Loquat!

There's a loquat tree near my office! I didn't realize it was an edible fruit until one of my friends pointed it out on our walk to the coffee bar.



This is a pretty small loquat, and a loquat seed. The flavor is mild, but good. A little bit like an apricot, but not oversweet. The texture of the flesh is smooth. It would make a really good puree... I expect to keep picking and eating them for the next few days before I head home!

Giò Pomodoro Again

These three are clustered together in a weird nook in my building. The first is "Hermes con Verga", Hermes with his staff.



These next two are both just titled "Arco". I like these ones, they are pleasantly abstract.

More Gio

There are actually a huge number of these Giò Pomodoro sculptures in my building. I do like a lot of them. This one is one of my favorites.



It's entitled "Folla", which means a crowd, like of people. This next one is "Marat", I think we are talking about Jean-Paul Marat. This is definitely a similar depiction of a person as in the Castor and Pollux sculpture shown before.



My friends Esther and Tom are here visiting this weekend, so you may not hear much from me in the next few days!

Design

My Italian class (and the reconfigurable manufacturing class that I am listening to) are both in the Via Durando half of the campus, as I mentioned, and also in the same building. The building is part of the design center complex. The building is just a huge classrooms complex, no Professors or anything, but classes for a variety of fields in design are taught there. Design incorporates textiles and fashion, architecture, stage design, and mechanical system design. So this means you see different stuff hanging around. For a few weeks the lobby had student designed stage costumes. In the central atrium of the building, there are banners of various famous interior furnishings designers, along with some of their designs. The building itself also has a very defined structure.



Note: that coat-rack in the top was also represented at the Triennale design museum!

Laurea

Yesterday was graduation laurea at Polimi Bovisa. I am not sure about the graduation schedule, I think this is people who finished up fall classes (which have an exam period ending in January and February) but I don't really now. The cutest part was the laurels that were the unofficial garb. I saw lots of folks with the headbands, mostly leafy, a few with some flowers too. Here's a surreptitious snapshot I took before class last night!

Poppies

The spring flowers in the grass patch near my building are a great variety of weeds. But one flower that has turned up along the edges of the pavement is poppies. These blazing red ones.



The long exposure makes the red perhaps too vivid, but it's still much closer in color than the washed out from flash version below. They are a strong red shade.

Finally! An Access Card

This week I finally got an access card to my building. Before, they were giving out the RFID key tags, and they seemed to be in short supply. I was able to do without pretty well, but in the last few weeks, they have started to lock the doors to my section of the building even during working hours, so it was becoming a little more necessary. I ended up asking the secretary in my group, which I should have done from the outset, she is very helpful. She filled out a form, sent me to a funny office, and they gave me this card.



Well, that was Wednesday, and it still hasn't gotten registered in the system... The guy said up to ten days for it to work, and I am well within that window, but I hope it works on Monday!

My Office!

Not 100% sure if I will be alone in this office for the next few months. I am in the Mechanical Engineering Building, which is a new building, next to the old aerospace/wind tunnel area. This is in the Bovisa campus of Polimi, very near to the Bovisa train station.

Anyway, enough talk, here's my temporary office:



The view from my office:



They are doing a lot more construction on the campus. Actually, all over Bovisa area, there are tonnes of cranes. And in many different spots.

I only have wired internet in my office, as that's what available to visitors at Polimi... Kinda a bummer!

Still Apartment Hunting

Apartment hunting has been tough! I don't think the Italians check their emails as often as we Americans do, so it's been tough taking a conversation through to its conclusion. In short, though, I still don't have an apartment. I have considered taking the room offered by Polimi, but Marcello actually said I shouldn't, since it's an incredibly long commute to the Bovisa campus where I will be working a lot of the time, 70-100 minutes, and that it's not in a nice neighborhood. The dorms are otherwise entirely filled! Wow! I was really hoping to live in the Galileo dorm, where one of Marcello's students live, since it is in a more centralized location.

I think this would be a lot easier in Milan! I would be on the same time schedule, and I could call people more easily. I should probably stop being a coward and add more funds to my Google voice account, so I can call from here... I'm sort of worried about calling people up because of the language barrier...

So, if you have a friend in Milan who could let me crash on their couch for a few days, now's the time to say so!

Triumphant Return?

I am back from my trip to Florida... I ignored my Italian lessons entirely while I was gone. This week I should hear about the Rocca fellowship options. I'm getting excited. I'm trying to schedule a call with my Polimi host for tomorrow. We're both into Skype, it seems like the best way to do international calling if both parties have good internet. I don't have a headset, I think I will have to get one!

Polimi Photos

Here's some photos of my last visit to Polimi!

Nati does in her signature pose at the Bovisa campus.



They have a fresh OJ machine, which I was pretty fascinated by!



Bovisa station is covered in graffiti, I liked this penguin.

Rocca Fellows Lunch

The current Rocca fellows at MIT have get-togethers every week at lunch. It's pretty casual. I went to this week's on Tuesday. It was pretty cool. I met five of the current Rocca fellows, including one who is a good friend of Nati's. I remember several of their names, which is pretty good for me. I have to work on Italian names. Flavia and Giovanni are pretty normal Italian names, so I remember them. I got some impressions of Politecnico and the like, and we played some foosball. (Which I am told is actually popular in Italy!)

Rocca App In!

Yesterday I handed in the final part of my Rocca fellowship application, and chatted with the program administrator about timelines and visa issues. Actually, I am going to be in Italy for a short enough time before the holidays, I won't even need a visa. (US students staying for 90 days or less do not need a visa!) I will have to get a visa when I am back over the holidays, though. This is complicated... Well, at least I have my application in place now! I am trying to convey to my Italian colleagues that it's important that things are in place for my arrival, we gotta organize stuff with Politecnico!

Pimsleur Italian 1 Lesson 16-17: Just when Rosetta Stone was catching up, now we are doing more numbers in Pimsleur. Up to sessanta "sixty". More work on figuring out prices, how much to give someone, change, that sort of stuff.

Pismleur Italian 1 Lesson 15

I returned from California last night! I was incredibly busy, I only had time to go through one of my Pimsleur lessons. On the plus side I listened to it while walking along the beach at Crissy Field. This was another one about having things, counting and money. The instructor explained that in Italian, you use the pronouns for "some" or "any" more than you do in English. When you actually use it to modify nouns, you use delle or dei. In this lesson they introduced the standalone form, ne. As in Non ne ho. "I don't have any."

Today I have lots of things to set up and arrange for later this week and next week. Including a meeting with the head of the exchange program with Polimi at MIT. Hopefully I can nail some of the details of visa stuff and travel down. I am also supposed to be having a conference call with Marcello and his boss/mentor Professor Tolio. The dates we are considering for me heading out are coming up soon! Hopefully I will be able to squeeze in some Rosetta Stone today, too.

Fellowship Application

I worked on my fellowship letter last week, and sent it to my future advisors in Milan... I want to submit it next week, since the fellowship program supervisor will be returning from her vacation then. What I need for my application package:

1. My letter of intent.
2. A letter of support from one of my hosts at Polimi.
3. A letter of support from one of my MIT advisors.
4. My resume.

4 is easy, I just finished up a first draft of 1. Gotta convince everyone else to write up their parts!

Maybe Milan

It's looking more and more likely that I will be going to Milan, to work at the Politecnico and ITIA. I just emailed with my potential future boss about putting together my fellowship application letter. Basically, I have to write a letter detailing why I want to go to Politecnico, and I need a letter of support from a faculty member at Politecnico and another from an MIT faculty member. That's the core of the application!

So, for me, I basically have to get cracking and write this letter. Once I finish it up, I am thinking that it will be time to get some Italian lessons.