I've just read an article on The Guardian, called Hanrietta Lacks: the mother of modern medicine, talking about this woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951 and whose cells have since been used in medical research to provide cure for many diseases.

Henrietta was poor and black. All her children suffered poor health and didn't have medical insurance to cover the treatment of their conditions. But more significantly, they didn't know how important their mother had been to many thousands of patients all over the world for the past fifty or so years.

Rebecca Skloot, who became fascinated by Henrietta since a biology class in her college years, decided to investigate the life of the woman hidden behind the simple acronym HeLa cells. She investigated the case and finally had to unfold Henrietta's children the story after their mother's death.

The point Rebecca has tried to make referred to the fact that so often in medical research, there is a tendency to approach cells and tissues as mere tools to experiment with. Rarely, the life of the people who provided those cells and tissues is taken into account.

I had the same feeling two weeks ago when I went to the exhibition Skin at the Wellcome Trust: a powerful exhibition exploring the anthropological, sociological, artistic and medical meaning of the tissue that protects us from the outside world and puts us in contact with it at the same time: the skin.

Many memories and flashes from my life and my family sprang to mind: the skin condition at the elbows of which I suffered once at 16, the fungis that my father has on his back, a photo of wrinkled hands reminded me of my grandfather.

And then there was this photo: a magnified photo of a cancer cell. It was blueish, like a little bubble of foam, it looked soft and light. Yet, it was a cancer cell. Yet, it belonged to someone whose life might have ended by the time I was looking at the photo.

I thought at how impersonally we can look at the photo of an ill cell. We have already seen the image in a science book, perhaps. But there's an entire universe behind that cell. There's a life, there are relationships, there are feelings. I am reassured to know that other people have my same thoughts.

Muslim vs Atheism - The case for women

"I don't shake hands with women."

It was those words that pulled me down and humiliated me. I went to a debate where I had to feel uncomfortable from the very beginning. "Sister, sister...that way," a man said pointing to the side of the room, where all the women were supposed to sit -stupidly facing the centre of the room instead of the stage, so then I was forced to assist the entire conference twisting my neck.

At the end of the debate, "Muslim vs Atheism", I went to the Muslim speaker, unconvinced by his argument on the existence of God based on the fact that the universe must have a beginning and therefore a cause, God. Mr Hamza Tzortzis answered my question and cut short saying that he's available via email to answer further questions. I then politely thanked him and stretched my hand forward for a respectful shake.

And there he stabbed me: "I don't shake hands with women." It is not the fact that he denied to shake hands with me that bothered me. If it was not culturally acceptable for him to shake hands with people, for whatever reason, I would have accepted it. But no, the fact that he denied to shake hands on the principle that I am a woman just pissed me off. I felt humiliated, scorned, angry.

Mr Ed Buckner, in his defence of atheism, forgot to mention how religions, Islam in particular, have contributed to lock women out of society and put them under the dominance of men. Men who claim to be rational and base their belief in God on rational grounds, but then have to cover up their women because they are too irrational to resist the temptation of women's beauty. How silly of women to accept this and believe it is protective of them in any way.

The fact that men and women should be treated differently because God, or Allah, or whoever claims to be the divine said so, is something that I cannot accept. You may call it a cultural bias. But entering that room tonight, being denied a shake of hands, a sign of respect and equality on the basis that I am a woman, made me feel like I was back in 18th century, if not earlier. And no religion that claims that there should be a difference of treatment of men and women on the basis of gender should be supported.

There is no intrinsic difference between men and women, other than biological ones. Therefore, a difference in treatment between men and women is no more acceptable than a difference of treatment based on the colour of skin or on the colour of someone's eyes. It is DISCRIMINATORY AND RACIST. If that is what Islam preaches, then I assume it is a discriminatory religion.

Brits are freaks - World Cup Fever

Flags are hanging from the windows. From the windows of cars and houses alike. Coming back home a guy walked past me, proudly waving a flag.

The atmosphere was quite weird, almost eerie. I had the impression some shops closed earlier and people wearing suits or office outfits were rushing home, or to some friends' house, or to the pub.

Rushing to watch England play against Algeria tonight. After the draw against the US, they can't afford to lose.

You can feel it in the damp air, the pressure, the vibe of the World Cup Fever. And if you just glance up, you will also see it all around.

White flags, a red cross. England. How nationalist one can be because of football...

Rihanna's concert

So I went to Rihanna's concert last night. And it was AWESOME! She's not the best singer ever, but she's definitely a good performer. She had the vibe, the moves, the passion. She laughed, smiled, had fun and she got even a little emotional when she introduced Rehab.

"Have you ever been in love? A friend of mine, Justin Timberlake wrote a song for me about being addicted to love....because I was."

I honestly shivered. And most importantly went home thinking I spent my money in a good way.
Enjoy the pics.

Wanna see more? Check out my Flickr account!

Brits are Freaks - Homeless Mothers

It was Mother's Day. I was on a night bus from Victoria to Angel. An old woman got on. She was carrying a sort of trolley and wanted to sit exactly where I was sitting, on the back seat in the corner. Fair enough. I helped her carry her trolley and shoved up. At a certain point she started blowing kisses to a couple of clerks working at a pizza-place. To my amusement she felt like explaining such a behaviour.

"I'm homeless," she said. "They give me a cup of tea when I go there." I couldn't really understand all what she was saying -her thick accent and her toothless mouth didn't help either- but she kept talking and I listened. I asked her how she became homeless and she told me her husband kicked her out. After having 4 children together.

Speaking of which... I asked her why her children didn't take care of her. "They don't have space, and I don't want to a burden for them anyway." How could she possibly be a burden for her own kids? I didn't go into details. And it's not my business anyway. But I thought there was something deeply wrong in the idea of this woman's children not taking care of her, just letting her sleep on the bus. She might have been a terrible mother, but still.

It is true that children are generally ungrateful towards their parents. But letting them be homeless, when they almost definitely have a sofa where their mother or father could sleep, now that is over the top. And it was even Mother's Day.

A story of power and its destructive consequences - Q&A with Filippo Timi, aka, Mussolini in Vincere

Power and its destructive consequences are at the centre of Marco Bellocchio's Vincere, a film that debuted in Cannes last year and makes its way in the British market only now, one year later. Poco male, I would say in Italian, if the UK premiere is in London while I'm in London and hosts as guest speaker Filippo Timi, who played the character of Mussolini in the film.

I recently watched Come Dio comanda (As God Commands), so it's a bit strange to have him in front of me at the Q&A, not handsome but charming, humble and incredibly smart, stuttering but self-ironic ("Have you seen how good I was?", he said pointing back at the screen). So, without further ado, here's what he said after the screening...

Q: At the centre of Vincere there is the character of Ida Dalser. Was her story known before the film in Italy?
F: No, in Italy the story of Ida Dalser was not known at all. Marco was interested in the role of Ida because she is the only female figure who completely opposed to the regime, Mussolini. Then, she gave birth to the first son of Mussolini and it's heartbreaking that he killed them both.

Q: The film also touches upon the Church and its interference with politics.
F: Well, there is still an interference of the Church in politics. Recently, there was a discussion on a law proposal regarding civil partnerships in Parliament and there was an unspoken threat of excommunication by the Vatican for those who would vote in favour of this law proposal.

Q: In this film, we see your character, Mussolini, in a twofold way. We have you on the one hand and the archive footage of the real Mussolini on the other hand. Why is that?
F: Well, you see, one thing is the public figure, another thing is everyday life. Mussolini's look and his body language were definitely enthralling. Think that some women thought to have fallen pregnant because Mussolini had looked at them.

Q: How was it playing the role of Mussolini?
F: It was the most unpleasant role I have ever played. There was also the risk of mimicking, something which Marco didn't want. The trick was to find inside of me something I call "the dark river", an eager yearning for power. And it was complicated. A woman at Cannes asked me if it was hard to enter the role. And it was. But it was even harder to exit the role. You know, after having played for three months the game of absolute power, you go home, to your mom -and you love her, but you want that dinner be served at 8 o'clock! Power is like a drug. I do understand and I pity men who are in power. Power is beautiful but smashes any form of sweetness.

Q: The opening scene is almost a provocation to the viewer. Was it designed like this in the original script?
F: The script was quite specific, but to my eyes it was unintelligible. Bellocchio tends to work on the composition of the frame. For example, in the script he writes "Ida climbs up a window". I couldn't imagine that the window would be 5-metre high with bars. And then images open to other meanings as well.

Q: How did you react when you first watched the movie? Because one thing is to shoot the scenes, another is to watch the final product....
F: To be honest, it was frustrating for me. The first time I watched the film I was instructing myself (laugh). I know that if an actor is good it's because there's a number of people that support him. And then you have to fight your ego, because when you see your face and it's 8-metre high, well...the instinct of saying "That's me" is there.

Q. In this film you also show a human side of Mussolini, one of the key figure in Italian history. Why is that?
F: To be historical, one has to be contemporary. The tragedy is that he was human, he was a human being. And that's also what's interesting. To prepare for this part, I studied a book on narcissism of a French philosopher and he argues that a dictator manages to kill others because he sees them as images instead of human being. And even when he looks at himself in the mirror, a dictator sees himself as an image. This is maybe the worst horror of all: to acknowledge that he was a human being. Evil is human.

Q: Is there any proof of Ida's story?
F: The documents of Ida and Mussolini's wedding were never found. But the documents acknowledging the son were found. Moreover, it was found that Mussolini, while at war, was entitled to send some money to his wife. And he didn't send it to Rachele, his legitimate wife, but to Ida.

Q: What attracted you to this role?
F: First of all, the challenge attracted me. I would have never imagined to play the part of Mussolini. Then it was really interesting to play the roles of father and son. And finally working with Bellocchio, who is one of the bravest man I know.

Q: What about the footage of the real Mussolini? Weren't you afraid of appearing close to the original one?
F: I remember that I raised the issue with Marco and warned him that people would see that I wasn't the same Mussolini they would see in the archive footage. Then Marco looked at me as I was a rookie and said: Look, the Mussolini you play is another Mussolini. It's a Mussolini that has something of what he will become in the gaze, but he's not quite there. Moreover, the movie is told through the point of view of Ida. And it's interesting because when Ida has a relationship with Mussolini you see me. Once she's estranged from him, you see the archive footage.

Q: How was for you playing your own son, who at a certain point imitates his father, who is you anyway?
F: It was a double somersault, from an actorial point of view. I tried all techniques, from Stanislavskij to... It was impossible for me to play the part of my own son, so I took this impossibility and I overlapped it to the frustrated yearning of my character to get closer to his father. And the more I failed, the more despair emerged, which was perfect for the role.

Q: What's the rapport with history in this film?
F: You see, you can't escape the time you live in. Great history is written in history books, but certain events, which are not written in history books, might come down to us and be true. The story of Ida came out because a group of elderly of Ida's own little village told it to a documentarist.

Q: In the end Mussolini abandoned Ida. Do you think there was any love on his part?
F: Mussolini was a tombeur de femme. There's no doubt about this. Apparently, though, Ida helped him financially. I think that at that time for a man it was really strange to accept money from a woman, so I think he loved her. But then she became troublesome, perhaps she was too smart. The woman Mussolini picked for himself was less emancipated than Ida.

Q: Don't you fear that this film might open old wounds?
F: No, I don't think so, considered that Italy today is a rather right leaning country. The story was told in a TV programme in Italy and there were several historians. Some supported that Mussolini was married to Ida, others discredited the story. All agreed that it was true that he had acknowledge his son. Among the guests of this TV programme there was Mussolini's grand-daughter, who is member of Parliament. At a certain point she started saying: "No, it's not true, it's not possible." But the thing is, Marco didn't want to make a documentary. He wanted to tell the story of a woman who fell in love and fought for this love. If this might help the viewer think about what power is, that's the important thing.

Happy Family

Happy Family by Gabriele Salvatores is a movie that combines different forms of art: from literature -Pirandello's echoes are thick in the texture of the plot- to music -the black & white sequence on the notes of Chopin's Nocturne n.20 is of memorable beauty: Milan by night, the speed of the underground, the street workers, the skyscrapers' profile and the Dome.

Art and life mingle. Ezio tries to keep the two separated as he shouts to his nagging characters: "This is a film, not life!". But Vincenzo immediately counters: "There is no difference."

Everything is intertwined in this movie that ends and finishes with the opening and closing of a theatre curtain. The frame is in fact Pirandello's Six characters in Search of an Author, only in Salvatores's case the characters are eight and the author is a screenwriter, 38-year-old Ezio, who decides to make something about his life and starts writing an art film.

And that's how the story begins: the characters present themselves and the relationship that link them. Altogether they form a happy family. But happy family is also the clique that the writer creates around himself. Everything is a farce, everything is a caricature. Even the chance encounter between Anna and Ezio, the turning point of the whole story, becomes a surreal vignette underlined by a heavy presence of the colour yellow (yellow flowers, yellow car, yellow houses).

Every single frame seems the result of a careful composition, as if every single frame was a painting. This is especially true in the sequence where Ezio and Caterina make love - the reference is to Renaissance painting. The poetry of it all is moving.

It is reassuring that 50 years after Fellini celebrated the glamour of Italian way of doing it in La Dolce Vita there are still film-makers capable of conveying the charm of our culture, the beauty of our country, the sense of aesthetics that permeates our daily life. However, once again, it seems that Italian cinema cannot express beauty outside the bourgeois circle, that of normal people, less rich, less glamorous, less Milanese.

And still the movie lightly touches upon several themes such as family, love, art, illness, death, the sense of life. Some scenes, though, have a life of their own and are there just for entertainment's sake, such as the sequence set at the dodgy massage studio of a Chinese girl or the question that the protagonist keeps asking himself: "What the fuck is a seagull doing in a city with no sea?"

The film is dedicated to the people who are scared: scared to fall in love, scared to die, scared to smell, scared to have smeared underwear in an important moment, scared to fly, scared to be lonely, scared to fall ill, scared to age, scared to.... Well, scared people. I still can't make my head around this opening sequence. But I guess the idea is to give hope.
After all, Happy Family is a good-feeling film about life and beauty. And it's meant to celebrate both.

The devil wears... Top Shop?

Take The September Issue, the documentary about Vogue US larger than life editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, and downgrade it by at least ten times. There you have me interning at the fashion desk of a gossip magazine in London.

I should feel like Andrea of The devil wears Prada, only with far less glamour. It was my third day today, yet I still walk in the newsroom unnoticed: a journalist asked me if I knew where I was going this morning - she must have thought I had gotten lost. My tasks are those tasks for which people usually get paid: emptying boxes, picking up the mail, moving clothes from one rail to another, filling dockets.

All this....not even to enter the fantastic world of fashion & beauty journalism because I frankly don't give a damn about that - what's a highlighter? What's the difference between a bangle and a bracelet? How do you call this piece of fabric that looks like a dress, but might as well be a shirt, a curtain, a sheet? - I keep asking my colleague. And at the same time I keep asking myself why such a smart girl would like to work in such a vain industry, writing about silly things, spending so much time and effort doing something that means so little, after all.

And we are sitting on plastic boxes in a tiny cupboard, because they don't have spare chairs to give us. Obviously, when our boss tells us that more than half of the chairs are free because people are not there.

Darwin talks among us

It's been a long time since I first started this post. It was originally meant for the Freaky Brits section -a section that I haven't updated in a while, I must be used to almost any freaky thing these folks do, now. But I decided to make a bit more personal, since all the original references are lost in oblivion. I barely remember an article that appeared in the first days of December on the Evening Standard suggesting that London commuters have adopted a Darwinist strategy to cope with overcrowded trains. I also remember a conversation with the editor of Nam, a woman who has lived in New York for many years and was sadly surprised at the aggressiveness of people in the Tube.

When I first moved to London, I heard the name of Darwin quite often. That was not much of a shock: last year it was the 200th anniversary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the origin of species. No wonder Darwin is so influential. Along with Galileo, who deprived men of the pride of being at the centre of the universe, and Freud, who deprived men of the pride of being self controlled at all times, Darwin has deprived men of another major pride: being unique among the creatures on earth.

At first, I was very reluctant to accept the pervasive force of Darwin's presence. Mostly because I felt more the Spencerian attitude, which is the application of Darwin's principle to society. The idea that just the fit ones make it repelled me. Which was even more striking to my self-conscience, because at 16 I once wrote that I firmly believe in Darwin's principle. In the fight against my mom and her illness, I felt the power of Darwin's theories and made them mine. Six years after that, compassion and understanding, and probably having been hurt, have scraped the crust of my toughness.

It was a wake-up call the disgust I felt towards Darwin. I realised that as much as I don't like to define myself a Catholic, and being an atheist I am most definitely not in belief, I am Catholic in culture and frame of mind. The idea of a Church, a community of men and women that takes care of you, even if you are unfit, is deeply rooted in my mind.

It is not by chance, perhaps, that today I read once more the name of the great revolutionary, Darwin, in the God issue of the New Statesman. In an interview, Martin Rees, astronomer and president of the Royal Society, referred to Darwin, evolution, DNA and said that creationists are "intellectually deprived. They don't appreciate the wonderful story that science has opened up for us." Because it's all about storytelling, no? I thought it was a nice way to put it.

Another interesting point he made was when he said that educated people, although aware of being the outcome of billions of years of evolution, tend to feel somehow at the end of it. Now, I consider myself an educated person, but it took me just a look at my nephew when he was born, a tiny fragile body, wrinkled and fresh, to understand that we are most certainly not at the end of anything. I remember that one of the first thing I thought, when I saw him, touched him, held him, was: Here is someone who will bury me. Someone who will make his time long after I'm gone. And I was nearly 20. And I didn't even have a degree back then.

Thump, thump, thump

I was walking in the galleries from one train to another in the Tube today. A mass of people walked regular steps, one after the other, most of them looking down, pensive, tired from the early morning awakening, somehow gray. I heard the distinctive thump, thump, thump of the feet. All at the same time, mine making a weird high-pitch sound compared to the others. Thump, thump, thump. Not a single word, not a sound standing out from the crowd.

Later on, while I was wandering in the fancy streets of Kensington half like a stray dog and half like Alice, I thought about Marianne. Recently she said we could hang a plaque on our front door: House of the lost! We are all lost in a way or another: some from a professional point of view (Marianne), some from a sentimental point of view (Bruno), some from both points of view (me!). And then I thought about my best friend. On such a lovely day she might be enjoying her pregnancy, and in a few months time she'll be strolling about with her pram and her newly-born daughter. The thump, thump, thump she feels now is not of shuffling. It's the kick of life straight from her womb.

I started Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. It's one of those fine books that, while you read it, it makes you want to change your life completely following in the protagonist's footsteps. So it made me fantasize about a career as a literature teacher somewhere in the world. Until I stumbled in this sentence that had the strength of an epiphany:

It was like this veil that meant nothing to her anymore yet without which she would be lost. She had always worn the veil. Did she want to wear it or not? She did not know.

Maybe Yassi, who has always worn the veil, can join us in the house. We, who do things, have feelings, pursue dreams and don't even know why anymore...

La Dolce Vita - 50 years later

This month's issue of Sight & Sound -perhaps the only British magazine I would die to work for- features an "Italian Cinema Special", with interviews to Luca Guadagnino and Tilda Swinton, respectively director and producer/star of I am love (out now), an account of the state of the seventh art in the Bel Paese, a thorough review of La Dolce Vita and what it represented and still represents in Italian cultural landscape, and a review of Marco Bellocchio's Vincere, a powerful biopic of Mussolini's life seen through the eyes of his mistress, Ida Dalser.

I devoured the section with the voracity and nostalgia of the expat craving for times long gone. Coming two days after watching Videocracy and a month or two after watching Fellini's masterpiece (shame on me, I know), the special left me with a bitter taste in the mouth. I have always underestimated Italian cinema, ignorant of the fact that some of our directors have made history. I have always underestimated the passionate storytelling that some of our filmmakers are capable of. I have always underestimated the richness in stories that are worth telling in our history, in our past, in our present, in our future. I have always underestimated the array of talents that work behind the screen: screenwriters, cinematographers, costume and set designers, make up artists, score creators. And for a moment I thought I could belong there, where things are first shaped, where dreams first materialize in drafts and sketches.

Despite this enthusiasm, a shady cloud hovers on Italy's cinema: "In a culture we love, we don't have a cultural policy," said Gomorra's producer Domenico Procacci, denouncing the lack of investments and funding. Still, some sparks of creativity and cultural provocation are lighting. If the tv offers the Italiano medio no hope, at least in the darkness of the cinema hall they can find the brightness of our crème de la crème artists.

And finally, La Dolce Vita, the movie that defined an era, the movie that still defines abroad a country. It feels so close to my heart now, even though I don't have the rest of the marvellous cityscapes of Rome. In his analysis of the film, Lee Marshall says: "the theme of men who are lost and know it, but are too lazy, cynical or self-hating to do much about it". He's scribbling my pain with his pen, typing my life with his fingers. He's pinpointing my plight of a middle-class unsatisfied girl, who still lives at her parents' expenses, wants to do everything and in the end lingers on doing just nothing. But that's another story.

La Dolce Vita brings to full circle this special section: all which epitomises Italy is portrayed in this film. Marcello, the bored journalist who dreams of being a writer; Paparazzo, the reckless photographer who treads upon people's feelings for a shot even when they're stricken by family tragedy; Emma, the nerve-racking woman who gives enduring love and forgives and struts and frets; the aristocrats and expatriate intellectuals, who enjoy a life of pleasure and idleness. And then the Catholic sketches, from the impressive opening scene with a Christ seemingly rock-star carried around on a helicopter hovering over the Vatican, to the fake miracle sequence, a stark critique of children's exploitation, media leeching, people's ignorance and, nevertheless, a beautiful meshing of awe, superstition and faith. And then the final scene, which is almost unintelligible. A sting ray has beached, the party guests go on the shore to stare at the "monster". Paola, the sweet teenage girl Marcello has met earlier on, is there as well, smiling at the man with naivety and sensuality at the same time.

Marcello represents the typical Italian man, wanting love, yet enjoying the hunt. In this respect, La Dolce Vita can be about the "sensuality of power and its masculinity", just as much as Vincere. "Italy gave the world its first camera-friendly dictator," argues Guido Bonsaver, author of the article The Great Seducer. Mussolini was definitely not the only one, I would add. Videocracy's images are still whirling in the back of my head and Lele Mora's words about how Berlusconi is obsessed with his image. And then I recall one the Prime Minister's neighbour in Sardinia, Marella, who talked about a little device Berlusconi has built in his villa for his entertainment: a sort of volcano that he activates with a wireless remote control. The man who rules our country: a 73-year-old who amuses himself by making a fake volcano erupt in his luxurious villa surrounded by bikini-clad ladies. Then the sequence shifts to another 73-year-old who has to make ends meet with a 500 euros pension, surrounded by anyone. Would it make an effective cinematic sequence?

And then the Prime Minister has the guts to say to people who criticise him for being detached from reality that they have no sense of humour, no joy for life. It's easy to say that when you're billionaire, can afford the triviality of hair and facial treatment to look younger than Madonna and can change people's career with a phone call. But there is still room for Resistance. Despite an unhealthy populism in Italy, a vice that has marred more than once our history and has made people blind before a persona's charisma, there are still corners where the imagination is free to dream again of a sweet life. Corners for poets and filmmakers to swim against the tide.

Videocracy - why sometimes I am ashamed of being Italian

Booties, tits, half-naked women that wiggle like snakes. The spotlight is on them, the tv is on, Italian families are watching. And in the end, again, young girls dancing, or least moving, swinging, touching themselves in a provocative way. But the music is disquieting, the beats are deep and at regular intervals. The girls look like meaningless puppets. Maybe they are.

I've just come back from a night at the movies and drink with friends. We watched Videocracy, the controversial documentary by Erik Gandini. Presented last year at the 66th Film Festival of Venice, Videocracy's trailer was refused screening in both Rai, the state television, and Mediaset, obviously. The film tells the story of the dodgy intertwining of television, power and politics in Italy. The movie features people like Lele Mora, celebrity-maker, tv agent, proud fan of Mussolini (was he so naif to show on camera that his ringtone is actually a fascist hymn?) and, of course, close friend of Berlusconi, and Maurizio Corona, the gangsta-like self-made-hero that exploits celebrities' mischiefs to make huge profits. And then a swathe of wannabes, from the sexy, albeit often unco-ordinated veline-wannabes to the sweet Riccardo, mechanic with the passion for karate and singing -the Italian combination of Van Damme and Ricky Martin, he says- who cannot find a girlfriend because of his stalking mother and spend his time and money pursuing the easy way to success via castings and auditions.

It was all very depressing. Nothing that I didn't know before. But to see our culture squeezed in 80 minutes of hopeless wannabes dotted by references to our media emperor, who is a clown and our Prime Minister, was quite devastating. And then I started thinking.

Paparazzo... to think that we invented this word. The mythical Paparazzo, a.k.a. Padua-born Walter Santesso, who plays so well the part of the ruthless scoop-seeking photographer in Fellini's La Dolce Vita. Is it there where everything started? That film represented the best of our culture, the poetry, the fun, the entertainment, the music, in our majestic capital, Rome, the Eternal City. And at the same time, the worst of times to come: the debauchery, the exploitation, the ostentation, the showcasing of everything, religion included. Did everything start back then? Was Fellini, perhaps the most famous and appreciated Italian director in the history of cinema, an admirer of that ideology of beauty, which later turned into vulgarity, which later turned into pornography? Is Corona and his clique of Robin Hoods -interestingly enough, they had the same accent from the North-East as the original Paparazzo- the modern embodiments of La Dolce Vita? Are Salvatore and the posse of tronisti from Maria De Filippi's Uomini e Donne the new decadent aristocrats who idle in luxurious villas in Sardinia?

And then I started brooding over my recent visit at the National Gallery. I visited the halls with works from the XIV and XV centuries mainly. Italian and Flemish/German arts in comparison. Italian workpieces flourished with beauty, harmony and colour. The scenes, inspired by the Bible or by myths, abounded in buxom girls, profuse landscapes and curving lines. Flemish and German portraits were austere and cold, the lines harsh, the backgrounds dark, people's expressions had nothing of the sweetness and warmth of Italian subjects. Looking at those paintings I had the feeling that in Italy people dreamt of an idyllic place to live, had fun and enjoyed the pleasures of life. Our Northern counterparts gave me the impression of living in a rather boring and strict culture.
The women that starred in XV century painting, naked and beautiful, shifted from those frames into the magic box. And now we have veline, meteorine, schedine. I still can't decide whether we are just more upfront than other cultures, who are righteous on the outside and just as immoral underground, or if we are a lonely island where celebrities are made like sand-castles. And just as easily as sand-castles are knocked down at the first tide.

Then, there was him, the guy we are fed up with mentioning and nevertheless comes up every time. In this case I must say the fault is of Italian people. Leaving out the fact that his supporters sing whacky songs that make them a mockery of themselves more than the "Saviour", as he likes to depict himself, I wonder how they cannot realise that what makes Berlusconi a successful entrepreneur is exactly why they would be wary of having him as politician. A businessman seeks his and his own profit. And Berlusconi is a businessman, before being Prime Minister. A politician should take care of people's interest. Someone who just cares for his own shouldn't be fit to rule, I would quote from The Economist. The fact that Lele Mora compares him with Mussolini makes it blatant.

It's sad to think that I was born and grew up within this system, dreaming about teenage stardom -I was a huge fan of Non è la Rai- and looking at women's big boobs in Colpo Grosso. It's sad to know that I had to go out of my country to fully realise what's going on, how vain and silly people can be for 15 or even less minutes of fame -a fat fifty-something housewife getting naked with saggy tits and flaming red hair at a casting???!!! The price to pay for living the good life, the Dolce Vita we all dream about, is quite high. The bill is to give up your dignity. No, thanks.

But most depressing of all were the final data about Italy. After the flashing lights, the naked bodies, the tv studio, the frenzy of it all, two terse sentences:

Italy is ranked 77th in the freedom of the press worldwide list*

Italy is ranked 84th in the gender equality worldwide list**

Which is quite gloomy for an Italian young woman who wants to become a journalist, ain't it?





* According to the Press Freedom Index 2009, realised by Reporters without Borders, Italy is ranked 49th.
* The datum refers to the The Global Gender Gap Report 2007, sponsored by the World Economic Forum.

Inglorious Basterds

“You know what? This might be my masterpiece,” Brad Pitt says at the end, echoing –you may bet- Tarantino’s own words priding on his latest film. Well, it isn’t, Quentin. Inglorious Basterds is definitely not your masterpiece. But, nonetheless, it’s damn good.

Once again, the director experiments with a plot that weaves different stories in the same frame. Both plots have one goal: to topple the Nazi regime in Third Reich Germany.

On the one hand, there’s Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a Jewish girl who escaped the massacre of her family at the hand of SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) and now wants to take her revenge. On the other hand, there’s a squad of ruthless Jewish-American soldiers headed by Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), who make a clean sweep of all the Nazis they encounter and plan to kill the Führer himself with the help of German actress and undercover agent Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger).

The meeting point of the two plots is significantly a cinema, the one owned by Shosanna, which she has planned to burn down at the premiere of a German propaganda film. Metaphor that regimes can be overthrown with the power of the arts? Metaphor that only arts can redeem a shameful past? You decide.

Tarantino has the gift, if you may call it so, of making violence entertaining. If you can put up with his obsession for scalps, bear close-ups of foreheads with carved swastikas and stomach a couple of scenes splattered with blood, then you may enjoy Inglorious Basterds as a movie that reinvents the war genre altogether. A distancing soundtrack, with the director’s typical cowboy-like strumming, dots the most ferocious of scenes – including a head beating with a baseball bat. Set within a fairytale frame with the “Once upon a time...” intro, the story unfolds with continuous unpredictable twists. The finale is Shakespearean in the tragic sense of the word.

Tarantino’s taste for the grotesque is recognizable in the characters’ performances: they are so exaggerated that they become a parody of themselves. One character stands out, though: the Austrian-born actor Christoph Waltz is impeccable as Hans Landa, a cold, sharp, slightly schizophrenic SS Colonel. His stunning performance earned him, in fact, the Best Actor award at last year’s Cannes and the award for Best Supporting Actor this year’s at the Golden Globes. His language skills are also impressive.

Linguists will appreciate Tarantino’s brushstroke of realism in maintaining the characters’ own mothertongues. The movie features German, French, English –worth of notice is Pitt’s caricatured Southern accent- and a haphazardly Italian. Italian is also the inspiration for the movie. The title, in fact, is nothing but the misspelling of Inglorious Bastards, as the English version reads, a 1978 war film by Enzo Castellari.

It may not be Tarantino’s masterpiece, but Inglorious Basterds is nevertheless an ambitious effort. Hasn’t it tried to rewrite history, after all?

Rating: ***

BLAZE – When Street Dancing Meets West End

There’s nothing of the roughness of actual street dancing in Blaze, the latest effort by Anthony van Laast, choreographer of Mamma Mia!, Sister Act and Hair. All the dancers are colourfully dressed, the moves are neat, the music runs smoothly for one and a half hours with no technical problems. Yet, the energy and passion oozing from the stage is real and pulsing, almost contagious. Blaze manages to bring the urban style into the theatre and make it appealing to the wider audience: teenagers and families fill up the rows alongside the expected black and hoodies crowd.

Different music styles, from hip-hop to house beats, and different dancing styles, from popping and locking to breaking, intertwine in a one-act performance made of singular vignettes where no story is told. The start is a bit slow, except for the showing off of sculpted abs by one of the dancers who takes off his T-shirt in the first five minutes of the show –nice move to set the girls in the cheap seats at the back of the stalls on fire. But when the notes of Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean start to play for an original tip-tap rendition, the show really takes off. And then it’s a sheer ensemble of vibes and electricity.

Twelve dancers, three breakers and a well-experience MC, DJ Hazze (great robot moves despite being a bit overweight), perform in a variety of dancing styles, experimenting with new forms of body storytelling. The setting is minimal: a backdrop of luggage, a bed and a refrigerator; the props are reduced to a sofa, three big chairs and sets of headphones. The visual effects and the lights, however, become part of the choreography in more than one instance, making Blaze a real ensemble creation. The b-boys are particularly impressive. Their lack of co-ordination –breaking is in fact mainly a solo art- is made up for by the intensity and precision of their power moves: 27-year-old Machine will leave you gaping while sweeping the floor with his head. If the solos, duos and female- or male-only choreographies work fine, with a lot of role playing and acting, the routines featuring the whole crew lack incisiveness, except for the final number, which, in the best street dance fashion, lets the dancers show “what they got”.

The costumes, designed in a way that each performer maintains their personality, add to the diversity of the show, which seems to be the key to success. Choreographers include Ryan Chappell (Bounce), US-born Kenny Wormald in his first West End show, Lyle Beniga (Fame) and Mike Song (winner in 2007 of the Hip Hop International Championships with his crew, Kaba Modern), and Swedish Tommy Franzen. The performers too come from all over the world: Portugal, France, the US, the Netherlands and Britain, including Lizzie Gough, finalist in BBC1’s So you think you can dance.

Blaze might also be a polished version of the street dance culture, but it represents nevertheless its best part: the fun, the charisma, the enthusiasm.
The show, which makes its world tour debut in London, is at the Peacock Theatre from 11 to 28 March.

Rating: ***½

Check it out

JOANNE HARRIS: THE WRITER WHO HIDES BEHIND THE COVER

Just as mysterious as most of her novels, Joanne Harris avoids questions about her private life with obstinacy. “I’m not very interesting,” she says plainly. Not quite something you would believe, if you think that the inspiration for her first novel, The Evil Seed, was taken from the inscription of a gravestone. Harris used to cycle to a churchyard in Grantchester while studying at Cambridge, in fact. Not the average hobby, you would say.

Harris cultivated a passion for the gothic and the extraordinary from a very early age. Born to an English father and a French mother, she studied Modern and Medieval languages at college, while reading, among others, Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, Ray Bradbury and Stephen King. Her grandmother is rumoured to have been a witch and a healer, but Harris dismisses these allegations as urban legend.

Memories from her childhood go back to Britanny. Three-year-old Harris would go round the markets in the village of Vitré early in the morning or cook sardines on a charcoal brazier on the shore of the island of Noirmoutier. Sometimes she would make pancakes with Memé, her great-grandmother, the woman who inspired Vianne Rocher, the eccentric stranger who settles in the small French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes and opens a chocolaterie just as Lent begins, defying the bigotry of the local priest.

It’s Harris’s most remembered effort: Chocolat, the 1999 bestseller that was later turned into a film, starring Juliette Binoche, Judi Dench and Johnny Depp. Unlike many authors who get upset by a movie rendition of their stories, Harris has always been quite happy with the final result, despite changes to the plot. And unlike many women, she hasn’t fallen for the charm of Roux, aka, Johnny Depp while working on the film.

Notoriety hasn’t changed her much, either. Unlike many writers who enjoy being celebrities, Harris remains discreet and humble. “I’m happy to stay a name on the page, rather than a face on the screen,” she says in a low-pitch but firm tone. This explains why her website features a massive section devoted to her books and a skimpy biography that goes little further from personal data.

Harris is an impenetrable woman. People may label her as “indescribable, awkward, and difficult”. But this is because they have expectations. “They expect me to be like Vianne Rocher,” she says. “But I’m not an extraordinary person.”

A mother and a wife, a bass guitar player in the spare time -she has played in the same band since she was 16, a keen traveller and a red wine lover: this is Joanne Harris, the woman. The writer, though, has already achieved a lot for 45. Her books are translated in over 50 countries and in 2004 she received the International Career Prize of Vigevano City. But she’s still enjoying the pleasure of discovery.

For her latest book, Blueeyedboy, due to come out next April, she has plunged into internet communities to research the way people make friends through the web. A thriller plot will intertwine with a blog-like layout and lots of musical references, marking a shift from her previous books. In fact, she was often criticised for repeating the same literary pattern over and over again.

Chocolat seemed to have set the trend for novels such as Blackberry Wine and Five Quarters of the Orange, where food, smells and tastes are unfailing ingredients. Tastes and smells are particularly evocative because they trigger an emotional response that goes back to our experience of the world as newborns. “Besides, readers understand food,” adds Harris. “In our increasingly diverse and multicultural society, eating remains one of the very few experiences we all have in common; a pleasure, a comfort and a means of expression.”

The love for food is also the reason why Harris co-authored two cookbooks, The French Kitchen and The French Market. Since she started working as full-time writer in 1999, quitting her job as a teacher at Leeds Grammar School, she has written eight novels and several compilations of short stories. Harris doesn’t regret giving up education. “I have taught for 12 years,” she says, “and I think it’s healthy to reinvent oneself every ten or so years.”

So, what’s going to happen next? “Well, I have no idea,” she says. And once again, she’s elusive. Or maybe, her life is just like one of her books: she has a vague idea of the beginning and the ending, but she hasn’t planned the whole journey.

Senseless Life

I've never felt so tired in my life. Every day I come back home, knackered. After a day full of things to do, I sit on the couch or on the bed and I still have stuff to do. It's crazy, the pace of life in this city. And the more I think about it, the less I understand why.

After my -at this point- dreadful weekend, with all the waste of time, the arguments with filthy politicians who wanted me to be their pr instead of being a journalist, after doing flat planning in print production -with all the space in newspapers and magazines eaten up by ads, I've realised that in this world everything is a trade. We, as journalists, are traders. We sell our stories, because we have to sell the paper. We talk about things that are going on and might be a little be PRish too. Sometimes, a lot of times, indeed, we're just filling some space. Stories have become commodities, our job has lost significance, because we're so full of everything that we're throwing up. Bulimia is a good metaphor to describe our way of life.

London is a great city, but the quality of life is incredibly low. The constant sense of urgency, hurry, the feeling of not having enough time. In my life I had never experienced something like it before. And it makes me age untimely. When all we do is building something that doesn't last and doesn't matter, what's the point of planning in the first place? And when I think about the idea of manufacturing something as a stint that goes somewhere in the end, I have to think twice, 'cause we are so full of things, stuff, that even those who actually produce something concrete don't have any certainty that what they do is worth it. We spend an awful amount of time working -'cause in the end we have to pay the bills- but we may not really have a purpose to do so.

Which is sad. Incredibly sad.

Put things in perspective

"Off with her head! Off with her head!," shouted the Red Queen.

I've just seen Alice in Wonderland, the latest adaptation of Carroll's famous tale by the Mouse Empire, aka Walt Disney, directed by Tim Burton. I had to wear these big black glasses, cause the movie is in 3D. And at the end, as I went out of the screen, I felt dizzy, my legs slightly shaky.
I couldn't help but wonder how this new technology will improve over the years. Sometimes I had the impression of seeing a pop-up book instead of a movie, with the characters unnaturally in the foreground and a background overly set at the back of the scene, too blurred. I believe that in a couple of years time we will look at these early 3D movies the same amused way we now watch films from the 1960s, when the scenes where the characters drove were just set in a studio with a fake still backdrop and a shaky bonnet of a car.

You just need to put things in perspective. Wonderland is a magic world where disproportion reigns - a queen with a bump of a head, a king with oblong limbs and slow-motion like moves, Alice who stretches from mouse-size to giant eating cakes. But the real world can be just as puzzling when we cross the borders of our land. Arts prove it. When I went to the Tate Gallery, in one of the rooms I found myself surrounded by enormous chairs and a huge table, much taller than I was. And I became a startled Alice.

My friend recently moved to Germany, some 550 km north from where she has lived all her life in Italy. She couldn't be more surprised, though. First of all, those crazy crucchi don't have speed limits. Hence, they flash past wasted lands (at least where she lives) like bolts. Secondly, those nasty Germans collect the rubbish only twice a month. My friend is still bewildered at the amount of litter she has to keep in her house before putting it out for the garbage truck to come and get it. Thirdly, when her husband tried to get rid of a litter bag on someone else's property (a petrol station), he was tracked down and called back to pick up his rubbish. You may think that the station clerk jotted down the car numberplate. Nope. He rummaged through the rubbish to find a scrabbled number on the envelope of a letter.
Mad people, eh? Compared to the Mad Hatter they're real nuts!

So, you see. Playing cards that brandish swords and rabbits that wear waistcoats are not that far-fetched after all. At the same time, old habits don't die once you've crossed the Channel. I walked back home after the movie, just as I used to walk back home from the video rental after watching a dvd in the middle of the night. Alone. Fast. Looking at my own shadow.
Feeling free and a character of a film myself.

In this city full of CCTV it's almost true.

Saturday Morning Epiphany

I was reading an essay written by François Serrano -the husband of my housemate's boss, who is studying Sociology at Birkbeck University of London- on Marx. And I realised that I am intimately a Marxist. Next step: reading the Capital. I believe that the economical/sociological analysis Marx undertook was incredibly lucid and true. The drift towards the meaningless of action, due to the specialisation and division of labour to an extent where anyone is replaceable, is something I'm experimenting right now.

I lost the sense of what I'm doing. I miss the 360° classes I took in my degree course in Verona. I miss the well-rounded overview on the issues. I miss the comprehensive attempt to explain things, the analysis from different perspectives. I miss the stimulating environment of my classes, the bubbling and lively conversations with my classmates before a glass of spritz. I find my daily routine meaningless, energy- and time-consuming, but lacking a purpose. I feel like I'm dragging myself ahead towards the completion of the Master without gaining much. Without feeling engaged. Without being passionate about anything.

The world of news is like this. A quick glance at the world, then write it, edit it, spread it and move on. It's like a factory processing of facts and opinions, that is getting more and more self-referential to my eyes. I miss the research, the in-depth investigation, the speculation, the discussion. I miss the passion, the passion above all. And reading the book on Italy makes me all the more sensitive to this lack. The passion oozes from the pages and smells like intrigue. My country pulses with emotion. It has a lot of flaws, but one of them is definitely not the lack of warmth.

I was discussing this with Marianne and Yass. The feeling we've got from being here in London is that the Big Smoke is like a whore. People come and go, they spend some time here, they make money and then leave. London is a disposable city. You exploit it and then you move on. There is nothing stable, everything is superficial, minimal. Relationships seem cold. "Italians are so emotional," said an American friend of mine once. Which is true. And we should be proud of that. London is a city with no ties, no links between the rushing splinters that are its dwellers. London is the realm of individualism and self-reliance, home to self-help literature and exaggerated Darwinism. It's no wonder that Marx has long lived in London. He must have seen the transformation of the individual in the character of the worker to a mechanism in the machine, before putting forward the concept of alienation.

Why are we doing what we do? I've always been ambitious, maybe too much for my real capacities. I've been dreaming instead of facing reality. Reality being that we just have one life to live and sometimes what gives us pleasure and happiness is not what we accomplish with our jobs, it's not in how we change the world. But how we influence the world around us. The microcosm we live in. That's why when I asked my talented teacher of history of arts why she was still living in such a provincial small town such as Pordenone she simply replied: "Because I like it." She had accomplished something on a small scale and was happy with it. She made us love the subject, and that was enough. She enjoyed knowledge and art for knowledge's and art's sake. She was a hedonist and a good teacher.

At the end of the day, the joy of living doesn't come from a mark at university, from the bylines you get, from the reports that are aired. Joy comes from the people you meet and talk to, from the relationships you establish. Aristotle said man is a social animal. And I believe so too. What distinguishes man from animal is language. Man, this communicating beast that needs relations to function and to make sense out of life (an ascetic would definitely disagree though). That's why I'm realising that and that bound me to my family, my home country, my home town, those ties that I've considered chains for so longwere not handcuffs after all, but roots. As in a tree roots provide nourishment and anchorage, so my roots give me life and emotional stability. And as much as I would like to climb up the trunk, the branches, the leaves to reach the light, I will always need the earth and the water from underneath to get the life blood running.

Inside Justice - What's it like in a Court of Appeal

We live in a world of paper and words.

Today I went to the Royal Court of Justice. I listened to the appeals of two cases in the criminal division. The first thing that struck me as I entered the small court was the amount of papers it contained. The walls around, especially the one at my back, behind the benches, was covered with tomes of books, old, yellowed books. A man in the row before mine had four or five briefcases, tied together with a rubber band, and each one of them had a pile of sheets inside. The barristers in the front row had papers and folders and documents displayed before them as evidence to support their arguments. The three Judges were examining documents and leafing through files.

The surroundings gave me the idea of being in the temple of hacks and formality, of eloquent circumlocutions and fixed practices rather than the temple of justice. The simple task of handing out a document to the judge involves a threefold transfer: from the hands of the barrister to the secretary, from the secretary to the assistant of the judge, from the the assistant to the judge. It gave me the idea that justice - especially in a Court of Appeal - relies more on technicalities than on the actual respect of the law. But when it comes to human, after all, there's always something more involved.

The defendants were behind bars, in a sort of cage. One of them reminded me of a cow, or a bull. He had a big neck and a bald head. He seemed a little bit like me: a little bit lost, a little bit sleepy. He was looking around, and maybe he didn't understand all the arguments that the two wig-sporting law people were putting forward, deciding on his life, on the future of his existence.

In the house of the law everything is strictly regulated, but the flow of people that come and go. Anyone can pop up and attend a proceeding, from young professionals wearing blue suits to school girls wearing flowers in their hair. The restriction is limited to under-14s who are not allowed in. The behaviour within the Court is also subject to restriction. Recording the proceedings and the use of mobile phone are prohibited. Food and soft drinks are not allowed in the Court and a special ban makes clear that chewing gums is not welcome.

The Court is also the reign of the dust: a mixture of tradition and procedures. A barrister addressed the judges calling them Milord and Miladies, a trite formula that reminded me of The Rose of Versailles (Lady Oscar). Judges and barristers are still wearing wigs, even though we are in the XXI century - I imagined fleas having parties in those disgusting yellowish, greyish fake hair. Microphones hanging from lamps and from the ceiling amplify the articulated discussions between judges and barristers. The former giving a hard time to the latter, who do their best to challenge the judges' previous judgement and lead them to revise it.

It's an exchange which is sometimes hard to follow, but extremely fascinating too. The epitome of it being an invitation from Lord Justice Toulson to the barrister: "Will you remove the fog?" Such a powerful expression to embody the search of truth that the justice has to assess to make its decision. And at a certain point the judge's admission that sometimes judges have to come to a verdict making the best of the element at their disposal, though they may not be all.

It's somehow eerie that life-changing decisions are made on the basis of paperwork and words. Pieces of paper and speeches can and do change people's lives.

Quirky Intros and Complete Strangers

First of all, let me point out that I'm used to having random conversation with complete strangers. It's a form of networking that I might even find enjoyable from time to time. When I was in uni in Italy, I used to take the train every week. And God knows what chance encounters you can experience on a train. I promised to myself I'll write a book about it. So, I'm not rookie here. However, some people's intros still take me aback.

The first week I moved to London, I was happily surprised by a transvestite who stopped in the middle of the street, ended her phone call and postponed another one, just to tell me: "Oh my goodness! You hair is fabulous!" Which wasn't even true in my opinion. She complimented me and bet that I'd rather have straight hair, instead of curly. Nope, I said. She then started to blurt out a number of solutions to deal with the dampness of London's weather - not a good thing for my already frizzy hair.

That was a quite funny, but flattering way of starting a (2-minute long) conversation. Other times, intros are clumsy and lame. Such as that of a worker yesterday that drove by me while I was walking to uni. I heard the car stopping and thought to myself: "Oh, Jeez... what does he want? I don't know my way around here," expecting him to ask me for directions. But he said: "If you smile then the sun will come out." So, I moved aside my umbrella, smiled at the sky and obviously nothing happened. Same old rainy grey weather. Flattered by the compliment, though annoyed by its cheesiness, I said: "It doesn't work," and moved on.

The worst ones, however, are those creepy people that just stare at you and then grin and then mutter something that you don't understand, and when you pass by them, ignoring them hopelessly, they shamelessly turn their head 180 degrees like an owl, risking to break their neck.
I went to a stand-up comedy recently. I've been told that the opening line is the most important one. So, please, people out there willing to chat with the person next to you or walking by: especially if the person is me, make it a good one.

People and History

Yesterday I met Liam, an Australian guy, at the club. He said his country is boring. And the reason for this would be because Australia has no history. He even said: "White people shouldn't be there." I thought that was quite a statement.

Being born and raised in Italy, a country that lives on its past, I've never considered the lack of history as something that would affect me. But apparently, the lack of history can really be an issue, leading to a blurry sense of identity. At least, that's how it is for Liam.


I'm currently reading a book by Tobias Jones, The Dark Heart of Italy. It's beautifully written and it's also quite interesting to read about one's own country through the eyes of someone else. All those little details that one takes for granted are seen again by fresh, brand new eyes. It's a mirror that I quite enjoy look at to see myself reflected.

It's true: you need distancing to really appreciate what's missing. To fully become aware of your own identity. To realise how in love you can be with the country you ran away from. Little Italy... I'll come back, because you're worth it, after all!

Random thoughts

So, today it will a little bit like a shopping list. Random thoughts on the past couple of days.

- Today I went to a refugee centre in St Pancras. It's for a feature for Home Affairs course. Everyone was incredibly helpful and warm, especially Jabbar, who welcomed me with a warm cup of a tea and insisted that I eat the meal cooked by the volunteers and delivered free to the drop-in session (awesome food, indeed). And then there was Mr Sharif, who was so proud to tell me his story (speaking straightforward to the voice recorder instead of looking at me). And then Herbert, who would wait for me to look at him in the eyes to speak (he couldn't bare talking to me while I was taking notes).

- On my way back to uni I met a man who probably had some sort of disorder. He stared insistently at me while waiting for the green at the traffic light. I said "Hi". He asked me to go take a beer with him. I declined the invitation. He paid me a couple of compliments. I thanked him and moved on. A couple of seconds later I looked back and saw him wandering, or rather zigzagging, in the middle of the street. I was utterly bewildered. And wondered if he would end up as the cat a couple of months ago: run over by a double decker. As far as I know, the bloke was luckier than the feline. But I wouldn't bet on it.

- Drivers would kill you with delight if you cross the street randomly and happen to be on their way. Amelie (French friend) made me laugh once when she said that cars even speed up when they see you NOT on the zebra crossing. But... if you're close to them they will even slam on the brakes to let you cross. Schizo Londoners!

- And finally, to cheer you up, a funny veggie picture. Supposedly, it is an eggplant....but, with a little airbrushing it can turn into a face very easily. And wonder of all wonders, it wasn't even by Iceland (cheap dodgy supermarket).

Stand up Comedy and Bloody Italians

So, tonight I went to my first London stand up comedy show. And I must say, I really enjoyed myself. A bunch of performers made our (the audience's) night much lighter and enjoyable. A good laughter brings people together, no matter their nationalities. And that's what happened tonight at the Soho Comedy Show at the Round Table in Leicester Square.

The room was cosy and small. As the show kicked off it was not even packed, but by the end of the night it reached full capacity, which was roughly 30 people. The six Norwegians in the front row were the guest stars of the night. Each and every performer, starting from the compere, made fun of them. Then there was the guy from Venezuela,, who was "funny in his country" [where people can understand what he says, that is]. Then there were people from all parts of Britain, including Scotland, and even from Ireland. And then there was me, an Italian.

But, no sooner had the fifth act got the stage that to my bewilderment I found out he was Italian too. Well, born and raised in Italy from Indian parents and had moved to London five years ago. He had kept the little piece of info for himself all night, as I got acquainted with the comics and the host, Jools Constant. No wonder he spotted my Italian accent when I speak (which is not as strong as a regular Italian). No wonder he knew where Pordenone and Aviano are. No wonder he was interested when I said that I find it hard to be funny in a language that it's not your mothertongue.

So, you can be in the most diverse city in the world. You may be the only one who vaguely looks Italian. But you can bet that there will be another Italian in the room, even though there are just about 30 people. We bloody Italians! But hey, stand up comedy in London....thumbs up! Definitely worth it!

Brits are freaks - The art of queuing

That British people are polite is out of question. That their politeness might lead to a sort of stiffness of manners is also out of question now. Today, I read on the Sunday Telegraph that queuing properly will be part of the test that immigrants have to pass to be granted British citizenship.

Being able to queue is now officially a requirement to "Britishness", along with the 5 o'clock tea and the fish 'n chips meal. After the ridiculous queen's hats, the judge's greasy wigs and the pint-addicted pub-goers, the queuers are definitely the latest English strangeness to add to the many already inhabiting my stereotyped imagination.

Once, I was thinking how much time the Brits waste queuing. They queue at the bank, they queue at the tube station, the queue at the cinema, they queue at the canteen, they queue at the cash desk. They queue orderly and patiently everywhere. In Italy queuing is accompanied by snorts and frowns at best. At worst, it is dotted with bitter complaints, agitated gestures, miserable attempts at passing who's ahead in the line.

Recently, I went to the One Young World summit. At 1 o'clock we were ready for lunch. The caterers had already set the tables. The conference finished. We (the journalists covering the event) ran to the trays to get some food and go back to our stint. The delegates calmly reached the tables and queued for their lunch. I imagined the same scene in Italy: everyone rushing to get the best bite, possibly tripping somebody else up in the run.

There is no space for gentleness in my country, despite the worldwide acknowledged warmth of its people. But in the UK queueing is not just politeness. It is part of the people's identity.

Home, Sweet Home

"Zia, vieni a casa" (pause) "Dici sì!"
That was the heart-breaking point of the day. No one else saying these words would affect me, would make me cry. But his clear innocent voice and his sincere laughter have this power over me.

Home...what is home anyway? A place where you settle down. The place where you grew up. The place where you always feel comfortable. But more importantly it's the place where your heart sets its roots. I've always thought my home as a stifling place. A place that could have never quenched my thirst for life. Which is true in a way. I've always thought of myself as fire in ice, a burning flame stuck in a frozen land. Over time I've realised I'm much more like water, a placid river just flowing towards the sea.

In the meanders of life I ended up leaving my home, finding a new place to settle down and feel comfortable. And I do. But that's not what makes me cry with a couple of syllables. That's not where I go to look for comfort and affection. That's not where I know I will always be special, no matter what I achieve.

That's home. That's why it breaks my heart hearing my nephew say: "Auntie, are you coming home? Say yes!," and my answer is no. Not yet.

Fighting online for Human Rights - an inspiring story

She was skinny and humbly dressed. Almost physically anonymous as she took the stage at the One Young World summit today in London. But as she started speaking her energy broke out, leaving the audience inspired by her experience.

Esra'a Al Shafei is only 23, but has already done a lot in the fight for human rights in her country, Bahrain, and in the Middle East. In 2006 Esra'a invested a ridiculous $100 to set up a social network, mideastyouth.com, and provide a dialogue platform for young people from the Middle East.

"Internet is a gateway for freedom of speech," she said. "There is no censorship there. And even when the government tries to shut websites down, there is always a away to get aroung that."

Esra'a used animation, comics, ads and podcasts to reach a young audience and change their mentality, rather than communicate with the government. Her aim was to tackle human rights violations and promote respect among diverse people.

The website launched projects to support minority groups, such as the faith of Baha'i and the Kurdish, and fellow freedom fighters, such as Kareem Amer, the blogger who was jailed for his alleged anti-religious and insulting to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak posts.

Esra'a, a graduate in social politics and international communication from the University of Lugano, Switzerland, is confident that the power of social networks will lead to a change in regions where intolerance and violence are still daily bread. "When I saw that people in my region were arrested, tortured or kileld because they were fighting for their dignity, I had to take action," she said."And Internet is my weapon."

Her hopeful activism, however, has not preserveed her from danger. Esra'a lives under death threat and has been banned from Egypt. "My mission is to stay out of prison," she joked, asking the audience not to take photographs nor to film her.

The One Young World, a three-day summit that gathered young leaders from all over the world, has given Esra'a the chance to meet other young leaders and build a network that will help her further her mission.

"This conferencewas inspiring, but in terms of actual action, it's hard to tell [whether it will be effective]," esra'a commented. "It's more about meeting other people, sharing, connecting."

For more info: http://www.mideastyouth.com/