Aug. 17, 2025
It’s back to base, as one sign which I’ve seen on the glass façades of Gatwick airport recites. That base is, presumably, London: and that sign wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t addressed to Londoners returning home after one of their escapades, more likely than not from abroad. The question is, then, is it addressed to me as well?
I have indeed, just come back from a short trip back home. Last Saturday was my dad’s birthday, and having received some travel allowance for the company’s summer party, I decided to take the chance and make him a surprise. Rather than taking the train back to London from Brussels, I booked a flight to Italy instead: I showed up at the door without notice.
Jun. 4, 2025
Everyone has some childhood memories, says my Chinese textbook. Some memories are good, some are bad, but all of them are equally engraved somewhere in the depths of our hearts. Well, let me dig a bit, see what I can find.
Sundays were a source of anxiety for me, when I was a kid. Don’t get me wrong, I never had to attend mass or anything like that: I was born into an agnostic family. But however agnostic, my family still had to respect the sacred tradition of Sunday lunch. Almost every Sunday, for lunch, my parents and I would go visit my maternal grandparents, who lived just a few blocks away from us: for my mom, going every Sunday was a sort of filial obligation. And despite her brother and sister being objectively less burdened than her by any kind of filial duty, they would still meet, the three of them, at least every other Sunday at the elders’ house. But my mom, being extremely filial, was always the first to arrive. She would pressure me and dad to hurry up and get ready, and than, seeing how sloppy the two of us were, she would just leave first, reminding us to hurry up as she left the house. Normally, me and dad would follow suite, between fifteen and thirty minutes later.
May. 9, 2025
It’s sad that the notes from my trip to China—which could have been among the most interesting content published on this blog—remain little more than a sketch in my head, their outline as clear and perfect in my mind as they are vague and unfinished in practice. Writing is, truly, a challenge against oneself: it requires patience to find the right words to express one’s mental images and, above all, perseverance to battle the voices inside one’s head that whisper, “You won’t make it.”