“Welcome,Sir”. “Good evening,Sir”. I take a deep breath. End of today’s trip. I am home. But is it home? No, but these greetings are reassuring and familiar by now. They remind me of the country where I live now when I enter the lobby of the Marriot airport hotel in Manila. I recognise some of the staff as I have been here a few times now. Always arriving in the evening and leaving very early […]
It is 7:00 in the morning. Sunday morning. We have Dumaguete, Manila,Hong Kong, the skies on China and Russia behind us. Helsinki is like a ghost town. As if all its inhabitants would have suddendly left or would have all be taken away during the course of the night by a alien forces from an unknown dimension leaving behind broken glasses, empty McDonalds paper cups swept by the autumn wind on the pavement. We walk […]
We just started our descento into Manila. Pressure is changing in the cabin. This the first leg of the long journey home, or better said to our homelands. We will fly tonight to Helsinki via Hong Kong, then after 10 days we will go to Italy. That will be the first time for Venla who is now 3 and 1/2 and the third time for Olga. Olga has been worried about travelling to Italy. She […]
A soft summer wind outside shakes the huge mango trees and the palms in our garden. It is past midnight and I cannot remember last time I have been so late up working on a paper and writing now in this blog. Headphones throwing ambient music from my iTune radio. Familiar sounds that accompany my home based work. For a second a felt like being back at the university, more precisely in Glasgow. Working on […]
Ho provato un nuovo modo di correre alla sera. Scarpe da jogging, pantaloncini, maglietta, iPod e i podcast di Travaglio. Corro qui a Dumaguete su una pista attorno ad un campo di calcio e quindi dopo qualche giro mi perdo nelle parole che ascolto nelle cuffiette. Ieri ‘e stata la volta del podcast sulla protezione civile e gli interventi (o mancati interventi) in Abruzzo per il terremoto. La prefettura che si svuota alle 23:30 alla […]
It is dark outside the windows of the yellow cab from Ninoy Aquino airport to the Makati district in Manila. I usually have to stay one night here before catching the flight to Dumaguete early in the morning. This time I did not find a room in the hotel where I usually to stay. So I browsed the web to look for a different one and found this London Inn. The traffic is not too […]
Bip. Bip Bip. The automatic door of the train starts to close. In my mind still the last words I told her: ‘I am a crazy man’. She had looked at me and with a slight smile and had replied: ‘Could be worse’. Now the door is closed and whatever I want to reply will stay this side of the glass window. I look at her. Our daughter is holding her hand and looking at […]
‘We are both so old’, I think looking at our hands. The thin skin that wraps the bones as a glove. The wrinkles on our fingers. The blue veins. Yet the same feeling of holding her hands as long ago. We are sitting on this small beach made by millions of tiny corals pieces. Sitting at the edge of the water, sipping beer from two bottles. Soft waves reaching the shore in the quiet night. […]
It is hot. The sound of the crickets is loud from the garden immersed in the tropical night. I tried to keep my eyes closed and find the sleep within my thoughts but it does not work. I put my hands under my head and look at the ceiling through the thin mosquito net which hags over the bed. I follow the lines drawn by the shadow of the window frame. I close my eyes […]
What does influence our way of thinking? What does determine our believes, our point of view of the world? These are questions that have been around for some time and probably will never cease to be. Each of us has an own point of view and interpretation of reality. When Obama was elected many people were happy. However that election meant something different to all those people because each of them as a particular point […]