It's been a tough weekend, as I expected, but also a very giving one, once again following my expectations! Given that I'm soon gonna go away for quite a while, I am trying to do my best and create opportunities to spend time with the people that matter to me and cherish it. Today I have not been feeling 100% well, it's probably just the humid heat and the need to recover some energies after such few demanding days! But don't worry, I'm still here!
Tere, my dear readers! I am writing to you from Tallinn, the first stop of the latest of the countless trips I've been taking in this 2016! The city (a big town) is cute and nice, but it just takes you 3 hours to see it all, the old town centre at least (and I guess there's not much else to explore). If I were to sum up this one day visit in one word, I think I'd use chillywind. I didn't expect to feel so cold (and sometimes warm at the same time), to the point that I decided to behave like a local and went on into a sauna to heat back up my bones! Coming back to the central square I found a kind of folk music festival, with people singing and dancing to local, traditional music. It's been nice and entertaining, and it helps me introduce my latest discovery, which is actually a song most of you (and me) knew already, personally I just didn't know its title nor its composer, but I can safely state that it's one of the most famous celtic ballads (?) around, at least in Europe. Give it a try if the title/composer aren't familiar to you and you might as well find yourself saying "Aaah, yeah, that one!".
I am in Milan tonight, after spending a very weird day between home and here, waiting for people to come and check household appliances, wasting my time and then choosing to spend some time with people who I care about and who made me feel better in a day that didn't start well. Waking up early is killing me, given my current sleeping times, but I need to go back a little...! Tomorrow is gonna be even worse, as I agreed to meet a friends for breakfast at 8, as she's going to work after that. What remains of me will see another friend for lunch and then probably go back home!
I have known that I am behind schedule with my posting with respect to my playlists and tonight I decided to quantify my delay! I have noted some songs off the last playlists of 2015 that have not been featured here yet and that really need to imho; all in all I have a week worth of posts, which not so bad, I can make it... (if I don't keep skipping posts or posting "older" songs that really really need to stay here)!! Well, in case I'll have to resort to some double posting, which would not be half bad given the name of the blog! Anyway, I'm just back from Milan where I spent the whole day, we went out for dinner to celebrate my mother's birthday and it's been nice (and cold). Will be back in town next week for a few things that need to done and a few people that need to be seen! For now I'll just leave you with one of my favs off Enya's new album, which is the beautiful 'Echoes in rain'! Enjoy!
I am kind of at a loss being here and needing to choose a song to post... I have posted a lot of Florence + the Machine lately, so I can't keep on; the problem is that in the last 3 days I've been only listening to them, mainly to their new album. The impact of the concert on my relationship with it has brought me to a level close to obsession, and I understand I need to break free (but I keep indulging...)! Anyway, yesterday I've been busy organizing and enjoying my usual xmas dinner with friends and it's been nice to be together, even for just a few hours. Then today I mainly cleaned up the leftovers of yesterday and prepared a little more sushi for tomorrow, as I already had the ingredients ready. I've not been feeling great in the last few days, and tonight I feel especially weak and ready-for-the-flu. Let's see how I'm gonna wake up tomorrow...! Maybe Santa Claus will spread some magic powder on me and make me feel well again! So as to catch two birds with one stone I am posting an Enya song off my former playlist (I'm lagging behind with posting, I know...), as she always puts on that kind of christmasy atmosphere! Wish you a great xmas eve and holidays and everything!
Double Enya post! With this one-two I am finally putting an end for real to my time in Veneto (for now at least, never say never!) and I am all set to start the travel back home! After bringing in a couple cakes at work to celebrate my last day and saying goodbye to all the colleagues, I am now ready to stop by the main office to leave this very computer, cellphone and all the stuff I had been endowed with, and to head west.
I will just leave you (and Veneto, can't underline it often enough!) with a quote out of this song, which I think tells perfectly my story and my current feelings, as they are often the same when you put an end to a part of your life to go back home!
Last night in Conegliano for me, and with tomorrow I'm closing this Venetian parenthesis that has kept me going for the biggest part of this year. I can't say I won't miss anything about what I had here, especially the people, otherwise I wouldn't have lasted so long, but neither can I deny the relief I'm feeling by heading back home, wherever my home is and will be in the next future (for now I'm going back to my "safe harbour" in my hometown). I have made this choice and it was needed so that I could find my way, and I am also taking this chance to post the first song out of Enya's new album, which I just started listening to but which I am already quite liking, mostly because its sound is very... Enya-like. The old-times Enya. But back to goodbyes... I have spent about 10 months in the Province of Treviso, moving back and forth from here to there and back to my safe harbour and then to Bangkok and more in the meantime. It's been too much, I realise it more and more as days go by. Now I'll be back to my starting springboard, with a little more inertia, ready to take the next jump, goodness knows where. But first, I hope I'll be able to enjoy my time pushing down the springboard!! Goodbye Conegliano, goodbye Veneto, I hope to not see you too soon!
Hello my dear readers, it's been a tough couple of days, as you can imagine. Maybe even more than you can imagine! A pair of more than 6 hours flights one right after the other, with some 3-4 hours of cumulative sleep, getting to Bangkok in the evening, the van that was taking us to the hotel smashes against the wall in the motorway, luckily nothing bad happens but what a fright! Then I get to the hotel, I get a smoking room and can only sleep 1.5 hours. That making it an optimistic 5 hours of sleep in two nights. And here I am right before the beginning of the third night. I think you can imagine how in need of sleep I am. And I think you can imagine even better how in need of Enya I have been and still am! Here she is for you, in case you might need her too!
Yes yes, it's kind of an Enya period, I'm listening to her more than I usually have done, and that means more blog posts of hers! But it doesn't seem you guys are unhappy about it, rather...! This is a 10-year old song I included in my current playlist, and I hope you're gonna enjoy it as much as I enjoyed my trip to Ayutthaya today: many temples and ruins, golden and stone buddhas, elephant-riding, feet-eating fish, floating markets, food, heat, people, fun, burning sun... did I mention the heat? Well, yeah, we had it all!! I'm starting to get more and more used to Thailand!
This morning I woke up at 6.15 to undertake a 4-hour drive to get to work... not the worst thing in the world, but not the best way to start a new week either. I have been feeling lousy all day, and now a little bit of headache is getting onto me. But the trip has been fine, luckily there were some clouds filtering the direct sunlight, so I didn't get too hot and sweaty in the car. Plus, I put on Enya music (as I have been doing often lately... damn stressful, adult people's life!) to soothe my head and to wake up gently. It worked once again, so that's been a good move! In the second half of the trip I moved to my current playlist to get going at full speed, and this was actually the only song I listened to twice, as it is also featured in the playlist. It's peculiar, as while listening to Enya, some Lord of the Rings movie soundtrack songs sung by her popped out and I was dancing at their epicness, so it's funny that she was already composing music inspired to Tolkien's book even before it got (even more) famous with the early 2000s movies. I hope you all, Enya's fans, LOTR's fans, music fans and bloggin fans can appreciate this post, which is number 600 for me and my blog!!
Due to the very annoying fever and general illness that has been affected me in this week in Thailand (in particular, but throughout the whole of 2015 actually), and the headaches deriving from it, I ended up listening to a lot (more) of Enya (than usual), and I must say that it works, her soothing music often helps me relax and feel less pain in my head. In turn, you have been seeing a lot of Enya on the blog, and my feeling is that for some time you're gonna keep seeing more of her! In the meanwhile let's all enjoy this beautiful instrumental piece of music, one of the first songs of Enya I loved, as it is included in her best-of 'Paint the sky with starts', her first album I started listening to! Hoping that you're feeling better than I do, I wish you a pleasant whatever-part-of-the-day-is-fitting (here in Thailand it's almost bed-time)! Cheers!
I'm sorry I've been away from the blog for a couple of days, travelling back from Thailand has been quite hectic and I didn't have any internet connection available, then yesterday I meant to post but I was at home so tired that I end up forgetting about it. Pity, because I had a song I really wanted to post, but I will do it now with a few hours of delay! I don't remember if I shared with you my latest TV series, but in the past few months I've been watching Shameless (the UK version): it's the story of a big family living in Machester's outskirts in a pretty degraded situation, but it's pretty nice and at times quite funny! At the end of the 6th Season, which is where I got to now, one of the main characters dies and the whole thing is very emotional, with this song playing in the background at the end of the episode, so it felt right to share it with you!
I posted an Enya song a few days ago (Wild child) and I was strongly undecided about whether to post it or this one. Then many of you on Google+ suggested I should listen to / consider / post also 'Only time' and, well... I realised that maybe I didn't make the best choice. Or maybe I did, because in this way I can post them both!! Happy saturday to y'all!
You might remember that I have posted a song by Ludovico Einaudi a few days ago; that day, after his beautiful and soothing piano music, I turned to Enya's celtic folk, which worked as well. Today I started getting again a little bit of headache in the afternoon and so I put my earplugs back on and asked for a little Irish help, which was much needed and very effective once again! Because I can become a wild child even with the most relaxing music!!
I have been having a hard time feeling christmas time this year - that until today. Notwithstanding the nice markets, trees, lights and stuff in Brussels, I was feeling cold and detached, not at all within that cheerful mood associated with one of the nice things of nice not-really-nice time of year. But it comes, as it does every year. This afternoon I have been working on the xmas tree at home and, even if I'm not fully satisfied with the result, I must say it turned out nice and it really helped me get into the xmas mood. Putting on some on-topic songs while decorating, it felt right to post one, which is actually one of my fav winter songs since it came out and which I've not posted yet, so here it is, enjoy Enya, trains and winter rains!
Here we are, it's wednesday, time for the second rendez-vous of this week with music from the awesome 1990s! For tonight I have chosen one of my favourite songs by Enya. I guess this song needs no introduction either, I'll just mention that Enya is the biggest selling Irish artist (after U2) and (unfortunately) she has never been on tour... well, we will wait for this event to happen, in the meanwhile let's enjoy her on record! Caribbean blue is out of her 1991 album Shepherd Moons (a great one as a whole, listen to it if you don't know it!). The special story behind this song for me is that I dedicated it to my dear wife for St. Valentine when we were just married, back in.. what was it? 2006? Second year of high school, anyway. A life ago, but we are still together, (almost) the same group of friends! How cool is that?
