TGIF

My Friday consisted of this:

Woke up a little before 9 am. Got dressed, at 9:30 am went downstairs where my knight in shining armor was waiting for me on his white horse.. and by white horse I mean scooter and by armor I mean helmet. The 2 of us drive to Stazione Centrale; this weekend we're going to visit Anais in Lyon and we had to buy train tickets. With 2 round-trip tickets from Milan to Lyon totaling close to 300 € we decided we'll drive it instead.
Leaving the train station we head over to my favorite bar to have an Italian breakfast of café macchiato, or an espresso stained with just the foam of a cappuccino.
After breakfast we split up, with an embrace, a smile, and a "buona giornata." He buzzes off on the scooter and I hop on the metro to head down to the Porta Genova area to make a stop at the best enoteca I know around here, Bottega del Vino. This store is filled with so many delicious wines, some of which I have the pleasure of recognizing with fond memory. I pick up 3 bottles: a Pinot Grigio by Livio Felluga, a Nebbiolo by Pio Cesare, and a Barolo. A sign behind the register read "Compri 2 bottiglie di vino e ti regaliamo un bicchiere gratis" or buy two bottles of wine and we'll give you a free wine glass. I walk out of the enoteca with my bag of treasures, 3 bottles of exquisite wine and the free glass.
Walking up Corso Genova I reach Oasi del Gelato and I can't help but to go in and get an ice cream. Today was one of those lovely late summer days; still warm enough to wear a summer dress and walk around eating an ice cream cone. Today it was lemon and raspberry.
I continue to walk towards the center of town, stopping when I reach Chiesa Santa Maria Presso di San Satiro. A few weeks ago I was told by a Milanese friend that there is an architectural secret inside this church which lies behind a gate, hidden on a small side street off the busy Via Torino. Apparently it only catches your eye as you walk up the central aisle of the church. Curious as I was I asked him not to tell me the secret, I wanted to discover it on my own. Seems as though today wasn't the day though; the sign outside the church told me it was closed, I had come right in the middle of their modest 11:30 am to 3:30 pm (Italian-style) lunch break.
I passed Piazza Duomo, quickly glancing at the magnificent cathedral but not venturing into the tourist-filled Piazza itself. Tram 1 came clunking down the street, I got on and was on my way home. Made a quick lunch of a frittata and insalata caprese, hopped on my bike, and headed down to l'Università di Politecnico where I had a meeting in the afternoon.

And that was my Milanese Friday.

Kladdkaka

Here's a recipe for Swedish kladdkaka or "messy cake". It's delicious when it's slightly undercooked and should be served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• 150 g margarine/butter
• 3 dl sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla sugar (or slightly less of vanilla extract)
• 1 dl cacao powder
• 2 eggs
• 2 dl flour

Melt the butter in a pot, stir in the sugars and the cacao. Add the eggs, flour, and vanilla, stir until smooth.

Pour the mixture into a sugared pan and put in the oven at 175 °C for approximately 20 minutes et voilà!

Vacanze estive 2009

Just 15 more days until vacation!
Here's the itinerary:
August 14-16: Chamonix, France





August 17-22: Havana, Cuba

August 22-23: Montreal, Canada

August 23-September 3: Mattituck and NYC, USA






Buone vacanze a tutti!

Couchsurfers

About 2 weeks ago I updated my profile on the travel website couchsurfing.org. It's a website created for travelers who would prefer to stay at someone's home than in a hotel, and supported by people who don't mind hosting a few nomads for a night or two on their couch. I had been registered on the site for about 2 years already without ever having explored it. When my good friend Cynthia registered herself on the site and reminded me of its existence I decided to give it a second try. Familiarizing myself with what the site is about and what kind of people are signed up, I quickly realized that this is totally up my alley. Meeting foreigners? Check. Being hospitable? Check. Possibly making a new friend or two? Double check. I got to work on my profile page, posting some pictures from my travels and some of me just doing my thing here in Milan. Added what languages I speak, some of my interests, and a blurb about myself and what kind of people I enjoy meeting, and most importantly, I changed the status of my couch to "available". I kid you not: within minutes of my profile update my email inbox was receiving so many requests to sleep on my couch that I didn't even have time to respond to all of them. Since the update, I have been receiving about 20 email requests per day from travelers all over the world to sleep on my couch! I never knew it was such a desirable destination.

I love the idea of hosting people. Even if at the moment I myself am not out exploring the world I can always live vicariously through the stories of others, and even hope that when I do put my traveling boots back on that someday, somewhere, someone might just return the favor. Through all these requests I decided to ease myself into this whole couchsurfing phenomenon by accepting to host a young American woman working as an aupair in Berlin, traveling through Milan for a night on a vacation in Italy. She's arriving next weekend, which worked out well because I knew my roommate Maria wouldn't be around as I didn't want to intrude by inviting strangers into our home. When I told Maria about our future visitor her reaction was, "Oh it's such a shame I won't be here then to meet her!" Little did I know that Maria's also registered on couchsurfing, and has already done some surfing of her own in Barcelona. Judging by her reaction I thought it'd be fine to ask her if we can host other people, and so last night we had our first couchsurfers stay in our living room!

Three 20 year old Swedish guys from Gothenburg spent the night at our apartment and I was proud to introduce them to Milan by way of an aperitivo. In addition, we also have a cat who's couchsurfing this week as our friend went away on vacation! So our house is full of surfers!

In the next few weeks before I go on vacation we'll be having lots more couchsurfers… so stay tuned for some updates!

Date night, Milan style.

Dating in Milan brings to mind just one word: aperitivo. Aperitivo is a truly Milanese tradition, where each evening from around 7 to 10 pm bars all around Milan serve up an unlimited buffet of food, mix up over-sized cocktails, and quickly fill up with young adults out to socialize. You pay just the price of a cocktail (around 8 €) and eat until your belly’s content, surrounded by the laughter and chit chatter of gregarious Italians. (Check out this article from the NYTimes written about Milan’s aperitivo scene to get an idea: http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/in-milan-the-best-meal-deal-in-italy/?scp=6&sq=milan&st=cse)Essentially, it’s the perfect activity to propose if you want to take someone out on a date.

Don’t ask me how it happened, but this week I found myself with 4 invitations for aperitivo from 4 different people. I’m a big fan of aperitivo, but does it get old if you do it every night of the week? I suppose I’ll let you know when the week is up…

That being said… suggestions for a 2^nd date that are not aperitivo-related are very welcome!

Quarter century mark

I did it. I’ve arrived at the quarter century mark.

Yesterday was my 25^th birthday. It seems to be a remarkable number of years, judging from reactions I’ve been getting from birthday well-wishers. Some, like my colleague Alessandro, can’t understand why I’m happy to celebrate my birthday. “Ogni volta che compili gli anni vuol dire che hai uno meno da vivere” or in English, “Every year you celebrate another birthday it just means you have one year less to live.” His reasoning leads him to the conclusion that each birthday should be a mournful event, remembering the year gone by and grieving its loss. Hmm! Interesting, but I can’t say I agree. In my opinion, every birthday you have means that you’ve done well enough to keep yourself alive another year, which should certainly be celebrated. I mean it’s easy enough to live to be 5, you don’t really need to do that much considering you probably have someone looking out for you: giving you food, shelter, putting bandaids on your scraped knees, and making sure you get your vaccinations. But when you’re 25? Seems like the number of things to take care of grew exponentially from when I was 5, and what’s worse, I’m expected at this point to be able to take care of them myself. So far I’ve managed quite well, which is why I decided yesterday was a day to celebrate!

Hitting the ¼ century mark I somehow feel like I’ve entered adulthood. Not that anything in my life has changed, mind you, but it’s just something about that number, 25, that seems so grown-up. That’s why this year for my birthday bash we (my friends Maria, Cynthia, and I) decided it was time to kick-it up a notch and make the theme of the party “Creative Black Tie.” I figured at 25 it was about time I wear my first tie, and what better way to do so than in the company of my equally dressed peers?

Here are some shots taken at the party, enjoy!

Marangoni fashion show

Here are some photos I took at the Marangoni fashion show in Milan, on July 2nd. Marangoni is a fashion school in Milan, and all the clothes shown at the fashion show were designed and constructed by graduating students! Bravi studenti! Viva la moda!

Zebras in Warsaw

Last weekend, from Saturday until early Monday morning, I was in Warsaw, Poland. Accompanied by one of my favorite travel buddies, Salma, we set out to get a taste for this historically important city. Saturday was awesome, we left the hotel and walked down one of the main streets, Marszalkowska, until we reached a suitable place to have some lunch. Although it was a little on the heavy side compared to the Italian food I'm used to these days, the lunch was amazing. We ate potato and cheese filled pierogi, ground meat wrapped in cabbage leaves (closely resembling the Swedish kåldolmar), and little patties of fried cheese served with lingonberry jam, while sipping mugs of blackcurrant juice. Yum!

After lunch we wandered through a street fair on Nowy Swiat and over to the old town, or Stare Miasto. In a city that was 90 % demolished by the Nazis during WWII and wasn't rebuilt until the 1970s the old town is drastically different than the majority of the city. Walking around the rest of the city, with its wide streets and sidewalks, modern apartment buildings and lack of the cobble-stone streets so abundant in most European cities, you feel like you could be in Ottawa or some other North American metropolis. When you walk down Nowy Swiat towards the old town, however, this sensation melts away as you approach the old, colorful 4-story buildings on the horizon, pass cathedrals dating back to the 13th century, and wave hello to the monument of Copernicus.

We reached a square lined with quirky colorful buildings on all sides just as it started to drizzle and were able to listen to a few songs from an outdoor jazz concert. Just as the rain let up we sat a beautiful rainbow stretch across the sky, which you'll see in the photo to the left..

After the jazz concert we continued exploring the city. Salma and I only see each other for the occasional weekend here and there about every 2 months or so, so most of our time spent together consists of catching up on news and filling each other in on the goings-on in our lives. Wrapped up in one of these types of discussions and oblivious to stoplights Salma and I stepped off of the curb to cross the street when our light was red, just as 2 Polish police officers were biking by (looking very threatening indeed). They stopped cycling across the street from us, waiting for us to approach. As we made it to the other side of the street I knew they were going to comment on our J-walking, but I didn't know the conversation would go something like this:

Cycling police officer #1: (says something in Polish, clearly unhappy with us)

Jasmin: "English?"

The 1st cycling police officer calls over the 2nd, who confidently strides over to us to use his English skills.

Cycling police officer #2: "Did not you see light is red?"

Jasmin: "Ummm, yes. There were no cars coming though."

Cycling police officer #2: "Walk red dangerous. Car, you fly! Watch the zebras! Look zebras. This time you go."

Salma and Jasmin: "Uhh, ok. Thanks officer."

If you had trouble understanding that interaction you're not alone. It left Salma and I laughing for blocks, even if I was pretty paranoid that I'd end up in Polish prison for the weekend (probably the law-abiding Swede in me). After consideration we figured the zebras he was referring to were actually the black and white striped crosswalks.

Anyway, if you go to Warsaw, watch out for the zebras or the police might be on your back. You've been warned.

mia prima pizza

Last night I made my first pizza, from scratch!
Two kinds: cherry tomatoes and basil and sausage and onions.
Have you ever seen anyone so proud of pizza before?

mafipulating with the Jane Grey

This week I'm working at Università di Politecnico di Milano. I come here to use the laboratory in the chemical engineering department from time to time through a collaboration that my company has with the university.
When I'm here I'm a regular lab rat. Donning a white knee-length lab coat and latex gloves I run around the lab setting temperatures on ovens, picking microchips out of acid solutions with sharp steel tweezers, and weighing out polymer pellets to a thousandth of precision. While this may sound like a drag to some I get wrapped up in it, doing my best to make sure each reaction goes as planned.
The past two days however haven't been that successful. While cleaning the microchips the hydrochloric acid corroded the chips and killed their electrical function. This caused me to lose a day of work as I tried again and again to get some functional chips out of the cleaning process. In the end my success rate was a measly 5/17 chips.
I think I need to take a few notes from the Look Around You scientists as they so skillfully mafipulate with their Jane Greys. Check out this episode about water... clear, refreshing, and impossible to describe!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCWA7uevo_Q

No Berlin, no gay parade.

Friday night, just as I finished packing my bag, I sprawled out on my bed and grabbed my cell phone. Set the alarm: 3:13 am. Just as I put the phone down and closed my eyes to get what would have been 2.5 hours of sleep I had a second thought, rolled over, and just to be safe set my analog alarm to 3:15 am. Armed with 2 alarms, 2.5 hours of sleep, and my bag already packed I figured I'd be in pretty good condition to make it to the airport on time without too much trouble.
Yea, think again. Next thing I knew I woke up, greeted by a light blue-pinkish sky and recognized that something was wrong. I hadn't heard any alarm, and glancing over at the clock on my nightstand saw that it read 5:45 am. You know those moments in time where everything stops and you realize that you've done something completely idiotic that can't be amended? Yes, this was one of those moments. With my flight for Berlin taking off at 6:25 am from Bergamo, there was no way I was making this one. It was a sad morning in the life of this jet-setter.

Berlin

Tomorrow morning I'm off to Berlin where I'll go check out the gay parade, among other things! The forecast says rain... let's hope it not too bad and that I can frolick about the town regardless!
I'll post some pictures and stories when I get back on Monday!

Have a lovely weekend!

Milan from the back of Swann's bike

Here's a video that I took on Saturday night (6/20) while catching a ride on the back of Swann's bike. We had just finished dinner at the Mongolian Barbeque and were making our way home through the streets of Milan on our bikes as it started raining. The bike squad here is made up of Swann (my ex-roommate), Maria (my current roomie), and Swann's boyfriend Yannick. We point out the location of the neighborhood marketplace and the local sex shop, so stay tuned!

Gold-plated microwaved yeast

Hi and welcome to my blog, "quo vadis?". As I'm writing I'm kind of wondering who in the world will be reading this, but I guess that's a question I can't answer at the moment! Since I'm really new at this and I don't even know what kind of information is really "blogworthy" anyway I suppose I can start off by telling everyone why I decided to start this blog.

It was yesterday. I was at work, listening to a salesman make a presentation about a super-spiffy maskless lithography machine that our research group is considering buying. This salesman was classic. About 50 or so, nice suit, leather shoes (all Italian people wear is leather shoes), well-prepared with a box of jellied fruit candies and a presentation full of micrographs that would tickle the imagination of any nanotechnologist. (Don't ask me why but I found that my attention kept drifting away from the micrographs and towards those sugary jelly candies..) Another detail about this guy that I couldn't avoid noticing: he was bald, like totally bald, and freshly shaven, with carefully-trimmed eyebrows, but with the hairiest earlobes I've ever seen. It's mind-boggling to me how someone who clearly pays attention to their appearance, and especially their facial hair, can skip over trimming those windy, wirey, 1-inch long earlobe hairs. Some things are beyond my comprehension, I suppose this is just one of them. Signore Lobehair presents this instrument to us using a PowerPoint presentation and flipping through the slides of micrographs while briefly giving examples of different potential applications. He pauses at a slide with an image of a microstructure that has an application he thinks we'll be particularly interested in, remembering that our group is involved in nanoBIOtech, biosensors, and so on. The application here? Attempted genocide of yeast cells, ie. saccharomyces cerevisiae, through the use of a microwave, was evaluated by coating the seemingly-dead cells in gold and measuring any movement of the cells with the electrode sensor. If you've ever asked yourself if yeast can survive being microwaved, just slap some gold on those puppies and measure their movement with an electrode. Huh?! Anyway, as I was listening to this I was just thinking that it sounded like a terrible science fiction flick or even a future episode of "Look Around You", or maybe just the greatest idea ever that I need to share with the world through my new blog..!

My life in the past year has flip-flopped between comedic, distressing, confusing, desultory, random, and tranquil, but always interesting. I hope you'll all enjoy these entries from my young-adulthood, whether they're about work, friends, fun, love, family, travels.. or anything else in between.

Ciao ciao!