Life

This post is simply an homage to my new Spanish friends. The story is straightforward. As often happens, I found myself in Brussels for work. This time it was only for one day, so I arrived the evening before the meeting and wandered around the city on my own. I went for a beer at the wonderful Delirium Café, where I met three Spanish people. It was very easy to start talking with them. We Italians and Spaniards do not usually have much trouble connecting with other people and starting a conversation. On the contrary, the problem is often making us stop talking, but that is another story. ...

I have various friends and acquaintances outside my work circle with whom I often end up talking about my activities. Every time, surprisingly, I discover how hard it is to explain what happens at these conferences or meetings I sometimes attend. Having already given up on answering the fatal question “what do you do for a living?” when asked by non-specialists over 70, I now try to explain how a congress such as EGU works. I once tried saying: “I work in EPOS, a European project dealing with the integration of research infrastructures for Earth sciences; now I work on metadata collection for the creation of a catalogue that will allow data discovery and integration.” The result was bewildered looks, mechanical “ah, interesting” replies, and other scenes I will spare you. ...