moving...

see tou there: http://frogsinspitz.blogspot.com/

Mamma mia, gia finito...

Back in France, so. After a little train-trip to Florence and then Pisa, Genova, Nice, Toulouse and my house.
Despite my monastic life, I was enjoying Rome, her thin streets and her green hills, her cappuccini and gelati, vespas and Romans. My Italian was also improving; too bad: I'll need to return in Italy to practice it more.
It's been a good time there, eventually. I learnt how to like this city, how to cook pasta and make cappuccinos. I also did understand that I wouldn't work at the Fao then: too much political and based on the interest of some countries. There are some good projects though, like the one I was working on.

There are the five best places I found in the area:
- the terrace of Castel San'Angelo, one of the best sights of the city (41°54'10.47"N/12°27'58.84"E)
- the gardens of Villa Medici, the other best sight on Rome (41°54'30.68"N/12°28'55.31"E)
- the market on Via Andrea Doria (from 41°54'32.00"N/12°26'56.28"E to 41°54'36.85"N/12°27'16.75"E)
- the lawn in the old temple, Ostia Antica (41°45'18.98"N/12°17'33.52"E)
- the decaying velodrome in the EUR (41°49'35.03"N/12°27'25.68"E)

That's all folks
Ciao ragazzi, ci vediamo en Hollanda

yvan

Breaking News

In the column on your right, the link to the BIRDHEALTH project I'll soon be a member -->

Journey in Mussolini country

E.U.R, for Esposizione Universale di Roma, 1942.

The district is not attracting, empty, cold, massive, and something that hovers above the buildings and weights on them. The cars, too, quickly cross the main way, all in perspective. The sky is grey, few people outside.

I arrive in metro in this district built from nothing by the fascist government of Mussolini, in 1942. The district by it-self it's not attracting, it's true: no alleys between two orange-painted walls, no tourists neither. We are so far away from Rome, in what was supposed to become the Third Rome, "extending over the others, along the banks of the sacred river until the Tyrrhean beaches".

The Convention Centre facing the Building of the Italian Civilization. 

This building is the one that impresses the most. 216 arcs hold up a propagandist ode to "a people of poets of artists of heros of saints of thinkers of scientists of navigators of immigrants"... I wonder what the people who live around and pass in front of it everyday think about that... The megalomania of a dictator. I think that what disturbs me is more the fact that those buildings are still standing up there and that these pictures are not aging paper archives but digital ones in my camera. 

A bit farther, nature springed back on a hastily built velodrome. I had to jump over two fences to enter in the site and see it growing and spreading. Nature is right, though.

Walking back, starlings were flying like fishes above the Palazzo dello Sport. Two falcons prefered courting instead of playing at sharks.

ciao

yvan

It's late here, I'll translate that later.

PS that has nothing to see: I've just received a Fao e-mail about the World Food Prize. It's a Nobel-like prize for agriculture and agronomy. This year's nominees are Luis Iniácio Lula da Silva, former Brazilian President, for his reforms against hunger and malnutrition, José Esquinas Alcazar, for his work on the conservation of biodiversity of agricultural species (agrodiversity) and to promote the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, Jeffrey Sachs, for his role in the fight against poverty, and Nicolaas A. van der Graaff, for his support of integrated pest management .

The aim of the game: find the mistake, or the subtle delights of globalisation when it comes to fight against hunger, or even, how to take the naughty for the nice.

The World Food Prize (WFP) has been created by 1970's Nobel Peace prized Norman E. Borlaug. It is said that he "has saved more lifes than anybody else" improving plant species and thus sparking what it's now known as the Green Revolution.

Last year, WFP laureates were "Edson Lobato of Brazil, A. Colin McClung of the United States, and H.E. Alysson Paolinelli of Brazil" for having allowed to transform bare and uncultivated lands of the Cerrado, Brazil, into one of the regions leader in terms of agricultural production. Very good. However, it seems that this Cerrado is one of the richest savanna worldwide in terms of biodiversity: out of 200 milions hectares (~400 milions acres), more than 40% of its 10 000 plant species are endemic, and shelter around 1500 vertebrate species. Today, more than 40 milions of hectares (2005) are designed to soybean cultivation (55% of the national production), to corn (28% of the nat. prod.) and to coffee (59% of the nat. prod.), and more than 55% of beef cattle. That agronomists used fertilizers to transform those unfarmable lands too acidic and rich in aluminium to make fields disturbs me a bit. But that WFP's sponsors are, I quote: World Initiative for Soy in Human Health, Monsanto, Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Cargill, US Grains Council and United Soybean Board pose me a problem...source

Vote for José... Esquinas

My new way

If the idea occured in your mind to send me a postal at Via Fransisco Sivori, 13, don't do it, I'm not there anymore.
I left the catholic surroudings of the Vatican to the also-catholic surroundings of Ostiense and Piramide, to the South. Only 20 minuts of walking per day instead of one-hour-and-a-half-almost-two I used to do; however, even if my fitness will be (a bit) worse, my lungs will be (a lot) better. Indeed, thoses last beautiful days, I've been able to discover the orange-grey smog I merily crossed each day during the three previous months.

My new way pictured, then :
At the corner, the caffè-at-the-corner; in front of it, at the end of the street, the great wall and the Piazza Ardeatino, and the stairs crossing the wall

In front of the wall, the handrail I'll slide on this evening
Upstairs, the symetric street; houses look the same in both sides of it

The market on the piazza at the end of the symetric street, warming hands and the fao...

And, from the top-floor of the fao, the sight to the west, and to the Vatican, in the north-western back-ground and above, the orange-grey smog.

Butterflies

Nothing really interesting this week-end. Some pictures.

Oh, yep, I've seen a butterfly, in January... shit

Save water, share a shower: Ecologic activism

I wouldn't like to fatten up the internet with some useless blogs (I don't even know if my blog is worthwhile) but there are some posters of a mediatic French NGO for environment. Translations:
- Putting on a half loaded washing-machine destroys the planet

- Taking a bath instead of a shower destroys the planet

- Leaving a lamp turned on without any reasons destroys the planet

Ciao
yvan

Flea market and CO2

This morning, I was walking on my way to work on Via Petroselli, just before Piazza della Bocca della Verità, when I caught sight of a woman's legs, ankles and heel joined, in leather ankle boots, lying down on the ground. Passers-by walking ahead of me hide her face with their long coats; and their legs, crisscrossing as they walk, let only see the color of her jacket. Surrounded by a small group of people smoking and talking, totally indifferent, she lies down on the pavement, among the scooters that are protecting her. Two policemen wait a bit farther. Her dark ankle boots seem there to cut the white line of the road, cars slow down as they come closer, a lady shouts at the ones that don't let her cross the street. I understand that the ambulancy won't arrive anymore. Perhaps one will write about her in the news in brief, about this lady lying among the feet of those who protect her too late. Perhaps.

Saturday, my mood wasn't so dark, I roamed even merrily in the streets, for once empty of people: they were inside shops. Sales. I'll use the occasion to buy new shoes, my old ones hardly bear Roman pavement. The market under plane-trees, nearby, displayed its fishes and smelt good sea..

The National Geographic talks about deforestation in Amazonia, a happy-ending expedition to the North Pole, migration of humpback whales and hummingbirds. Things that soon nobody will talk about anymore, when the Mato Grosso will have changed its name (literally: dense bush) to Grande Campo de Soja Que Engorda os Proprietários Terrestres (lit.: big soyfield which fattens squires), when expeditions to the North Pole will be done by boat and will always end happily, and when whales and hummingbirds won't need to migrate anymore. What a wonderful world is that one, intended to facilitate our job.

In front of the Castel San Angelo, an ice rink. Despite the coolness of the ice, it's a hot day. Lili Allen "makes me smile". I conclude Senilità written by Italo Svevo on Piazza del Popolo, under the rays of the sunset.

Walking back, I find the bookshop Il Mare, which sells a large number of everything about sea. I'd like to do seakayak on Kamtchatka peninsula.

Sunday; that's when my dark mood came. Green mood rather. I had decided to gallivant toward the Trastevere, on the other side of the Tiber, so. I went there by il Gianiculo, to say hi to Garibaldi and enjoy the calmness of hills. The garden of one of the American embassies

Downstairs, a huge flea market straggles. One can find everything: scrap mercants, book mercants, people who seem to sell all they own, i.e, for some of them, a plastic dwarf or old trinket on a dusty blanket, forgeries sold at high price under the nose of policemen, kilograms of unusable clock's mechanisms, kilometers of wires from mobile phone chargers, one laptop which looks so strange on these stands that it must work as well as this half dismantled boat-engine, others suggest curtains, a bit of color, discs, a bit of music, watches and fake guns, mobile phone's bodies, electric components, memory sticks, plastic things, dvds, and all the stuff our occidental society send to Asia to build it up, that comes back to us and that we buy, use, stock, forget, sell again so that others buy it, sell it to those who will buy it, use it and forget it again and so on until it ends on the dusty blanket of an Italian bum or a lady from the Balkan, lean hope to feed a day or a family.
And me, in crowds squeezing and moving me, my green ideas make my mood darken: is ecology a thing of well-to-do? Who, in this thousand of people, thinks about the future of Earth? Rather, who has not much daily problems to think about our planet's future? North Pole's ices and the Amazonian forest? Which one of these faces I meet thinks like me that batteries costing 1€ for 5 are not a solution for industrial contamination? How a president-to-be will take into account these environmental problems while the half of French population lives with less than the Smig (official mimimum salary, almost 1400€/month) and a good part with something less than the Rmi (assistance for unemployed, around 500€/month)? It's a good thing to create washing-machines and fridges saving energy, but how many buy 2nd hand washing-machines and fridges that don't save, or don't save anymore, energy? Proposing tax-deductible assistance for those who use solar panel or transform their houses in HQE (French High Quality for the Environment); but how many are under the taxable income and consequently can't have this assistance?
Walking out, I follow the Tiber, which at the edge of the city grabs tatters of plastic to the branches of plane-trees. A bit farther, slums; heat escapes from a stove pipe.

ciao
yvan

Post Scriptum which has a lot to see : I recommend you (for the ones who read French) to read "Dol" written by Philippe Squarzoni. After "Garduno, en temps de paix" and "Zapata, en temps de guerre" (two comics books about globalisation and the way it affects our life -negatively and positively- that you can find in good bookshops or in my bedroom), Squarzoni is attacking last years' conservatory policies and eventually relates it to our "new" environmental problems. The English translation of "dol" is "wilful misrepresentation". A very good political comics book, soon in my bedroom.

Back in Rome

I have the impression that cities make me shrewish (I didn't know this word. It's a funny one though): cars passing by and never stopping to let you cross, stupid car-drivers who need to honk all the day and night-round, bunch of people who never walk fast enough nor straight enough so you can never overtake them, idiotic pigeons, parks that are closed you don't know why, guys driving 4x4 in narrow alleys, people who never care and put their rubish or their cigarette butt everywhere and above all in the only open parks, or policemen who park their cars wherever they want...
Saturday was a good day though: it was a free-day. Near the Vatican, a parade whith horses and guys wearing stilts, marching band and cheerleader celebrated, in a semi catholic-pagan procession, the arrival of the Three Kings and the Befana, a witch who gives present to good Italian kids and coal to mischievious ones. A band was playing "Ay ay ay ay, canta y no llores".
All of them headed up to the creche situated on Piazza San Pietro.

Sunday, I was walking, daydreaming, when an enourmous BANG! almost blew up my heart. The culprits: two olds, him, a lighter still burning in the hand, her, a smile crossing her face. Firecrackers are loved in this district.
On Piazza del Popolo : did the US signed Kyoto Protocol?

Snaking around...

Rome's antenas: almost a part of the architecture... In Trastevere district, a place I didn't know, but where I'll go back. A guy was playing "Ay ay ay ay, canta y no llores" on his accordion.

Ay, ay, ay, ay, canta y no llores

porque cantando se alegran
cielito lindo los corazones

De la sierra, morena
cielito lindo vienen bajando
un par de ojitos negros
cielito lindo de contrabando

Ay, ay, ay, ay, canta y no llores
porque cantando se alegran
cielito lindo los corazones

ciao

yvan

Sometimes...

Sometimes you just think that everything will go worse and worse.
It started well, though.
New Year's eve has been good, in a hutt, at 2500m (almost 8400 f).

Packe's hutt, from the name of an English pyréné-ist who funded the construction, at the top of a saddle, near la Coume de l'ours ("Bear's valley"), at heart of la vallée Toy ("Toy's valley").

We ate foie-gras, drunk white wine and enjoy beautiful sunsets and poetic moonrises.

The way down was great, we saw a partmigan (Lagopus mutus) and walked on the dark ice of a frozen lake. The weather was warm, like an early spring in the middle of winter; that's when you think about global warming.

And then, we drove back. I arrived at my house at night, unpacked my backpack of my my mountain's stuff, packed it with my city's stuff, ate a south-western soup; that's when you sleep the best, after a long day from mountains to plains, having seen family and friends, and when you think you won't see them before a while.

The train starts in time at Pau's train-station. We ran along snowy mountains and cold streams, then sunny plains, then the mediterranean sea, and then we stopped. A women had just thrown herself under the wheels. So we waited 5 hours, I missed my train in Nice, we slept 5h in Nice in a couchette, waited 1h to take the train to Vintemiglia, Italy, waited 2h to catch the train to Genova, waited 2h to take the train to Rome, arrived at Rome with 1h30 of lateness, spending the 6 hour of this last trip between two railcars. In Rome, I payed a 50€-fine for not having enough coins to pay my metro's ticket. Eventually, my travel lasted 35 hours from my house to my flat. Almost as long as going to New-Zealand.

Fortunaitely, my future Arctic supervisor remembered me and is going to send me some ar(c)ticles.

Christmas's coming

Have a Merry Christmas

fishes z'and co

I don't know what to write and I haven't taken so many pictures. I won't be loquacious today, if I've ever been loquacious.

Italians markets are fun. I mean, the one which is near my building is fun. You can find there anything you want. Like a supermarket along a street. People have their own stand in bricks and mortar where they sell their stuff.

A view on Tiber river, and you see the floatting houses.

Next extinctions

Do not forget the un-mediatised...

Arctic ices

to see how fast should desappear the Arctic seas' ice cap, wait a little bit, just the time to download it :

two weekends' pictures

Some photos ...sun rising above houses, in front of Vittorio Emanuelle's bridge

arriving to Circo Massimo

back to my house, Via Candia is now illuminated.

Last sunday, I was waiting for the washing-machine to clean my clothes ; I've been to Piazza San Pietro so. It was 12 noon, and the pope was doing a briefing of his recent visit in Turkey, from the uppest window of his appartments. There were lots of people though. Some of them had banners, like this one "L'Immacolata vincerà" : the Immaculate will beat. I didn't know the Virgen had thi sking of ideas...The times they are a changin'

Some groupies were there too, young girls, screaming at the pope at the end of the Pater Noster... I went back to my clothes.

I enjoyed this sunday going to Piazza Navonna, plaza where street's artist perform. This time, sheds had been built up for a sort of funfair : some of them sold food, others MadeinChina's handcraft stuff, others cups : some strange cups, though, with the face of Mussolini, the Italian dictator during WWII.

Piazza Navonna, by day by night

This week-end, unsorted

on top of a hill, surrounded by goat's dropping (maybe sheeps)

Walking to the observatory's hill

from it..