Pictures of Turin

Here are a few pics from that huge city, impressive but not as good as Florence, i keep saying that don't I

That unbelievable hunting lodge for the old Kings of Saxony, they must have been rich




Here are the stabling blocks that surround the house, they could have had 1000 horses there, must have been hundreds of staff




Not sure if this was built as a church or not, but now is the National film museum, it is called "The Mole Antonelliana" in 1863 it was the tallest masonry built structure in Europe




This is just one of the palaces




This was probably just a theater, can anyone translate the latin for me

Trip to Turin and it is Bigger Than You Think

I had to make a trip to Turin, to carry out an inspection at a supplier for my project, i took jenny and the little girl with me as it was a boring drive alone and they may enjoy having a walk around the city, We stayed at a hotel on the edge of a hunting lodge for the old Dukes of Saxony, this was no ordinary hunting lodge, it was possibly the biggest and most fancy lodge ever built by mankind. It was a palace of monumental proportions and the rows and rows of stabling was immense, maybe 1000 horses and the palace was amazing, i would have liked to have a party and go hunting there, this is what created revolution, this type of extravagance,

Stupingi, what a name




anyway, i did my inspection and then had lunch there, i had the most amazing wine, a first for me, i had a slightly fizzy wine, i didnt know they existed, just a hint of a sparkle and it was nice, nothing fantastic but very interesting, afte the lunch I drove into Turin to find my wife, she had travelled in by Tram, so i parked at the tram terminus and went by tram, i was travelling for 30 minutes thinking i was going wrong, but i got out at the train station and walked across the city to find jenny and the little girl at this chapel over looking Milan, it had great views of the City and the Italian Alps in the background, but the city was far bigger than we thought, we had a walk to the Palace real, this is where the king once lived i think, and it has a show of Ancient Afghanistan Treasure, we saw this and liked the gold and glass from 2500 years ago, but not much of it, we got in cheap for some reason, the women on the counter was nodding and winking at me and let me in for a 10 Euro total, should have been 16, why ?? i dont know. we walked back to the station and go the tram and finally arrived at the car for our long 4 hour drive back to Massa, it was a long horrible journey which took us through perhaps 50 tunnels around Genoa, i have never seen so many in my life and probably never driven through as many ever in total in my life. the speeds were crazy italian speeds 130-150Km/Hr, well over the limit but that was average, some of the bigger cars were leaving us for dead. It was a trip i enjoyed but somehow i have seen better and once you have been to Florence everything else is average, I feel spoiled, more pics tomorrow

Adopting Italian Attitudes

I have started driving like an Italian, i once commented that they drove like Gladiators in a chariot race, well that is true and it is addictive to be on the same road as them, wanting to overtake when you see a gap of only 3 feet or 19.547 meters for you unmetricated folks, then you have to accelerate and weave maniacally about overtaking and force the person to swerve out of the way to let you get in before you have to break and smoke the tires to avoid crashing the car into the guy in front of you who is stopped at the traffic lights, this seems perfectly normal to 50 million italian drivers so i will also do the same. Learning to shout really loud while talking with a friend, not sure what this is about perhaps it is a congenital defect of all inhabitants of this peninsula, smoking and drinking coffee until your teeth are brown is something i will not adopt, eating unlimited amounts of pasta and bread until you look like an egg is also something i cannot do, as i am eating as much as my belly will allow and then trying to sample the wine and beer and cheese is impossible, so i just have the wine beer and cheese instead of the pasta and bread, actually all Italians over the age of 40 are in shape as round is a shape and you cannot deny this fact. So life is a struggle of learning to drive with a cellphone in one hand and puffing up your hair and grooming your goatee beard at the same time and shouting out of the window and waving another arm about at other drivers who dare to try and overtake and shouting as well and doing it simultaneously is a feat only the Italian can achieve i salute them all,

Turning Italian

I have decided that to live and work in Italy i have to look like an Italian and act like an Italian, so i have grown some facial hair and for the first time in my life i have the Goatee, man i feel strange and i really don't know what to think about it, Jenny likes it a lot and my little girl thinks i look like a singer, don't know which one as she is only 5 and doesn't watch much music TV if any, so here we are, i just worry that i am going to end up with food stuck in it after a meal, i am very self-conscious about it but i may feel better in two more weeks, I did have a full beard after not shaving for 3 weeks but it was driving me crazy with itching, not only the end of my chin itches, so this willnot last for much longer. what do you reckon

My new italian look

Eating Heavenly Food

This is the place to be eating nice and interesting food, i have been buying cheese and cured meats that you can only buy in the Mediterranean. The cured ham is working out at about $30 a kilo, very expensive really but i am only going to be living here once probably so i am indulging, sometimes at night i come back from a hard day staring at paperwork and i will eat only a snack of green olives some cured ham, some hard cheese, called Grana Padano, then some blue gorgonzola on crackers, then some fresh cherries which are coming into season here in Italy. It is heavenly, i then wash it all down with some red wine and maybe a beer to finish off the night, we are eating outside every meal now as the weather is always warm even if it is cloudy and we have this huge canopy over the patio to keep off both the rain and the sun, as the sun is merciless when it is out and would make eating uncomfortable for sure, so we lounge about eating and drinking all evening, not sure what it is going to do for my waistline,

Litte fishing village but the architecture was ugly 50's apartments, a real disappointment



This Last weekend we visited a tourist spot calld Cinque Terra, the five things, supposed to be little fishing villages, it was a 1 hour drive so not far and then when you get there you have to walk down as the access is restricted, at the entrance to the village you are stunned by the ugliest 1950's cheap apartment building in this beautiful valley, all completely toursity and fake, expensive restaurants and gift shops and full of Americans and Japanese as nornal. i was really disappointed as i thought it would be real like Florence but it was as fake as Disney World, i reckon this part of the world is basically ruined as far as the history is, So we had a quick look around and left for home. The mountains near to our house are a centre for Marble cutting, the mountains are white topped with all the cutting of the marble, they are systematically removing the entire mountian, there are some marble caves that you can tour, so maybe next weekend we will visit them. So for now i will keep eating my cheese and tasting the local wines, as long as they are below 2 Euros a bottle.

Prince Phillip, Gawd Bless Him

In celebration of Prince Philips 86th birthday this weekend:-

Some Prince Phillip quotes:

"Are you still throwing spears at other tribes?" (to Ivan Brim, Djabugay Elder at Tjapukai Aboriginal Park , Australia 2002)

"If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." (1986 World Wildlife Fund meeting)

"How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them to pass the test?" (Asking a driving instructor in Oban, Scotland )

"You can't have been here that long, you haven't got a pot belly" (said to a Briton in Hungary )

"If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed" (to British students in China )

"You are a woman, aren't you?" (in Kenya 1984 after accepting a gift from an indigenous woman)

"Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf" (to young deaf people in Cardiff 1999, referring to a nearby school's welcoming steel band)

"It looks as if it was put in by an Indian" (pointing at an old-fashioned fusebox in a factory near Edinburgh 1999)

"If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?" (amid calls to ban firearms after the Dunblane shooting)

"Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed" (during the 1981 recession)

"British women can't cook" (1966)

"If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels." —Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund

(1967 - When asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union ) "The bastards murdered half my family.."

(1982 - To Solomon Islanders, on being told that their population growth was 5% a year) "You must be out of your minds.."

(To a Cayman Islander) "Aren't most of you descended from pirates?.."

(1998 - To a student who'd trekked in Papua New Guinea ) "You managed not to get eaten then?.."

(2002 - To a school band in Cairns , Australia ) "You were playing your instruments weren't you?, or do you have tape recorders under your seats?.."

(2002 - Commenting during the Jubilee tour) "If you travel as much as we do you appreciate how much more comfortable aircraft have become. Unless you travel in something called economy class, which sounds ghastly.."

(2002 - Commenting on the London traffic debate, after mayor Ken Livingstone forced through his plan to charge motorists £5 to enter the city) "The problem with London is the tourists. They cause the congestion. If we could just stop tourism we could stop the congestion.."

Socrates' Philosophy

One day the great Greek philosopher Socrates (469 - 399 BC) came upon an acquaintance who ran up to him excitedly and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students?"

"Wait a moment," Socrates replied. "Before you tell me, I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Test of Three."

"Three?", exclaimed the student.

"That's right," Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my student let's take a moment to test what you're going to say. The first test is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"

"Oh no," the man said, "actually I just heard about it."

"All right," said Socrates. "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second test, the test of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good?"

"No, on the contrary..."

"So," Socrates interrupted, "you want to tell me something bad about him even though you're not certain it's true?"

The man shrugged, a little embarrassed.

Socrates continued. "You may still pass though, because there is a third test - the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my student going to be useful to me?"

"Well it....no, not really..."

"Well," concluded Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all?"

The man was defeated and ashamed. This is the reason Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem. It also explains why he never found out that Plato was having an affair with his wife.

Desperation in a week with no Internet

I have een suffering all week with no internet and this has made me realise that not only am I a total internet junkie but i cannot do my job without internet, i am like a man with no hands, i was moody and miserable and childish and suffered total paranoia about why the internet connection wasnt working in my office, I am working in italy as most of you will now Know, it is in a rented building as the main factory is so busy they have no room and so it is a makeshift network in the office as there is only 4 guys working in the office, and only me who is here full time, so nobody cares if the line is down and Italia Telecom is one of those giant monoliths that really doesnt care if you live or die when you have a problem they will do it whenever they want. So i couldnt send documents to my colleagues or mail my wife or update my blog, i was desperate, but saturday it was reconnected, i was in heaven , what a sad state of affairs to be in with such a simple thing like this, anyway my wife arrived in Florence with no problems other than the airline told me my wife was there but another person said she wasnt so i went away to wait for the next plane to arrive from Paris, and all the time she was upstairs in the arrivals lounge trying to get hold on me via skype, she didnt have an international cellphone, this was my big mistake in not getting her a raoming cellphone contract.
So we ahve moved into the house, we have filled the kitchen full of crazy italian food and stocked the shelves full of fruit juice, olive oil, Balsamic vinegar and some wine and very cheap beer, the weather has turned alot warmer the horrible cold weather front has passed away for good i hope and now we are taking the sun with a wine and beer on the patio or porch whatever you want to call it and listening to the bird song all evening long after i get back from work at night. We drove around the hills behind our house and you can get a great view of the bay and other mountains but it was stil a little misty


The work i am doing has been interesting for me as some of the stuff i have never done before like inspection, but the rest is a piece of cake, i am working with the same company as before but now as the customer and this is a nice change as i get to make the rules, i am not abusing it as someday i may have to go back to my old agency and i am not going to burn any bridges. I am still lookig around for other interesting jobs as i would like to keep moving about for the next couple of years with my wife and see the world together rather than me being a miserable old fart living in man camps all over the world.



Here is a picture of the worlds largest centrifical compressor, it needs one of the worlds largest gas turbines to turn it over, all going to Qatar on the worlds largest LNG plant. Impressed ???? , only if your a metal geek like me, i also like steam trains to.