Parentesi

I love mushrooms. Mushrooms are fun. They are a meme, they are deeply rooted in our imagination. Super Mario in mushroomland; the Peyote; Germanic Berserkr using Amanita Muscaria; the saying "to grow up as mushrooms"; and the smurfs live inside mushrooms!
Mushrooms aren't even a plant, no, not a vegetable. They are not in the animal nor plant kingdom. They are just mushrooms . They are mostly water, but still something living, something which is not water. And indeed they can be very good to eat, or very nasty and deadly. They are soft, have funny shape, with those big hats.
That's it. This post is completely pointless, nonetheless i wanted to write it.

The meaning of life - Gaming

Gaming has probably nothing to do with the meaning of life, or perhaps it's its real kernel. By the way, today I will not publish more of my finnish diaries, but write about... well, gaming, I guess you understood by now.





HOW, WHEN AND WHY DID I START GAMING

I am not a veteran, but I've been gaming for... 20 years?
I guess I figured out the concept of "playing" at, perhaps, 10-12 months after my birth, and I never stopped thereafter.
As a kid, I played with parents, with my brother and occasionally (rarely) with friends. But playing and gaming are different things. When have I started gaming? I cannot be sure what came first, wether the "adventures" with my brother, "Space Quest I", or Monopoly, but indeed very early. And why? I am strong and healthy (sort of) and I like hiking, climbing, swimming... no sports, but the normal stuff. Nonetheless, I admit that the mind gives me more pleasure than the body, and what better than games to stir the mind?
Backgammon is said to be 5000 years old, and therefore gaming goes along with civilization. Gaming is filling your afternoons with something different than hunting or mating or sleeping. Perhaps gaming is the most human thing.
In my 20 years of gaming, many things have changed. I did not notice at the time, but they happened indeed.

BAD POINTLESS SUMMARY ON THE HISTORY OF GAMING

Before the great war gaming was chess, cards, gambling, Go, Backgammon. Good stuff indeed, but games of chance and randomness, games for gambling, games for spare time.
After the war, we created the nerd. And nerds are the creators of many things we now have: Wizard of the Coast, Lord of the Rings, Microsoft, Linux, File Sharing, Google. But not only: nerds created gaming as "lifestyle".
Now it's 1974 and Gary Gygax (hope you are in a heavenly dimension, buddy) and Dave Arneson (the other one everybody always forgets) created Dungeons&Dragons. They created the Roleplaygame. And the world... didn't change, but geeks did.




ROLEPLAY I.E. MENTAL HOSPITAL

Many people ask me what a Role Play game actually is. I believe it is the highest accomplishment of humam mind abstraction. Abstract art or poetry are bullshit, compared to RPGs; Philosophy... you don't want me to talk about philosophy now, do you?
RPGs are about imagining that you are a character that you are not, and imagining this character in a world that does not exist, not painted, nor filmed, and in this lands, he fights creatures that do no exist and talks to people that do not exist, to save the world that does not exist, with clearly unreal weapons or spells. And this makes you happy. Now, is this mental? sure it is.
You might think that afterwards, gaming got even better, evolved, or just stayed as it is. I think it moved backwards. I realized it when, yesterday, I've seen D&D accessories named "D&D - miniature game"
Miniature game? What the fuck? Yes, miniatures and cards nowadays sell more than "imaginary worlds" and therefore, back we go.
What do gamers have today more than yesterday? More stuff, but not more spirit.
Yesterday there was Monopoly and Risk, today there is Monopoly, Risk, Carcassonne, Agricola, War of the ring.... etc.
And this is great. There is an entire world for gamers, for geeks. Board games, RPGs, Computer Games. All kind of games. And this is great. But I cannot stop thinking, that geeks have been transformed, from "socially different" to a commercial target. They analized geeks, understoof how they work and created something they can buy. Like Emos, Punks, Rappers etc.
And are they wrong? Geeks used to read books, to think more than act, to speak like Oxford teachers and such. Nowadays in geek stores I see only school kids and pre-adolescents with Magic cards.

ME AND GAMING = A 100% BORING STORY
Now, me and gaming. As I said, I've been in gaming for a while. What can I tell?
First of all, lack of gamers. When my parents became too busy for board games, I had only my brother. Then he became too old and I had to drop board gaming. I had been computer gaming since I was very little. Am I a very good gamer now? Indeed, I am not. I quite suck at games usually. I like the feeling they give me, I don't like the winning per se. I like the stories. Yes, for me computer games are essentialy movies.

And computer games were, at the beginning, activity oriented: they were based on doing something, i.e. driving a car or shooting monster. They were hard, but fun.
Then PC games evolved, and the trivial arcade, almost abstract ideas (is pong a simulation of tennis or an abstract game?) became, with the help of sound and image, simulations.
I don't have memory enough to describe the history of computer games, but when the internet came, I got randomly involved in RPG by Forums. That changed quite a couple of things....

See you in the next episode!

In the pictures: chess, D&D logo, Carcassonne board game

Memories from the repository

Hi again, after a long time!
After Finland, I "enjoyed" Italy with my beloved foreigner. I may describe Italy to you all, but this is not my task. I may tell you the feelings of such foreigner, as far as I know, but that is not my tasks. I may express my own feelings, but this is not your business.

As I said in other posts, when I don't post I'm not being lazy: I just prepare bigger posts! And so I'm going to "publish" the memories, i.e. publish here what I wrote on paper during my stay in Finland. Now plug you headphones and play Korpiklaani full volume, we're going back to the first day I left for the land of lakes....

10-06-08
Leaving is always the same. A restless night, an early morning, and with the most casual attitude, you say farewell. The day before is a singular one also. It's such a random day. Usually with good weather, a nice afternoon, a wonderful dinner. A "goodnight", something you forgot to do, and, as an everyday "bye" you say farewell; be it for a week, a month or forever.
That's leaving. Leaving is mystic, it's a religion. [...]
I had a weird dream. I left my old house in Dublin, and I brought with me everything: pieces of my closet, tables...
But something (as my Lego collection :| ) I couldn't bring with me. Back to Italy though I discovered that a weird warp portal was in the room upstairs, so that objects could be transferred from Osimo to Dublin effortlessly. [...] I can find nothing to feed the sense of loss, nothing to replace the Emerald. [...] Leaving is forgiving.

11-6-08
Qualche volta ti viene voglia di non fermarti, di prendere aereo su aereo e continuare a viaggiare.
[translation] Sometimes you want to go on, not stopping, to take the next airplane and keep on travelling.

14-6
I've been in Finland fro three days now. The world is so small sometimes. I've run into a small italian food shop. Inside it, nobody but a chubby, bald italian with rough, generous hands. He's been living in finland for 6 years now, with his finnish wife...
He made me nice discounts, offered us a coffee. It's hard to make a living here, he says. Well, no wonder. Italians can't really stand the cold, the silence... finns have bidet though.
And then I even saw Joni, the finn from UCD. I couldn't believe it. Dublin is the entire world, isn't it?
Sometimes in the evening I think I'll go out with Christian, or early in the morning I think about meeting Alice and Giorgia smoking in the courtyard. I still imagine to see kate waving at me through windows. That world is no more. Is it so difficult to settle down in this country, so hard to change homeland? Andrea did. He was alone, but smart and with a clear aim. Maß und Ziel.


20-6-08
In this long time abroad I've stopped writing and playing. Producing. I've been dull to the world but not to myself. I've produced myself. I'm increased, not in size but in capacity. My own world expanded.


There is much more! It will come, with time...

Journey

I made a journey, a most wonderful one, lasted one week.
But for me it was a lifetime, a life within life.
I was surprised from Frankfurt, I love that city!
I was again in Ulm and I loved it.
I was in Augsburg and Innsbruck and... well, not sure I loved them completely.
Then I was near Trento, in the dolomites, at the Taramelli hut.
Then I was back home, and I was so happy and content, that it gave me an energy pump for the life to come next.
That will be really boring, non-exciting. Especially compared to what I've seen and what I've done in the last year. Not to mention the fact that in other projection I could have been abroad.
Well, that's life and my decision. I belong to a place and I belong to people. No place belongs to me nor people do. Besides that, life is a continuous challenge even if you play at home. Working on ourselves is important. If we just focus on the outer world we miss the delights of our soul, we miss to fix the troubles of our soul.

Note: Innsbruck was very inspiring at night, in the inner city, but the rest of the city is a bit grey. Besides, people are really kind!
Ah yeah, I didn't mention, I traveled on my own. I met people, special people, but I traveled on my own. And I was looking for that, I love it. Me and myself...
I love to travel by train: you see the landscapes mutating, you understand the distances, and you can dig into history, imagining to live in fast forward the great migrations. Airplanes are maybe cheap, but they only bring you to a specific place, to the crowded places. With the train you can reach nearly everywhere. You can really say you're travelling.
I traveled for 2100kilometers which only 700km were made by airplane.

I discovered a lot during this trip. I learned about myself, and about life. Traveling is the occasion to put yourself into challenge, or observe yourself from a different point of view. That way you improve yourself, your life. You understand things that are not visible when you live in the everyday life. That's the important part of traveling, besides the fun. Exploring new places and meeting new people is partially true: we can do that always. Just we don't when we are at home, and that's a great flaw, especially if we declare ourselves "international people".

Paris

I've been for a workweek in Paris, for - easy to say - work.
Work was great but tough, especially phisically, I came back home sick, but now I'm feeling better.
I had some time to sightsee the city and as I did already 4 years ago I was puzzled by its romance. I love that city. The architecture is great everywhere in the innercity, there's no palace or building which is not tuned to the overall atmosphere.
The suburbs are times worse. I've been in Saint Denis and Neully-Plaisance, two outer areas, served by metro. Two aspecta I have to outline about them is the uglyness of the streets and the multicultural component.
The street are quite ugly as what concerns architecture and urban care. Some positive spotlights of course are churches.
Paris is really multicultural, and I think the racial integration is better than any other places I've been to... I'm wondering if it's even better than american metropolis like New York, where there are still "niggers" ghettos as far as I know. There in Paris arabs, asian and africans live together with european frenchs, without - apparently - problems.

I think I would never move to Paris even tho I liked the cosmopolitan way of living, the easy trekking with the metro, the events and occasions. I think I would likely move to a satellite town of Paris, a nice and good looking one, like I saw passing by by car.

Now I would like to discover more about smaller cities and towns of France. I've been once in Avignon and the nearby cities, but I can't recall many things. I should see them again under a different light.

I learnt french for 3 years at middle schools (that's to say: 11 to 14 years old) and I loved it, I was motivated and I was good in it. After so much time I didn't forget much and I was still able to conversate with french people. I'm fucking upset with my high school studied: I wasted 5 years with inadequate and unprepared teachers. I didn't learn a word of english (while I could have been a mothertongue speaker by now under different conditions), I wasn't taught math and phisics (like, instead, it was intended to be), and I had to relearn on my own at university (I learnt in a couple of years tons more than I didn't in 5 years), I learnt an unuseful latin, while I could be a good french speaker or even a german speaker (hate to say, things would have been different if I knew german). I don't remember anything of the literature and history studies which were just sticked to my mind for a few days after exams, the only thing I benefit from these fuckin'horrible 5 years is philosophy.
Ok I'm going too far with this topic.

So back to Paris: it's a pretty good place to spend some time, surely more than a tourist week...

The of Finland - The worst of Finland

First of all, a piece of news: Henna isn't able to join Tampere University and will be back to Dublin. I have the feeling I'll se the eccentric Irish capital again soon.

Then, the few international readers may forgive me, I'll give my temporary evaluation of Finland - but in

 Italian. The few non-english speakers who read this blog are anyways probably finnish.

Il meglio della Finlandia

L'estate:

I fiori sbocciano, il vento diventa tiepido ma non troppo caldo - come in italia. Le giornate sono cosí lunghe che si fondono l'una con l'altra: luce, luce! La notte é annientata, il cielo non é mai nero e cupo. Ogni ora é buona per uscire, mangiare, festeggiare, mai per dormire!

L'estate é una poesia tiepida e accogliente, luminosa. D'estate una fresca birra Finlandese é il meglio, accompagnata da un festival musicale o dal semplice svago, il giaciere in una foresta o su un lago. Condurre una barca sulla sua morbida e splendere supeficie, camminare sotto antichi e magnifici alberi, sul grasso muschio. Guidar

e una bicicletta nelle sue pianure. I finlandesi, finalmente liberi del winter blues (ma non del grugno) si fiondano nei loro mökki e nelle saune a legna, in mezzo alle foreste.

Bacche:

D'estate vengono i grandiosi "marjat": le bacche. Fragole e lamponi ma anche i piú esotici lakkat, i lamponi artici, o lindonberries, cranberries, fragole selvatiche, more, mirtilli, ribes... in quantitá enormi, liberi per tutti da essere raccolti sul suolo pubblico e congelati, per essere gustati durante l'inverno.

Non dimenticheró mai la dolcezza dell'estate finlandese. Un capolavoro per coloro che hanno un cuore soffice.

 

Laghi:

Il lago é una delle principali caratteristiche fisiche della Finlandia e un po' un centro spirituale della nazione. Sul lago si passeggia d'inverno, sul lago si va con le barche e si annega durante Juhannus, attorno al lago si fa il "kokko" (faló) e si mangia makkara. Dal lago si pesca e attorno al lago si fanno passeggiate. Non c'é nulla di meglio di una foresta riflessa sulla superficie di un lago.

Foreste:

La Finlandia non é che un

 grumo di piccole cittá e villaggi sparsi tra foreste e laghi. Certo, in Italia possiamo vantare tanti piccoli paesini sparsi, ma la struttura é diversa. In Italia abbiamo le grandi repubbliche marinare, le cittá industriali, i paesi di montagna. Anche i piú piccoli centri sono aggregati di origini medievali, sul picco di una collina per difendersi.

I villaggi finlandesi sono uniti solo dal nome. Sono solo case di legno sparse casualmente pre una foresta. Non fatevi ingannare dagli enormi palazzi di Helsinki o Turku: al di fuori della cittá c'é sempre foresta.

Le foreste non sono distese di pini piantati dopo la deforestazione, o bassi, cattivi e impenetrabili fratte di arbusti e serpenti, ma nella maggior parte vecchie foreste, ampie e incredibili di abeti e betulle; atte

nzione perchè ci sono ancora alci, orsi, scoiattoli ed ogni animale! Ma anche funghi e frutti di bosco (vedi alla voce:bacche)

La neve:

L'inverno sará pure buio e freddo, ma che gioia andare con lo slittino! E la luce riflessa sulla neve, camminare SUL lago, bianca freschezza ovunque, dove correre, sciare o solo stare in casa a guardare i bianchi fiocchi...

Politica, welfare, riciclaggio:

Tutti riciclano; se p

orti a riciclare lattine e bottiglie prendi soldi indietro; l'ambiente é protetto; lo stato da case a coloro che non ne hanno, e soldi ai disoccupato (24€ al giorno, mi dicono). C'é molta energia alternativa, i politici non sono corrotti fino all'osso. Molte cittá forniscono connessione Wireless gratis. Le strade sono sicure, le persone vivono tranquille; anche troppo.

La Musica:

I chitarristi finlandesi sono veloci, molto veloci. Ma non solo. Non c'é bisogno di essere mafiosi come gigi d'alessio o raccomandati come i gazzosa per suonare. Le band hanno i loro spazi, e nessuno ti dirá che sei un

 cretino perché dopo i 20 anni invece di mettere su famiglia suoni.

Il Traffico:

Se vi piace guidare rilassati la Finlandia é il posto per voi. Su le cinture, frecce attivate e luci accese. Si rispettano i limiti e i semafori, nessuno ha troppa fretta, e comunque le strade non sono mai affollate. Un sogno per i viaggiatori.

La libertá:

In Finlandia la chiesa conta nulla, anzi, ci si puó anche "disiscrivere". Puoi avere figli senza essere sposato, andartene di casa a 18 anni, convivere, sopravvivere, con persone di qualsiasi sesso ed é tutto abbastanza normale. Ma il natale con i tuoi!

Puoi ascoltare "la musica del diavolo" e va bene, girare vestito male, non importa. 

Il Peggio della Finlandia:

Architettura:

Le cittá finlandesi sono brutte. Ad eccezzione di qualche bella chiesa ed antico edificio a Lappeenranta, o il castello di Turku e Hämenlinna, la cittá é fatte di larghe strade e alti blocchi di cemento grigi. Sará perchè sono italiano, ma per me edifici storti, antichi, pieni di storia, diroccati, tondi, ovali, a casaccio e colorati sono la norma.

Alcohol:

"Alko", i negozi monopolio dello stato per la vendita dell'alcool é il centro della vita finlandese. Senza una bottiglia di Kossu (38%) nell'armadio non si vive. Ci vuole almeno una birra dopo la sauna. Ai matrimoni si beve piú di quanto si mangia. Non sará come l'irlanda, ma la Finlandia é una nazione che ama la bottiglia: l'incubo di ogni donna finnica é il marito alcolizzato.

Metodo:

In Finlandia c'é un modo giusto per fare ogni cosa. Qui ogni cosa é efficace, grandi lavori fatti con il minimo sforzo e massimo rendimento, ogni cosa pulita e pronta all'uso. Ma quanto é divertente fare le cose a modo proprio, sprecando tempo ed energia?

Timidezza:

Sará il winter blues, sará fisiologico, ma i Finlandesi troppo spesso nascondono il proprio mondo interiore, nel silenzio che caratterizza la nazione. Molti sono gioielli nascosti.

Considerate questa come una bozza. Ci sono tante altre cose in finlandia, belle e brutte, che mi verrano in mente solo con il tempo o che forse non sapró mai.

Hail, Munin.

the meaning of life - don't overdo

I planned and indeed started writing this post as quite philosophical, claiming that traveling for real - no turism -  is a good way to understand that what we take as eternal truths are nothing but a faded image of the world seen by a blind man from a tiny hole in a wall. This was going too far away though, and I'll keep it on paper, as I'm doing with much of the stuff. I may publish it all later on this blog.

 A CALL TO ARMS

Being an ex-erasmus in not only about erasmus: I shall now answer to my call to arms, or two actually:

-I believe I'm going to subscribe as an "erasmus buddy"; what does this mean? I'll be in charge of a drunkard asshole foreign student coming to Macerata, and help him finding his way -to the pub- in this completely weird country.

- There's a contest for ex-erasmus students, which involves using movie, photos, text and basically anything to explain their experience. My photos have been sucky and I have no recording (or 'footage') therefore I'll try to join with my diary.

the meaning of life - hometown, homeland.

The whole modern human society is based on one single basic mistake: that a man shall have only one home that he owns.

Therefore he shall protect his home, use and abuse it, and no one can enter it; thus he has to endure it if the winter is chilly or the summer too hot; thus comes that he shall expand it further; thus he shall buy, conquer, steal and hoard items and treasures, and keep them for himself; thus comes that upon his death his sons must bring forth this task.

Are swallows so foolish, after all?

Hail, Munin

100th post! - Kate Havnevik

The title was meant to be just "kate havnevik" but then I saw it was the 100th.

Kate Havnevik is a norwegian female singer. She had been in a lot of different styles and genres, but up to now I only had the chance to listen to two tracks from her (back then) recent album, "unlike me" and "timeless". I didn't want to talk about the music in itself but about what that music means to me.

I discovered her just for instance during random surfing (despite the shroddy internet connection) when I was in Ulm, and downloaded for free these two songs...

I was astonished how dreamy and enchanted these atmosphere were. Ulm, my first city, the snow, my small room, at the top of a typical german house (i'm not sure about a precise definition for the kind of building in this case), in sight of the münster and a nice view over the inner city roofs, the cold breeze, the nights and the walks along the city, the food, the smells, the small discoveries, the straßenbahn stop in the early morning and the nice tune of my morning alarm, the unknown language which made everything harder but more miserious, and Havnevik with her wonderful music. I felt happy for every step I made in the cold. I felt in a wonderland which in Huggin and Muninn's phantasies is called Norway or Scandinavia, even though I think it's probably nowhere but our spirits.

Everything was perfect and I had a life on my own, deciding for every step, the room was my nest, even tho somebody else could have seen it as a dark lair. Everything was delicate cause it was deeply me. My room and that music, my room and the snow, myself and the streets. I was sorrounded by and of myself. After some time, which was incredibly short - just a month or so, but felt like a life - I started to lack something: a guitar in my hands, a hug every now and then, a person to take care for. Yes, that's loneliness, but a very feeble one. I didn't look for my italian friends for a few weekends just for coincidence, which eventually I did. And then I met her. And everything changed.

The world which was still and silent like in a snow bowl started spinning fast and fast and my frozen heart respawned and the music changed: it was time for chikinki.

But now I'm going too further.

Everything was too short, the time for myself and the time for chikinki. 

Only 5 fucking months. Never doing it again, too short time.

The travels of Munniver

I' sorry for all the (imaginary) readers of this blog, for not having time - or means - to share my extreme experiences in the country that recently won the "most eccentric country" award: Finland.

I've been here for... several weeks, lots of time and yet not enough. My knowledge of finnish advances very slowly, partly for lack of time, but mostly for the characteristic of the language itself. Every time I learn a new word, or grammar feature, I find out later that I was mistaken, or the word is right, but it has 7 other more often used synonyms. Learning a language has seldom been more frustrating.

The other habits still surprise me, or I surprise them; for example, Jaakko was amazed, impressed and disgusted when he saw me putting salt on salad.

Salt and oil, is there anything more basic for a salad?

And there is a lot more. What about, for example, the silence? It seems to be a law in here, that I actually don't dislike - and as every rule is often broken by teenagers. I could spend hours describing the perfectly hygenic lack of hygene; no matter what they do, finns are always healthy - except for lactose allergies.

I should post a few pictures, but, well, they are on the other account now. I suggest to everybody who has a facebook account to check them there.

All the time I've been moving. After Lappeenranta I came back to lahti for one single day to leave again for Helsinki. There, after 2 days I departed for Turku, where the Ferry to Mariehamn, Åland, was. Together with Jaakko we went on a short trip with the motto "Knights & Dragons". Don't ask me why.

After enjoying tax free shopping, wonderful scenery from the sundeck, terrible wind on the sundeck, we reached the glorious capital of... Åland.

The city is tiny but quite pretty, a weird little island, in which finns can fell "half-foreigners".

There's not too much in Åland, but beaches, bird poo, ships and tiny forests should keep you busy for some time.

Then we faced another too early departure, this time towards the capital of... Sweden!

I have to say - finns, forgive me -  I loved Stockholm. There is so much to see and to do; the capital seems massive, its city centre comfortable and huge: looking from the channel, you can see a wide wide city, or so it seems. Don't think of New York, that's way to  big, but in Stockholm, there's free air - except in the small tourist venues of the Old city - everywhere. There is room for people. And toilets are expensive.

There is an entire small island for museums and a park, a Tourist could spend weeks in it. We only had tim to visit the Vasa museum and it was great.

By chance, we had the two sunniest day of the summer... so that the city looked even happier and warmer - Helsinki feels quite the opposite.

So, long story short, I ran out of time. I'll try to write again soon....

BWOOOOOUU - INAPPROPRIATE!!!!