FLYING to LAS VEGAS

Las Vegas, here I come. Just for 2 days business trip. But still it is to get into a plane and catch the beauty of a sunset of my way to the sin city ...

UBUNTU

My thoughts are going back to UBUNTU. "I am only because I am surrounded by other people". "I am nobody without the people around me". "The people around me make me". It is more important what I can do to improve the community rather than what I can do to become richer or more powerful. I think this is an universal truth. And I am glad that it is so clear in fornt of my eyes now.

SEATTLE from ALKI BEACH

This is a picture that I took in the weekend, it is the Seattle skyilne from from Alki beach. I think we are really lucky to live in a place where beauty is so accessible ...

THE LAST of the MOHICANS

Today I am totally in love with the them of "The last of the mohicans".Today it randomly popped to my ears, and I totally love it and I can't stop listening to it ... again and again ...

THE CENTER of the UNIVERSE

It is years now that I am walking the path to happiness. My walking did follow different paths. All of them were just so necessary to my growth. Travelling by itself is a path, all this blog started from that path, and travelling made me and makes me happy. My NeNe is an other path, she makes me happy and she is the dingle most important person I have met in my entire life, she is my soul mate. But today I found an other truth. To be truly happy maybe I shouldn't care too much. Or better, I shouldn't care too much about me, and I should care more about other people. It is so easy to think that we are the center of the Universe. We actually don't even think about it. I think it comes natural. But maybe it is all wrong. Maybe one of the secrets of happiness is to take things less personal, just relax and think that I am not the center of the universe and that everybody around me have the same rights to be happy that I have ... and that my happiness pass through their happiness ...

COOKING for OTHERS

During the weekend NeNe and I went to the local catholic church here in Capitol Hill to help out for a open doors meal. Also Stefania joined us. I think it was a nice initiative from the church and I guess was meant to give a warm meal to homeless and people who live alone.  For us it has been a great opportunity to share a little bit of our free time. Here are some pictures that I took ...

Really a lot of work, but it was more fun than work, actually. Once we were done with cooking, we left just I didn't meet the people who actually enjoyed the lunch. A shame. It would have been really nice to listen to their stories. 

HAPPY FEBRUARY 29th

2008 is a leap year. And today it is February 29th. So happy leap day to all of you. Amazing that we get a free day every 4 years. I like that. We shouldn't waste it. But I guess I did it ... I went to the office today ... :O

READING on the BUS

As I was saying few days ago, I really love commuting to work by bus, because I have almost 2 hours per day to read all the books that I left behind in the last years. So after I finish "The life of Mahanta Gandhi", I started a new one "Guns, germs and steel". It is an amazing historical book about the evolution of the human kind in the last 13,000 years. The book is trying to answer to questions like "Why in certain area of the planet people created cultures and empires and went to conquer other continents? Why it didn't happen the opposite?" Really interesting. If you are interested in human evolution, you have to read this. BTW ... this is a gift from Jake, my former roommate in LA. Thanks Jake!

THE 1st GUEST OUT OF TOWN

Martin s the first guest that we have from out of town. He came to Seattle for some meeting and we invited him to our place for a dinner. Although our pace is still a mess and it is tiny, we managed to be nice hosts. Now that we have a couch, we can even take non standing pictures ...

... and of course now we hope that we will have more guests coming to visit us ... :D

I COMMUTE TO WORK BY BUS

I commute by bus, and that it makes my proud and happy. Proud because I believe it helps the environment, happy because it means that we don't need to buy an other car, because I hate to drive bumpuer2bumper (BTW ... who like it), because it relaxes me and finally because I can finally dedicate time to read that pile of books that I have in my room. And here is how the bus43 looks like at 8AM in the morning ...

... not even too crowded ... there is always room to seat ... :D

WE GOT A COUCH!!!

We finally got a couch! We bought in the weekend here in Capitol Hill, the Seattle neighborhood where we live. Nice nice couch, and very nice prize as well. I think it was a $900 couch and we bought it for $250 in the "as is" section. Here if when we got it home. The other guy in the picture is our neighbour Stevie, he help us to push it trough our apartment door ...

We bought it in this shop called AREA51. They have very nice stuff, but they have an horrible customer service (they are just jack-ss). I guess it is worth writing the story. In our case they try to charge us $300 for the delivery, and the reason behind that price was that we already got a good deal out of the couch ... so they had to charge us a lot for the delivery ... :O ... smart of them to tell us!!! And they didn't even want to keep it there for 1 day more, after we paid, again because we got a good deal out of it. F-ck-rs! So we decide to walk the couch home. 1 mile away. Ehehehe. It took us 1 hour, but at the end we made. Nene was so exhausted that when we got in front of our apartment door, she gave up. And Stevie help us to made the last push into the apartment door. People was looking at us, like we stole it. Very funny. Anyways when we got home, we realized that the plastic foot of a leg was missing. Of course because we bought in the "as is" section, there was no way to bring it back. And we thought that maybe we lost the "foot" on the way to our apartment. We went back all the way with our camping lamps and we actually found it on the curb! Very lucky! And now we have our new fancy couch ... ;)

PUBLICTRANSPORT+GOOGLE

I love public transportation and I love also GoogleMaps. And now I found that they are the perfect match for me. At least here in Seattle. If I want to go by bus, I just check the directions on Googlemaps and I select "by public transportation" instead of "by car" ... and there you go it gives you ways to go there by bus. Timetable, waiting time, everything is there. For example this is my way to work ... bus43 and bus 242 ...

... I love it ... ahahaha ... it is just great ... :)

The official GOOGLE BLOG

If you are, like me, a totally GOOGLE addict ... you have to keep the googleblog. It is supercool. It has all the latest news about GOOGLE products and it is updated almost every day ...

... so if you are a Google addict, you can't miss it!

AN OTHER ADDICTION

I got an other addiction. This time is for facebook. I was there for more than 1 year, but I never really used it. This week suddenly I started using it. And bang. Now I can't stop anymore. I need to check every hour if is there anybody out there who did something exciting. The good thing is that I found a lot of far away friends in there. Today I was able to speak with a friend, after 16 years! The bad thing is that I can't stop checking what is happening in their lifes. Now I know when they walk their dog and when they go to the doctor. Ouch! Is there anybody out there who can help me to get rid of this stupid addiction?

A PIECE OF WISDOM

Once Mahatma Gandhi said ... "The things that will destroy us are politics without principle, pleasure without conscience, wealth without work, knowledge without character, business without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice". I read it few days ago and bang, it was like an eureka for me! I am thinking about it everyday now ... and it helps me to be a better person. Or at least try to be a better person. 

AN INCREDIBLE LIFE

Gandhi has always been an icon for me. But I never really read a lot about his life. So, last year when I was in Nepal, I got this book. I am reading it now, I am almost done with it. It is a good book. But it unveils also a lot of the private life of Gandhi. And there is where I was shocked. I discovered how hard he was with his family. Not a bad person at all, but his convictions about education and sex really strange to accept. Anyways, if you have some time, I suggest to give it a try and read this book.

BOOKSHELFing

Here we are. Driving back from IKEA with the bookshelf in the back of the car was funny. Carrying all that stuff upstairs was not too hard. And now it comes the last part of the game. Put together the bookshelf. Here are some of the phases of the work ...

... it took as a while, but at the end we made it. I have to admit that the hardest part has been to lift it up, as a whole. I was really afraid that it was going to kill me!

MORE IKEA SHOPPING

Here we are, we have spent only 2 months in Seattle ... and we have driven to IKEA at least 5 times already. Getting almost a familiar place. But maybe this is one of out last trips. We have actually purchased a book shelf and some other stuff ... and even if we had to squeeze our knees against the windshield on our way home, we have managed to fit everything in the car ... ehehehe ... here is it ... our mighty car filled in with a book shelf ...

 

FEBRUARY 17th

Febraury 17th is one of these dates that I will never forget. Last year something very very special happen to NeNe and I. And today, one year later, we have decided to remeber that day. And we were lucky enough that it was an incredibly sunny day. It is rare to see the sun here in Seattle in Winter, but today it was a sunny day. We went to Alki beach, just in front of Seattle, and there we met our friends Stefania, Supito, Joe and Kartik. For us happiness is just share our happy moments with our friends in a very simple way. And this is a picure that we took at lunch ...

WE GOT A PIANO!!!

Our researches on CRAIGLIST bring some result. We found a very good piano. For free. It plays really well, and it is in a very decent shape. The piano is actually for free, but we had to hire some PIANO MOVERS and have it delivered in our 3rd floor apartment. Here are 2 of the 3 guys who did the job ...... an amazing hard job. It took them almost 1 hour to push it upstairs! A very very physical job. The fee for the service was $250, but it was so hard that we ended up giving them $100 tip. Totally deserved. And here we have the new piano. NeNe is really happy, and I am as well. It is such a pleasure to hear her to play ... :D