Bye Schumacher

Michael raced in his 250th and last ever Formula One race a couple of Sundays ago and I’m missing him already. Unfortunately he didn’t go out on the high note he hoped for of winning his 8th Drivers World Championship, but it was a fantastic drive to watch seeing him get up to 4th from 20th place after a puncture. He and Felipe were treated by Ferrari to engines that redlined at an extraordinarily high 20,000 rpm that weekend and they both drove spectacularly. I loved it when Michael passed Kimi Raikkonen in an awesome manoeuvre, just to show his replacement who’s still the king. I always prefer to watch Michael when he’s racing from behind and seems to pull the impossible out of the car, rather than see him coast to a victory effortlessly from pole.

Michael tends to have a love him or hate him, type fan base, and I’m in the former, but he does test our loyalty sometimes with episodes of apparently purposely cutting drivers off to secure wins and this year stalling on the final qualifying lap to try to ensure Fernando Alonso couldn’t top his pole time. We’ll never know for sure what really happened, but even assuming the worst, I still manage to forgive him. Even though he races with robotic perfection most of the time, he is still human and occasionally makes errors in judgement when he has to make split second decisions when driving at speeds around 300kph. These errors are put in the spotlight, because of his number one status, more than other drivers who make mistakes as well. His conviction of winning-at-all-costs obviously has its part to play as well, but if it weren’t for those convictions he wouldn’t be number one and we wouldn’t be discussing this at all.

What also sets Michael ahead of the rest is that he left Benetton, which was the team he won his first two drivers world championships with, to join Ferrari, the then floundering team that hadn’t been competitive for over a decade, and turned the team around. It always amazes me when I hear of a driver who just won a world championship, wants to leave and join an uncompetitive team. Damon Hill did it in 96 and wasn’t really on the radar after that. But Michael essentially built the Ferrari team up around him to quickly bring it back to winning form; eventually creating a formidable team that he won a record-breaking 5 championships in a row with. He did more than other drivers ever did behind the scene and understood every aspect of the car as well as being a master on the track. That’s why the Italian Tifosi (passionate Ferrari fans) embraced the German into their pride of the Italian marquee. What remains to be seen is if Alonso’s punt of leaving his championship winning team of Renault will pay off when he joins McLaren next year. McLaren can be fast, but are too unreliable at the moment with Kimi not winning a single race this season.

Personally, I’ll miss him because he’s a role model. He had what I would say as one of the best jobs in the world and he was the number one. He showed that determination, single-mindedness and putting in extra work on top of a natural talent pay off. Now I just need to get my first drive…

Newsflash!!

Ok - not many of you will care but a few of you will be jealous; Nine Inch Nails are playing at the Brixton Acadamy in London on March 7 & 8 next year!! And I'm going to at least one of those nights. It's the best news I've had for a while and I'm pretty excited. Sure, I saw them play at the 2000 Big Day Out and again in Sydney last year, but it's my favourite band and would be happy to see them play once a month if I could. If you want to come with me - let me know...

Rock on!!

Italia

As promised, here’s a bit of an Italy review. I was already thinking of wanting to go to visit my friend Turtle who’s staying there, even before I got the new job, so it kind of worked out perfectly; I got my own personal tour guide, who knew his way around, some of the people and the language!!

I won’t go through all that we did, as it was a lot, but will mention some points of note. Firstly I flew into Bergamo (an hour outside Milan) on Sun morning. I had to get up at 4am to get out to Stansted in time!! When will I learn? Bergamo is the little city that Turtle trained in Montessori Teaching several years ago, where he still has a few friends who are kindly putting him up (or putting up with him?!) . They are wonderful friendly people. I got picked up from the airport by Turtle and Rudi and we got taken to Rudi’s mothers place for a traditional Italian Sunday lunch. The home cooked food was amazing with veal and pork and polenta and more, topped of with some red wine (vino rosso) of course. Plus for a bit of a kick I tried some homemade grappa with a healthy 52% alcohol content! That night we had great dinner in a restaurant in Bergamo where I sampled the local pasta. We were seated outside under big arches in such a quiet street, it was almost romantic – except that Turtle and I don’t have that sort of relationship! After that off to a tiny bar where we stayed until close having fun talking to the locals.

The next day we saw a little more of Bergamo, and jumped on a train to spend a few hours in Milan. I can’t say it’s the most amazing city. The outskirts are nothing to look at and there isn’t a lot to do if you’re not into shopping. We did have a look the Duomo (Italian for Cathedral) which was pretty impressive on the inside but covered in scaffolding on the outside unfortunately. We got a train to Florence which took about 3hrs, then found our hostel. This was possibly the best hostel I’ve stayed in; spacious, large lockers in each room, only 4 people per room and breakfast delivered to the room in the morning! We saw some more Cathedrals and the like in Florence, punctuated by many a gelato or espresso. It seemed to me the whole time I was always thinking about where we would eat or drink next. We were having a few drinks in the hostel before we went out and met some Germans, Aussies and an Israeli girl who now lives in NZ. She had the most weird accent as a result. We went out for a few more drinks and came back to our hostel room to find our room mates - a couple of Canadians – in a bad way. One hunched over a rubbish bin exclaiming she hadn’t thrown up in 10years!! We found it all amusing; it always makes me feel better than I might otherwise be if someone is worse.

Feeling a little seedy (and a lot tired), we went to the Academia the next morning. We brushed past most of it to get to what everyone was there for: Michelangelo’s David sculpture. It was pretty impressive I must say. We weren’t allowed to take photos though. I notice he had a furrow on his brow and I found out later that it was supposed to be him thinking about his impending fight with Goliath. Why he was going to fight naked I don’t know. Maybe that’s how they did things back then, or maybe he had just showered.

We made our way to Rome that afternoon to arrive to more wonderful summer-like weather. For some reason I was expecting to have liked Florence more than Rome. I think someone had told me Florence was a beautiful city and someone else told me Rome was quite dirty. I guess they were both right, but I found that I was more comfortable in Rome. The reason I got frustrated in Florence was that the footpaths were so narrow and there were so many other tourists as well that you ended up constantly avoiding people and having to walk on the road whilst watching out for the crazy Italian drivers. Rome, however, even though it had probably more tourists, was a lot easier to navigate around with generally more space. Florence was probably more picturesque but Rome had more features to stop and stare at. One example in Rome was the Trevi Fountain. At first I thought “yeah, that’s impressive I suppose” but the more I looked at it, the more I noticed the detail and wondered how such a marvel was constructed/sculpted.

There are hundreds of people around Rome and Florence with little fold-up tables selling fake Gucci, Prada etc. sunglasses, belts, handbags and other accessories. I was keen to have a look at some sunglasses for myself, but was put off because they were always pressuring me to try them on, if I looked at one for more than 0.5sec. I just wanted to take my time and browse, but they were always pushing for the sale and looked pissed off if I declined to try them on. We found out why they push so much when I was actually trying on a pair one day and all of a sudden the guy grabs the sunglasses off me, folds up his table and runs off. We noticed another guy doing the same and wondered what was going on, until we saw a cop appear on the scene. He could have chased them, and probably caught one, but didn’t see too concerned, but it was funny for us to watch. Obviously it’s illegal to sell knock-offs, but it’s not rigidly enforced.

We saw many of the typical touristy things in Rome including St Peter’s Basilica, Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, Pantheon, Coliseum and the Spanish Steps. These were all important and enjoyable, but we made sure we interspersed them with ample relaxing time as well. This was of course a week off for me between jobs, so I did want to return somewhat refreshed. Seeing all these places was highly educational and gave me a good feel for the history of Rome and how it al fits into so much of today’s culture. I figured out that even the cd/dvd burning software Nero is named after the 5th Roman Emperor Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus who apparently let Rome burn during the great fire.

So, I’m happy I’ve explored Milan, Florence and Rome enough for the moment and next time I go back to Italy, I’ll try to see some more of the rural areas. Although after just finishing a Robert Harris’s novel called Pompeii, I’m quite keen to check that out as well…

A big thanks to Turtle for being a great guide and friend who put up with me for a memorable week!

(photos to come…)

Blog about nothing

I haven't forgotten you all

Hey hey. I know it's been awhile and much has happened so I'll do a quick update now and maybe fill in the gaps later. I can write blogs from work now (in my lunch hour of course) so they might come more frequently...

You read correctly; I've started a new job now. It's at an international Oil & Gas Engineering company called Saipem UK. It's part of a parent company called ENI who's logo is the six legged dog you may have seen in relation to Agip. I'm working as an estimator in the commercial department working on tenders for sub-sea pipe laying and heavy lifting (up to 12,000 tonnes) projects, ranging from say £3m to £60m - so projects with a large scope and a bit more responsibility. My experience as a Costing Engineer at Windsor got me the job. It's a good move for my career I feel and I'm happy to be back in the engineering industry. There's a lot of new concepts and lingo to be learned, but that's what I enjoy. There's good scope to move around within the company and possibly around the globe as well, in the future. http://www.saipem.eni.it/

I took a week off after I left Charles Church Developments and nipped over to Italy for six days to hang with Turtle in Bergamo, Milan, Florence and Rome which was great, but I'll expand on that later...

Ciao tutti.