The sport Opera

A seldom story from the far away country Italy. We have been very busy, doing I don't remember what - moving, planning, working, moving... which I shouldn't borrow you with here.

Today I want to tell you about the sport Opera, in which I had the fortune to participate last Saturday. The way it goes is that you go to Marcerada, to the famous 200 year old outdoor opera scene, and wait in front of the gate. Actually you sign up to participate is by being too late to get any seats so you have to go early in the morning to buy tickets which allow you to do the race up four stories to the top where you have a wonderful view of everything but no chair (It was FUN :-D). The railing (excuse my English) is in a perfect height for Sara to lean on, but it was pretty low for me. and with my newly gained witch hazel (hekseskud), it was pretty tough for old me.

Anyway to put away my danish tendency to always complain, It was a wonderful opera - a tragedy, otherwise there would be no reason for the high notes, right. The opera shown that evening was Norma by Bellini. Remembering the story, its a wonder that everybody looked happy when we exited the theater, and not on the verge of suicide, because the story goes as follows: There is this priestess which is in love with the roman proconsul, and had two of his children, which in itself is enough to put her on the pyre by her fellow sisters in faith, but this is not the main theme. The problem is this, the roman proconsul is infact in love with another priestess. And he wants to bring her back to Rome, and marry her.
The plot thickens as Norma, the priestess with the children, is about to go and cut a branch of a three to see whether its time for all the druids of Gaul to do the uprising against the Roman invaders (i.e proconsul). Without confusing you (or me) more let me just tell you that the ending is many centuries away from the happy ending in all the Hollywood movies (unless happy ever after being burned on the pyre, sounds good to you).

The costumes and decor looked a lot like something taken out of a samurai movie, and did not really connect with the story, but it was beautiful to look at.

The night was also beautiful, and we enjoyed it a lot. Especially the lady lead singer was very impressive, though I (with my very inexperienced ear) thought she had some problems keeping her high tones clear, but I also have a theory that it was because we were very high compare to the scene in a outdoor theater. And the scenario was blessed with few very nice cranes, as you can see on the picture.


have a nice tuesday

Now may be we will learn.

In Denmark its a standing joke that they wouldn't mind if the weather would be one or two degrees warmer with global warming, but may be somebody forgot to tell, that global warming also means a lot more rain as a team of scientists reports (link (in danish ))

So while everybody, here in Rome, is praying for more rain and some cool air, everybody in Denmark is wishing for more sun and heat.

17 degress warmer than denmark

Today it is 37 degrees, which okay from an air conditioned room. But 37 degrees is actually so hot that my lunch icecream almost melted before I had time to eat it, and thats scary and stressing.

Here is a picture, outside here we have 37 degrees I think somebody said (and I choose to believe the danish measurement, because otherwise the headline doesn't sound as good :-)).

Back on drugs…

After finishing my antibiotic treatment for my Sweden size foot, I am now on a antiflammitory treatment, after Sara and I was, quite involuntary, in front of an idiot in a BMW who forgot to break (why is it that most idiots buy BMW?), when everybody else did it in the traffic queue, on the way to the beach.

It all started like a good day, we were suppose to paint our apartment, before we move into it during the weekend, it was Sunday morning and we were up half past seven, so we thought nobody is up this early a Sunday, and nobody will be on the way to the beach, so we could just pop of to a quick swim and be back painting in no time. Two and a half hours later, we were almost there, in a long and very slow queue, it had finally sped up a bit, but then everything stopped again, well except for stupid BMW, which ran into us. Our car didn’t suffer much, neither did we, I think that the shock was worse than the actual pain, but it was quite a shock.

Getting out of the car, Sara (who was driving) rubbed her neck and said “che botta” (which means “what a bump”), and the driver who drove into us, started shouting at Sara, "that it was certainly not a big bump", "it was nothing", "she was over doing i t and bla bla… Sara and I was pretty perplexed, and just stared at the idiots (his girlfriend was also there and shouting). Suddenly the police showed up, and asked the idiots why they were shouting at Sara. now that somebody asked, they didn’t actually know either. We didn’t think anything serious happened, and just got their number if anything should come up later.
And went down to the beach, or almost down to the beach, cause we couldn’t find a parking spot within kilometers of the beach we wanted to go to, so we ended up going to this resort for a coffee and a cornetto – they call it breakfast :-D. Getting over the shock we started talking about, our necks and started to get nervous about if something serous happened to us, so we went to the emergency room at Ostia, at the beach just outside of Rome (well Ostia is two and a half hour away from Rome in heavy traffic, half hour otherwise) and was preparing ourselves for hours of waiting. But after some initial problems to actually get in contact with the health care people, we were visited by the doctor after only 10 minutes, which I think Danish emergency rooms could learn a lot from.
Basically the visit consisted of the doctor asking us to move our head first to the right and then to the left, and since we could do that without any considerable pain, gave us prescriptions for five days of antiflammitory drugs, and said that we should put on a collar if the pain got to big. And send us on our way.

On the way home Sara showed me a very nice quarter of the Rome, where the houses is designed mostly by this one architect, which had a very cool taste. And we found a nice restaurant and some good food. It was all perfect, were it not from the headache and strangeness we both felt. (if Sara didn’t I felt it for both of us).

Going back to our apartment we decided that it didn’t need a third painting, and cleaned up, so its was ready for the floor guy to come the day after.
So now I am back on drugs, but still happy.

So a bit strange Sunday, where we both got on drugs, and rented five movies a blockbuster (which we only saw one of)...

This weekend the intense heat will arrive

After being quite proud of my ability to withstand the incredible heat in this city, one of my colleagues exclaimed that this weekend, the intense heat will really start. I felt like crying, after a night where I haven't slept much because of the heat, they tell me that its fresh now, and the real heat haven't started yet.

Wonder if Scandinavians can actually melt, like the icecream I'm going to eat for lunch.

Anyway on the other end of the scale, I keep surprising myself by being a bit cold, and finding that its actually above 20, which is usually a temperature, where I prefer to go with no shoes, shorts and t-shirt. I will be packing my winter coat when we go to Denmark in August.

Anyway, bring on the heat, I'm game, lets just hope that I don't melt, I would hate that.

In Australia is cream trucks melt:

Sometime you win

Even though its cold and a bit cloudy - below 30 - its always nice with an ice cream, to get energy for the last two hours of my workday. And I can enjoy it as a celebration that my Italian has reached a level where I actually understand that I said something wrong :).

Sometimes you loose

I just realized why several people have looked very strange at me, when I asked for almonds (I actually did that, on different occasions). Because I had this idea that almonds is called "almone" in italian, which is actually not a word...

(it is called "mandorla")

With my new updated vocabulary I asked an colleague (he was going anyway) to bring me a magnum ice cream with almonds. Wonder what he brings me...

Reading Olympos

The main character have just shouted "But then they are all going to die", I sit on the edge on my cafe chair, with a cappuccino flying in one hand, and barely registering some Italians staring mystified at my strange behavior. I drop some coffee on my t-shirt. While doing a half hearted attempt to salvage my t-shirt, and trying to continue reading my friend Pietro appears and sits down, and now I have no idea of what happens to the poor Greeks. But I did learn a trick about reading socket connections which I had not thought of, in the project I am working on.

If you don't want to be in similar situations then don't read Dan Simmons "Olympos".