Domenica 20th Dicembre

No more snow for us in Italy since the big dump on Friday - but still very very icy today. Stayed in for most of the morning and unpacked a couple of the boxes of mine - aaaaarrrrrgh scary. Went shopping to get some basic supplies and then had to go into the office to sort out an urgent issue before Australia woke up on Monday morning. Managed to solve that in a couple of hours and then ran around the campus with my big camera taking a few photos. Beautiful views across the Tuscan hills with the snow settled on and beautiful clear sunny skies.

Went round to a friend's place and played another level on Left 4 Dead and a bit of GTA 4. I drove home slowly as it had become incredibly cold all of a sudden and Italian drivers are, well, slightly unpredictable to say the least. In fact, when we drove into the centre of Siena to go to the Municipality on Friday, we went in a normalish taxi. I was the only one to wear a seatbelt, even the Danish guy, who had been living in Germany the last few years, was in no way tempted to deploy the seat belt. I of course had it on practically before I sat down! We drove right in to the centre of Siena which is a proper mediaeval walled city with very tight narrow alleys and not set up for cars. Still - people drive into the centre especially taxis and people just don't get out of the way. The centre is full of tiny little taxis and the little three wheel open back "cars" which are powered by motorcycle engines, and also lots of scooters, natch. On campus at Novartis, which is a real hodge podge of buildings and very tight roads, there are more of the three-wheeled cars, but also some really scary super mini little electric cars that just seem to appear by magic. I shall try and get a photo of one soon. They also remind me of the late 1960s surreal TV show and one of my all time favourites - "The Prisoner"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner
which was filmed in the tiny little welsh of Portmeirion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmeirion
Which is a picture postcard pretty sort of artifical village "made", well designed and created by Sir William Clough-Ellis from the 1920s onwards. Amazing place. Anyway - full of famous quotes like "I am not a number - I am a free man", "six of one and half a dozen of the other" - anyway, in that program they had little cars driving around - little Mini Mokes or something I think they were called. Anyway, sometimes the campus at work reminds me of this tiny little artificial world were all sorts of magic people get things done. Or not as the case may be!

I digress. Planet Italia, weird cars, crap drivers :) When I went out to work earlier there had been a car that had slid into a wall and the police were making things awkward to drive round. Very flashy Alfa Romeo police car, natch, and just getting in the way, causing travel havoc, waving a red stick to annoy people.

But, to the point of this little monologue - as I was driving back I noticed that the snow at the side of the road was twinkling like it was full of little diamonds in the half light. It was very cold (the iMac claims that it's -8C in Siena tonight) but I had never seen an effect like that before, amazing. It's like Planet Italia in lots of ways - take anything "normal" that you might have in the UK and add sparkle and gold edging to it - and hey presto! that's Planet Italia! So yes, twinkly things. Indeed, when I was visiting Dawn in the summer I saw fireflies for my first time just by where we are living now.
Planet Italia, twinkly bits, and gold edging.

I used the video function on google talk for the first time tonight, using the built-in video camera on the new iMac. Awesome system, thank you google, much better than I have seen before. Quick shot of me speaking to Saman - full screen goodness!!

Shots uploaded today are of the snow at work. And also an ariel corporate photo of the centre of Siena to show how hard it is to drive to the centre of the town. In fact - I think that most cars are not allowed access to the centre of the town.

I bid you good night.
Ciao.