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.
Last week I had my first Couchsurfing guest.
What is Couchsurfing?
You can be a host, a guest or both, totally up to you.
You can ask to be hosted, or accept/deny requests from people to surf your couch, totally up to you.
Estate 2006: Wild Holiday.
Dopo quasi 3 mesi nel nuovo posto di lavoro sono riuscito, da buon italiano, a prendermi ferie nella settimana di Ferragosto.
Roba che da noi richiede qualche anno di anzianita’ 
Si parte alla selvaggia, presenti io, Colombo e Paul.
It turned out to be a mistake, 2 years ago, but I still didn’t know.
I was kite surfing in one of the most stunning scenery I’ve ever been.
The dunes of the Sahara deserts are falling into a blue lagoon in Dakhla, Morocco, and the surfers are spending fantastically frugal days flying over the water and sleeping in simple bungalows.
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?