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Day 3: Friday, July 20.
Milano.
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Visiting DEC. |
| 07:00 |
Time to get up and get to work! Actually, I woke up about an hour ago,
but I found it too hot & noisy to go back to sleep. Today, I'm going to visit DEC with
Josh and have a meet-ing with his group. It'll be interesting to see how they're doing and
if there is anything I can do to help them. |
| 09:05 |
After a quick cappuccino
and brioche at the local cafe/bar, we're on our way in the Milanese public
transportation of choice: a slow, noisy, clunky old tram — but very charming. Inside
are signs telling the passenger not to smoke, lean out of the windows, or spit(!) |
| 09:12 |
The tram has stopped dead in
its tracks. There is another one ahead of us blocking the way and most passengers have
left our car. When we go out too, we find them standing next to the tracks in front of the
other tram. Apparently, someone has parked their car too close to the tracks for the tram
to pass and an agitated group of Italians has now gathered to express their
dissatisfaction. The official folks from ATM, the Milanese public transport
company, are here too and are now taking pictures of the offensive vehicle. After some
more vigorous hand motions and vocal venting, someone comes up with the brilliant idea
that if a few of them got together, they could probably push the little Fiat out of the
way. No sooner said than done and a few minutes later, we're on our way again. |
| 14:52 |
I think the meeting with the
group at DEC went well. I tried to be as helpful and informative as
I could without saying anything that would break my confidentiality agreement with Sun. It
isn't going to be easy for them. Their project is under the threat of being canceled
and they've only barely gotten the window server up and running together with a few
applications. Running on Alphas, the system is very fast and is looking good, although I
had hoped that they might have been a bit further considering that their base system is
Mach based (OSF/1) and they're not doing any X11 integration.
Still, their group is very small (6-8 people) and they are doing progress. They
hope to have their NEXTSTEP 3.3 port done and ready to ship it by
April 1996, which is about the same time as we and Sun intend to ship OpenStep. I wonder
if this may prove to be too little and too late, but one possibility is to add the
OpenStep libraries at the last minute as unsupported packages. In any case, I tried to pep
them and bring some positive energy to their group. I hope that I was at least partly
successful. After the meeting, I had lunch with Fabbio, the group's technical lead,
and Josh in the DEC cafeteria. Boy, I wish we had this kind of catering at home! This
being Italia, there were both prima and secundi courses with a wide array of
deserts to top the meal off — all paid for by the company if I understood it right.
Wow, what a deal.
From DEC, I'm taking the bus a few stops further out to Cinisello Balsamo, where
IKEA is located. My old childhood friend Mats Nilsson is working there. I haven't
seen him in 16 years and he doesn't know that I'm coming! I'm looking
forward to this, heh-heh... |
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Dinner with Mats, Josh, and Susan. |
| 15:05 |
Rats! When I arrive to IKEA,
the (very cute and very Italian) receptionist tells me that Mats just left the site some
10 minutes ago and is on his way to their other warehouse in Corsico. The island Corsica,
I ask to my despair? No, Corsico, the southern suburb of Milano some 25 km away.
It'll take him about an hour to get there, but here is his phone number. Bummer. I
lost the opportunity of total surprise by showing up on his doorstep, but at least
he's still around. Back to the bus and the 35 °C humid heat... |
| 16:10 |
I've just had a very
surprised Mats on the phone. At first he couldn't figure out who this Lennart guy was
who spoke to him in his own language, but then it dawned on him and he became very
pleasantly surprised. He seemed to be in some kind of meeting, so we didn't say very
much except to make plans to go out later in the evening when Josh gets home. |
| 20:20 |
We've just reached Mats at
his apartment in the very in part of southern Milano. It's tiny — only 35
m2 — but very nicely decorated in white and blonde wood. He's been in
Italy for over four years now and doesn't seem to have any intention of leaving soon.
Although there are many things that irritate northerners like ourselves, you learn to love
them (or at least accept them) after a couple of years, he says. Together, we reminisce
and talk about living abroad over a couple of glasses of Matheus rosé wine. It's
funny: Mats head is almost shaven and he looks like a 35-year old version of his former
self. This is of course appropriate since that is about how old he is, but is still very
strange to me who only remember him as a teenager. He still says herregud
(oh-my-god) all the time, though, just like he used to in the old days. I guess some
things never change. |
| 02:30 |
Dinner was a real treat! We had
the special degustazione menu: a five course meal for ITL 50,000 ($33) with coffee
and grappa (× 2) on top of that. It was absolutely delicious and well worth the total sum
of a little over a quarter million liras ($170) for the four of us. Afterwards, we went
strolling through night time Milano and ended up at some famous Gelateria outside
Mats' apartment a few minutes ago. Unfortunately, they (too) are closing now, so I
guess it's time to start heading home. Taxi! |
| 03:15 |
And what a taxi ride that was!
We found a deserted cab in the middle of a back alley street, and when we started looking
for the driver, he appeared out of one of the local bars. Then it was full speed ahead
through a mostly deserted city in a true Italian fashion utilizing both sides of the
street and paying no particular attention to red lights. That disregarding, we finally
reached home a few minutes ago and I'm now winding down by sampling some late night
TV before calling it a day. They're doing strip shows mixed with commercials for chat
lines, mmm... :-) |
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