A sunny breakfast can fix a lot of things

 Not much is happening or at least this is what is seems like to me.

A couple days after my last post, Mischief sent me a long text that I'll partly copy here (I cancelled some things that include details on our clients):

Just wanted to say hi and hope all is well there. I am coincidentally in Seattle and had dinner with [our firm] Telco leader who is from Rome which was fun. I liked him. Didn't know things were crazy there like in Paris or so he said. Nothing new here. Been doing a lot of longevity stuff. I also heard your client [my main client for whom I do a lot of work with -us West Coast] on Bloomberg the other morning and was surprised. Oh you'll be surprised to hear I pinged [long piece about an investment he wanted to make a few months ago on which I gave him a bit of help in my professional capacity]. They said everyone we met is asking all about me and what happened 😬! Felt bad but the data center stuff was the right call. Anyway, I hope you're well. ♥️

To add some context, this was after the weekend where protests spiked to a riot downtown here, but I think media put more hype on the story than it deserved. I consciously let the text simmer for 12h before giving a short reply ("hey! so did you meet [name of Telco guy]?"). he went on with long texts and I gave in and resumed the conversation. We discussed how I am currently not very happy with the firm and that I should explore other opportunities, among other things. I am probably reading too much into the fact that he resumed the conversation.

Meanwhile, I just spent two days in Taormina for my firm annual partners meeting, which is in my humble opinion the most beautiful place in the world (although I would not want to live there). Taormina is in Sicily and a number of movies were filmed there, like Aquaman 2):

The volcano was calmly erupting (it's almost always the case), it felt like summer with 24 Celsius, weather was amazing. We had dinner in the hotel of the White Lotus Season 2, everything was good. A colleague that was with me in Mountain View spent a good 30 minutes obliviously talking to me about Mischief and how the guy was interesting and how he spent all his time with me and am I still in touch with him, he's such a handsome guy - at this point I smiled and politely said I'm certainly better looking and I think he got the hint to stop buggering me.

I spent the night working after receiving a call at 1h30 in the morning (hello West Coast), had a bit of a stressful situation and at 7h30 when I was done I called my friend Cinzia, who was staying in the bedroom next to mine, and we went to breakfast. Breakfast was here:

Needless to say, this took away my stress.

I'm afraid my decisions about avoiding contact with Mischief were also taken away but hey, a girl can dream.

Song for this post: "Angel of the morning" by Juice Newton

just want to go out

The older you get, the more you value walking. At almost 38, I already considered that the best part of my weekdays was when I managed to walk home from work instead of taking the tube. I live 3.5km from work (a bit over 2 miles) and whenever it wasn't too late and it wasn't pouring rain, I used to walk home, sometimes making calls to clients or my mother, sometimes just listening to audible and watching shops windows.

I seems like I'm talking about a long time ago, but we've been working from home since February 22, and in a total lockdown since March 7. Yesterday I decided to go for a walk in the woods (my parents' place is really next to wild woods by the lake) and in order to do that I had to wait over one hour: as soon as I saw a police car patrolling, I waited for it to be gone and crossed the road to get to the footpath in the woods.

That because if they stop me outside home, I can get arrested.

I so miss walking.

My father in law died on Wednesday morning. He had 4 sons and a daughter, all loving him and living close to him, and he had to die alone because we are not allowed to leave home (let alone visit sick relatives in the hospital). He was buried this morning with no funeral (not allowed) and no family (again, not allowed). On of my brother in laws is a priest, so he's celebrating a private mass via skype for the family tonight.

This gives you an idea of the situation I guess.

because this is Italy

And as such, while the whole country is quarantined,  on a sunny Friday evening at 6PM, a whole nation of 60 million people open their windows and start singing the national hymn, you remember what a crazy beautiful mess this country is.