Envelope / Develope

Milan, 14th of Aug 2019 I just arrived and was confused about how to find the hotel. Although it was close to the train station, somebody just helped me to find the right directions. In hindsight I should have used Here for pedestrians.   The hotel (Soperga, ranked three stars, yes I don't splurge on lodging) looked very neat and the room was larger than what we've seen previously in Italy (2017). I got out with Emma and dined to a nearby restaurant with owners from Middle East. I got a mussel soup, Dorado fried fish and salad. More than I usually eat for dinner. Emma got shrimp, langostino and fries. I even tried their house wine but the fermentation was spoiling it.   The whole experience was not bad and the prices were decent. I was surprised by the richness of the mussel soup. Emma ate at least half of the mussels from my appetizer. It was a nice restaurant with table cloth, men servers and people smiling when talking to you. Romania has a long way to go in that rega...

Mes projets de voyage ne se font pas du jour au lendemain, simplement parce que je veux me détendre ou décompresser. La plupart du temps, je vois des endroits dans des documentaires ou des films ou je lis à leur sujet, puis je commence à dessiner un plan. Quand une graine est plantée, je récupère des informations et j'essaie de comprendre s'il ne reste plus que mon impulsion à me rendre sur place: si elles ont des endroits incroyables à photographier ou des paysages aux caractéristiques uniques, mieux c'est. Aujourd'hui, je dévoilerai mon plan de visite en Corse. Je suis un grand fan de TV5, la chaîne de télévision française qui au fil des ans m'a présenté de nombreux endroits incroyables à travers leurs documentaires: Thalassa, Des racines et des ailes, Passez moi les jumelles. Dans l'un des documentaires, une jeune guide ( Magali Vermeglio ) a été filmée lors d'une randonnée au GR20 et à la beauté du paysage et à la rugosité des sommets moi a commenc...

Photo by Gabriel B, My travels plans are not happening overnight, just because I want to relax or decompress. Most of the time I see places first in documentaries or movies or read about them and then I start to sketch a plan. When a seed is planted I dig information and try to understand if there is more than my impulse of getting to the place: if they have incredible places to photograph or scenery with unique characteristics, the better. Today I will unfold my plan to visit Corsica. I am a big fan of TV5, the French broadcasting channel which over the years introduced me to many amazing places through their documentaries - Thalassa, Des racines et des ailes, Passez moi les jumelles. In one of the documentaries, a young tour guide lady ( Magali Vermeglio ) was filmed while hiking GR20 and the beauty of the landscape and the roughness of the peaks just gotten me started. The only problem is that we are a family of two - dad and daughter (8 years old). Can we manage GR20, to...

Photo by Curtis MacNewton on Unsplash   Dansul hirtiilor in Romania 2019 Am iesit sa-mi eliberez un certificat de nastere, ca sa-mi fac din nou un pasaport Romanesc. Da, sunt inca cetatean roman, desi nu m-ai traiesc acolo de douazeci de ani. Dar nu am uitat, pentru orice fituica, trebuie sa alergi, intrebi, primesti lectii si astepti. Deci eram pregatit moral pentru socul cultural, inca mai imi aminteami de nervii pe care mi-i faceam acum douazeci de ani. Sa incepem cu gasirea cladirii unde se elibereaza certificatele. Pancarta care ar trebui sa anunte pentru oricine care este scopul acelei cladiri publice este facuta varza, poti sa-ti inchipui ca au trecut sute de ani peste ea (poate compania care a furnizat-o a trebuie sa taie din vopsea ca sa dea ciubucul pentru intrat la licitatie). Este o cladire veche, de cel putin 60-70 de ani conceputa pentru cu totul alte scopuri dar modificata pentru lucrul cu publicul. Am intrebat la casierie, ce trebuie sa fac, mi s-a ...

Photo by Olivia Spink on Unsplash Open up to "unconnected life" Or Meet-up on hidden dating I was using Meet-up app to find "birds-of-the-same-feather", people interested to do the same things, enjoying the same events or just willing to spend time in the same activity (hiking, dancing,  entrepreneurship, etc..). It was a big eye-opener, and with each group I had some period of accommodation: looking around and trying to understand why all those people are there, what is the reason they are coming and what they were looking for to be happening.You don't have to be a mind reader, the gazes of people are telling more than they will recognize. I will tell the story of my first meet-up with a dancing group/singles group. Friday is my tennis night and coming back with Emma from the courts I tried to see if I can arrange a baby-sitter for her in order to go to that event: a dancing night for singles (or not only). I was anxious because it was...

Writing as breathing Or Thoughts dumping Or Free wheeling writing The whole concept of starting by listening to your breathing and then leaving your mind to spit out thoughts and ideas and images and hidden wishes and dreams and memories and people as characters and   ... is nauseating. The implicit statement is that you can be able to do it, like everyone was born a writer or trained to release the mind valve and put words out from the inner life. Are we all capable of that? What is the purpose, just leave it out in the open? How do you make use of it by reading it? It is like an expectoration of thoughts and then who is able to inspect it (to be captured by the words or the tempo or the images). I started "back in the game" just to anchor feelings and raw emotions, just to freeze them on paper and analyze them as (maybe) deeper/unknown desires I cannot manage to unearth just by thinking of. It is harmless for any reader or third person. The words may resonate ...

Why the same financial analysis ends with yes instead of no, a few years later I am following the investment community by reading all the common sites - Seeking Alpha, Morningstar, Fast Graphs, etc..- and have the conviction there are gems left in the stock market and just a few people are acting on them. I keep also the view that there are business people totally unqualified for their position and pushed by market events to lead something beyond their understanding and comprehension. Those statements are coming from working in many start-ups which were acquired or imploded spectacularly and the investment community did not have a clue of real motives. The financial statements released every quarter forces a short (maybe medium) strategy in the life of a public company. In my MBA years I was so amused by all the case studies providing hints of the health of the company based only on those numbers. It helps to know the industry, to know the players and the direction it goes but mo...

It was obvious the picture posted on the website resembles so much an Enya's picture - the deep cleavage shirt, the lost gaze and the hands together offering something. Her interest in gem stones and healing was like a modern take on witchcraft in our times. Her mind was intriguing and the poems sounded like a modern haiku with a merry tempo. Hard to associate the hopping tone with the somberness of the words. Clearly she was hurt, by someone, by misunderstandings or by some twists in her life. She was smiling though, and at peace and content that life events can create such lines, like a kid amazed to the power of words (where are they coming from?). She was in her own bubble (or ivory tower). Fragments of her life are online, and exposed to anyone interested - how much more open can you be? She is still looking for answers or meaning or love or friendship. Just waiting for the life to happen. And here are a few quotes that I really liked and I discovered Mark Gro...

People are loathing complainers. They are everywhere, life was harsh, when they were vulnerable other took advantage of them. The system is against them or simple events were not aligned with their life plans. There are not many who can run around unexpected events and take the blows and turn them around. How do you vent out if not complaining? Ask for advice, present your facts and leave others the judgement. One of the impulses we have is to categorize and jump on analyzing. What if you leave time between event and your reaction, especially an emotional one. Time is dampening the immediate response and emotions are not resisting erosion. It is very simple to pull arguments in favor of your view (bias oriented). You will never build an argument against your status-quo or the comfort of your views. Contradictions, opposite views are not laying good with our psyche. A person you respect and look to advice for might give another weight and perspective to your personal events. A ment...

Photo by Gustavo Lampert on Unsplash   I remember an interview with Li Na (the famous Chinese tennis player) who was asked how can she be so positive with all the attention and burden of carrying the dream of all Chinese people and having all the health problems the majority of professional tennis player have. She was smiling and said, every morning, when you wake up, you have two choices - gloom&doom looking to all the problems in your life or smiling and being grateful for the life you have. Her choice was to look to the bright side of her life. It is not coming easy, to smile and virtually forget the problems you have, but continuing with a positive attitude will make you cruise easier and not be consumed by the life events. Being down is mostly being too much on the dark side of your soul and over-thinking, over-planning, over-ageing. If you are grateful for the life you have, then you can turn around and see the beauty in your life, you can make people feel good, lis...

An article on Reuters - Is America the sick man of the globe? - caught my eye as a continuation of what went wrong with the industry in North-America. This debate is more acute after the financial meltdown but people are not analytical as they should be and as always the numbers are partially telling the truth. “From the 1980s onward, manufacturing jobs and the sector's contribution to U.S. GDP declined, a process accelerated by productivity enhancements and increasing competition from lower-cost markets. Now there are just over 8 million manufacturing workers in a population of 300 million.” Special Report: Is America the sick man of the globe? by Nick Carey, Thu Dec 16, 2010 Reuters The whole mess is politically driven. The decision to compensate the unemployment in industry with jobs in services and finance industry leads to decimation of an entire generation of tradesmen. Bill Gross (Pimco): " “We forgot that the more stable and safe way to go is to make things...We...

Photo by Jamie Morrison on Unsplash Before You are in a relationship and after a while are sensing there is distance between you and your partner. All the gestures are there, with the same intensity but they look like 999 rehearsed plays of your life. For outsiders everything seems to be fine but you already left the character. There is no more dynamism, you hate the stagnation and the stale taste of life near a partner who is old in habits and does not come with any new ideas to heighten daily life. What is next, you wonder? Where have you been drifting, after a while? If you've been a mouse all your life, you cannot dream to fly like an eagle all of a sudden, don't you? In Between And together, you and he, decide to split for a while and live separate lives. At the beginning is the urge to go back just because the habits are ingrained in you like a drug, absence of them is hard, your mind is stuck in the same movement. Then, after a while, resisting the impulse you j...

I love Chef's Table (on Netflix), not necessarily for the food stories but mostly for the cooks' life stories: coming back from death sentences, finding love in foreign countries, leaving established careers and mostly the defiant fight to find their path. It is about normal people with a sudden discovery of passion for food and proving how small turns in life lead to greatness. The music is so engaging, the images are vivid to accentuate you the eccentricity of the dishes and punctuates fast victories in a life so short and ephemeral for a chef. One of the stories seems to stuck with me, the incredible life of Ivan Orkin , the ramen chef from New York, and his quest to conquer Japan on ramen. You will hear him describing how he was floundering life when young, and then going to Japan just because he learnt the language, finding love by accident, becoming widow with a kid and in the end finding his call in cooking ramen. More surprisingly was his adventure to find love a...

I thought it will be cathartic to write and anchor in time my feelings, rages, surprises or laughters. The group I just joined was like a door opened at the last minute "are you interested to listen to other's people self healing writings?". I was not healing, just venting and, as always, becoming pictorial in my writings. I did not realize how deep and long the pain can be for some people around us. It was like a project started when you are 20s and still unfinished in your 50s. I felt ultimately ashamed and insignificant in my turmoil just hearing someone reading "this is round ten of the ripping apart feeling happening between us". There were deep, deep scars. Those issues had histories, days, nights and long discussions between people. Daily scratches becoming wounds and changing the life of (mostly two) people. Couples trying to change each other or one of them promising they will change. The trajectory of their problem looked convoluted and the evol...

Can say with assurance that the subject of my failed short relationship (mostly imaginary) is coming to an end with this last post. I turned it on many facets, analyzed it for my futile understanding, built explanations for deciphering meaning, but the emotional bleeding is becoming dry. Life goes on and I wish everyone, no matter what role they played in it, to move on, to enjoy life. There are a few more posts that were written in the last few days but they will probably not be published. You got  the gist of what happened, a few more theories are an over-extended tired saga. It was one of my mistakes , of many that will come, that slowly will make me re-adjust, re-think and look at life in a different light. Although not old, I am at an age when some things are no longer possible, others become available, where I have roots or connections that are hard to change, they are imprinted in my brain. More roots had unexpectedly grown and is where I redirected some energy, lately. I...

I was scanning the room to see the reasons people are coming here, to this group. It was a first for me to share the writing and hear others reading their thoughts. Do they need advice, look for ideas or simple want  a real connection with themselves. How important is the writing for yourself? Yes, we are the pawns in the grand scheme of things and want to believe we are more than sand in the world. Dreaming of love and partners and kids loving you back and reciprocal feelings. In any relationship it seems to be a taker and a giver and the texts read tonight are expressing it clearly. Nothing new to dream and aspire and interpret the life through writing. Is the healing involved? I think that crystallizing the moment is one of my goals and revisiting and remembering emotions are on the second plan of my intentions. I hope to come back and from the raw writing to come with a general idea for myself or others, like, don't flow with the anger, understand it and then try to find i...

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash Any major change in your life has the "now" perspective: it affects you, it draws your emotion high and flashes of feelings are just running wild through your mind. Suddenly the life becomes like a "tunnel-vision" experiment and you pulse with a heightened intensity. Especially the life/death events or sentimental affairs have a "in-your-face" urgency. It happened to me several times, one quite recently. What I learned over time, in order to not be paralyzed or run away, is to add the "third-person-view": to recognize I am not the only human being hit by the major upheavals, shaken at my core. I learnt that I can go through, I need the calm to find a solution, I can survive and more importantly there are some people around me that need me more than being a victim and complainer. The light in my tunnel vision situation was that you can pass through, it is just a phase in reaching another plateau, ano...

In my life they didn't work and I separated from the women I was at the time. There is a saying, "the eyes you don't see you forget". There is no memory of us together, there is no past we can think off. Real life did not occur between us. I don't even have a photo with you/us. My daily life/cycle is different than yours and is hard to create context in writing or speech.  And context is the background of our behaviors. Commenting and having discussions is important in my day-to-day living. It is very simple, you are here or not, the talk is not enough for me, sometimes I need just silence and presence and my problems will subdue or find a solutions in subconscious . Sometimes I need just a sounding board or an ear to shoot my ideas to. I understand to have different daily lives, but need the close connection (almost) every day. Or, as I give this example with my daughter - since she was a baby she slept on my shoulder, then on my chest, then on my belly, alw...

What do you want to be the most important thing to teach Emma?    What is the most important advice you will give your kids, looking back to your life?    This is coming from Marin Preda, "The most loved earthling" book- if there is no love, nothing is. Chase love and stick with quality people, bother them, cherish them and give them your time. What I would like is leaving Emma with a framework of understanding life and people that can be passed onto her kids. Life is difficult if you don't understand the big currents in life and how people function, driven by the same dreams for thousands of years. But the most important thing is to really care about people. Empathy for others, listening to their problems and helping out cannot be taught, it is in your structure or not. And she has it. Work hard and be humble is the Kipp school slogan and I like it. I have seen many fallen stars because they were staring at their own light. We are not in the show business...

Imaginary relationship Or The life of words Or Parallel living It is so much interesting that a relationship can evolve on words only. We haven't experienced nothing together but had a few hours of conversations, where we just asked and shared and bantered and flirted. Everything exchanged was in our minds. And suddenly we see each other closer, more connected than before. Everything changed only in our minds. Our lifes are still separated by 500km, we cannot lean on each other, we cannot touch, we cannot count on any help but there is this intimacy build on words. We are bolder, freer, more open to ask, empathize and reveal ourselves. I understand the voice, intonation, gaze and body language is adding or polluting the conversation.   We are stuck in this state without any possibility to advance, in the near future. How long can we survive in this state? It is not natural, it is not healthy and it does not add veracity to the relationship. The wizardry of words has no currenc...