously been seen in the history of Siena having so much snow in one year. It was cold on Sunday, a furious 5C, and then we awoke on Monday to an inch of snow. Not that cold either, only 2C or so. It snowed all day and we had about 2 inches by mid afternoon when the gods of Siena decided that enough was enough, that the snow was an afront to the very being of Siena, and that it was time to rain again. Tuscany is a very green place, very fertile lands, excellent growing for olives, grapes and sunflowers. But this comes at a cost - it seems to rain all the time, and biblical rain too. Since it started raining it seemingly hasn't stopped for a second and the rain keeps up this relentless intensity. I am expecting a bumper crop of grapes, olives and everything this year! Speaking of which, we made a bowl of olives about a month ago which are now ready. The process was to put the olives in a bowl and cover with salt and leave for a month - cos cor blimey they were disgusting raw. I have taken a photo of the bowl of olives covered with salt! So I shall try them tomorrow as I am ready for my pudding now!

Postal update - my parents received the Xmas hamper today. Within 3 weeks which is pretty good, and undamaged except for some superficial damage to the outer packaging (thank you Alan Partridge!(coincidentally I am as we speak eating a Terry's chocolate orange!)). So, my faith is restored in the Italian post, after Dawn losing a letter or two. Although I would not gladfully embrace it. The Italian postal system that is. Too many forms and random erratic queueing aka Brownian Motion.

Sunday, which was cold, as previously advertised, I went out on the wheels of steel for the first time - that is the road bike. Wrapped up warm, buff (stooopidly not the VISOR BUFF TM) and hit the tarmac. Lovely smooth roads, but the hills are a killer, should have a third ring on my front derailleur really. But yes roads were lovely, and the traffic is used to cyclists, and I coped quite well with looking over the wrong shoulder. Roll on more cycling when the light gets longer.

Went to karate again last night, good fun, and I even swapped some words with some of the Italians. Karate was good again, some technical aspects of distancing and evading gyaku zuki, countering with oi zuki etc - good class, enjoyed it. One interesting note to the sartorial of you all - Italians don't seem to possess towels, but sort of hooded towelin bath robes which they combo up with as towels.

I feel obliged to highlight amusingly named products or slightly sweary ones. I have included a picture of a smoothie called "mukki" - ho ho. Very funny. Actually it was pretty disgusting, like one of those cheap, horribly overly sweet ones in the UK, so yes pretty mucky indeed. Bluuurgh.

Italian still comes along slowly. Thanks for the help Pete. Finally we got around to "Quando a Roma, fare come fanno i romani" which we both approve of. Interestingly, I find myself increasingly thinking of French words and in lessons I am constantly thinking of little words in French like "there" "also" "that one" - they just pop into my mind, even though I have never attempted to speak French since my GCSE. Strange. Shows how much it says about learning young, and m French was pretty poor.

On Saturday we went to Lucca - a walled city to the north east of us, about an hour and a half, in the direction towards Pisa. Beautiful city, the wall was built in the 1500s and was only ever used as defense when the pesky sea tried to invade in the 1800s. The wall is a flat raised section of about 4km which people walk round and cycle round as it is wide and flat and very pleasant. Photos to come.

Whilst strolling around the centre of the town, which was very Xmassy and just rammed with people, we stumbled across a Chinese restaurant. As I mentioned earlier, in Siena there is practically no choice for food, other than Italian :) and we instantly craved Chinese food. So once we had completed our tour we thought we would try and find it again. No joy. So we googled for a chinese restaurant in Lucca and we found one. Plugged it into the sat nav and successfully found our way to a deserted square outside the walled city with a fantastic looking bike shop - but no chinese! So we tried again and found another - New Hong Kong Restaurant. We turned up and it was just like one of those completely overzealous 1970s Chinese restaurants - the floor of the restaurant was lined with glass and you could see koi carp swimming underneath your feet! Starters were excellent, fried seaweed, spring roll and dumplings - amusingly the dumplings were referred to in the Italian section of the menu as "ravioli" :) The main course was very disappointing, my pollo picante was not at all picante and Dawn's battered sweet and sour pollo was not very well cooked with the batter being very soggy. So this left us hungrier and more craving Chinese food than when we started!