Thursday, August 24, 2006

22/8: potential terrorism


Look at the picture: what is that?

It is not what it looks like....
It is definitely not BABY FOOD !

At least according to Stansted airport personnel.
It may be a dangerous item, or some component that could potentially be used to make a bomb...
who knows...
but it is not baby food.
So they thought at the airport, and I tried to reply to the nasty woman at the inspection: "if it is food for adults, why don't you eat it?".
She then specified: "it is not CLASSIFIED as baby food".
Poor Rachele! she had to fly without food...

There I laughed, but what made me pissed of was a bit of envy: that woman has a quite crap job, still she was so passionate!
So energetic!
There must be some satisfaction related to the possibility of exercising power, no matter how logic or intelligent the decision is.
But really, looking at her, it was like seeing that she was so proud of having avoided a possible terrible accident, because she was so careful to avoid that that food entered to the airport!
Amazing!
A lot of people I know, and some time even myself, should have one out of ten of her motivation factor at work: results would be much better!

20/8: Wimpole Hall



We have been visiting Wimpole Hall, a very nice park with a Farm and a beautiful noble house of XVII century.
It is interesting to see a snapshot of the life stile of these people at that time, by looking at the furniture and the arrangement of the house itself. And it is funny to notice that now a days one room out of two or so, of that house would be useless.
There are many rooms for specific use cases: one for reading, another one for playing piano, a dinning room for breakfast, another one much wider for lunch, and a room for dressing up, beside the bed room.
I wonder who was the first reach man who discovered that it is actually convenient to change clothes in the bed room!
Or that to have to walk a lot to reach the reading room maybe not so practical....
However: when we went downstairs, visiting the servants room, I thought: "as overall arrangement, this should be much more close to what we are using nowadays". Indeed it was... except that the living room was at list the double of the size of the one where I live now!

Sunday, August 13, 2006

13/8: Ely's Cathedral


This morning was heavily raining so we went with friends in an amusement center for kids, in Ely.
Then, as soon as the sunshine appeared, we decide to have a walk around and we went to visit Ely's Cathedral, which I was scheduling since a quite long time.

It is a worship site since VII century, but the older visible part of the Cathedral is standing since 1091.
Amazing! really impressive!
No much to say really, just astonishment.
This is not the best Cathedral I ever seen, not at all.

But still is impressive. And my mind could not avoid to go back to a novel I've been reading and enjoying a lot last summer: "The Pillars of the earth", of Ken Follet. I had a look at the inner part of the site by remembering one of the novel's character words, and I really had the impression that the columns were just the "binding" from the earth to something "else". Funny to think in this way, but I understand the purpose of such a wonderful construction and the feelings of middle-age people.
It's really a place worth seeing.