Jan
24

Cotechino

2007 | Filed Under Italian Food, Italy | 15 Comments

I wrote about lentils and cotechino here a little while back. Well, the other day we had some, only this time the cotechino was not your usual stuff, but Cotechino Riserva.  And, it has to be said that this cotechino was possibly the best I have ever had.  It was not at all fatty, which was odd, in a nice way, because cotechino often is, and the flavour was wonderful, maybe because some red wine had been added.

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Jan
23

Paying by credit card? - Watch out!

2007 | Filed Under Italy, Milan | Leave a Comment

I’d noticed this the other week in the local supermarket.  There was a notice saying that payment by credit card would only be accepted upon presentation of valid ID.  This is not a great problem for most Italians who never leave home without the ‘Carta d’Identitia’, but for anyone who is not from the Bel Paese, it could be.  Today I bought a new pair of shoes and was asked for ID because I wanted to pay by credit card, and being good ID card carrier, this was no problem for me.

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Jan
20

Digital photography

2007 | Filed Under Digital photography | Leave a Comment

My reawakened interest in photography has been leading me on some merry voyages of discovery around the wonderful world wide web, I can tell you. The standard of image creation is pretty stunning too. I happened along this site: dpchallenge.com, which I love. It also gives you some great information as to what your chosen model of digicam is able to do. Once you have a nice new digicam in your hot little hands, you can revisit the site to take up one of their challenges and put your photographic talent to the test, if you really do get a lot out of being a happy snapper, that is. The standard of work, which you will see if you dig into the members portfolios, is, generally, highly impressive. Well, they look darn good to little old me. Sort of fires up those creative juices. In fact I’ve found myself wandering down the street eyeing up things that would make potentially good images. I have already spotted several interesting scenes, which is making me even more keen to get my grubby little ‘ands on a ‘real’ camera.

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Jan
20

What is going on?

2007 | Filed Under Milan | Leave a Comment

It was freezing cold last night, today seemed like May.  It reached over 25°C in Turin today.  I guess winter has come and gone, but then it might be back again before deciding not to return once more.  The weather is weird.

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Jan
17

In the dog house

2007 | Filed Under Italian Food, Italy, Me | Leave a Comment

Yep, I got myself in trouble last night. I was not a popular bunny. Oh no. My goose was well and truly cooked. My crime? Well, I roasted a chicken. I thought my other half may appreciate a nice bit of roast chicken seeing as we have often bought pollo arrosto from shops in the past and I, mistakenly, believed that pollo arrosto was roast chicken. It tasted like it, but the only acceptable way to roast (I think ‘roast’ is the correct expression…) a chicken is to cook it on a spit in a suitably equipped oven, I discovered. The roast chicken odour which permeated our flat did not go down at all well, especially when I decided to boil the carcass in order to make some yummy chicken stock.

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Jan
17

Winter, maybe

2007 | Filed Under Italy, Milan | 1 Comment

In Genova, where I was at the weekend, the temperature was around 16°C.  Not bad for the bleak mid-winter.  Even in Milan we had around 10°C, which is unseasonably warm for the time of year.

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Jan
16

What could have been

2007 | Filed Under England, World News | Leave a Comment

There is a lovely article in several online newspapers today.  Here is one.  Apparently, around 50 years ago the French (!) PM proposed, secretly, that England and France should merge, thereby forming an Anglo-Francais European superpower sort of thing.

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Jan
12

Protected: Long day

2007 | Filed Under Italy | Comments Off

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Jan
9

Climate change - Have we gone too far?

2007 | Filed Under Thoughts | Leave a Comment

This is one odd winter. It is not really cold in Milan, nor was it last year. Not too long ago Milan got regular snow falls in winter. Not now. It was the same in the UK too around Christmas and we were in northern Britain at that. Remarkably mild for the time of year. Last summer it was incredibly hot during summer in the UK. My mum moaned about not being able to stand the 35°C heat.

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Jan
9

Italian TV yet again

2007 | Filed Under Italian TV | Leave a Comment

I heard it on the news last night.  Recent audience figures from the Auditel TV monitoring body have confirmed that Italians want better quality TV.  Goody, goody.  The brain numbing effect of all the low quality trashy TV programmes has finally made Italians vomit their feelings.  Good for them.  Berlusco will not be a happy bunny as his companies may actually have to forgo some pocket money and pay up to make some real interesting programmes.  Might mean an end to the dreadful Real TV program which shows other peoples video footage that has been ‘introduced’ by a half dressed nubile, but talentless, model. I’d like to say bye bye Big Brother too.

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Jan
9

Getting confused

2007 | Filed Under Language, Work | Leave a Comment

I’ve been preparing some material on sentence composition and managed to confuse myself after trying to understand the difference between adjuncts and adverbials.  Adverbials can be adjuncts apparently, but not always.  Then there is presenting all these nuggets of grammatical knowledge to students in a manner which will actually improve their written (and spoken) English in an effective and, preferably, non-confusing manner.  Fun, fun, fun.
I shall have to test this material thoroughly and monitor its long term benefits.  All I need are a few willing victims, sorry, er, guinea pigs.

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Jan
9

Wifi woes, again

2007 | Filed Under Technology and Gadgets | Leave a Comment

Blasted Dell 6400 does not do wifi too well.  It keeps dropping the signal.  I upgraded the Intel wifi management software, but had the pc’s fan go mad because the Intel software put something in my pc which kept the cpu working away far too hard, and it got so hot and bothered that another memory parity error reared its confusing head.  I’ve dumped the Intel stuff, except for the wifi card driver, but I had a little problem getting the software off my pc.  I had to open the task manager and shut down the Intel zero configuration .exe file before the uninstall would complete.  This it not something I like doing.

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