kareina

I fully intended to come to uni to *work* today. I found a spare monitor in my office (no idea if it is actually available, but with everyone else on holidays it seemed reasonable to plug it in), so I could easily work on the things which go much better with two monitors. However, my focus seems to be communicating with others, and I've lost many hours to facebook, livejournal, e-mail, and the couchsurfing web page. I've sent requests to folk who live in the Alps looking for crash space for this weekend. That was inspired by finding out that a friend of mine from the West will be at a Drachenwald event this weekend. An event I'd considered attending, but was scared off by the cost of air fare being so much more than I spent on my tickets to Edinburgh at the end of this month. Alas, the prices are still too steep, so I'll stay closer to home instead, and in order to not whine about not attending an event in a castle I hope to go play in the mountains.

This morning I did my weekly shopping at the Monday morning market, and spent less than last week, as I'd not yet eaten everything I bought last week. However, I've learned a very important word "mezzo" (half) which really helped today, and will be nice on future shopping trips. If I'm buying three types of fruit I do not need 1 kg each, there is no way I can finish all that myself (my food log shows that my diet this month is currently at 21% fruit and 21% veg, which tells me I've been making a good attempt to eat everything I buy, since typical months before moving to Milan saw me eating 12-15% fruit and 15-20% veg...

As usual I purchased the ricotta and the asigao cheeses from the cheese guy. They are *so* yummy! I've gotten both of these from the supermarkets here as well, and they simply don't compare to what he sells. I get them in part because they are the two cheapest varieties he's got, and, as you may recall, I had almost no cash left when first I arrived, and while the finances are looking better, I'm still being careful as I anticipate some major expenses once I find a flat of my own to move into. I had looked up the words for "recommend" and "mild cheese" with the plan of asking if he could recommend something else I might like, but, of course, standing there in front of him, as he happily spoke long complicated sentences to me in a friendly voice, I didn't recall them, and chickened out and just ordered what I know. Perhaps next week. He seems like such a nice guy, I wish I could understand him.

Sunday evening, after the sun dropped low enough to no longer be an issue, but before it got dark I went out for an exploratory walk in a direction I'd not yet gone. My uni is located near the edge of the handy folding map obtained from the tourist informaiton booth. It shows some major train lines just east of here, and beyond them there are areas of the map which show up as green squares. In other sections of the map that means park or at least vacant lots, so I decided to go look. I found a tunnel under the train tracks (they are dense enough here that only some of the roads cross them) and did a loop north to the next access back under the tracks. It took about an hour of brisk walking to do the loop, and most of it I won't bother to return to again. The closest green area on that side of the tracks turns out to be a tall concrete wall painted a dreadful shade of mustard yellow (not a happy colour at all, which is odd because yellow usually manages happy) topped with coils of nasty looking barbed wire. Walking past it I also saw buildings, in various states of repair, which looked military in nature, so whatever is behind the wall is (or has been?) likely military in nature. After passing that section I came upon an area of particularly ugly apartment buildings in what looked like 1960's and 1970's architecture. Then, suddenly, in the midst of them, I noticed a tryly beautiful building. A lovely brick church, with graceful lines, curves, arches. It was just plain pretty (and for the first time all walk, I regretted not having brought the camera). The sign on the building said that it was a XIV Century church, and how I would have loved to have seen it when it was new and would have been one of the tallest buildings in the area, instead of dwarfed by its neighbours.

My plan now is to head off to the natural food store to get a few things I can't obtain from the Monday Market nor from a regular supermarket, and then try to get some work done from home this evening, where there is no internet to tempt me (but there is a bit of fiction I've not yet finished, but if I go to the effort of carrying home the computer, perhaps that will guilt me into doing what I should have done by now).

Tomorrow evening I've planned to meet some local couchsurfer people at a cafe, so I'd best do my work in the morning...

I walked to the Milan Central Station yesterday to meet clovis_t on his arrival. I'd not yet been there, before, so as I like to do on a walk to a new location, I consulted my map frequently while walking. It seemed important at the time to track my progress, since I didn't want to accidentally walk past the station without noticing it. As I neared my destination I looked at the map one final time, closed it, and thought to myself, "ok, that was the last cross street before the maze of streets that are at the station, from here I just need to look and see what I spot". The next second I stepped out from behind a building and beheld the single most impressive train station (and totally impossible to miss)that I have ever seen in my life. I particularly like the pegasi on the roof. (Note: as with so many things in this world, the photos in the links simply do not do the building justice.) It was a pleasure to wander around the grounds and inside the immense halls within whilst I waited for his train to arrive!

His train came in on time, and I led a very sunburned boy with very blistered feet back to my apartment, fed him some dinner (fresh baked bread, which he loved, and some left over lentil/curry stew, which he managed to eat more of than I expected, since he normally politely refuses my vegetarian cuisine--he meant it when he said he was hungry from not eating much while spending the day on trains and in train stations) and sat up talking till the wee hours of the morn. Since he hadn't slept much the night before in anticipation of his early morning departure, I was not surprised when he slept in this morning, and left my guest happily asleep in his bed when I went in to uni to do some work. Well after 1pm I returned home to find that he'd broken his fast and was contemplating a shower before following the directions I'd written for him to join me in my office (my only source of internet, which is why I spend so much time here!).

However, I'd made my way home in search of more food (having long since eaten what I'd brought with me in the morning), and had brought my computer home to enable me to do some work from home, for a change. After I'd eaten and done a bit of work we decided to head to the closest supermarket to get some supplies to make food a bit more to his taste than what I've got in the house. Alas, that plan was thwarted--the supermarket is simply not open on Sunday afternoons. So instead I cooked him some home-made egg noodles and tossed them with butter, cashews, some grated carrot, and some curry powder; a simple meal, but filling and while he would have prefered a bit of cheese in the mix, the cheese I bought at the market last week was so good that I finished it all before he arrived. (Money being tight until I get paid I don't have the well-stocked spice cabinet to which I'm accustomed, but I couldn't live without *something*, so I picked up a curry blend from the local Asian market. It isn't bad, but I do look forward to having enough money to expand the spice collection a bit).

The night is still young, but we are both feeling a bit tired, so I think that as soon as I post this I'll shut the computer off, head home, and get some rest so that we can wake up early for the morning market and stock up on yummy food stuff for the week before I have to come back and do more work.

Speaking of work--after a couple of e-mail exchanges with my advisor I've decided which sub-topic of my research I will try to publish in the Journal of Metamorphic Petrology. We've picked the "hook", and I've started the document. I wrote an introductory paragraph, and have started editing the bits from the thesis which are relevant. I've also done a quick search for papers that I'll need for background reading and to cite on the topic of the effects of metamorphic fluids (and/or the lack thereof) on (mineral) inclusion density in garnet. Alas, I didn't find anything very useful, so I gave up and asked on the Geo-Metamorphic e-mail list if anyone there can recommend one. (I did find 1000s of papers on fluid inclusions, which is different, and handfuls on the manner in which fluids modify pre-existing garnet, which is also not helpful).