I am back to xanga! Sorry for the lack of updates on my blog. It has been more than hectic. Life has been all centered on work, too many nights on call, working all night long, too many days of sleeping, losing track of time and trying to barely survive between a shift and the other. In the end, I was so often out of my apartment, that I decided I needed to be more mobile to pay expenses and other amenities, that I even bought an iPad!! Something I couldn't see to do in a million years! Cause I don't even have an iPhone. I just hate spending time on something I don't think I really need, but I had to recognize that being that often out at work, I was able to stay in touch with family, friends and to pay all my expenses, without relying on my computer at the hospital, which for some obscure reason has tons of filters!! Anyway enough with this technology things and let's go on with life!

First of all, six more days and I am flying to Portland, OR to visit my friend Monica and to have 2 weeks of complete relax and a little bit of madness in between. We are going to be in Portland, Eugene and Seattle, and I am sure I am going to meet some wonderful people as well. I cannot wait to see her again, when she was here in Milan, we really had such a nice time. I will have enough time to talk with her and to visit a lot of interesting places! I am reading the Lonely Planet guide, documenting myself and looking at the most interesting places where to head to. Plus we are in a fantastic region both for wineries and for microbreweries, something very interesting from my point of view (not that I am an alcoholic LOL).

Life is quite interesting at the moment, cause I am trying to get the best from my job, learning something new and interesting each day, while building some good relationships at work, and being at ease with all the cases. I am also doing some ECM courses and I really hope to be able to publish something very soon. At the moment, I am trying to get my dissertation thesis being published and then starting from there working on ideas about research topics. I am also exploring different areas of interest, not necessarily about medicine, cause lately I started to read a lot about sociology and more topics such as education and feminism. While surfing the web and reading the technology section of the NYT I discovered a company called Coursera (www.coursera.org), where you can get a class from university professors at Stanford and other associated universities, for free. So I decided to enroll in two classes and I am waiting for them to start in june and july. I find it fascinating to be able to improve my knowledge and to interact with other people on a regular basis, like being in a class, even though you don't really earn credits. In my opinion, you learn for yourself and so knowledge should not be based on credits alone. I am pretty much busy with work, but I love to read something different to medicine as well. I don't believe my human being is only related to being an anesthesiologist, though I believe I can be a better person if I expand my mind and I learn my limits. We will see what happens and how will be the experience. So far my idea is pretty positive.

It's all for now, I will be back later writing something more.

Thanks for reading, as always! 

Busy days...Being overly tired while trying to do my best at keeping my training at its best. Life is awesome in so many ways and my newly discovered good attitude to everything in life has helped me way beyond hope! I am slowly learning to count my blessings and to hear what my body and mind want to do together. It is all about savoring life one moment at the time. Someone gave me a couple of interesting books lately. Some of those books you never think you are going to read, because of course you think you don't really need to. You think you are such an achieving professional, with a brilliant career and whatever it comes to your mind. And that is when I just understood that I was totally wrong or at least I had to change attitude. It is all about growing up all your life and learning from people and situations. The first book is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by S.R Covey. I was totally and undeniably skeptical. I am a science person, do you really think  I am not able to change habits, to work at my best? As a human being you have a high opinion of yourself of course, and that's when you acknowledge that you have to rethink your role and be a humble person. I mean BE, not talking about being a humble person. So I went on reading it and discovered that some ideas were quite good and I probably needed to put them into perspective, while analyzing how I really wanted to live my life. Then I also got the second book, The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Anchor, and I found some insight as well. What did I learn? To be more open to anything (no matter what), to any person trying to communicate with me, to be more patient and to see myself, my life and my job as different perspectives of the same attitude, but most of all to listen more and act instead of being acted upon. Of course changing is something not absolute, and it takes a lot of time, but you eventually come to that end. And from now on I am sure everything will be a lot different. My perspectives are changing and nothing is absolute, so I might change some aspects of my life and may keep some other line. In the meantime I am happy as never before. I am finally able to listen to my silence and to accept it, that is why I will never ever be afraid to be alone with myself.

Thanks for reading...as always