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- first houseguest (mom): check.
- it's thirty-six degrees in Roma, and rising.
- i made pasta with fresh zucchini (and *one* fresh zucchini flower -- thank you Claudia!) for the first time, and the aforesaid mom liked it.
- the bi-annual sales are coming soon, and for the first time in My Italian Life, i may actually be able to do more than window-salivate.
- gelato is fast-becoming a key food-group, and shakeratos make more sense every day.
life is moving lazily along (well, in that "so-much-to-fill-your-days-with", quasi-frenetic kind of way). and although there is much i am struggling passionately with -- how i feel about my job; what i've been doing with my life and my mind; how the Italian government processes (or rather, *doesn't*) the residency permit renewals of its taxpaying, in-status and law-abiding foreign workers; and where i belong -- i think for now, i am okay.
[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, Roma]
[mercoledì 29 giugno 2005 ore 09:51:42] [¶]
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...(about POSTSECRET): "the only thing i want to know is the e-mail address of the guy who buys things for the woman who shows him photos of her feet. why didn’t i think of that???"
[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Via Giordano Bruno, Roma]
[sabato 25 giugno 2005 ore 22:42:37] [¶]
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if you live on the continent of North America, or on the non-continent of the United Kingdom, and/or anywhere near a "real" English-language newsstand (unlike myself) -- run (don't walk) to said newsstand and get yourself the current may/june issue of RAVE*SQ (note: glossy magazine, so be prepared for the usual emaciated female on cover).
turn to page 48. but don't read *too* carefully...
note also on page 58, the fine-flick-skills of my very own sister-in-law (the one that's *not* Shahzia Sikander, by the way)...
send me the copy when you're done with it. am collecting for my mother.
[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, Roma]
[venerdì 17 giugno 2005 ore 11:24:26] [¶]
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--- thoughts from a heated-but-amicable debate with co-workers, about a lecture we all went to last night -- on Mussolini, Fascism and the Second World War...
presentation is usually pretty important to me, but when it comes to things like history, poetry and writing -- i don't really give a you-know-what about the PowerPoint template the lecturer is using, or whether she has a consistent brand identity, or whether the background is black or white. if she's a good speaker, i don't even really care whether or not there *is* any PowerPoint. she can put sticky-notes on a blackboard for all i care -- i'm just so thrilled to be (for lack of a better way to put this) "getting smarter".
there *are* folks though, who believe that if you can't make it look good, it's not worth doing. which is fine -- i know only too well that this everlong and everpresent tug-of-war between form and function is a valid one, and that there is good reason for it to be so everlong and everpresent. we all draw our lines in different places.
there is Michael who would rather not do something if he is not able to make it look as pleasing to the eye and the visual-user-experience as he wants. there is the nine-to-five Me, who (thanks to my profession, and to all those passionate design-and-usability reviews at Razorfish) knows that this is indeed incredibly, incredibly important -- in many cases, as important as the content being delivered.
but then there is also the off-duty Me, who (apart from being a spelling and grammar maniac), cares only for how *much* content i get, and -- of course -- how good the content is in and of itself.
it is no coincidence that in my first year at NYU, the thing that impressed and excited me the most was that Bobst was the largest open-stack library in the country (or something). it is no coincidence that i can never throw away a newspaper or magazine until i have read every article in it (well, except maybe some of the sports section). it is no coincidence that when i let myself buy books in this country (where the the written word in English is hard-to-find and ridiculously expensive), i find myself seeking out the longest, biggest, most-paged books i can get for my money.
what i want -- always and desperately -- is for there to be more. more to read, more to know, more to consume.
[nightingaleshiraz] [?]
[Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, Roma]
[giovedì 02 giugno 2005 ore 11:59:00] [¶]
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