Just as good as being there myself..

My sister Bebis is in Florida in these days enjoying a well deserved vacation before coming to England in order to start her year-long English course. She's been to one of the greatest places in the world: THE KENNEDY SPACE CENTER. To someone who "easily gets lost in time and space" while watching starry nights (that would be me of course!), this space center is sort of a pilgrimage site, and therefore going there has been a whole life dream to me.

Leaving aside for a moment all the political intricacies and controversies about manned spaceflight I think space centers are a living homage to people who have believed so much in dreams and exploration and have given everything, sometimes even their own lives, in the name of the progress spaceflight can bring. Space centers are places boldly built with sacrifice, sweat and blood, and it's up to the governments to use them for their own benefit or instead for the benefit of “all mankind”.

Space centers are very meaningful places to many people, not just to me, and thousands of them gather around them whenever there’s a chance to see a launch. It’s all about people going to the skies, few people, extremely well selected and special people. Astronauts are special people, and seeing them reaching the skies must be a wonderful sight. Special yet ordinary people flying higher and faster than anyone else: it sounds like a religion to me… and it certainly is!!

Watching the pictures my sister e-mailed me I just can't believe that it's been already three years since last time we met.. Watching her smile in every picture is simply as good as being there in the space center myself. I just can't wait to see her again. I have been waiting for three years to do it! Three years! Welcome to Europe, dear sister of mine. I’m looking forward to seeing you soon. I love you Bebis.

My building process 1: Modelart's SpaceShipOne - First Post

Just as if working, studying, training and “taking care of my girlfriend” weren’t enough to keep me busy, I decided that somehow -even if it meant spending on it just a few minutes per day- I would come back to one of my favorite hobbies ever: paper modelling!

What’s this about? Well, as you may know Japanese people make amazing things with card and paper. I’m sure everybody has heard about Origami. Well, card modelling is a little bit different from it but upholds the same basic principle: having fun with just paper (and glue). The point is that you can build real cool 3D paper models of almost anything: houses, skyscrapers, cars, airplanes, rockets and even helicopters! Not to mention Mecha and Anime characters!

Today’s plastic models are extremely beautiful, I love them, I have a couple of them at home in Colombia! They are highly detailed but the best ones often require real high expertise in, for instance, brush painting. Moreover some are expensive. Of course you can buy pre-assembled ones but it’s not the same, you miss some of the fun of having the model at all: building it!!

An alternative to plastic models is paper modelling. There are so many on-line stores that sell you, for a very convenient price, the pdf files that later on you may print on thick paper. And that’s it! The rest is up to you and in order to assemble and stick together one of them you just need a little bit of patience, some nice scissors, glue and lots of coffee! And if you just don’t want to pay for the model that's all right: there are so many free on-line models which are as beautiful as the ones you pay for. One of my favourite sources is definitively The Lower Hudson Valley Paper Model Giftshop. Another one is Currell Graphics. Please, have a look at them!

I will keep writing about this in the incoming “My building process” posts. I will tell you about my Modelart^® SpaceShipOne model. The designer of this 1/32 scale model suggests to print most of the pages on 160 g/m² paper and some pages on "normal" 80 g/m² paper (common white paper you use for your photocopies). I printed mine a few weeks ago and I’m really happy about it! But I’m also concerned about the fact that I printed pages on 170 g/m² paper instead… Hope this will not make the assembly process too difficult! So far I have been so busy that I haven’t even completed a single piece of it. But in next post about it I expect to tell you that I’m making progress on it, and will sure post some pictures and comments about it!

I also need to find time to answer my friend's e-mails... I promess I will! :)

A book: Astronaut Umberto Guidoni's "Un passo fuori"

The book on my desk together with some astronauts and the shuttle

Astronaut Umberto Guidoni on board ISS - April 23rd 2001

A few days ago I've finished reading astronaut Umberto Guidoni's "Un passo fuori" (A Step Outside), a beautifully written book about his life. It was published by Editori Laterza GLF, Italy, in 2006. Up to this date there seems to be no English version of it, at least in Amazon.com. Sorry English speaking "space geeks", you will have to learn Italian!

To those who have no idea about him -too many Italians don’t- he is not only one of Italy's first astronauts but also the first European to “step on” the International Space Station. He’s a family man and a scientist with a degree in Physics from “La Sapienza” University Of Rome and, as far as I can see, he’s got the same passion for science and exploration he’s got for Italy and its finest traditions. He is a man Italians should feel real proud of, someone people should pay so much attention to.

I gladly think of him as "our neighbourhood astronaut" (il nostro astronauta del quartiere!) because that's the impression I had first time I saw him. Quiet, still, almost as if he was trying to be completely invisible to the people around him, just an ordinary guy calmly taking every step. And yet he had soared above the sky at 28000 km/h and climbed as high as 350 km above the Earth, towards the realm of space!

It was in Rome where I met him, a few years ago, at that peace demonstration that happened simultaneously in big cities all around the planet, when the second war in Iraq began. I met him just by chance in a journey with so many mixed feelings and a lot of deception for seeing some Italian people carrying huge placards asking for support to “revolutionary movements” in Colombia. I was born in Colombia, I'm sure most of these Italian guys (if not all of them) had never been there and yet they arrogantly defended their slogans, as if they'd ever seen what is happening down there. Their attitude made no sense to me, and seeing them and their behavior, made me really sad.

Luckily, something better was about to happen to me that day: at some point of the demonstration -in which thank God there were plenty of people with more brains than those idiots whose display really disturbed me- I found myself walking aside one of my greatest living heroes! Holy cow! I was walking on the streets of Rome aside Astronaut Umberto Guidoni! I got so excited I’m sure I must have said so many stupid things to him when I shoke his hand! A twenty-something year-old “kid” meeting one of his favourite heroes! Imagine that! I still remeber my excitement! I guess I will never grow up!

His book is more than you could imagine. For “space geeks” like me it is a mandatory book because it’s a very good description of his adventure as an astronaut, magically depicting his experience using the simplest words and often letting the writer know his opinions as a foreigner in the American space program. It’s so well written that there are moments you do feel you are sitting right there in the cockpit of the shuttle, stuffed in the space suit, seeing with your own eyes all those screens and computers of the flight deck around you.

For normal people (that is, “non space geeks”) it’s a fun and inspiring book to read. I would give this book to kids or youngsters, it could be very encouraging, it can truly touch you! I think Dr. Guidoni is truly an ordinary man, the guy next to you at the bar having a cup of coffee or someone you just see on the train. In the book he shows that he’s got the heart of a dreamer and a stubborn determination to accomplish goals while dealing with everyday issues and problems we all have to deal with. He accomplished goals that most people in these days consider impossible, completely useless to try or even to think about.

As we approach the end of the book he details his new experiences back in Europe –after more than ten years living in America- and the beginning of a political career as an Italian representative at the European Parliament. When I first saw his campaign ads I was quite confused to know which political party he was representing. But as I read about his job in the book and after truly studying his ideas, political points of view, opinions, and dreams in it, I have to say that I have an even better opinion about him. His ideas are clearly based in historical facts, and his scientific background definitively seems to be at the core of his opinions. I do not like pretty much the fact that he represents a political party I have so many doubts about but I guess you just can get “up there” in the world of politics on your own. I truly hope –and pray- his compromises with that political party will never blind that wonderful view he has about the world, its problems, and the dreams of a unified “Spaceship Earth”. He appears to me as an individual with great coherent ideas, let’s just hope he can put to work as many of them as possible!

Dress Code

My good friend René Hernandez, a Medieval Literature super-geek currently living in Padova with his wife Genoveva (and their “stepchild” Juan Pablo Valenzuela*), would agree with me when I say that there’s hardly anything better than a very well ironed long-sleeves white shirt and a nice tie. Yeah, it just can get any better than that!

Today I dressed up formal for work, without the tie though. I love wearing formal attire, with nice well-ironed pants and shining shoes! Tidy! There were some very important people coming from abroad that wanted to have a look at the company and therefore everything, including the guy responsible for foreign affairs (that would be me!), had to be perfect. It’s a funny thing to get so many compliments and charming gazes as I walk on the street dressed formal, here, in Italy, the land of fashion! What is this thing about? Well, back there in Colombia wearing a tie is not a big deal (almost everyone wears a tie for work) but here in Italy, well, at least in Bologna, you don’t do it often. I guess the city is just “the coolest of the cool” and then people hardly dress formal. Jeans and comfortable sneakers rule!

The day I went looking for a job here in Bologna for the first time (a couple of weeks after my arrival, almost six years ago...) I also had an appointment with one of my new Italian students (I was already teaching English then). Silvana is her name and we met at a bar in "Via delle belle arti" for a cup of coffee and some tutoring for her upcomming English exam. You should have seen her face when she saw me! “What the hell are you doing? Are you getting married or something? What’s the tie for?” she said. I told her that I was looking for a job. She smiled and then asked me: “How is it going so far?” She laughed. I told her that I was amazed by the fact that no one had offer me a job though I was telling potential employers that even working in McDonald’s “as a French-Fries expert” (A rather idealized way to describe the sad truth of such a job…) would be OK. She laughed again and explained to me that dressed that way I would never find a job like that in Bologna, that people would think that I was someone so important seeking for a huge salary, etc. I had certainly seen people staring at me and looking kind of surprised that day, even kind of inquisitive to me… Funny! Thanks to Silvana I finally got to understand this “local dress code”. Next day I wore jeans and sneakers, and things got better: I was offered potential jobs in teaching and a job at a hotel. I first took the job at the hotel (making beds, cleaning bathrooms…) and a few weeks later I left it for my current job at the factory and some teaching hours at an English school :)

I don’t know, today I just felt like talking about this.

*I think Genoveva would prefer calling Juan Pablo “Mischievous Parasite” rather than "stepchild". My dear Geno has such a sweet way of telling things...

Right under my nose...

I could see one of the injured guys from my window, in front of that videogames store on the corner of Via del Borgo San Pietro and Via Irnerio. There was already some guy in uniform, a security guard, having a look around. There were also some people. I guess I just couldn't believe it! It was really happening here, on Via Irnerio: gun shooting right below my apartment, below my beloved window! I went to the kitchen so I could have another view of the street... and there he was: the other guy, still inside the car, a car with its windshields torn to pieces by the gunshots. Amazing. First thought: "Holly Cow! Davide, he went out tonight! Where the hell is he?”

Some five minutes later Davide came back to our apartment. He was OK and had no idea about it all! I didn't tell him but I was so relieved to see him back home. Davide has become like a little brother to me, and I was really worried about him.

We watch in awe the time passing by while paramedics tried desperately to keep the guy alive, that guy in front of our kitchen window. Not that we really knew how he was doing but Davide made me realize that they were taking too long before moving him, and surely this was 'cause he was so badly injured it was just too dangerous to lift him from the ground and set him in the ambulance. Paramedics were working so much on the guy and police cars kept coming. Finally they took him to the hospital. We would later know from the news, the day after, that the guy had injures in his head. Davide was right: that guy was barely alive when we saw him that night. That guy was trapped in between life and death. Up to this day, according to the news, he still is…

The view from my window...

I’m taking a break. I have been studying Nuclear Physics all day long and for a moment I'll just take it easy. I'm watching through my window, having something to drink, looking at the sky, praying and dreaming.

On my desk, among my notes, there’s this beautiful picture of White Knight and SpaceShipOne, flying together, reaching that wonderful place that I think “is just the best place ON Earth”: THE SKY. I’m listening to “Ethereal”, my favourite track from Odonata, an album by Amethystium, artistic name of a Norwegian musician named Øystein Ramfjord. I wonder what he had in mind when he wrote it, and what he felt first time he listened to it. I just can’t think of something different while listening to it: White Knight and SpaceShipOne soaring above the sky, pushing SpaceShipOne to the edge of space...

So it’s a cool moment, and I tell myself “It couldn’t be better”. Yeah, I forget for a moment all my troubles and the things that are happening here, around me, and think that this precise moment of daydreaming and a glass of soda, while watching people passing by under my window and the skies above it, well, it’s just perfect. I love my room in Bologna and I’m definitively gonna miss it. This great view from my window will be left to someone else, and I hope he or she will enjoy it as much as I have. It’s a wonderful place.