Sorry, I am becaming as annoing as a spam chain with my posts about my new place…but I am so happy about it (the flat, I mean)!
And atually, since at the end I love you a bit, I am going to compress two posts in one. Happy?

First celebration.
A week-day evening. After work you cook, eat, maybe wash your clothes or iron them, say hello to parents and friends on skype, you w.. (work??? no, not work) .. and then you are ready to enjoy all the earned (with the pretended work  we were speaking about ) comforts  in the flat. A good film, a puppet, and the best configuration ever created for that: The Ikea sofa!

Cleo! THAT was MY place on the sofa!

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Second celebration

I was so proud of my new flat, that I had the arrogance of having a
warm-up party there this sunday.
First, I invited a carefully selected bunch of friends. In an 18 sq.mt room (including furniture), 17 people had a lot of fun! We were the perfect numbers, in fact the space pro person was much bigger then the one I had in the NY party.
And if they do in that way, we can do better!

Second, I spent SOME time cooking for my guests. The menu was set by the Fabello’s team (my mother, well-known in Monza for her cakes, gave me some recipes, and my father, a refined cook, suggested the main dishes*) and then I put my ability and my love in cooking.
Indeed, some of my old friends in italy complained because it happened that I had never prepared such an awesome dinner for them!

At the end, everyone agreed in saying that the party was a big success! And they DIDN’T say that just because I was there! So, looking forward for the next one.

* Yep, I am trying to buy my parents services with flattery.

** The food was really good, and (hopefully) everyone was fine after the party. But it happened that my fridge is broken, and today I decided to finish same shrimps-pasta left, after three days…
I spent the afternoon in bed, food poisoned by myself! :p

Cheers

Here we are! After a strenuous (thanks Drew for this new word ) week of trips to the Ikea & co shops, for taking measures, choosing, buying, returning*, building furniture, my flat is almost done!
I am very proud, and a special mention goes to my parents [here in the picture] who came and help me, with indomitable courage, even sacrificing their own health to create a beautiful flat…

Home

*sometimes you think you are living in the neverending Story, when you buy a table, arrive at home, open it and discover is broken. So you go back to the shop, but that model is runned out; you choose another one, bring at home, open it but you discover the screws are missing. So you go back to the shop…

Silvia’s back.

After one relaxing, doing-nothing, thinking-less week in my place, I am back to Monza, and tomoroww I’ll be back to Munich. This is the most intense activity I had there:

So, ready for work again, now! Before, just a couple of pictures to show SOMEONE (Michele, real names don’t refer to real people, right?) that also MY mountains are beautiful!

On the left: me and my father in front of “La Presolana”; on the right: Me, Margot and three wooden statues (in the wood, they created a number of figures from the dead trees…)

Silvia has moved!

Today was the Big Day, my first real moving (at least, inside the same city in a new flat I have choosen…) and here are the pictures of the beautiful flat.

There is nothing inside, except boxes and bags (but how many of those! Stuff collected in only 11 months…!), and there will be nothing else untill the end of August..but look how many light! How bright!
(for those who never entered my old flat, I lived in a dark basement )

Looking forward to post pictures of the room with forniure and nice decorations I will  make..

I just wanted to share with you this e-mail I got at work. (Luckly) we do not have condition-air, so there are people complaining about hot temperatures. Someone decided to write some suggestions to all of us…enjoy it (sorry for non physicists if you do not get the fun)

Several of us (perhaps the majority) feel uncomfortable with the
temperatures developing in our building during hot spells like the
present one. That is, we would prefer the building to be cooler. The
following contains some recommendations to you that will help us achieve
this goal.

The intrinsic thermal time constant of the building is large enough
(several days, probably) that it would be thermodynamically a simple
matter to maintain internal temperature at a value not exceeding the
daily average outside temperature (about 23C at the moment).

Experience shows that the actual temperature in the building is often
much higher. The cause can be traced to the practice of preferentially
opening windows and exterior doors when the outside temperature is at its
highest.

{\bf Excercise}. Your open window (aperture: 1 m2) allows an airflow of
1 m/s to enter the building at a time when the outside temperature is
30C, the inside temperature 23. Compute the heat load you are imposing on
the inhabitants.
[hint:
http://www.efunda.com/Materials/common_matl/show_gas.cfm?MatlName=Air0C]
To put the result in perspective: this is about the yearly average
heating requirement of a 70m2 apartment.

It should not come as a surprise, then, that the building quickly heats
up even when only fraction of the inhabitants follow this practice.

Of course, you experience a cooling effect when exposed to an airflow
from your window, even if the air temperature is rather high. But
consider that this effect is absent in most of the volume away from your
window. After passing by you, the hot air, following its nature, floats
up to the directors' level (the 3rd floor of our building). In addition,
doors opened on the lowest floor allow cool air to escape from the
building, being replaced by hot air entering at the higher levels.

If the physics involved here does not appear transparent to you, you
might consider whether a physics degree was actually the right thing for
you, respectively if you should aspire to obtain one.

{\bf Recommendations}
- Close your windows and outside doors when the outside temperature gets
higher than the building's interior.

- To reduce the heat load on your office, consider using the {\em
blinds}. With thermodynamic aforethought, these have been placed on the
outside of the windows, and experience shows them to be quite effective.

- When you see apertures opened in the hallways, coffee area etc, feel
free to close them under these same conditions. If this meets with
questions from others (the need for `oxygen' or `fresh air' is sometimes
advanced in this context), you can politely point out that this is part
of the institute's carefully thought-out measures to avoid overheating of
the building. Explanations of the physics take more time, and experience
shows that they often do not achieve their goal.

Of course, variation exist in people's subjective appreciation of
temperature. This can be accomodated under the following rule of conduct:
- Feel free to open your windows, outside doors or raise the blinds on a
hot day, but show your consideration for other inhabitants of the
building by {\em keeping your office door closed} whenever doing so. If,
for psychological or physiological reasons you feel the need for
increased airflow under these circumstances, consider the use of a fan.

I have been silent for quite a long time, I know..
I was at a conference in Italy, than I had three days of vacation in Rome (pictures coming as soon as I can)..now I am trying to re-connect myself with Munich life after almost two months far from my desk. Hard job, trust me!

There is a strange atmosphere – air of autumn, I’d say. Not only because in the last few days it was rainy and cold. It’s something about changes, movements…You know the feeling you used to have the last days of summer during high-school, when is still hot but the air is saying cold is not far, the wind blows away holiday mood, the light gets somehow metallic reflections. And maybe is because autumn overlaps with the beginning of academic years and because I am still young enough to have not forget yet, that I associate autumn with end and birth, with changes.
Or maybe is just because nature changes, so it’s easy and not even original to have this mood.

But the point is: cm’on Silvia, is not even August, how could you have such this feelings!
I have been around in the last weeks,  disconnecting from Munich. I came back and saw the firs new faces here at the institute. That means that a new year is going to start, new students will arrive, old friend will leave, far away.
I am moving in few days, that means leaving the usual way and find a new one.
These are just a job and a life which are always changing, around you. You’ll change leaves, colors, always hoping everything’ll get better. Always searching for the warmer autumn you’d ever had, the whiter snow ever, the sparkling spring..and start again.

Is this gloominess or a shy smirk?
Are we all really looking forward for an ever-ending summer?

I am afraid I have lost the magic of the city, now that I am far from it (or She? Or He? it is a lady to love?  Or  a party-mate which presents you his friends? Or just a city?)
I am not able to say why NYC is so famous, why people loves or hates it so much. What I have now is the feeling that New York is what you see in it, is everything and nothing special itself.
I’ll try to explain…
(if you have time, before reading, listen to these songs…they will give you MY NY mood; Don’t panic – Let Go- New Slang- I’ll just don’t think I’ll ever get over you- One of these things first)

NY is a huge city, made up by 5 burrows, which are Manhattan, The Queens, The Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island. Actually, New Yorker who live in Manhattan think THAT is the real City.
Manhattan is an Island on the Hudson River which divides NY by New Jersey.  Is not too big, just 87 km^2; but all the most famous New York icons are settled there. Central park, Time Square, Broadway, the 5th avenue, The Rockefeller Center (where you can ice-skating under the huge Christmas Tree), The Art Museums, As well as Harlem, Little Italy, Soho, Chinatown are there.
And if something is not there, you can see from it: an example? The Statue of Liberty.
But actually anything is so special, just seen by itself.
Time Square is just a place with a lot of advertisements, even if they are colorful, changing, huge…
The Brooklyn Bridge is a bridge, many others are more amazing.
The buildings are nice, from the past century, but in Europe we have cities with nothing less.

Now, with everything said, I will tell that I could love to live there.
What is amazing in NY- but that’s is according to me, and I just spent three days there- is that whatever is your mood, whatever you’d like to do in that moment, whatever is your attitude for life, you can fit in New York.
You walk among the long streets, and you are surrounded by people, a lot of people; you can feel life around you, and just let you be in that drift of movement and business.
But if you need to be by yourself, to feel alone, you can sit in Time Square, and let you wander among the crowd, the people at the Cross-roads, without really focusing on anyone. They will not take of you, do not worry,however you behave. You will be alone as never and if you were sitting along on a beach staring at the waves movements, your thoughts could be stimulated as well.

And than of course you want to eat the strangest thing and found a place near you where is fresh made; or you can say “I’d like to see a play tonight” and find your self in a theatre in Broadway (!I did! Details next time), you can desire to go to a museum, to play baseball in Manhattan, to go to a roller coaster, to browe rare books, but buy a cheep used one, after beeing delighted by the last technology goods…and I could go on forever…

So, I think I have lost the magic of the City, now that I am far from She. Because what it’s special is how She makes you feel when you are here.

I want to be a part of it – new york, new york
I want to wake up in a city, that never sleeps

(* nda: but maybe it’s not so special, and I just enjoy so much the CHANCE of living even for few days in a city where the language is not a problem, where you can wonder around and understand -almost- everything, where you can feel part of it, and even go to the theatre!)

I am on the bus, going to NYC!

It’s pretty cool, like an airplane…the driver introduced himself as “the captain” and explained al the facilities we have…power, drinks, snacks and wireless!

e ora, come dicevo, una informazione che e’ dedicata a tutti quelli che colgono, ma sopratutto ad Emanuele: ieri siamo andati a cena in un bar downtown (Lost Dog Bar: da fuori sembra un posto di quart’ordine, ma poi si mangia bene, quasi ricercato..se ti capita di passarci, Ale, non farti spaventare..) allora, dicev, sul menu dei drinks c’era..l’Appletini!!!

Secondo te Ema se l’avessi ordinato si sarebbe materializzato JD?

By the way, tra i drinks c’era anche il gelato alla banana affogato nella Guiness…ho dovuto chiedere la traduzione per esserne sicura. Anche allora non volevo crederci.

Tomorrow I am going to NYC!

I will do  few work in the afternoon, and then…sightseeing!

I will be in New York. Once I reach the Columbia University, there’ll be people who will take me and bring me around. But I have to get there.

So, tomorrow at lunch time (late afternoon for Europe), think about me. The tiny Silvia will go down the bus, will put her feet on the ground and she will be in the Big City. And then, suddently, the camera will move fast far away from her, letting you see the bus station, the city center, the all Big Appel, The New York state, the US…(yeah, like an Hollywood movie! And actually, I will not be by myself. I have four pages and maps of instractions they gave me, about how to reach the university..)

So, I promised news about Cornell..let’s see.. some random scratches…

Cornell is the university of Ithaca, member of the Ivy League. It’s a private university, but it was founded in the late XIX century by Ezra Cornell, who wanted a university for everyone, male and female, rich and less. You have to think that, eg, universities like Standford of Princeton were reserved to man until the 60s! (1960..)

It is built up on a hill, around 300 meters above the Cayuga Lake, which is one of the so-called “fingers lakes”; they are a bunch af narrow lakes created by glacial era ages ago.

but I live close to the campus edge, so in the morning it’s quite easy to walk toward the campus and reach the Space Science Building. I just have to walk a bridge, go up the stairs in the wood, greeting the squirrels in the grass…seems easy..I do not want to think how should be to do that in winter, when it’s -20 C, the stairs are frozen, the wind blows strong from the lake…amazing!

But since I am here now, when every thing is closed and the campus is almost empty, I can at least enjoy the green ivy on the buildings, the stadium at the sunset..and get lost, of course! in the maps I show the loop I was able to do trying to reach home…I can only say that was my second day..Is it enough as excuse?

Here is the whole campus map.

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Plus, now I am starting to interact with people

last saturday I went to Martha and Riccardo’s place. They live 300 meters above the campus, so almost in the mountain, in the middle of the wood; Martha cannot let the plats grow because deers eat them!

So, we were invited at dinner, followed by the vision of an old back-and-white movie, as tradition. I was scared, and I was right. If now it is not so difficult for me to get the general idea from an American movies, was instead impossible to understand more than half of what Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and James Stewart said! weren’t old actors supposed to study a lot to speak well? Crap…

PS: At the end we (they) decided to see “A Philadelphia Story”…