Snowy Siena 1st febbraio 2012
Wednesday, 1 February 2012
More footy 1st febbraio 2012
More footy 1st febbraio 2012
It's a snowy day today, very snowy, and some football matches are off. I think that Italian football is a little off. The teams that have visited Siena have been rather less than impressive, despite Siena still languishing just one place above relegation. We have not seen a great team, not seen anyone pick Siena apart. Interestingly I would say that about 85% of the players on the pitch at any one time are Italian. Now that must bode well for the Italian game this year. And I hope they do well, although I will really struggle to pick out any standout stars for the Azzurri.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/15846874
I have seen very little English football since I got here, not having (legal) access to football TVchannels, and I cannot see how well the English players are going, but England teams fall into one of two camps: a) underperforming, or b) overrated. Whichever it is, the end result is the same, I would like to see Fabio Capello turn this around but again we shall see. I hear a lot about Mario Balotelli and would like to see him play, he sounds as mad as a bag of porcupines and thrice as spikey. Italian teams tend to be steady, but despite the profound differences and allegiances in the country seem to pull together well for a championship (World Cup 2010 excepted). And of course that is clearly demonstrated with having 4 World Cup wins (only Brazil have more) and won that amazing game in 2006, most remembered for the headbut on Materazzi by Zidane. Awesome. A great football evening, certainly much better than the damp swuid of the Arse in the Champions League final of the same year. However, my favourite game remains the stunning turnaround of Liverpool winning the Champions League final against A.C. Milano in 2005, with six career-defining minutes of Stevie Gerrard, and the penalty shootout to end al penalty shootouts. I think, I must say that I was as pissed as a fart, in Norwich, seeing over copious lagers and if I recall correctly, a kebab feast - ah, the mighty kebab feasts, the greatest food that Prince of Wales Road, Norwich, East Anglia, and the whole of England can provide! I believe it involved a shed of kebab meat, a garlic cheese pizza, sauces, chilli sauce, chillis, garlic mayo - and all enough for four people. I remember ordering them and making them last me for two evenings. Happy days!
I digress, the former also reminds me of one of those pre-move memories I have of Italy, and this of course is of the great James Richardson, on Channel 4 on a Sunday morning in the 1990s, reviewing Italian football live on Football Italia, reporting from the Piazza San Marco in Roma, reading La Gazzetta and giving some great commentary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_Italia
Interestingly, it turns out that he was no great Italian speaker, or indeed lover of football and was only there chasing a broad, classico! Or should I say - Gooooalllllazzo!!!
http://europeanfootballweekends.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html
Looking back there are some classic classic moments. Check it out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHXfHFNlJ_w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HQZnLqmqjM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlapdOpgOzI
And whilst we're at it, let's look at some Gascoigne at Lazio!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jrUGBvPsck&feature=related
Meanwhile, back in current days, a great game between Palermo and Milan (of course, there is no snow in Sicily) has gone to 4-3!
And that also allows me to extend my knowledge of Italy before I came, and that was of course the term "Italian Shower" - thanks Harry for that one. Too late, at University, to grab a shower before going out, or going in, or after training? Simply deploy a can of smelly deoderant, and Hey Presto! Italian Shower.
Inter - Palermo is now 4-4!!
Avanti!
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
A few of my favourite blogs 31st gennaio 2012
A few of my favourite blogs 31st gennaio 2012
Mine
http://jjdoel.blogspot.com/
Our IronMan blog
http://ironbadgers.wordpress.com/
Matteo's cycling in Tuscany blog
http://bikescapes.wordpress.com/
Gary's l'Eroica preparation blog
https://sites.google.com/site/leroica2012orbust/home
The views from the south 31st gennaio 2012
The views from the south 31st gennaio 2012
There certainly are some interesting types in the footy crowd. Seats seemingly are assigned at random, although we have our season tickets, there often are people sat in our seats, but the stadium is never full, so shuffling around is easier than kicking out some fools from our seats. Next to us sits shouty woman. She is, ahem, late middle aged, and sits alone, although sometimes it looks like her father sits near to her. She shouts a lot, and has the coarsest tongue around us, and normally disappears mid-way through the second half. A few weeks ago when we spanked Lazio 4-1, she left the ground both times when we had penalties. Strange beast. Others are conductors of the singing and always face the crowd rather than the game. One piece of graffiti I like is "con la voce si vince"- with the voices we win! And of course, because it is Siena there is a random arrangement of dull ordered flag waving every so often. And all this in a stadium of around 15,000!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.C._Siena
Sad news about the crashed liner of the Tuscan coast, more bodies are being recovered one by one from the wreck, and now it is suggested that it cannot be rescued for another 7-10 months, until all the oil is salvaged. The court case continues apace, but now I am reminded of what Riccardo said - on the day after the crash he said that he was not surprised that it crashed, as they always sail too close to the island, so that the passengers can see the sights. If an Italian thought this on reflex, then why has it taken so long for this to come out. OK, the captain was extremely negligent, but it appears that the cruise company was negligent in encouraging, or at they very least, not discouraging this type of behaviour. Vada a bordo cazzi!
Meanwhile, life in Italy continues apace. Recently I had to complete the census. Every ten years there is a census in Italy, and the fine for not completing it is somewhere in the region of €1000 per person. Of course, it is completely unintelligible, and almost impossible to fill it in online. Finally I managed to do it but really it was a pain in the proverbial and I have no real idea what I signed. I'm sure it must have been more organised than the UK one though.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2089777/Calls-teenage-boys-vaccinated-sexually-transmitted-virus-alarming-rise-throat-cancer.html?ITO=socialnet-twitter-mailonline
On Saturday we had dinner with some friends. On our way to their place we had the double team of pleasure - we saw not only a porcupine but a badger too! Awesome!!
On other fronts, work had finally become too much, and I offered my resignation at the end of last week, sadly it wasn't accepted, just yet, but we have hope!
Other exciting things that have caught my eye recently:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16426024
Fashion firm La Redoute launched an advert campaign with young children and completely missed the naked man in the background of the picture!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16446239
A Vietnamese man had a 90 kg tumour removed!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8982958/99-year-old-divorces-wife-after-he-discovered-1940s-affair.html
An Italian couple are to become the world's oldest divorcees, after the 99-year-old husband found that his 96-year-old wife had an affair in the 1940s.
And finally an update on James Cracknell.
http://road.cc/content/news/49043-olympic-champion-rower-james-cracknell-switches-cargo-bike-after-driving-licence
When I worked in Chiswick I used to see him driving around in this huge old BMW so seeing him in a bike would be strange. It must be tough on the guy, hope he gets something out of it.
Let it snow let it snow let it snow 31st gennaio 2012
Let it snow let it snow let it snow 31st gennaio 2012
Snow in Siena is rare. At least, it is rare if you listen to one of the Sienese. From my experience, it comes as often and just as deep as anything in the UK. Of course, I have missed the last two winters and the hardest winter storms for 40 years, so more than even my life span, so I am considering previous years in the UK, when I have really seen very little at all. So, I am told that it only snows once every three years in Siena, and when it does it just snows a jot, yet over the past two years it has snowed pretty heavily. Today it has snowed again. The forecast, which tends to be very accurate, at least for the next 72 hours (http://meteo.it/), has predicted snow this afternoon, moving to 30 cm starting from 12 midnight until 6 am. Now that is some pretty heavy snow for this place. OK, it has been cold recently. This morning it was minus 3C when I was running and yesterday it was minus 2C. That is pretty darned cold for round here. We (ooh look at me - saying "we") have a lot of hills and the cold takes a long while to stick. So around 2 pm it started snowing, sadly it was pretty miserable snow and after a few hours of snowing there was just a wet cover, temperatures hovering about 3C so nothing was settling. Of course, the locals went absolutely ape and started leaving in droves. I thought that the Brits were bad when snow hit, but the chaos that happens when a bit of snow falls, coupled with the many steep hills make the roads absolute carnage when the snow descends. And this is despite it being a law for all cars to carry snow chains, snow tyre covers, or have snow tyres. Anyway, the upshot was that the office was deserted pretty early and tomorrow we may well be stuck at home. Peccato!
Of course - the best news of this is that there will be plenty of snow on the mountains so it could be a great weekend for snowboarding, and a bad weekend for cycling so no guilt even about missing training!
Back on the cycling front, I have still been struggling still with the ride of my bike. After last week when I seemed to have a mental block about turning left and ended up in a barrier, this week I went riding with Tobias and my Mavic carbon wheels are just worse than ever. My descending is pathetic and really holds back my speed. My confidence just isn't there with my wheels. Anyway, after my ride with Tobias he kindly lent me some old wheels of his. Well, they are not just some old wheels - he bought them from a friend of his, after the shut down of the pro team Gerolsteiner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerolsteiner_(cycling_team) and they are pretty sweet. A long way away from Carbon wheels which he reckons may be too twitchy for me, plus maybe I am too heavy for them - when I am out of the saddle and climbing they are flexing so much that they are rubbing against the brake blocks.
So, now installed I have the Ambrosios running on Dura Ace hubs, also with some handstitched Schwalbe Ultremo tubular tyres. It's all great. Also, Tobias quickly looked over my bike and tweaked and townked a few things that I have been trying to put right for a while - all in about 5 minutes, amazing to see someone really adept work on a bike!
On Sunday, I attempted a mini-triathlon - a quick 40 length swim, followed by an hour long spin on the "velodrome" followed by a 20 minute run. The hour spin was great, the wheels and the tubulars felt really smooth, and I am eager to get the wheels out on the road to see if I can get my mojo back.
I say "velodrome" - it was built as a skate park I think, and occasionally skaters do use it, but it is mainly used by older fatter cyclists. It is an outside concrete 200 metre track and is pretty smooth. I am very glad to have it as a resource. Thank you Siena. And it makes a great place to do a mini-tri!
Meanwhile, the triathlon training is going well, plus I am shedding weight which is a great bonus.
Onwards and snoward!
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Don't forget your hat! 25th gennaio 2012
Don't forget your hat! 25th gennaio 2012
It was a weird week in the pool. As part of the ironman training I need to be hitting the pool twice, and preferably thrice a week. This week was tricky. On Monday I do Tai Chi http://www.taichisiena.it/, well I should do Tai Chi, although I have only been able to manage to go once so far this year due to work nightmares :(
The swimming pool seems to open only at random times - only a few evenings a week, and then it only opens at 20:40, with limited lanes, which is a pain - and doubly so when you are a slow and rubbish swimmer. I am not yet prepared mentally to go swimming in the morning - it doesn't open until 07:30 when it does open, and I would be physically and mentally drained when I got to work, which is really the last thing that I need just now. Anyway, the long and short of this is that to make my swim sessions I need to go on a Wednesday and Friday evenings and once on the weekend.
So I jollied along last Wednesday after work, and actually after sorting some issues out it wasn't until 21:00 until I got there and the woman said that it was full. Obviously I spat out a dummy, starting swearing and kicking doors on my way out of there. Vada a bordo c@zzo!
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/costa-concordia-disaster-vada-a-bordo-cazzo
So, Friday I was early for swimming and all was fine, thankfully the woman - it's always the same woman - didn't seem to remember my little spat - and then Sunday morning came along and I was in there super early, well before 09:30 for my Sunday morning swimaroo. I jumped in the pool, and it was fantastic, empty and peaceful, no Italians were out of bed, the sun was shining in through the windows and it was the first time I had ever been when it wasn't dark. My goggles were fitting really well and I was starting to feel at one with the water, for the first time ever! And then one of the lifeguards stopped me and uttered something in Italian, of course I couldn't here with my ear plugs, but eventually I heard "cuffia" - meaning swim cap. I had forgotten it of course - and was struggling through, but she insisted to me that it was "obligatorio" and so it was. At that point I was going to spit an extremely large dummy, when she trotted off and spoke with one of the other lifeguards who lent me his cloth swim cap. That cheered me up a lot and I had a good swim. It really is very typical Italian in two ways. People seem a pain in the culo at times, but generally at the end of the day, they are pretty nice and considerate, and secondly, that there are always rules about everything, and always a rule to countenance them once you open some dialogue.
In other news, whilst I was riding on Saturday I passed a very fresh, if very flat porcupine corpse. At the side of the road there were lots of spines that had come off and I made a mental, if gruesome note to come back and do some pilfering, and eccomi - after swimming on Sunday I tootled off in the car and arrived at the corpse and collected a whole load of the spines. I can assure you that they are brutal but very pretty with different colours along their length. The thickest ones are the size and length of a big pencil and I would not like to be poked by one! They have traditionally been used in artwork as pens, and jewellery, as well as for sewing and as weapons. Of course, they are a protected species but you rarely see a corpse on the road as apparently they make delicious eating and the resourceful Italians have them away for eating as soon as they see them dead on the road!
Meanwhile, we have booked a week's skiing at a nearby ski resort. We had a look around and picked one that had good facilities so we could do some other stuff in case the snow was not great. Some work friends went skiing at the weekend and saw the hotel we had booked and one of them checked it out on the web and found the funniest thing on the homepage - talk about lost in translation.
Just to recap - "I will make my soul a casket for your soul, my heart a dwelling for your beauty, my chest a tomb for your p3n1s". We laughed our cavolos off! This really is classic Italian translations - unfortunately the standard of English is pretty poor over here. Of course, my Italian is nothing short of a disgrace, especially since I have lived here for two years, but compared to other European countries e.g. Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain - the standard of English is just not equivalent.
Classico! Over n out.
Saturday, 21 January 2012
Sabato 21st gennaio Left is sinister
Sabato 21st gennaio Left is sinister
The fallout over the ship disaster off the coast of Tuscany continues apace. The current death toll is low - 11 currently, but there are still over 20 people missing. A huge lawsuit is being launched (pun intended) and it is really adversely affecting Italy, which has been an unsteady ship for quite a while now.
The claim that the disgraced captain Francesco Schettino that he tripped and landed in a lifeboat, at an angle that he could not climb back on board, is frankly ridiculous. Then there is the rumour that he sailed close to the island so that his head waiter could salute to his family, and other rumours that he was eating after the crash and still ordering his pudding whilst others were panicking. The most strange one is that he had a Moldovan girlfriend or lover, who was driving the ship at the time.
Things continue to emerge, including thermal camera pictures of the escape at night.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16591501
There is also a recording of the call that the coast guard made to the captain.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2012/jan/17/costa-concordia-captain-phone-call-video
The coastguard ordered the captain back to the stricken ship, after he evacuated long before the last person had been evacuated. In one particularly emotional part, he says "vada a bordo cazzo" - "get back on boards for f@@k's sake"
This has captured the imagination and now t-shirts are being sold with this on it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9022477/Costa-Concordia-Italians-buy-t-shirts-with-Get-back-on-board-for-s-sake-logo.html
It seems that the captain had a reputation for being reckless and a wildcard but still he had climbed the ladder to being a captain. Che disgrazia! It seems to be indicative of a malaise in Italy, not helped by role models like this guy and of course Berlusconi.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9027822/The-buffoons-steering-Italy-on-to-the-rocks.html
On to lighter things, something that amused me recently and slightly related since he was exiled near these islands, Animal Farm in France the bad pig is not called Napoleon!!
Meanwhile Ironman training continues apace, and despite me struggling to find time to get the swimming done. I have changed my front wheels to give me a little more confidence but still things are not great. Today whilst on a descent I lost a little control, struggled to turn left, and I don't know if it was something mental that couldn't allow me turn left, but it was pretty nasty. I careered to the right, threw my brakes on, went into a skid, and thankfully there was a barrier on this road that allowed to keep myself upright by leaning on it. Not good, and quite scary. Meanwhile, the weight loss appears to be happening at last.
OK, I'm tired and need my nap. Vado a bordo!
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