Saturday, December 12th dawned promising one of those warm, sunny days, unique rather than rare this time of the year here in Galicia. We were coming from 10 consecutive days of rain and the blue of the sky so clear and diaphanous looked like a chimera. Indeed, a few hours after that would prove to be: a chimera! By midday some sort of unhealthy semipermeable haze looking like clabber darkened that intense blueness that Mother Nature had presented us with. A natural phenomenon? An eclipse? A sudden perturbation driven at high speed by ocean winds? No, none of this, it is called "chemtrails", a phenomenon as subtle and (potentially) dangerous, as unknown to most. I heard of it for the first time last year, speaking to Flavio, a friend here in Galicia, the westernmost point of ... read more

I apologize in advance to my readers for temporarily abandoning the story of my return trip from Asia, not respecting for once the chronology of events. Fact is that, while having moved to live in Istanbul a month ago, three news arrived from Italy in the short span of 7 days have struck my attention and I believe they deserve an immediate comment. 1) Clemente Mastella. Sunday, June 7th, was elections day for the European parliament. Like the vast majority of European citizens, I didn't vote. The overall voter turnout was 45%. Low. In the UK 35%, in Poland as low as 25%! In Italy, however, a country where politicians are known to oblige to their duty, never take backsheesh, never dream of using their position to earn unlawful benefits, always strictly adhere to the will ... read more

Sri Lanka keep offering me only gifts directly sent by the Lord himself. In the past it had been described to me as a lot of hassle, persistence and intrusiveness. In hindsight I must confess that I can’t disagree more with such description. Sinhalese people seemed to me wonderfully generous men, not at all intrusive, less than less aggressive. Climbed down from the Adam’s Peak, I wanted to go to Kandy. I’d even bought the ticket, but while I was at Hatton station taking some pics of a train that was about to leave towards east, an old man with a prophetic white beard and a perfectly round shaped belly approached me and we start chatting. He was the engine driver. I told him about my passion for trains and that once in my childhood my ... read more

If you're reading this you probably belong to one of the following categories: (a) You are a friend of mine or family member; (b) You are Samantha Fox; (c) You are someone who regularly reads my blog; (d) You are a male, aged 30 - 35, who hasn't got anything better to do right now (you're probably at the office pretending to work) and have just googled for "Samantha Fox". A few words of introduction for the benefit of those belonging to categories A and C born after 1980. Samantha Fox was in the end of the 80s the sexy icon par excellence. She was for us, thirteen years old boys, what Palestine was for the Jews led by Moises: the promised land where everything was good and abundant (especially abundant in her case). Theoretically she ... read more

According to a survey conducted by Project Gutenberg and based on 30 million words used in cinema and literature, the three most common words in the English language are You, I and to. If, instead of thousands of movies and books, had the research been carried on using Ya (the bungalows' keeper of the place where I'm lodged on Ko Chang)'s english as basis, the results would have been surprisingly different. After ten weeks on the island I've come to understand that Ya is a minimalist. Not in the philosophical or artistic meaning of the word, but in the plain, literal one: Ya reduces everything to its bare minimum, vocabulary included. He's got three phrases that combine a hundred different meanings: 1. For sure, which might mean surely, are you sure? I'm not sure, maybe and ... read more