Do you believe in coincidences?
In 30+ years here around planet Earth I came across situations so difficult to explain that I started feeling like an actor on stage in some absurd comedy.
I’m sure you know that feeling too.
Here some examples of what we call coincidences, stories involving unexpected encounters.
One autumnal Sunday morning in Lecco, on the shores of the beautiful Como Lake, few years ago.
As many Sunday morning, I was there with my friends, our motorbikes parked on a long line of hundred motorbikes, standing in leather suites and helmets religiously under the arm, talking with other riders about – guess what – motorbikes.
Vasco Rossi, the damn rocker
A man came out of the blue shouting:
“Listen to me guys!
I want to do a great concert!
I want to invite Vasco Rossi here in Lecco
and I want all the riders to enjoy this concert!”
Me and my friends looked at each other in the eyes, no word spoken, but clearly thinking “who’s this madman!?”.
He continued:
“I’m telling you guys this because I love riders.
And do you know why I love motorbike riders?
Because they are ALIVE! They have PASSION!”
What a beautiful declaration – he wasn’t a madman at all!
This time I write about things lost in the transformation.
I’m talking about the transformation I’ve been going through in the last years, since I left Italy and the easy family life to live the real life alone in this funny Amsterdam.
“I’ll call this process *volution
as I’m not sure if it was evolution,
involution, devolution
or simply a revolution,
but I’m sure it’s not over yet
and is not time to make conclusion.”
(I made rhymes! is this creative writing, or what!?)
Here is a list of 10 habits I changed or got rid of during this *volution.
I’m not telling anyone to do that, and I don’t want to convince anyone that I’m doing the right thing or the best thing. I’m just sharing what I changed in my daily life, making it simpler or more miserable as you like.
After all, not telling people how to live is one of the rules I put in this blog.
Colombia and Pacific ocean
Beou is a dude from US living next door.
He’s cool and he’ll pay me beers forever because a month ago he lost a bet, saying that Colombia doesn’t border with the Pacific ocean.
But he won’t pay me beers for the coming month…. and here lies my next challenge.
A new month is a good occasion to start a challenge, not for nothing but at least the numbers are on your side, and no calculation is required to remember when you started.
And this Monday, the week day I choose to publish the blog, is a special day as it’s the 31st October – last day of the month.
Continue reading “Experiment #6: my last beer (for a while)” »
I’m very proud to present this experiment, the greatest so far.
This time isn’t a “one month change of habits” kind of experiment as the previous ones.
This time are hundreds experiments inside a bigger one.
Something planned well ahead, waited, prepared, executed and still with consequences under investigation.
Here it is: from June to August 2011 I took a career break to vagabond around Latin America – basically Colombia….
Inspired by my friend Claudio, that recently started his new project “40, and now?” I decided to revamp my personal blog with a personal challenge.
I realized what is preventing me to post in this blog is not lack of time, lack of arguments or lack of ideas - I actually often find myself thinking about something I’d like to share here.
What is stopping me is the lack of self discipline, the very thing that makes a difference between me and the people I admire the most.
The challenge is to write one blog entry a week for the next 4 months. Total 16 posts.
Here are my rules, written more for myself than for any reader:
Having said that, beside exercising self discipline and English writing I hope to attract like-minded people… if any 
In the last months I insisted focusing in the morning routines. Maybe thinking that changing how a day starts, will impact the rest
After having changed the shower procedure to a greener and healthier one in “morning shower revolution“, I started a 5-minutes exercise routine from the Yoga world, called “Sun Salutation” (Surya Namaskar in Sanskrit) that I will post about later.
At the same time, I revisited my 30+ years old breakfast tradition… a very Italian tradition: a cup of hot milk with honey, and cookies dipped in it. Lots of them!
And not just cookies, I love Macine from Mulino Bianco, that I bring here in large quantities every time me or someone is coming from Italy.
Who saw me having breakfast here got surprised and/or amused by it, mainly because the “sweet” breakfast is not common in north Europe (and in Mexico too)
I thought I could never ever adapt to live without a sweet start of the day… so I had to prove me wrong! I can adapt and change. That’s fundamental for living well.
Beside that, this breakfast is high in carbohydrates and in the last months I have been trying to reduce them to see if I could get rid of some body fat %.
OK, I don’t have much f it anyway but I started wondering if I will ever see my 6-pack abs in my life. And even if I have one or if it’s just a marketing invention from diet companies 
So I reduced the pasta, reduced the bread, tried to reduce the pizza (c’mon, once a week is the minimum to keep Italian passport!) and then I had to face the truth: my breakfast if bloated with carbo and I have a layer of cookies covering my abs. (I wish I had a picture to show what I have in mind).
So, inspired by the controversial Tim Ferris’s book “The 4-hour body”, I replaced my breakfast with spinach and scrambled eggs.
If sounds terrible to you, I have been there.
I has think for ages that eggs for breakfast was a barbarian habit
Preparation:
Many people I spoke with horrified for 2 reasons.
The first one is: do you eat eggs every morning??
Yes, that’s correct but I total 3 eggs white (high in proteins) and 1 egg yolk (high in fat and cholesterol).
The second objection is: this must take lot of time to prepare!
Define a lot, it requires more time than warm up a cup of milk with the microwave but it became a solid procedure of 3 minutes + 2 minutes to wash the pan, plate and tools.
This experiment had been running for well over a month now and became a well established habit.
I lost ~2kg between changing breakfast and reducing carbo, but more than the weight I must say that I feel less swollen and more than a person noticed the difference.
I sometime miss starting the day with something sweet, but I had stopped buying milk completely and this turned out to simplify my groceries.
In fact milk doesn’t last for more than a few days in the fridge, and it was difficult to don’t waste it because of my business travels.
While I’m still not convinced that eating eggs every morning is the healthier choice, I believe it was a good thing to step out of my old breakfast to reduce carbo… if nothing else, I can stop importing Macine from Italy and wasting cows’ milk!
And you, what’s your breakfast?
For a twist of fate, I ended up going for work to Germany, a little town in the iper-productive nord-east Westfalia region.
What’s special in there? Well, it was 30Km only away from Sennelager and Paderborn, places where my granfather has been held prisoner for 14 months during World War II.
So I decided to go there and pay a tribute to nonno Franco.
That has been for me a special and unique opportunity – nobody from the family has ever been there and I felt very lucky but also emotional reaching Sennelager.
It’s strange looking at old people around and ask inside me “what were they doing 70 years ago?” “didn’t really know anything about it?”. Touchy, but of course no hard feelings.
Sennelager sounds like a terrible name but this place always had this name and has nothing to do with the meaning of the word “lager” we all know since WW II.
Lager means “field” in German.
Sennelager host now a big British NATO military base, and everything in town seems to revolve around that. There’s even a grocery shop called “Little Britain” to help the soldiers not feeling homesick.
I stop on the main road trying to imagine 70 years ago, how could have been… the gray day and the freezing air let think that this can easily be a sad place to be.
I ask some people around, everyone speak English, I tell them my story and they listen carefully: I’m looking for any kind of memorial place.
They point me out to a monument, right in front of the entrance of the military base, that commemorates the German victims of the conflict.
A bit outside from the center, a Russian cemetery bring back what my grandfather wrote in his diary, where he mentioned in fact a Russian camp not far from where he was.
To get there, I had to cross a large railways passage, and that was the more intensemoment because, yes, I knew he passed there… twice at least.First arriving from Italy after days of trip, unknowing what was waiting them, and then going back home at the end of the war ready to continue his life in Albiate.
Photo album here:
The answer is YES.
Many sources reports that entry in Saudi Arabia is denied for people with Israeli stamps on the passport… and many people think that this is true.
So, I volunteered to be a guinea pig and I went there to check*
Weeeel, what most people think, guess what, is wrong.
The Saudi embassy can’t refuse to issue a Visa for you if you have visited Israel before.
And once in Saudi is not true that your entry will be automatically denied…. no no no.
At least, this is my first hand experience
But, to avoid any complication, when visiting Israel is always better to ask at the passport control to don’t put the stamp on the passport… they can stamp a separate paper instead!
Happy traveling
Back in January 2011, I started the experiment #3: morning shower revolution that was an attempt to review one of the daily rituals, the morning shower, in a more interesting way.
Below the results of this experiment, almost 3 months after it started…
This experiment was the best success so far – I’m totally hooked now to this “navy + cold” shower ritual….
It gives me a different kick in starting the day.
Since I started, may sound silly but I really look forward to shower when I wake up.
I use much less water, I use less warm water and I also use water less warm
(you may need to read it twice to get it)
After some weeks I can see that I don’t need hot water anymore. I can pretty much start with warm water (~28C) and immediately start lowering the temperature.
The last ~30 seconds are with totally cold water… and the best part is that this is not anymore a “oh-shit” moment… it’s just a fresh energy kick, and when I’m out of the shower I feel OK even if the house is still cold.
My only concern is that with summer arriving soon, I may not have water cold enough!
Result: FULLY APPROVED!!!