3 Feb, Day 24/Weekend#4, Winter Sports

This has been a pretty good week and a great weekend.

The neighbors just stopped by to give me some marmalade because we haven’t seen each other in a while. I think we’ll meet up for dinner Wednesday. I still can’t get over how nice they are!

Yesterday I went snowboarding with Paddy, Maddy, Michael, and Nico. Nick was in my Italian class at Stanford, and he’s now studying in Firenze and came up for the day. It sounds like a lot of fun down though we had a good time up here too. But speaking English together for part of the day, I began to realize that I’ve started to slip below my former eloquence (which was not particularly well developed to begin with ;-)

We left Milan in the morning mist (which sometimes doesn’t clear for the entire day), but it began to clear by the time we reached Lecco, and we were looking at a bright blue sky as we ascended into the mountains. The base was pretty dry, but we rumbled up long tunnel in a funiculare to the bottom of the ski area where there was some snow. The snow on the mountain was pretty good, but a little bit icy in some spots. I was very pleased with my snowboarding since the last time I can remember doing it was during high school 6 or 7 years ago. (Wow! Was high school really that long ago…?) I’m still hurting in various places today, but it’s nothing too serious, and completely worth it. If I go a couple more days this year, I should start to get good enough to keep up with mom and dad on skis… Although the snowboard is still fun, I feel in many ways it is somewhat inferior to skis in that it takes more time to buckle up before and after the lift, there is no easy way to move on flat terrain, and you have a bit of a blindspot making heel-side turns. Maybe as I get better I’ll feel those limitations are less of a factor.

We went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. I ordered a burrito, though I wouldn’t say that I actually got one for dinner. It was good though. Later I showed Nico some of the limited nightlife in Monza. We went to a bar I’ve never been to after being unimpressed with the scene downstairs, and being turned away from my second choice because we didn’t have a reservation. What kind of bar requires a reservation??? –Only in Italy… But I guess it was for the best, because this place was probably more fun than I’ve ever had at the other two places.

I watched the Sicilian soccer derby (Palermo vs Catania) Friday night with Fabrizio and some of his friends. I couldn’t believe the fans threw teargas onto the field to stop the game on 2 occasions. A police officer was killed in the riots after the game later that night. I would consider myself to be a passionate fan of the Miami Hurricanes, but I couldn’t imagine rioting because we lost a game. (Although I’ve heard that the dung eating trash of Ohio State trashes their city after some games.) We went for some drinks in a chic lounge toasting to the victors afterwards, and I didn’t end up getting much sleep before getting up early to get on the road to the mountains.

Accent reinitiated talks of a new contract for me at work on Thursday. It looks like I may begin working on some more interesting facets of the project, and even a bit of design engineering in the future. But there’s still a lot of inertia working against my efforts at “design thinking.”

I went for an aperitivo with Emiliano on Wednesday evening. He’s an Italian that I met at Stanford while he was doing some research in the biodesign department. Now he’s back in Milan working on a doctorate. It was great to share some old stories, and I hope we can hang out a bit more.

My Italian lessons started up again for 2007 on Tuesday evening. I enjoyed the practice, and company. -I may have even found an Italian girl that would like to learn a little English.

Some pictures of Brescia