The Pink Floyd in 1973 published this immortal piece of music.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way Read the rest of this entry »

So now it’s clear to everybody: the swine flu, aka H1N1, was just a joke.  It was slated as a dangerous pandemic that could kill many people and therefore deserved urgent large-scale vaccination.  Of course, following a suggestion that came directly from World Health Organization (no less) all industrialized nations ordered massive amounts of vaccine doses.  The small club of producers (Novartis, Glaxosmith and Baxter), collected a huge amount of money.  Was it worthwhile?  Was it rational? Read the rest of this entry »

Last month I performed Georg Friedrich Händel’s Messiah, together with Coro Polifonico Santo Spirito. This was my second time, first being in 2004.  It is believed that it took Händel just 24 days to compose this impressive oratorio but the vocal score is more than 300 pages long so – after five years – I had to study it again. Read the rest of this entry »

As much as Larry Gopnik struggles to be a mensch (a serious man, guided by right principles) he’s constantly fed with temptations and mysterious bad events.  He tries his best to keep the family together and live straight, but there’s no end to his tribulations. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently watched this movie. The plot is about an ex secret agent from Mossad now secretly controlled by the US government to perform illegal actions in defense of the “American lifestyle” and declaring he is OK to kill a few innocents when that is for the good of everybody else.  This bad guy goes crazy for money and escapes control, killing his angel in the Senate and creating an incident with many victims.  Read the rest of this entry »

Wow! In this post I described a strange spice that a Shilpa brought me from India some months ago.  Back there I didn’t know much about it, just that it’s good with tea. In fact I didn’t even know the name, thanks to zreen for telling me!

Today I googled for that name and found that can be used to heal bronchitis, is an expectorant and can be used in general to alleviate lung infections. Cool, this is exactly what I needed and I have plenty of it at home!  I’m definitely going to use it a lot in these days.

Thanks Shilpa, zreen and patrick!

No, I’m not at the concert of Depeche Mode in Bologna, even if I would love to be there.   Michele had bought a ticket for me, but I had to ask him to find someone else.  In fact he had no problem, it took him 20 minutes to confirm he had found a back up. Read the rest of this entry »

Part of my job is to select technical people to be hired in the company.  Few months ago I happened to interview a guy for a developer position.  This guy has a degree in chemistry but his career then oscillated between system administration and programming in the java world. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Sunday was a wonderful day with clean blue sky.  A sunny day in winter is rare and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to enjoy the old town and take some pictures.  After almost four years living in this place I’m still impressed, expecially by some of the buildings from the middle age.  This palace, Palazzo Vecchio, was built seven centuries ago.  Can you believe it?

Last summer we were on our way back from Berlin when we took a little detour for a one day visit to Prague.  We were at the end of our vacation and didn’t expect much more from it, but after little walk in the city center I was totally hypnotized.  Surrounded by wonderful buildings, lots of people partying and having good beer down in the narrow cobble-stoned streets, no cars or any other vehicle in sight and the atmosphere felt a little like fairy tales. Read the rest of this entry »