Yesterday Mirano, Today Murano, Tomorrow Merano?

Hey folks,

Just a quick update to let you all know what we've been up to. After Capod'anno we were chilling out back in Venice before I had to go back to work and Ali started her intensive italian course. We took a daytrip up to the ski resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo, which was very nicely covered with snow that made the whole place pretty, but slippy. Ali has fallen in love with snowflakes and the amazing way that they actually look like what they're meant to look like on tv - all 120º angles , inverted hexagons and the like. We went up a cable car to one of the ski lodges, crazy fashions on display and brave parenting - people sending their youngest children down olympic slalom runs with nonchalance - now we know why italy is suffering negative population growth!

Ali's halfway through her intensive italian course, which she can tell you about in another blog, and I'm busy at work, preparing lectures and constructing a cleanlab for the rest of my project. We're planning an Australia day celebration and maybe going to visit Ali's rellies in the UK next month.

In the meantime, Carnevale is coming up real soon - more or less from the last weekend in January to the first weekend in February - Cassius will be playing the opening party! I was hoping to write a little bit about the Naples rubbish hoo-ha and the University of Rome's Physics Department cancelling a visit by the pope, but it's just too complicated, and as I mentioned, we're off to Murano soon. Oh, yeah, the post title refers to three different places here in the northeast of italy, all exactly the same title except for one vowel, and painfully easy to confuse...yesterday we went to the town on the mainland called Mirano, where Ali went boot-shopping, today we're going to the Island of Murano here in the Venetian laguna (famous for it's glassmakers being kicked off Venice for starting too many fires) and Merano is a city up in the Alps on the way to Switzerland, which we're not planning to visit tomorrow, by the way.

OK, so now the blog is up-to-date and the website was updated yesterday, so drop us a line and let us know what you're all up to...

Ciao, Paul.