24 Mar 2008
by Alessandroin Motors, Personal Life
Yesterday I have been driving a car after several months, and I understood how much I miss driving and especially driving my first and only car, a Škoda Fabia 1.9TDI silver colour, bought in 2001 and sold in Christmas’ Eve 2007 because of my move to Norway.
I had to do it long long time ago, but I had not time at all to do it… This is my tribute to the car that drove me all over Italy and Europe, giving me a lot of satisfactions and not showing a single problem despite my GT drive style. 
Goodbye my little Fabia…
10 Jan 2008
by Alessandroin Information Technology, Personal Life
Fortunately or unfortunately 2008 has come!
Even though I found not so nice weather and got a flu during my vacations in Italy, after all I had a very nice time with my family and friends. Fabio has been a great host, he showed me Milano, Sondrio, Como, and the surroundings of the Como’s lake. I had a kind of “Lombardia in a nutshell” trip. I enjoyed so much also New Year’s eve, thanks to the company of Andrea, Hilde and all their friends.
But at the end, as expected, I had to come back in the rainy Bergen… And here I am, without being homesick yet. Today is a very important date in my life, I finally started the PhD programme here in Bergen. All the staff at the University was very very kind with me, I had a tour to meet most of the people working at the Department of Informatics, and after dealing with some formalities I got into my own office, located on the fjord side of the building (that will be unfortunately obscured in some months by some new University’s building 
). To please some of my geek friends I also add that I have a very powerful Dell PC with a 24” LCD monitor, running Fedora GNU/Linux 8.
The work environment seems pleasant, I am really satisfied and I look forward to becoming really productive. It actually seems that some people kept the finger crossed for me. Well, if you did so please continue like this, I would like to end the 2008 positive like today!
14 Dec 2007
by Alessandroin Personal Life
It is about five months that I moved to Norway, and I can definitely say that “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe…”. My life has been really full of happenings, but as always I have too short time to write about them all.
Well, let’s start from my social life. My purpose of having mainly local friends has been at the moment a partial failure. People here seem to need more time to get confident with someone, and my personal experience is that is much easier to become friends with girls than guys… I do not know what to think about it. Being Italian did not “help me” that much, I had a couple of unpleasant experiences with that but I still feel confident that in the future, especially once I will be able to speak Norwegian fluently, things will be much better.
So as you can imagine I had to spend a lot of efforts to enter a little network of friends, and even though sometimes I still feel that I still miss something, I met some very nice persons, who helped me in the difficult moments and who gave me a lot of remembering. My special thanks go to Mikal, Federico, Silje, Petra, Sonia, Valentin, Enrichetto, Diego, Fabio, and Regine, (merely ordered by who I met first) for all the moments shared together.
I finally started to study Norwegian. Here the approach with the languages is completely different from what I am used to have in Italy. They have two official forms of written Norwegian — Bokmål that is the one I study (literally “book language”, used by 86% of the population) and Nynorsk (literally “new Norwegian”, used by 14% of the population). On the contrary, there is no officially sanctioned standard of spoken Norwegian.
My course is a 48-hour intensive course, and I have to say that my Norwegian skills improved considerably, but it is still hard to try to jump into a conversation. I am mainly trained to listen to the spoken variety of the urban upper and middle class in East Norway, upon which Bokmål is primarily based, because this is the form generally taught to foreign student. In real life instead, people use to speak their own dialect with anyone, and they are able to have a fluent communication even if their spoken variants can have significant differences (especially when coming from very distant rural areas). Anyway, I will continue with an intermediate course the next year, not only because I really want to improve my skills but also because I have to be ready to speak fluent Norwegian as soon as possible.
The reason is that another big change is going to happen again in my life. I was a bit unsatisfied with my work lately, so I decided to come back to my original plan of continuing my studies. Becoming a researcher has been one of my biggest ambitions, so I applied for a PhD scholarship at the University of Bergen in October. I received a positive answer from the committee in the early days of November, while I was having the visit of my parents. At the beginning I was surprised and shocked, but it has been very nice to share this moment with them.
This PhD scholarship counts three years of research and one year of teaching, meaning that I will live in Bergen for a long while. I will start on the 10th of January 2008, and I will probably be travelling several times and spending some months abroad as visitor student, hopefully in some sunny warm place where I will be able to charge a bit the batteries. 
I will research in the field of Model-Driven Development, under the supervision of Prof. Khalid A. Mughal and Torill Hamre. I really look forward to start this new experience, my enthusiasm and motivation is really high. It was a difficult choice, but I feel it was the best for the pursuit of my personal expectations in life.
That’s all at the moment. Please, keep the finger crossed for me once more.
26 Aug 2007
by Alessandroin Personal Life
26th of July – 26th of August: it is exactly one month that I am in Bergen and my life is completely changed… again.
I live in a nice flat really in the city center, close to all pubs and social places. It is made by three room, one bathroom, one little storage room, and a little space in the basement where I can park my new bicycle. The kitchen has gas stoves instead of electric hot plates, something really rare here in Norway since cities have no gas networks, and I really feel at home. Unfortunately there is no living room, but my room is very big, about 16m², where I have also a sofa.
I share the flat with other two nice and clean Norwegian guys, Thorolf and Willy. The life at home is a bit different from what I am used to have in Italy or during my Erasmus. People spend most of the time in their room. Sometimes they come to the kitchen to prepare some food, but then they even eat back in their room. I would like to have a bit more of social life here…
Thorolf and Willy, if you are reading this, why don’t we make a party here? Anyway, maybe it is normal to have a quite life when you are a worker, like me and those guys are, but I noticed that I have still and Erasmus mind-set.
I go to work with a shiny new bicycle, and since the company is one of the few with the office still in the city center, I am at the work place in 10 minutes.
The firm is little, and sometimes I feel like I work in a family-managed business. The relationship with the managing director and technical leader is very pleasant. I have flexible working hours, with core work from 9:00 to 15:00. Of course at the end of the week I should have done 37.5 hours of work, but this is a very good opportunity for me. In general I work from 9:00 to 17:00, but if I need to do something I can go out earlier and work more the day after. There are details that I do not like in the company, the perfect work place does not exist, but I am trying to come to an agreement with the management to fix them.
I work closely with Mikal, the guy who found me this job. We will have to develop an entire new project about surveillance systems starting almost from scratch. The way is very long but we want to do the things in the right way, like Ian Sommerville teaches in the Software Engineering book. We agree on how the company should be run, but we have a completely different technical point of you. As you know I am a strong believer of the free software philosophy, I prefer to use free/open source technology in my life, and I would like to do the same at the work place. On the contrary, Mikal is enthusiastic of latest Microsoft technologies, and while I recognize that some of them can be even better then the free/open source alternatives for the purpose of our project, I do not agree with him for what concerns the ethical and economical consequences of using Microsoft products. Anyway, the final word on the technology is always up to the technical leader, and we are still far from starting the implementation, so we will see what will be chosen in the future.
Soon I will receive my first salary, and I look forward to feel completely economical independent even in Norway. Here the cost of life is a bit higher than in the rest of Europe, but not as much as one would believe. I spend about 3000NOK (about 375€) per month for the rent + bills, less then what I would have spent in Rome and Milan, while I spend a lot more for food and drinks. At the end of the month I think that the total cost of life is just a two hundreds Euro more than in any metropolis of Italy, but the salary, at least in my field, is more than the double.
My parents sent me a package of 30Kg, containing a lot of personal staff and food. It took almost one month to be delivered and at the beginning it was also lost by the Italian post service. Fortunately it was simply stopped by the custom at the Italian border because of some “missing documentation”, probably something was lost during the way. At the end it was found and delivered again with the proper documents, and now I can finally eat some good food from Italy. I do not like a lot of things from my home country, but I still believe that Italy has the best food and cuisine in the world.
How do I spend my spare time? As you can imagine I came here with few contacts left from my Erasmus experience in Bergen and from the short trip I had here in Easter, but this was enough to know lot of new people.
The bad news for me is that most of them are just left or are leaving soon. Thank you Mauro, Piedad, Silje, Sara, Gonzalo and the other people surrounding the “auberge epagnole”, you are very nice. I would have had more time to spend with you but this is unfortunately part of the Erasmus: suddenly you have to say good bye. I hope to keep in touch with you and to see you again, maybe here in Bergen or maybe somewhere else in the world.
Anyway, I already have new friends who are starting new their Erasmus exchange… this is a kind of Erasmus part III for me, but this time my hope is to get in touch with local people. During my Erasmus I did not have this chance often, since I was living in the Fantoft studentboliger, the hostel where almost only international students live.
Here all the people use Facebook, an on-line social utility to connect friends. Practically every Norwegian not older than 40 year is at least registered to it, and most of them use it as a concrete communication media. It has been impressive to see that anyone I met was also there. Some times people instead of asking you your mobile phone no., just ask you your family name so they can search and you on Facebook. I am registered too now and I am getting used to it, but the good old way to have a real talk with your friends in front of a glass of wine is still the best for me.
If you looked at my Flickr photostream you would have probably noticed that I am also spending a lot of time in shooting pictures around the city. My new DSLR camera gives me a lot of satisfaction, especially now that I have a bit more of theoretical and practical background about photography. Take a look at my last pictures of Bergen.
I am learning Norsk too thanks to a language exchange with Silje, a Norwegian girl who is interested in learning Italian. At the moment I can say just childish sentences like “Jeg heter Alessandro og kommer fra Italia” (My name is Alessandro and I come from Italy), but I hope to improve my skills soon, especially if I will join an evening course.
Anyway, this time I really wrote a lot, my stomach is reminding me that it is time to eat something. I will keep you updated!
29 Jul 2007
by Alessandroin Personal Life
As you have probably noticed lately I did not have so much time to write on the blog, which is not a news. Actually these last days I have been busy more than usual, because I was preparing for a great change in my life.
Until some month ago I was still a simple student willing to graduate soon, and I was living with my girlfriend in L’Aquila, not far from my family. Today instead I am a full time worker and I live in Bergen, Norway, more than 3000km far from my loved ones.
Why this radical change? After getting my Master Degree I started to receive several job proposals, like to apply for a PhD position at my university (without guarantee of receiving a scholarship), or alternatively to move to Rome or Milan and work in one of the many IT companies. Considering the working conditions and the salary, none of the offerings I received was prizing my little but intense academical and working career, but this of course is my point of view. Some friends and colleagues continue to say that this is normal, that they had the same treatment, that the labor market is like this for everyone, especially software developers… but I had no wish to accept such conditions.
I have also to say that since a long time I am stressed by all the social-political problems that are ruining Italy, but I do not want to talk more about considering that I already suffered them too much.
I received from Norway a unique job proposal, that even if it is normalized to the cost of life is much better than the others I received from Italy. A the end I made my choice, not completely conscious about the future I decided that I would come back in the city that already hosted me for one year.
How long will I stay here? Who knows, I would like to travel the world so it is not sure that Norway will be the place where I will settle, but at the moment I stay and I take the best it is offered to me.
Obviously I will miss something: girlfriend, family, friends, weather, sun, sea, cuisine, motorcycle… By the way, I think I made the right choice, here I have a lot to gain and a little to loose.
Goodbye Italy, you lost a brain and gained a tourist.
29 Jul 2007
by Alessandroin Italiano, Personal Life
Come avrete potuto notare ultimamente non ho avuto molto tempo per scrivere sul blog, il che non è una novità. In realtà questi ultimi giorni sono stato piú impegnato del solito, poiché mi stavo preparando ad un cambiamento piuttosto significativo nella mia vita.
Fino a qualche mese fa ero ancora un semplice studente desideroso di terminare gli studi, e vivevo con la mia ragazza a L’Aquila, non lontano dalla mia famiglia. Oggi invece sono un lavoratore a tempo pieno e vivo a Bergen, in Norvegia, lontano piú di 3000km dai miei affetti.
Perché questo cambio radicale? Dopo essermi laureato ho iniziato a ricevere diverse proposte di lavoro, tra cui rimanere a fare un dottorato di ricerca nella mia università (ma senza alcuna garanzia di ricevere la borsa di studio), oppure trasferirmi a Roma o Milano per lavorare in una delle tante società di consulenza informatica. Sia per le condizioni di lavoro sia per il salario nessuna delle offerte che ho ricevuto rendeva merito alla mia piccola ma intensa carriera accademica e lavorativa, ma ovviamente questo è un mio punto di vista. Alcuni amici e colleghi continuano a dirmi che è normale, che anche loro ci sono passati, che il mercato del lavoro è cosí per tutti, specialmente per gli informatici… ma io non avevo nessuna voglia di accontentarmi.
C’è da dire poi che da molto tempo covavo una certa insofferenza per tutte quelle problematiche socio-politiche che stanno mandando in rovina l’Italia, su cui non sto a dilungarmi visto che mi ci sono avvelenato il dente fin troppe volte.
Dalla Norvegia ho ricevuto una sola proposta, che anche normalizzata al costo della vita è di gran lunga piú gratificante di tutte le altre che ho ricevuto dall’Italia. E cosí ho preso una scelta, neanche completamente cosciente del passo che avrei fatto ho deciso che sarei tornato nella città che mi aveva già ospitato per un anno.
Quanto rimarrò qui? Chi lo sa, io ho voglia di girare il mondo quindi non è affatto detto che la Norvegia sia il posto dove mi sistemerò in pianta stabile, ma per il momento ci resto e prendo il meglio che mi viene offerto.
Ovviamente alcune cose mi mancheranno: la ragazza, la famiglia, gli amici, il clima, il sole, il mare, la cucina, la moto… Per il resto però credo proprio di aver fatto la scelta giusta, qui ho molto da guadagnare e poco da perdere.
Addio Italia, hai perso un cervello e hai guadagnato un turista.
09 Jun 2007
by Alessandroin Motors, Personal Life
The FZR is a sportbike produced by Yamaha between 1989 and 1996. When I first saw her – yes, motorcycle for us are like girls – in 2004 I fell in love immediately. I bought one of the 1994 that was up for sale in a motorcycle garage in L’Aquila.
She has been my first motorcycle, and she gave me a lot of emotions. Unfortunately, after riding for 10000km I had to sell her, I am going to move soon and she can not come with me. I just hope that the new owner will take care of her like I did these years.
Goodbye dear motorcycle…
07 Apr 2007
by Alessandroin Personal Life, Travels
Thursday I came in Bergen, a very beautiful city in the Atlantic coast of Norway where I lived for one year as an Erasmus student. Only those who had the same experience can understand how many memories you collected living in a multicultural environment like this. I always had the sensations to live my life two time faster when I was here. You meet everyday new people, you understand a lot about other cultures and your own culture, you improve your languages knowledge, you enjoy the life as you never did before…
Coming back here I had an extraordinary mix of sensations, that are very difficult to describe in a blog, especially when you do not write in your mothertongue. When I just opened the door of the Fantoft Student Hostel – the hostel where all the foreign students in Bergen live – it seemed to me that I never left this place. I recognised even the little details like the smell in the corridors and the noise of the elevators. For a moment I was half smiling and half crying.
By the way, I will stay here until the 18 of April, probably part of my future will be decided during these days so please, keep the fingers crossed for me!
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