Stealing back my stolen wallet

I have to give it to them; it was indeed a nice try. Had I not heard my lipgloss fall to the metro platform floor and had my lightening quick friend Maria with me my wallet would be lying in a heap with hundreds of others in some gypsy camp right about now.

This is how it went down: last night my friend Maria and I were on our way to catch the red line metro from Loreto. I pull out my wallet, tap it to the sensor at the entrance of the metro which sounds off a buzz and allows me to pass through the turnstile. I place the wallet back in my purse which is hanging over my shoulder and saunter down the stairs to the platform blabbering on with Maria about this or that. Once on the platform I hear something fall to the floor, and turn around to see my lipgloss lying there. As I reach down to pick it up Maria asks me if I have everything else from my purse, and when patted down with my hand I realize that my wallet isn’t there. Maria, who has been the unfortunate victim of several metro robbery attempts, starts telling me that the two 20-something girls who are standing beside us watching me have taken my wallet. I say to one of them, “Apri la borsa!” and she voluntarily opens her bag wide and I don’t see my turquoise blue wallet anywhere. Maria assumes the worst; that these girls quickly snagged the wallet and have already passed it off to an accomplice who made a run for it. I noticed that the girl had a second bag, under her other arm, which she was holding close to her body. I demanded that she open that one too, and went to grab it from her. As I held the straps of the purse I saw my wallet squeezed between the bag and her body. At first she tries to hide it from me but I grabbed it.

Just a regular Tuesday.

Creation from last night: Tigerkaka, or Marble cake.

While I was experimenting with cake my roommate Valery decided to try out a new lemon-y cocktail on me: lots of vodka, lemon juice, and lemon snaps. Wow! It made for a spectacular Tuesday evening at home. Enjoy the photos!

Let's not forget this morning: I made my first latte macchiato! It turned out deliciously well. Excellent way to start the day!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

"People who photograph food and display the pictures online"

I read this article a few days ago and think I'll start doing this on my blog. Some of the food I eat here is so beautiful I think it deserves to be showcased. Will especially be posting photos of baked goods and other dishes that I cook myself. This will also be neat to do when I go to Indonesia!
Check out what people are doing in the following NYTimes article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/dining/07camera.html?scp=1&sq=pictures%20food%20&st=cse

Let me start here - some photos of Swedish SEMLOR that I baked a few weeks ago for mardi gras.

Swedish chef

I think my love affair with Milan is ending. We've had a great run, made amazing memories together and fallen in love over the years. Recently however, upon returning to Milan after skiing in the Swiss alps with my mother and sister, I realized that I might be moving on from my relationship with Milan. We just seem to be growing apart from one another.

In the past few months I have applied to a number of PhD programs in the USA and Canada. After a slew of rejections (I received my last rejection letter about 2 months ago) things have been suspiciously quiet on the PhD application front. This has given me plenty of time to make myself crazy with all the "what ifs?" that are swirling around in my head. So what if I'm not accepted anywhere? At this point I've already given my 3 months notice to my landlord and we've even found new renters; expected to move in the first week of June. Will I stay in Milan, even if my head and heart have already moved on? Or should I move closer to my family in New York, even though I don't have anything solid lined up there? Believe me, it's not an easy desicion.

I've recently been toying with the idea of changing careers (please don't tell my mom, she'll kill me). Yes being an engineer is rewarding and I love the work I do but there are other options and I have other passions which I might find just as much pleasure pursuing professionally. For example, I might want to try my hand at being a pastry chef. Baking has been a hobby of mine for a long time, and with positive feedback from friends and colleagues I've been motivated to consider this as an alternative to chemical engineering... I mean afterall, they are really similar: selection and preparation of just the right ingredients, mixing components in precise quantities, heating to a specific temperature for just the right amount of time to permit a chemical reaction to occur, and ensuring the final product comes out just right.

Who knows, I might be the next Swedish chef!

2 ships passing

Yesterday after work I went to the central train station in Milan, the elegant and imposing Stazione Centrale, to buy a train ticket to go visit my sister in Switzerland in May. I walked up the stairs from the metro and to my surprise right in front of me was a very familiar face, that of my first love. For about a year and a half of my time spent living in Milan I was paranoid that I might run into him; and if I did, what then? Would I make a run for it? Or look straight past him with cold and unforgiving eyes? Or greet him as I would any old friend with a big hug and a warm smile?
As it turns out, after all that time has passed, my reaction was the latter. We had a chuckle at the chances of running into each other in such a busy transit point at rush house, I accompanied him to buy a train ticket, and we embraced and shared a quick kiss before he ran off to catch his train.
He went his way, I went mine.