mafozone

Dear Friend from (almost) everywhere on this planet,

I am coming back to you after quite a long time to give you a little update about my personal life during the last 15 months. Well, I am still having a very good time with the job I started in November 2008, dealing with air pollution, air quality control and stuff like that. Also, last year I was able to invite Lee Keang, my long time Cambodian girlfriend, for a three months stay here in southern Switzerland during the summertime. I say I was able because now I know how difficult is it to invite someone form a country outside the Shengen area who doesn’t have a few ten thousand dollars in his/her bank account. So, being someone who likes difficult tasks I decided to invite her again, another three months, but this time during the winter. Hopefully she will come on time to experience snowy weather (and I won’t have to discuss too much with immigration police to get the bloody Shengen Visa).

On 1. January I came back from a 5 weeks holiday in South East Asia (my flight took off from Bangkok on 31.12 at 23.58, so that by midnight i was flying at about 3-400 m height and I could enjoy the fireworks all over a city of nine million people. Very impressive!) Beside Cambodia and Thailand me and Lee Keang also visited Bali, where we were guest of a very good friends of mine, we met another Swiss Italian friend and… my parents, which I strategically “sent” on vacation on the same Island. In fact, it would have been too much for them if I’d asked them to follow me and Lee Keang, so I thought this would have been the best solution. And it was!

Also, I enjoyed eating real Swiss cheese fondue in the tropical heat! I know, I know… many of you will blame me for this, jejejeje! I just thought that after all of my past experiences with local foods I kinda deserved to try something like this, and actually it doesn’t make you sweat that much as one might think.

Very hungry of traveling, I decided to spend the last few days in Shenzhen, China, where also this year I was guest of my friend Angelo, who at the moment owns two Italian restaurants in this 16 million people city nearby Hong Kong, which is almost two times the size of Bangkok, looks like Manhattan, and probably most of you never heard this name before. Not really surprising if you consider that the DOMESTIC airport terminal in Shenzen is probably bigger than the new Bangkok airport, while the INTERNATIONAL terminal is for sure smaller than the one in Lugano here in southern Switzerland, population about 50’000. Mysterious China…

Wishing you guys a wonderful year 2010!

All the best,
Ivan

P.S.: almost forgot... last september I bought myself a 1973 VW Beetle 1303 S (see pics below).

I'm having lots of fun with it!!! Just to tell you one, imagine that sometimes the horn starts to blow by himself (must be some problem with electrical contacts, I'm not an expert at all) and this always happens at the wrong moment and at the wrong place... just like the beetle from the disney movie... And of course sometimes it causes me little trouble, but this is part of the game, ain't it? ;-) Cheers.