A Sustainable Train of Thought

Sometimes you struggle with a seemingly intractable problem only to find an embarrassingly simple solution in the end. My struggle over the past several days with my hard drive and its power requirements in Italy culminated today in one of those situations.

I have an external hard drive that I use to back up my work and to store my music and photos. As you know, you generally can’t use US devices in Europe, unless they’re specifically rated as being compatible. Knowing this, I emailed the manufacturer prior to leaving the States and was assured that the power supply was compatible with European standards and all I needed was a specific part with a specific part number to make everything work. Thus reassured, I figured that I was all set. While I didn’t expect every computer store to carry this particular part, I figured it wasn’t an impossible problem to find one that did, and in the worst case, hey, I had the part number and could always order it online or direct from the manufacturer. (Cue cynical tittering amongst the readers aimed at the writer’s obvious naivete.)

After arriving in Italy, imagine my surprise when this specific part with this specific part number was impossible to find. Either the stores didn’t have the part, or the online merchants had the part number but no picture, and upon further investigation admitted they couldn’t confirm whether or not it was indeed the correct part. I even contacted the manufacturer’s Italian branch to clarify the situation, all to no effect. The situation looked grim.

This afternoon, we each received a digital camera from the school: a brand new HP Photosmart R707. Among other things supplied with the digital camera was an adapter used to charge the camera’s battery. If you had seen me at that moment, staring at the plug in my hand, I’m pretty sure you would see a light-bulb (dim, mind you) hovering over my head.

The solution was so simple and obvious: I didn’t need a specific part with a specific part number, or, for that matter, anything to do with power…I just needed a plug with the Italian prongs on a cable with an output that matched the port on the hard drive’s power adapter. Sure enough, when I got home and plugged everything, the lights came on, the drive spun up, and any designs I had on feeling self-satisfied were quickly squashed by the embarrassingly simple solution.

This evening I broke my long-standing policy of avoiding unfamiliar Chinese restaurants. My justification: the restaurant has fish in the floor! Part of the floor is clear and huge koi swim underneath the guests. Our table also had a fish tank within the table, so as we ate we could watch the fish through the glass top. A unique experience, to be sure.

I’m not sure which takes the prize: fish in the floor, or brick wallpaper at Leon d’Oro, where I had pizza one of the first nights after my arrival in Italy. I think I’ll have to start a running competition for worst (some may say best?) decor…

It was a little surreal ordering food tonight, as the menu was in Italian and English, the waiter was Chinese, and we placed our order using a combination of Italian words and numbers and a little Mandarin. This, after having last eaten Chinese food in Shanghai several weeks ago! I’m probably going to have the same problem with Italian food after my two years are up: it’s just not the same anywhere else.

Note: Six and a half hours of Italian class turns my brain to mush. I have another day’s worth on Wednesday to look forward to…time to go to sleep!

First, the big news: I’ve moved to Italy!

Now, the details: Earlier this year I applied to Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, a graduate school in Ivrea, Italy. I learned at the beginning of June that I’d been accepted as part of the class of 2006. With this opportunity in hand, I quit my job on 13 August and flew to China on 14 August. I travelled to Beijing, Xi’an, and Shanghai. I’d never been to these cities before, and it was an amazing experience. In fact, this trip was probably the best vacation I’ve ever had.

I returned to San Francisco on 25 August and on 26 August departed on a cross-country trip to NJ with Sydney. We took our time out west and visited Zion National Park, Great Basin, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Rocky Mountain National Park. The weather was great: we camped in Yellowstone, and while it was cold at night, the weekend before we arrived it had snowed and hailed. After we left, it started raining. So aside from the boringness of Kansas and the bad roads of Pennsylvania, there really wasn’t much to complain about. We took some of the smaller roads, such as US 50, and I definitely want to explore more of these less-travelled routes.

After leaving Colorado, we drove straight through to NJ, arriving on 6 September. A few days of rest and repacking, and on 9 September I flew out to Milano, Italy, arriving in Ivrea the evening of the 10th. I lugged two heavy suitcases and two bags onto and off of one bus and two trains—I think my shoulders have just begun to recover. Classes began at IDII on 13 September. I’m now beginning the second week of school, and things are going quite well.

Right now we’re mostly handling administrative stuff (permits of stay, tax IDs, bank accounts, etc.), but we’re also taking intensive Italian classes. We started off slowly last week with a couple of hours a day, but now we’re up to about 6.5 hours a day…grueling at times, but it will definitely help in the long run. Ivrea is not a tourist-y city, and hardly anyone speaks English, so it definitely pays to know Italian around here.

Speaking of classes: we’re done for the day. I need to go home to Talponia, cook some dinner, and start in on my compito di casa…it’s been a long day.

(Note that photos from all of the trips I mentioned in this entry are available in the Gallery: http://www.d4v3.net/gallery)

I’ll catch up in the next few days with what’s been going on in my life, as soon as I sort out some troubles with the blogging software. Until then, you can check out the photos available at: http://www.d4v3.ne/galleryt