Today I turn forty. That feels strange to write. A round number, a heavy one. My birthday has always been a built-in checkpoint—falling on the 1st of November means the year is almost done, and looking back has become a bit of a ritual. But this year, the reflection feels sharper. Maybe because forty isn’t …
Category archives: Life
The distance between how nations see each other
There’s a strange kind of clarity that comes from having two homes. Not two houses, but two countries. Two sets of holidays, two very different senses of humour, a lot of unspoken rules which often don’t translate. You learn early that what’s considered polite in one place can be borderline rude in another. And somewhere …
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Worn in, not worn out: 18 months in the humble Uniqlo Selvedge denim jeans
There’s a certain poetry to objects that wear with you. Not the kind of wear that weakens, but the kind that records. Like a well-used cutting board or an old mug with a chip that only you notice. But there’s something special about denim. Something stubborn and slow. It doesn’t just fall apart, it breaks …
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Parents as leaders
I’ll be upfront: whenever someone can’t stop yammering about leadership, a little voice in my head mutters, “Yeah, all right, prove it.” Maybe you feel the same. We’ve all been bombarded with LinkedIn manifestos and TED Talks declaring the secrets of “visionary leadership,” usually in the context of business, and maybe sports. Boardrooms and locker …
Why are Italian salaries so low? It’s not just the economy
There’s a certain shrug Italians do. A half-defeated, half-practical motion that says, “What do you want me to do about it?” Ask anyone in Italy why the average salary seems nailed to the floor, and you’ll probably get a variation of that shrug, maybe paired with a sigh, maybe a joke, maybe a deeply uncomfortable …
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“Hit by air”: the Italian fear of breeze, explained
[…] the British do not have a term for a “colpo d’aria”. It literally translates as a “hit of air” and seems to be incredibly dangerous for Italians. They can get one in their eye, their ear, their head or any part of their abdomen. — BBC Magazine, 2011 If you’ve ever spent some time …
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You, me, and Hegel’s dialectics
Ever notice how talking to certain people feels like breathing? You say something, they challenge it. Not aggressively, but with curiosity. And then somehow, the thing you end up agreeing on wasn’t quite what either of you started with. It’s better. Sharper. That’s not magic. It’s Hegel. Sort of. Now, I’m not saying you need …
What your Apple TV becomes when you start getting curious
Sometime around the turn of the millennium, a strange new object appeared in my life. Metal, vaguely alien, it was bolted to the outside wall of our apartment building in Southern Italy: a satellite dish. Inside, a decoder box materialised in the living room, paired with a remote that looked ordinary enough, until I learned …
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Smart, but doesn’t apply himself
I was always that one child in school. Not so keen to effort. Teachers muttered about wasted potential. Mamma agreed. Friends watched, puzzled, as I made it through the system largely by test-optimised bursts of knowledge acquired last-minute, at the strategically right time. “If only he’d apply himself,” they all said. The tragedy of it …
Three albums from the 2000s you should listen to again now
The 2000s—a time of rapidly changing technology, geopolitical instability, and existential dread. It was a decade of musical innovation too, where artists across genres flirted with the digital while grappling with the analog, tapping into both societal unrest and personal angst. As the years pass, certain albums have come to feel like period pieces, their …
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