When I decided to become a Computer Scientist, I never imagined that my career would have collapsed because of a small problem. So small, that it rarely reach three millimetres. Yes: I don’t know how happened, but I am working on fruit flies. When I listened to my friends talking about their experiments on Drosophila melanogaster, I remember their frustration my admiration for what I used to classify as “dynamic testing on living beings“. But the difference from pretending to care to someone else’s research and actually conducting research on fruit flies, is not small. Actually it’s quite huge.

However, I can’t really say that this turn in my carrier was so unexpected. Google Suggests – the modern version of the Delphic Oracle – tried several times to warn me from the serious consequences that working on fruit flies eventually occur…

At lest, I think that I finally understand why my new little, creepy friends are called fruit flies…

Creepy. Creepy and naughty.

Since when I started using my GMail account, I have to say that I didn’t received any spam message so far. Well, I actually received them (an still I am!) but Google, clearly violating my privacy, reads my emails and cleverly put them in the right folder. SPAM.

By the way, even when spam filter can’t get it right with some messages, we are now so used and training to detect fake emails that I can hardly believe that someone still manage to get pranked. Come one! We receive at least ten messages every month about effective and risk-free techniques to enlarge our penises up to horse-comparable sizes, but as far as I know, I have never seen people walking in the streets leaning forward because of its weight.

If problems related to spamming messages are now becoming less and less severe, there is another type of unwanted emails that, unfortunately, cannot be filtered. They are not technically spam, as their main purpose it’s not trying to sell us cheap, natural herbal Viagra. However, there is something wrong in some people’s minds that make them believe that normal people are actually interesting in any possible event whatsoever is currently ongoing at the College. And so, in less than a week, you receive over twenty unrequested, undesirable, unwanted, bloody useless messages from some random College newsletters you never really signed for. It’s not spam. It’s simply rubbish.

A place in which I didn’t really expect to receive thousands of spam, is this blog. This first day I started it, I was so annoying by the comment filter that I asked to the staff to remove it. Fortunately, they simply classify my mail as spam instead. However, spam comments starts to appear, slowly but constantly. Then, after my post called “The Valium is on the table” the number of comments containing link to buy Prozac, Valium, Rolex – and yes, Viagra again – reached an alarmingly high level. So alarming, that I am sometime flattered by all the consideration that spam bots have for my blog. Ultimately, this is the reason why I have tried to use ambiguous and dangerous words in this posts. However, let me apologize in advanced if I missed some spam-related top key words like barely legal, Nike outlet, scabies remedies and – your favourite – cam girls.

And even if in the wrong way, I am quite proud of my over 1.000 spam comments so far. And some if them, I can’t deny it, seem really, really interesting:

• Swollen Gland Sore Throat
• Cataract Surgery Recovery
• Cancer Of The Tongue Pictures
• Dry Scalp Home Remedies
• How To Get Rid Of Bloating
• How To Get Your Ex Girlfriend Back
• Brandy Cocktail
• 200+ Pictures of Lady GaGa 2011!

Health problems, low self-esteem issues, alcohol abuses and pop music. Oh God. These spam bots know me better than everyone else…

Since the dawn of time, Humankind has been coped with the deepest consequences of being made of flesh and blood. And even if millions of years have been passed, we still need for the same things. We still fear crossing dark hallways when we are alone. We still feel our heart pounding in the chest when she smiles back at us. And most of all, we still have to take a crap twice a day.

If you think about that, it is quite surprising that toilets, despite their being essential, are so underestimated. We go to the loo more often than we buy a sandwich. And most of us probably have said to his own girlfriend «I need to pee» (quot.) more time than «I love you». But as far as I know, there is no Saint Valentine’s Day for our water-closets. So, here we go. This post is meant to be, literally, a toilet review to finally give to our favourite room the respect that it deserves.

Just for the record, I was dramatically inspired by my Halloween weekend. I will never, ever had Sweet Chilli Noodle again. It burns when they enter in your body, as well as when they come out. And if you’re thinking this can be gross… well, let’s try a double portion of Sweet Chilli when you’re at the College. If you can survive to the shock of using the toilettes in the Campus… then I will be more than willingly to visit you at the Hospital and listen to all your criticisms.

However, if you still feel brave enough to have a spooky weekend, I can’t prevent you from eating Sweet Chilli Noodle. But at least, I can tell you which toilets NOT to use!

Huxley Building

Sherfield Building

This page will be in constant update. If you want me to review a College toilet, just leave a comment and I will do my best. But this time, without Sweet Chilli Noodle.

Sherfield Building is an amazing place, where Art and Science are melted together. Unfortunately, not always with the expected results. This afternoon, as usually happens to me, I was running up and down the College, completely lost. After a very kind receptionist told me that «Lecture Theatre 7 is the room with the number 7 written on the door», I ended up in the Blyth Gallery. A must (literally!) for all the students who are in the fifth floor and need to go to the toilette. In Italy I used to be surrounded by what I can call “conventional art”, and for this reason I find particularly difficult to appreciate unconventional one. Quite the opposite, I am indifferent to easy attempts to make art out of sex. Especially when it comes to giant fabric-made vaginas, like the ones hand-sewn by the gynaecologist artist Sarah Gillham.

«Her use of vaginal imagery should not be read literally, but metaphorically, as an active and powerful symbol of female identity whilst at the same time exploring her own fantasies and desire».

So, according to the description, either she didn’t explore her… desire very well, or she really does not know how to sew! At least now I have a clue on how Freud ended up with his theory about “penis envy”…

At the same time, but fortunately not in the same floor, another artist tried to scare me. Succeeding. What a man fears at most, more than a vagina as big as a garage door, is to lost his hair. The Department of Humanities now welcomes its students with lovely reproductions of Robert Newman‘s paintings spread all over the breakout area. Well, probably “The Alopecia Diaries” wasn’t the best way to make international students feel integrated, but surely now they won’t complaints that toilettes there are the most scaring part of their Department.

These two exhibitions are not permanent, so rush up and have a quick look during lunch time. Sorry, probably I wasn’t clear enough. Giant fabric vaginas! Do you really want to miss the chance to take a picture next to one of them?! And for your Facebook profile it’s surely better than a trivial shot of you in front of the Big Ben.

I am aware that I’m not an art critic, but to be honest… the last picture looks like a vagina, much more than the first one…

/ˌek.spekˈteɪ.ʃ^ən/ When you expect something to happen.

Ohh, I know what you’re going to say, but it’s true: I love drama. It could be probably related to my childhood overexposure to rubbish mystery fictions, or maybe it’s just a natural consequence of being a programmer. After having written too many else-branches, in fact, it become quite normal to see the glass half empty. Even where there are no glasses at all.

Sometime I wonder if Jessica Fletcher feels the same when she’s packing her bags for a lovely afternoon tea in the country side. And I’m sure that she knows. She knows that someone, somehow, somewhere, is going to be killed. And she knows that she’s going to casually trip over his corpse. That’s why she never wore high heels among twelve series. Oh yes, and also because of her diabetic foot…

/ˌdɪs.əˈpɔɪnt.mənt/ When it doesn’t happen.

However, being a good superb programmer actually doesn’t succeed in killing the Mr Brightside inside me. And that’s why sometime I still have the bad habit of expecting too much from a situation. It’s a common mistake that I simply can’t avoid to do, again and again. Like starting to watch the umpteenth episode of Rosemary and Thymes, hoping that this time the plot would be different …even just a little. Or when I go shopping to a 99 cent shop and the cash-man refuses to give me one penny back. And that’s why I usually go to Tesco, where every little helps. Even a penny.

/dɪˈzɑː.stə^r / The first day at the College.

I can’t deny that even if these things hurt me every time as it was the first, there are other more tragic events that can make my day worst. And when I say worst I mean like… keeping the hand dryer on in the toilet to prevent people outside from hearing you crying. Or feeling miserable because you actually attempted to commit suicide in the tube the only day a week that it was closed for work.

And as far as I know, there is only one thing that could lead me to both of these behaviours. It’s when you are at the top level of the High School food chain, and suddenly someone casts you again at the ground level.

There are actually many different ways to define this peculiar phenomenon. Mathematicians say that it’s a local minimum of your career. Physics say that it’s the zero-point energy in your confidence level. Chemists say that it’s the absolute zero of your self-esteem. I just say that no matter how, but believe me …your first day at the College will be a complete disaster lovely!

I can’t deny that when I firstly moved in London I thought I would have found a posh studio in Oxford Circus, or at least a vintage room in Covent Garden. I never ever imagined that the future was holding a wonderful two-and-half floor house for me. Yes, in Seven Sisters. For the ones who are not familiar with the geography of London, Seven Sisters is a place in London well known to the Astrophysics community. Being distant miles away from everything, in fact, has made Seven Sisters the first and only village in the world to have its own red-shift.

According to my new favourite site double vee double vee double vee police dot you kay, the number of crimes reported every year in Seven Sisters settles the city between Gotham and Metropolis. Even Wikipedia seems to agree with this nice record saying that South Tottenham is famous for being “culturally diverse and [an] ever changing area“. Mmm. “Culturally diverse“. Mmm… just saying “the most cheap and dangerous area of the UK” wouldn’t probably have been enough “Academic”.

The problem is that I always knew that there was something strange in this neighbourhood. From the very first time that I came here I tried to ignore all the bad signs. Like the ten thousand half-eaten-chicken-wings in front of the grocery store, the latino mommy with fake lashes and her cheap French manicure pointing at me with disdain, or the creepy squirrels that had followed me since I came out from the tube station. How can squirrels survive in the middle of nothing? Oh, sure! They are probably fed with the corpses of all the aboard missing students living in the city. And this theory also explains why they’re so damn fat.

Just to recap: fat squirrels, rotten chicken wings and purple hair-dyes in a failed attempt to emulate Rihanna. And even if four years in Pisa taught me that rarely things go straight, all the ninja techniques I developed to protect my bike from being stolen seem to be useless in London. Especially in the ghettos. And that’s why I really believe that, regardless who these bloody seven sisters really were …they were surely being killed a long time ago.

Many words can be used to describe my relationship with the English language, but actually I’m pretty sure they’re all swears. The first time I realized that I really have some problems in learning another language was in second grade. My English teacher was off because she was sick, so I decided to visit her home with a little present. The next day she died. The guilt for having recycled the fancy sweet-box from my uncles’ wedding still haunts me in my darkest nights.

Things seemed to go better at Highschool, even if the new teacher didn’t realize that “Angela’s Ashes”, “The Battleship Potemkin” and  ”Schindler’s List” probably were not the best movies to teach English to the youngest students. Oh my God: they killed the girl in the red coat! You bastard!

Until recent years, talking in English was like having a colonscopy made by my hairdresser: painful and quite useless. Despite this, my scoring have always been quite good not so bad thanks to my ability in making good collages from pop songs’ lyrics. I won’t say that a DJ saved my life because it would surely be an exaggeration, but I don’t lie when I say that Britney saved my diploma.

So, which tragic event may have happened during the six years spent in Pisa that made me change my mind so dramatically that now, sometime, I almost don’t hate enjoy writing these posts? According to my psychiatrist { before he went off, of course… } my pathological impatience, along with an insane passion for tv-shows, brings me to watch them undubbed, not to wait for the subtitled version. And probably this wrong way of spending my free time helped me to tumbling down the walls I built brick after brick with my childhood language’s traumas.

Now that I finally live in London, learn speaking a perfect English is becoming a matter of life or death. However, no one of the twenty-three teachers in the pre-sessional English course is dead yet. Maybe, after all, English is not so difficult as I initially tougt. Tought. Thougt. Fukc! Right click, Language, English (UK). Thought. Ok, that’s better.

How many bags are required to contain all your life? According to Ryanair, just one. Or two, if you want to pay thirty pounds more like I did.
If you are an aboard student you should have already learned three valuable lessons. One: never flight with Ryanair. Two: no matter how much you get prepared, there will always be a cashier in the supermarket that will speak with an accent that you won’t understand. Three: homesick is a mandatory pre-sessional course that we’re all going to attend on the first week. So, let’s be honest: leaving is always hard, but it surely would be a little bit easier if one could bring with him all his stuff.

In Pisa I used to suffer from Narnia’s Syndrome { the one that transforms your wardrobe into a dimensional port to strange, dusty world where no swiffer has gone before } and considering how close I am to the end-stage, you may imagine how hard has been for me to compress an entire room in just one hundred thirty-two liters. Despite me being a pathological case, now I firmly believe the fact that the knapsack problem is NP-hard is probably the best way God had chosen to tell us that pack up is strongly against nature.

Every Computer Scientist knows that one of the most critical phases in the life-cycle of a computer is the bootstrap. I kinda feel sympathy for my laptop, as I know better than everyone else how waking up in the morning could be disoriented. Especially when you are not surrounded by your familiar stuff. Kesha may be used to wash her teeth with a bottle of Jack Daniels, but I really prefer the old-fashioned brush: yes, I have to admit that I like to be cuddled into habits. There is nothing to be worried about in my everyday-routine and quite the opposite, it makes me feel really safe. Like flying the plane of my life with the autopilot mode on. Besides habits help the pilots to held on course while they’re having a lovely afternoon tea in the cockpit, they cannot make the plane lands all by itself.
This is why sometimes you just have to stop dunking your triple chocolate biscuit, to took over the reins and to start flying that bloody plane. And that’s exactly what I did then I decided to book my one-way ticket to London.

And against expectations, I started all over again, trying not to be worried about what I left behind.
I suppose that Dido was right, when in 2003 she told to me that «if I don’t lean to buy …I deserve nothing more than I get». This cloudy weather could have made my throat sore, but it won’t make me homesick because I’m going to make London an home from home.
Too bad that I underestimate Dido’s adivse just because, at that time, I thought that “life for rent” was just the clean way she used to claim herself as a luxury hooker…

In conclusion, when it comes to move, people are so unrealistic. «If I were on a desert island I would bring with me a NintendoDS and a Margaritaville!». Are you insane?! And what’s next when you will run out of batteries? And what about food? Well… “Lost” has definitely makes people lost their minds. If I were on a desert island I have not doubt about what I will bring with me: a GPS. To be rescued.