Jean's Weblog

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Wake up to a rainy morning, soft warm rain. Forecast is promising many sunny days after this rain cloud passes. Shuttle driver is joking about reindeer. happy morning.

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Turned out it was only raining in the City. It was dry when i got off the shuttle and promptly forgot my umbrella on the shuttle.

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My small “London Fog” fold up umbrella with black, white, blue and pink cats. I’ve had it for over four years. It went with me to Paris and Pompeii.

As I walked over to our evening shuttle stop and wondering whether i should call ZM to come and pick me up when i got home since it is raining in the city again. I saw the shuttle driver from my morning bus, he was walking into the “Lost and Found” office, with my umbrella!

All is well ends well.

Over the weekend, I realized the new movie “Up in the Air” is by the same director who brought us “Thank you for smoking” and “Juno”. My interests was piqued. I just finished reading Anthony Lane’s review of it on the latest New Yorker, and he liked it!  That is very rare.  Now i definitely want to watch the movie.

So i went over to watch the trailers and some clips. They were hilarious! Brought back flood of memories from the old days when i used to travel/live for the miles! Now i’m dying to watch this movie!

A couple of FreshAir interviews relate to “Up in the Air”

• For Reitman, The Best Characters Are ‘Up In The Air’
• Walter Kirn: Living, Or Something, In The ‘Air World’

So it is done, and here are the World Cup Groups 2010!

Group A: South Africa, Mexico, Uruguay, France
Group B: Argentina, South Korea, Nigeria, Greece,
Group C: England, USA, Algeria, Slovenia
Group D: Germany, Australia, Ghana, Serbia
Group E: Holland, Japan, Cameroon, Denmark,
Group F: Italy, New Zealand, Paraguay, Slovakia
Group G: Brazil, North Korea, Ivory Coast, Portugal
Group H: Spain, Honduras, Chile, Switzerland.

Was Thanksgiving always this pleasant, weather wise?
It only rained on black Friday. The rest of the four day weekend was sunny and warm. The breeze was so soft and sunny that it felt more like Spring rather than Winter.

Today I was able to sit on the beach and read New Yorker for an hour. It was warm, wind-less, gorgeous waves, and herds of pleasantly surprised beach goers just like me strolling up and down the beach, sunbathing, or making sand castles. This kind of beach day doesn’t happen very often on this Northern California shore.

Bliss.

There is now a new Beijing correspondence for the New Yorker, while Peter Hessler has remained quiet lately, the new guy’s name is Evan Osnos. The last profile he did for Hu Shuli left a strong impression on me. Yesterday i just read his latest on Chinese Romance with Red Wine. Fascinating.

What’s more, i discovered that he keeps a blog on the new yorker site, Letter from China. Currently it has some interesting entries on Obama’s recent visit. Quite a few insights on why China won’t go along with the US’s mission on Iran, but also call out the better than expected agreement on renewable energy, and last but not the least, interesting description of the life of Obama’s press corp in China.

I’m making my way slowly into his archives, just got into middle of October 2009. Feeling great that there are so many more months left to be read. The author description on the blog also mentioned that he is working on a book on China. How cool!

Captions still need work. But here are the photos, enjoy!

Italy 2009 – Rome

Italy'09 II: Tuscany – Florence, Siena, S. Gimignano

Italy 2009 – Napoli, Herculaneum, Pompeii

Italy'09 IV: Sicily – Palermo, Corleon, Syracusa, Ragusa

The Last Night in Rome

Yesterday was a long day of travel across ocean and continents, starting from 4:40am in a Rome hostel by the train station, and ending in the comfort of our home in San Fran, total of 25 hours in transit.

Turned on my camera this morning and realized the very last photo of the two thousand plus was this one from our last night in Rome: a cello left lying on the piazza of Campo dei Fiori. Seemed a rather fitting ending of the past 21 days. One session of music has ended, awaits for more?

Now i have to go through all the photos and collect my thoughts. Three weeks has always been my upper bound of being away: Europe in 1997, Eucador in 2002, Turkey in 2004, China in 2005, and now Italy in 2009. But this time, I wasn’t as eager to return home as before. We have gotten into a somewhat comfortable pattern during our final weeks traveling in Sicily. Finding a base, then peaking into little towns in the vicinity, deciding on length of stay, checking out the scene, finding our favorite local Trattoria or Osteria, trying out new dishes, new pastry/bakery/sweets, and then move on.

Places we’ve been are: Rome, Florence, Siena, San Gimignano, Naples, Herculaneum, Pompeii, Palermo, Corlenone, Syracusa, Ragusa. My favorite places are Rome and Siena…

More to come…