Five Things

I have read on friend and fellow photographer Bexxi's blog a new Five Things meme in which you tell someone else what you associate with them, and ask them to elaborate. So, here are the things she came up with for me.

1) An Italian in Munich – how the heck does that work?
So far so good.... There are many Italians living in Munich, a lot actually, doing all sorts of jobs (including Luca Toni!). There are pros (many) and cons (a few) living in Munich. Notably the very high quality of life compared to Italy vs. the long and cold winters/autumns and a general lack of empathy and connection with the locals (that is germans in general) - it is not impossible and usually you need them to have at least a beer in their stomach, but generically speaking it is much more difficult to get into somebody's life in Munich (and not just with germans sometimes) and feel a connection than, say, in Italy.
With the difference that usually once you are "in" it is very difficult to be "out" someone's life - a friend (Freund) in Germany is most of times forever. Otherwise you are always a Bekannte (an acuaintance), no matter what you do or say.

2) Florence
This is my "home" town, although I was not born there and lived only 8 years in this lovely, but abandoned to itself, town. That was during my university studies. My parents were born here, but due to the ob of my father, we have been living a bit all over the place in Italy and in England for about a year. It was also the place where my grandparents lived and I have been visiting regularly Florence, no matter where I was, all of my live. And where some, but not all, of my best friends live. I was born in Milan, but Florence plays a centra role in my life and it is very likely the place I will want to spend my retirement days - there is so much that connects me to this city.

3) Complaining about stuff
This is probably the worst trait of my character - and the biggest problem is that I don't even realise that I am complaining!!!
I am told that I can go on forever complaining about everything, people, places, facts, computers, music, books, you name it. I think this comes from me being very critical about myself and very detailed oriented. And then project this on everything else and being not very tolerant in situations where likely giving some slack would be better. This also results in me being "serious" when I shouldn't. I don't give usually too much slack to myself, and therefore I end up not giving it to others/other things, and end up complaining about it.
I am working on improving this dark spot and ask others/friends to tell me when I am doing it to stop, recognise that I am doing it and improve. There is always room for improvement, right?

4) candle-light setting on camera
This is related to a picture I took with a Point & Shoot camera I brought with me for casual phtographying during an excellent workshop called "Learning to see", by Chris Marquardt. Everybody was carrying their DSLRs and I was the only guy with a Canon S3 at the WS - it still has a lot of manual control but in comparison to a DSLR it lacks performance, picture quality and a couple of other things... I honestly felt at the beginning of the WS completely out of place. I thought, honestly, that I made a mistake joining. But everybody seemed to be cool about it and the purpose of the whole workshop, as Chris quickly explained, was learning to take good pictures, pics that mean and convey something by using what you have - even when using a throw-away camera or...a point and shoot camera!
I have learnt so much from the others and got the "virus of the DSLR" (I now own one ;)), but they also saw that I could take decent pics with more modest equipment and gifted me with many heartfelt compliments on what I shown them (we had each days a very honest pictures review session). Plus having a swiveling LCD screen and a 12x optical zoom in a tiny and light package, I could actually take pics you cannot easily take with a DSLR. You can see all the pics we took back then here (the first 6 pics were not taken during the WS).
So, back to the candle topic (sorry for the digression...), there I was during one of the dinners (the workshop was 5 days long) and took this pic using the "Candle Light mode" of the Casio Exilim that I took with me that evening. No DSLR has typically such modes, but the result was really good - it is currently one of the "most interesting" pics on my Flickr phootostream. I really like the pic and reminds of the very good times, the friendships I made during that workshop and all that I learned from Chris.
BTW: the camera has also the "food" mode, AKA Japanese-taking-pics-of-everything mode, "flower" "kids" "pets" modes and so on....

5) “non tutto il male viene per nuocere” (you quoted this at me once, and I liked it)
Literally translated the phrase sounds more or less, "not all bad comes to hurt" - this is one of the ways for me to try to see the glass half full - unfortunately it is usually half empty.
I don't remember when I mentioned it to Bexxi, but glad that she liked it! ;) It stikes me a bit that she associates me with this one.

Now these are the five things I associate with Bexxi (some are similar to the ones that our common friend Kavey wrote for her):
1) flowers and (wonderful) pictures of them
2) (her) self portraits
3) literature and university
4) this pic
5) A Welsh in Freiburg - how the heck does that work?!? ;)

How about yourselves out there? Post me and I will write 5 things that I associate with you and then you can write on your blog your comments on them.