It never happened when I was a child

I am suddenly aware of my being a dinosaur when the man selling coconut in a blue basket, shouting 'cocco bello' on the beach to advertise his merchandise, suddenly stops shouting and takes a call on his cellphone.

V for Vendetta (2)

I am almost desperate without my daily dose of China Daily. Luckily, today's issue of the IHT played substitute. 'Cathay Pacific planning to add premium-economy seat option'. Who cares. Losers. (For explanation, see http://gabrieleisland.blogspot.com/2011/08/v-for-vendetta-2.html).

Goodbye Earl Grey?

For tea lovers, it may come as a shock. Earl Grey by Twinings, the famous black tea with bergamot flavour is no more. Replaced by The Earl Grey, a new recipe that makes it taste allegedely as dish soap. Looking forward to try it - or wash dishes with it!

Berlusconi vs JFK

In materia di fatti e misfatti sessuali nella politica contemporanea, Berlusconi non ha inventato niente. JFK aveva una macchina perfetta già negli Anni '60.

F for Food - La Fiaschetteria

If you happen to visit the green areas between Parma and Piacenza, don' t miss La Fiaschetteria, a smart elegant restaurant - with three rooms for rent if you want to spend a night or two in an enchanting scenario - renovated to perfection, playing with the ancient-meets-contemporary concept.

http://www.la-fiaschetteria.it/fotogallery.asp?lang=it

 The menu offers specialties from the region but cleverly revised in a contemporary key by the woman chef directing - almost sole-handedly - the kitchen. The wine list is quite extensive, featuring wines from all over Italy, some foreign labels and the half bottles. 

Fashionista (3)

You might remember about me talking of colour blocking (Fashionista 2). I keep thinking about it. So when yesterday I was studying - rather suspiciously - the uniforms of the Aeroflot cabin crew it suddenly was all so clear: they are following this summer's fashion!

Fluo orange dresses, red shoes and blond hair. All in clear definite blocks. If I were to add a little touch to complete their colour blocking, I'd suggest an electric blue foulard. But, hey, nobody can actually be that perfect!

Se mi arrestano mi porterete le arance in prigione?

E' tardi e non ho voglia di passare all'inglese - sara' contenta Liliana. Certo che questa blog-mania...
Stanotte posto dalla business lounge del terminal sfigato dell'aeroporto di Pechino. In teoria da questa connessione e' tutto censurato: blogspot.com, ANobii, YouTube e compagnia.
Ho scoperto tuttavia che se hai la pazienza di scoprire cos'e' un proxy server il problema e' - seppur faticosamente - risolto.
Lo so che ci arrivo sempre un passo o due o tre dietro gli altri. Ascolto la radio, NON ho uno Smartphone, men che meno possiedo un tablet. Anzi, il mio portatile e' un HP, azienda che presto manco piu' li fara' i pc, per intenderci!
Ma chi se ne frega. In questo momento, sono tronfia dei miei successi, e assaporo il gusto del proibito. Dopo tutto, ho appena aggirato la censura.

P.S.: piu' che le arance, preferirei la Nutella.

Video killed the Radio?

We had an old Mivar radio in the kitchen when we were kids and we would have our breakfast with the radio news on. At the time I thought there was only one station we could listen to, and that was the one chosen by our mother, never to be changed. Then the TV came and the news started coming on video instead of on-air.
Did the radio disappear from our lives? Not at all. My sister and I put some money aside (probably just her, she always had some, I was desperately penniless) and bought a cassette recorder and radio all-in-one. Recorded music was fine, but the number of stations you could choose from... we were not into big national radios, but mostly into local stations. The small ones. The ones you would call to leave a message and place a request for a song. And better not to be too picky because they had a limited number of records available!

The radio never left me. At university, I convinced my flatmates to buy only Granarolo products (milk, mainly, but also mozzarella and yogurt)  and collect the points so that after a while we could get our prize, a mini stereo - with a karaoke function... . And the radio station we were listening to was always RTL. My flatmate V called me once from her house on the other side of the border and said "Bastarda, adesso ascolto RTL anche qui dai miei!". It was clearly contagious.

The first thing I bought when I had my own apartment was a stereo...with radio. And since I was in China already, started listening to Radio China International because they broadcast international music, especially in the morning when I need the radio to start my day. And with the computer I can still get my daily ratio of   RTL at www.rtl.it    My mornings are nights for the djs or early mornings. And they ask the simpler questions and get the craziest, funniest answers from the people who call in to tell their experience or their opinion or just to say hi. You could even "see" the djs because the radio is also on video now - power of technology! Oh, but the beauty of driving your car and listening without seeing, just following voices you don't want to put a face with because it would lose the magic.

Like in the movie "Frankie and Johnny", where the radio and the radio voice reconcile the two lovers. Wouldn't be the same with a tv on, would it?

B for Books

I have always had a thing for books. Some days it's like a real addiction: I could be in a bookstore for hours and come out with bags of books. That's why when I can, I just make a membership card in a public library... it's not that all the books I read are worth keeping and they start to demand a lot of space!
Together with the buying addiction, comes the "cataloguing" addiction. I like keeping a record of what I am reading. As a kid, I'd do it manually on an old diary. Today, the web offers a variety of "social" networks that allow people to keep these records conveniently online. They are not exactly "social" because the level of interaction is actually very low. But they are good enough for the cataloging purpose I have. And fellow-readers are helpful anyway. The ANobii community actually helped me a lot finding a book I had been looking for for years!
I picked ANobii not because it is better than other networks. It's just the first I heard of and when I visited it, it was fairly enough what I was looking for. Only later on I heard of the others, LibraryThing, Goodreads.com and the like. There are blogs on the Web analyzing the differences between all these network so if you need to play with your books or keep a record of them or else, just take a look and pick the one you think fits better. To me, they are all just ok for my purposes.
Lending libraries in the Sanlitun area are not common. There are a couple of private ones, though, one being the Bookworm and the other one Le Petit Gourmand. Not all of the Beijingers might remember that once upon a time, the two entities were one and the same. They were hosted in the same low-rise building in Sanlitun, where nowadays you have the Sanlitun Village area, in a shadowy alley. You entered the space they had , and you had the restaurant (Le Petit Gourmand) on your left and the lending library (The Bookworm) on your right. When they separated, they each kept the same formula: food+books, with the Bookworm concentrating a little bit more on the latter and adding a small but good bookshop to the library.

China Daily - it makes my day

The China Daily is a very interesting newspaper, especially if you look for some odd news in the last pages - front ones are far too serious. But today Page 4 hits the jackpot. The title attracting my attention is "Parents say textbook porn for kids" and so I imagine prudish parents complaining about sexual education at school. But what they're complaining about is the textbook introduced in a primary school, explaining sexual intercourse as follows:

"To let sperm find the ovum as soon as possibile, dad inserts his penis into mom's vagina at full tilt and the sperm enters mom's vagina"

... and while her vagina is thus occupied, Mom prepares dinner.
Full article available at: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-08/22/content_13159703.htm

P for Pizza

This is a post of ... self-appreciation. Sorry!
I know, there's plenty of blogs about cooking, recipes, tips in the kitchen. Some are great. I could never ever write a blog about cooking because though I can cook, I am a lazybone, so I tend to repeat the same two or three recipes. I mainly dabble in pasta&risotto dishes - which is nothing to be proud of, my friend V told me once, 'cause anybody can cook pasta. Ouch.
But sometimes, when I make something really good, and also pleasing to the eye, I say to myself "Pity there is no witness here!" So that's why yesterday night when I took my pizza out of the oven I just had to take a pic of it and put it here.

Beijing - The Temple of Heaven

After so many years in this city, I still think that the best place to be on a sunny day is the The Temple of Heaven. It's not about its monumental buildings which tell a history of imperial grandeur hard to imagine, but it's about the park, its centenary trees, its local visitors who come in flocks every day to perform any kind of activities, from singing to dancing, playing or just wandering in the green.

Cypress trees are everywhere and give solemnity to this already solemn place of imperial devotion. They take any kind of curious shapes:

And if it's easy to go off the beaten path and just enjoy the sight of the trees and the peace of the cypress forest, it's also easy to find spots where the locals gather and sing, performing popular songs, karaoke, dances or just play around, passing their weekends and spare time at leisure

    If you are not exactly  into a performing mood, you might just as well enjoy the scenes from the sidelines - just beware that while you are watching, you might be watched!:

 

Paintings

I bought some paintings over the years. Never felt like buying them in Beijing, but outside of Gabriele Island there is a Painters' Village which I always pay a visit to. Somehow, most of the things there talk about sunshine, happiness, dancing.
Take a look at some of the things I bought:

 These 2 belong to the same artist. At the Village they are quite proud of him because in the '80s he was abroad, so to them he is their "international star". I loved the movement and the colours in his paintings as soon as I saw his works. But his style is changing. Colours are being replaced with scale of grays. And the human figures are getting smaller, and curved. Ageing? Decay? Or simply a change in style? I might try to meet him next time and ask directly, but so far I haven't bought anything in the new style.

The portrait on the left is from another artist. I liked the way he played with the black lines, almost scarring the painting with them. And then I liked the calm expression of the woman. She for sure knows something we don't.

V for Vendetta

I know. I promised myself I'd only write one post a day. But this is too nice to keep it only in my brain.

Take a look at the "Celebrity Sauce" gossip-column of today's China Daily. Skip the first half and go right into the middle

Cathay Pacific has been dealing with some major public relations fallout after one of its flightattendants was photographed in the cockpit pleasing her pilot lover and showing off her crownjewels.

At the same time as the pics went viral, the company was about to go global with its newadvertising line: "Meet the team who go the extra mile to make you feel special."

(http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-08/19/content_13146248.htm)

And since this is the air company which drove me mad with a 4-hour delay in August 2010 - when I finally got to HK I waved the HK-Milan "connecting" flight goodbye - it just makes my day. I knew there was something wrong about you... losers!

Fashionista (2)

Colour blocking. Or the art of putting strong, possibly fluo, colours together. They said it 'd be the new trend this summer - but if you exclude the catwalks and a girl in the subway about one month ago (who was also carrying a trolley !!!! See my previous Fashionista post) I haven't seen much of this "trend" around.

It might be because if you are a colour black type like my friend C., you'll find it very difficult to have a colourful parenthesis - once you go black, you never come back .... or is it?

Or maybe it is simply that you might remember your mother yelling at you in despair because you put together green jeans and a red body-shirt (and for "you" I mean "me").

True, if you are careful in combining the colours, the effect might be quite good. My friend architect P, who is not much into fashion but understands colour matching, suggests that you should combine complementary colours (green and red, for example). But I have noticed that the effect is even better if you match a primary colour and one of its secondary colours (blue and green, for example, looks great together).

Although it might be tempting, I think I will not try it out on myself. Some things are better left to the catwalks, after all.

Rocky - or the American Fantozzi

Let's admit it. We were watching Rocky as kids and thought it was cool. We watch it now and think it's trash. But what a piece of trash!

Rocky comes to life illiterate, ignorant and almost retarded. But the evolution works on him, and in Rocky IV he is almost normal. He can even drive his cars! More than that, at the end of the chapter he makes a speech to the Russians and the Americans which could easily be in the Penguin Book of 20th-Century Speeches.

And Adrian, oh Adrian. She is the great woman behind the great champion. Champion? Not that Rocky is a winner. He is a man who can simply take more punches than the others. That's how he usually wins his fights.

The initial chapter is a phenomenon in itself. The sequel, as often happens, is not really up to the first movie, but then comes the 3rd part. Which is easy to label as the trashiest of all. But look attentively and I am sure you will agree that it puts the gay element in it, making it simply great. Just re-watch the scenes where Rocky and Apollo run together on the beach: it's all about their leg muscles going up and down , the two friends wearing those cut-to-the-chest sweatshirts... and they end up celebrating in the sea, embracing each other among splashes of water. Just watch them, all the cliches are there!

In Rocky IV, Rocky recovers all of his virility, and couldn't be otherwise having to be the champion of American-ity. ...Or is it just because his partner Apollo is dead?

Hot Yoga - simple tips for a simpler life

A lot  of people think hot yoga is a perversion. All those students sweating like pigs.... and somebody says it's not real yoga, because real yoga is about concentrating, meditating. My friend P, eyeing me suspiciously,  asked if it was an erotic version of yoga.
Well, I am not a sport person and never will be. But I think that hot yoga is fantastic, at least for me: I can't concentrate with normal yoga, whereas when I start thinking about else while practicing the hot version my heart beat just reminds me I am supposed to concentrate on what I am doing.
I feel lighter, happier and satisfied after each session.
It's good even if you suffered some injuries or if your body is a little bit stiff: the heat helps warming up your muscles and junctures. My lower back and neck pains are quietly disappearing - and I am just doing it once a week. I was so happy with the hot yoga that I followed my practice even during my stay on Gabriele Island.
My hot yoga spots so far are
http://www.omyoga42.com/ (Beijing)
http://www.jiwayogabali.com/ (Seminyak, Bali)
I wanted to try out a Shanghai spot, too... but since Shanghai is Shanghai, they do not offer the drop-in session. Basically, you are not supposed to book a session: you just go, pay and join the class provided you arrive on time. But not in Shanghai. You are required to book in advance.....which I will never do, you know, lazy is my middle name.
Want a real perversion? Look up Doga. Yoga with your Dog. I am sure it makes you happy. But how about the Dog?

More than Words - leek vs. shallot vs chive vs. scallion

The other evening I was trying to get to the bottom of a linguistic problem concerning.... onion-like vegetables.
What's the difference between a scallion, a shallot, a leek, and a chive? For sure the Web is quite unclear about explanation and translation, often misleading the poor "scholar" into believing that leek might be a synonym for scallion or that you might translate it as porro or scalogno as you deem best.
So let's get to know our vegetables
"leek" is "porro" (Allium ampeloprasum porrum)
"shallot" is "scalogno" (Allium cepa aggregatum)
"chive" is "erba cipollina" (Allium schoenoprasum)
"scallion" is generic and can stand for any kind of onion shoot before the bulb is formed. So scallion does not have a Latin name.


Out of vocabulary, In practical life, my advice is to use leek instead of onion if you are preparing some kind of risotto (with porcini for example, not to cover the delicate taste of the mushrooms) or sauce with fish (a salmon pasta for example). If you are French, you probably want to go with shallots. 

Fashionista

It's 5.30 a.m. but I am actually awake since longer. I have several things going on in my mind. One of these is something that my friend B. told me a couple of days ago about this new "fashion trend", very popular in Italy but not so visible here in Beijing - yet. Roller handbags. In his words, ladies going around with trolleys instead of handbags. "How are you? Going out for the weekend?" "No, just taking a walk to the city centre".
Well, of all the fashion trends that have come up so far, this is kind of ... weird. First of all, imagine all the trolleys in the metro carriage or on the bus - and the wheels rolling on other passengers' feet.
Second of all, no matter how beautiful or fashionable these roller handbags might be, my mental image will always be the checkered (hand)bags older ladies carry around at the local market when they shop for groceries, usually with celery or scallion sticking out of them.
Can I ever surrender to this new trend? Never say never... but the stick of celery is very strong in my mind....

From the Kingfisher Review of Books

Death can rehabilitate almost anything, even Beijing Story by Tongzhi.
Too much explicit sex to classify it as a "love story", it's not even erotic - and the Kingfisher is not exactly a puritan. And does the book really depict some kind of life in China? Well, it could have happened in so many other countries.
It belongs to the "Internet novels" - a phenomenon very much alive in China to escape censorship. This could explain why I have found so many enthusiastic reviews about it. When something is censored, it immediately attracts attention.
A small Italian publishing house decided to publish it as a paper book in translation. But that's about it. The fact of being censored doesn't make it worth reading in my view.

Mooncup - simple gadgets for a simpler life

It comes with different names, different colours and a couple of sizes.

Let's call it Mooncup,  the original name for it - or the Keeper, Diva Cup, Lady Cup, Lunette, 月杯. A silicone menstrual cup that if you are patient enough to give it a try, will change some habits of yours and also save you some good money.
It takes a couple of menstrual cycles to get used to it. As the actress said to the bishop, if at the beginning the "put- it- in" part seems the most challenging, you will soon discover that the real challenge comes with the "take-it-out".
I ordered it in the UK, and it arrived pretty fast in an unassuming envelope with its own instructions. But as usual, if you are not much into reading instructions, there is plenty of videos on the Net.
The price is usually around 30euros, more or less, depending on where you order/buy it. It is available on Amazon, La Bottega della Luna, mooncup.co.uk and many more. At the beginning of my search, I spotted a factory in Guangdong, China and I sent an e-mail to inquire about availability in Beijing. Of course, they make it in China but you cannot buy it here, it's just for export. My Cantonese correspondent was ready to send me one for as much as 100rmb (about 10 euros). I thought about it. But then decided to order it on mooncup.co.uk, you never know with the entrepreneurial spirit - was he trying to sell me a faulty cup or, worse, was he stealing his wife's to make a couple of bucks?! And by the way, I even found posts by people who wanted to sell their own, saying "Just used it once". Well, even if it's silicone and can easily sterilize it you actually don't want to *wear* a second-hand mooncup... or do you?

If you are concerned about the environment, keep also in mind that tampons and sanitary pads are one kind of waste that will haunt the environment for ... ever.

You are wondering why you never heard about it before? Well, just think about it: you invest 30euros and it can last 10years or more. Now you do your own calculation, how much you invest in tampons and the like in a lifetime and it's easy to understand that no multinational enterprise involved in the production of tampons and sanitary pads will ever want to let the word spread.

Easy-Read - simple gadgets for a simpler life

I was travelling to Gabriele Island a few days ago and I was thinking how nice it would be if I had a book holder - to hold my books for me, for example when I am on my tummy on the beach or when I am in the kitchen and I need my recipe to stand in front of me, since my memory is not as good as it used to.
Have one made by a carpenter, in wood, like I was a violin player? Fancy, but not that I can pack it up and carry it around, can I? And then IT came under my nose in a bookstore inside Singapore airport. Some pieces of plastic combined together, adjustable, combinable, easy-to-carry. Can hold books for sure and apparently also docs if you are working at your pc (haven't tried it yet, nobody actually cares about W-O-R-K on Gabriele Island). Pretty easy to use but if you need it there should be a video demo online.... Price? Affordable, whatever it means in numbers!

Food for Frogs - ovvero c'e' speranza per tutte noi

Congrats to the Duchess of Alba: 85 and getting married. You go girl!

For a complete list of her many names and surnames, please refer to Wikipedia... Gabriele Island is not big enough http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayetana_Fitz-James_Stuart,_18th_Duchess_of_Alba

From the Kingfisher's Review of Books

Books come and go on the shores of Gabriele Island.
This week the waves brought a copy of Le Correzioni/The corrections by Jonathan Franzen.
In this book , like in the more recent Freedom, Franzen narrates the lives of an American average family from the Midwest. He explores the present in connection with its past  so that, slowly, the reader is brought to explore the whys and hows the Lamberts are what they are today. You can perceive Enid (the mother) as a fastidious character all through the book, but somehow you will sympathize with her after you dig a little in her past - and understand what a poor sex life she had with her now demented husband.
The central theme of the book is "depression" as a disease permeating our society at different levels and degrees of intensity. Some characters are depressed and acknowledge it - like Gary; some others are depressed but hide it - mostly to themselves - under layers of protective shields (like Enid). Franzen has indeed dedicated much of his literary production to the theme of depression in our society.
The reader can easily find something of him/herself in one or more of the characters depicted. That's why the book is such a successful enterprise: it's not just about an American average family but it's kind of universal. At times you will feel like you are Chip as a kid, left alone sitting at the dinner table because he was  squeamish about his food; or like Denise, one unsuccessful relation after the other; or again, you will start thinking what it's like to get older or to see your loved ones get older and weaker.
The Kingfisher is now flying away, time for some good worms.

Gender issues - what the Crab thinks

Gabriele Island is populated by many creatures. The Crab is one of them and has a mind of its own on many issues. For example, it was quite puzzled by a little piece of paper where this question was neatly handwritten in black ink: "Perche' il bagno per i disabili e' sempre accanto a quello per le donne e mai accanto a quello per gli uomini?" The question disappeared with the wind, but the issue lingered in the crab's little brain  and got larger and larger. It became: why the toilet for the disabled is never divided into  "male disabled" and "female disabled"?
Forgetting about the little piece of paper, the Crab went on reading a  page of the China Daily, which was flying around the garden towards Gabriele Island. Here is the e-version if you want to take a look at "Crackdown on girl baby abortions:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-08/09/content_13073446.htm
What puzzles the crab is that the new measure is taken "to balance the sex ratio". The Crab thinks there is something wrong with this sentence. Is it grammar? Is it semantics? Is it logic? Hard to say.
The Crab has no time to waste, time to go back to its hole.

Gabriele Island - L'Isola di Gabriele

Gabriele Island is a small private project. A little green isle in the middle of a sacred lagoon on the shores of a beautiful magic island. No need to locate it better than this.
What looks like nothing to a stranger, means actually much to its creator. Gabriele Island hosts at the moment 3 mangrooves and is regularly visited by local kingfishers. And like this blog, it's just a simple ongoing project.
Welcome to Gabriele Island.