Goods things in my life: The Hunger Games. The Wolfson Winter Ball. My being a quasi-auntie (OK, OK, babies are kind of cute). Keeping up with work as required (have probably done more work in the last two months than in all of my undergrad!). New friends. Christmas coming up. A lovely new house. Having enough money to live on for the year without stressing (sometimes it is the material things!). And London, which kind of feels like home again. All's good in the world of me. Maybe being 27 isn't such a bad thing...

...write on this blog again perhaps? One thing's for sure, everything's changing. And this badly needs updating. In the meantime I leave you with my new home in London (as of 1 August 2011).

I've just had the most stressful week in a very long time, but well, it doesn't matter, because today is a lovely day, M is coming back from a ski trip tonight, and I'm excited by all the future has to offer. If everything goes to plan we'll be moving to London in August. I'm thinking South, possibly Balham or Streatham, but we'll see. M has an amazing job lined up; my plans are slightly more vague, but who cares? Spring is coming, and after that summer, and then I'll be in London.
There is no doubt I will miss my lovely little bedroom though.

...really, has it been this long since I posted? A couple of the realities I talked about have actually happened; we've been to Italy (and came back with 15kg of cheese and cured meats), we've been to Sweden (and came back with an inane amount of crockery). I'm not quite in my job any more, thanks to a promotion. Which means I'm actually pretty much in the same job, but I have more responsibilities and a little more money. The next three months are going to be interesting! And I may very well be dead by Christmas.
Dreams and reality are unfortunately still not colliding at all, but at least things are moving along. M and I have had our first serious talk about moving to London, and I think we can pretty much put a date on it - one more year in Oxford, or thereabouts, and that's it. Which is, in itself, terrifying. We have this lovely little life here, so sheltered, with an incredibly close group of friends we see almost every day. And it sounds like in a year's time our little group is going to explode in many different directions. Somehow that's a lot scarier than moving countries, or moving continents, or all the scary things I've done.
I am 26, and every day I wake up realising a little more that I really am a grown up now. And I think, what the fuck happened? Two days ago I was 18 and moving to London, yesterday I was 22 and moving to Oxford. Not that any of it is bad, it just makes me realise how fast time goes. And also that I need to stop hankering for the past, and start thinking about the future.

These days I dream of:
- A job I love, I don't know doing what, but something else. Or maybe more training, more studying... Anyway, just something else.
- A little house all of my own which I can make into exactly what I want, top to bottom. A bit more space, an extra bedroom for family and friends, and doing all of the things I dream of doing - painting, putting in wooden floors, beautiful curtains and rugs, designing a bathroom and a kitchen just like I want them, work in the garden.
- Going back to Asia: sit on a beach in Thailand, visit the temples of Angkor again, eat beautiful seafood, see the Mekong river, walk around Luang Prabang and Vientiane...
- Travel to new places: Sweden, Kenya, South Africa, Turkey... The list goes on.
- Get into some sort of shape, start going to the gym.

The reality is:
- I am really losing my patience with my job. It was only meant to be temporary and it's becoming way too permanent; plus there are some definite clashes of personalities which make life oh so difficult. I try to see the positives (I've learnt a lot, in the practical sense; I've formed some pretty firm opinions on education generally, which I feel so very strongly about; etc.) but it's just getting too much. My mind feels like it's shrivelling down to a peanut. I feel trapped and undervalued. I just need something more, but nothing interesting is coming up, or maybe I'm scared of looking further afield, or going for something which pays less...
- Thinking about doing a law conversion course but doing absolutely nothing about it.
- Fretting about the mouldiness of our bedroom, having to live with all of the contents of said bedroom in the living room whilst they clean it out, arguing with the estate agent, generally feeling miserable about the fact that half of my clothes and handbags and other accessories stink of mould.
- Planning small trips for this summer: Italy for a week in July, possibly Sweden for a week in August (so at least I'm realising one of the dreams!).
- Feeling miserable I'm too weak-willed to actually go to the gym and lose the weight I've been slowly putting on for the last six months.

Anybody out there has a magic plan to make dreams and reality collide? I'd certainly be very grateful.

A few days ago I had a very long conversation with F., one of the Wolfson freshers. She is Italian, and we talked at length about the state of education and women in Italy - I always find these conversations interesting because, despite the fact I'm Italian too, I have so little knowledge of what it is like to live in Italy today. Actually, I pretty much have no idea. So we talked about universities in Italy, which are underfunded, based on nepotism, and ultimately do not present an academic community conducive to research. This I all knew, but was fascinated to hear the detail of. Even more interesting, we talked about women, and the position of women in Italian society.
F. explained how horrified she was to realise that, somehow, Italy is going backwards in this field, and how she has spent a lot of time sitting with her childhood friends who seem to have little to talk about apart from how they clean their kitchens and how they're trying to get their boyfriends to marry them and make them babies. It reminded me of a friend of mine who once made a side-by-side comparison of glossy women's magazines in Croatia, the UK and Italy: the Croatian ones talked about fashion and hobbies, the UK ones about sex and orgasms, and the Italian ones about how to look good in front of men and bag yourself a husband. Whilst this is generally quite funny and says a lot about culture in the three countries, the Italian one is a pretty worrying trend, and one I think is spreading (or maybe it's just been more over the DL over here?).
The UK is generally better when it comes to women and women's status, don't get me wrong, but in the last few months I've encountered some pretty weird things. Most of the women I know are well educated (sometimes beyond postgrad), have good jobs, and are generally independent. Yet so many of them seem to have one ultimate dream: to get married and have children. It's not that I see anything wrong with long-lasting relationships (more on marriage later) or having children, but the idea that women's ambitions are still reduced to 'family' does terrify me. Surely we should see beyond this? What makes it worse is to see the men involved with these women, who, to be quite frank, don't give a shit about the big wedding and the children. Queue the big white dress, hundreds of guests, thousands of pounds spent on renting a wedding venue which is somehow always disappointing... And women thinking this is "the best day of my life!" Isn't that a bit sad? And isn't the happiness actually to be found in the years spent in a meaningful relationship, rather than the one day and the one rather antiquated rite of getting married? Apart from the trite statistics on divorce, I think it would seem obvious that marriage has become more and more a meaningless institution; and this is coming from somebody whose parents have been happily married for 39 years! People get married without much thought or, for that matter, love. Same goes for children. This absolute need to have children most of the time appears to be based on selfish reasons (reproducing yourself into another human being who will love you whatever you do) than reality (bringing another human being into this world, and doing your best to both make them into nice people and give them a fulfilling life).
The more I think about this, the more I am sure about two things:
- If I ever do get married, and I am not discounting the possibility absolutely, it will be because I want to make a commitment to somebody in front of family and friends. This means no big wedding, no expensive venue, and most definitely no white dress (white dresses are for VIRGINS you people!). I would then pay for a big dinner for our families and our closest friends. End of story. And most definitely NO wedding list. If I do get married it won't be to force people to buy me crap.
- I am not sure whether I will ever have children. Whilst we are told all the time how big a commitment this is, I don't think most people realise quite how big. Too many people do it in less than ideal situations - no money, no stability, no mental wellbeing involved. How can you bring a child into this world without making a 100% sure that you will be able to give them the best possible life? Oh, and also: I have no desire to be pregnant. Sounds pretty horrendous, actually...
My only conclusion is that, possibly, I feel differently about all this like I feel differently about nationalism/nationality. The life I have led means that I don't feel like I exactly 'belong' anywhere: I may have two passports, but I don't feel like I belong to either of those two countries; I might have lived in England for almost ten years, but I don't feel English. If I had to define myself as anything, I would say I am European, but that just sounds hippie-ish. In the same way I don't define myself by the fact that I have a womb. I have thought of myself in many ways (a student, an NGO worker, a traveller, a postgrad, a Wolfsonian, an office worker) but never have I defined myself as first and foremost a women. This doesn't mean I don't feel strongly about women's issues, actually, just because of it I feel even more strongly about it. I find it offensive that because of this silly womb, which many women may never use, we should be disadvantaged in any way. I feel very lucky that indeed I have never felt disadvantaged because I am a woman.
So, we, the lucky ones who live in a part of the world where we're a lot less disadvantaged than we could be, should really make an effort. And that means aiming for a bit more than a big white dress and a pram, surely?

Wow, I don't even want to check how long it's been since I've posted something. Christmas came and went, after a tough term dealing with admissions, and it was great - despite the difficulties getting to Paris a couple of days after the Eurostar debacle! We walked, we ate, we drank, and no arguments were had. And then, well, we've gone back to the daily routine of work and friends and TV and books.
I am now looking around to see if any new interesting jobs appear, and I seem a bit happier, overall. I have done a lot of thinking lately about relationships, past relationships, weddings, children. I need to sit down and write it all out one of these days, but let me just note that I have no intention of either getting married or having children!!!
Life goes on, and things make me happy lately. It's good.

Cast your eye back, around seven years, to October the 8th, 2002, and this is what you'll find: The beginning: Ok. My name is Vanina. I'm 18, I'm italian but have been living in Paris for the last 7 years. Actually, I lived in Paris until 2 weeks ago. I just moved to London to attend university (SOAS, which ROCKS)...
My first month with my blog I posted 75 times. My life in the UK - what turned out to be quite a big bit of my life - had just started. I was excited, and happy, and doing all kinds of things I wasn't meant to do. I've become a lot more sensible, and sometimes I feel boring. But in many ways I'm still the crazy 18 year old who moved to London. I still have (some) dreams, amidst the fog of feeling lost. I'm also a lot more fucked up than I was seven years ago, or maybe just fucked up in different ways. Or maybe it's just all come out...
It feels weird to think I'm 25. When I was 18 I thought the world was mine for the taking, and then I discovered that it never actually happens that way. You make do, you try your best, and you adapt. When I was 18, living by myself for the first time, going out, partying, drinking, smoking, I felt like a grown-up. Now, every morning I wake up and feel more like a child. There's so much still to work out! So much I still need to understand!
A lot has changed. It's weird, but I almost I feel protective of that 18 year old me, somehow so innocent (amidst all the naughtiness). I might be disillusioned, but I do realise that so far I've mostly been pretty fucking lucky. And I thank my lucky stars I made that move, I left Paris behind and came here. I cannot even imagine a life not in this country, not with these people.

Things this end of Oxford are becoming a bit difficult. Or maybe frustrating is a better word; I'm frustrated with myself, with people, with work, with the world. The problem isn't a lack of willingness to change direction - the willingness is all there, because I know it needs to happen - but a lack of confidence in my ability not even to take a new direction, but to pick one. I've felt lost for too long, and somehow I'm having a really hard time finding my way again. And of course this is affecting all other aspects of my life, and everything is just becoming too much. This complete lack of self-esteem makes every action so difficult. It doesn't help that we're all a bit lost, with all of our own problems, and inevitable clashes/crashes happen.
I know I need to do something else, I know that. Where I am with my life right now just makes me unhappy, but somehow being unhappy isn't enough for me to start doing something else. It's hard to see the bigger picture, and so I get stuck on the small, inconsequential, and upsetting details. And by doing this I do no good to anybody, and I start feeling like dead-weight.
I keep thinking I've sunk to the bottom, and now I can only go up; but it never seems to be the case. Maybe it's time for me to ask for some help.

The University Parks are the one constant of my everyday life in Oxford. I am very lucky in that I live right next to one of the entrances, and my work happens to be very near the entrance on the other side of the parks (a whopping seven minutes away!); also, my office has a wall made out entirely of glass filled with a view of trees and lawns. And so every morning I cross the parks, spend my days looking at them, and until sunset started happening before 5pm, I also crossed them back on my way home.
They provide me with endless entertainment, particularly in the morning, around 8.40am, when I see a whole series of odd characters. There's the Polish couple walking in the opposite direction who, around once a week, walk down the path screaming at each other in Polish (the next day they're always holding hands). There are lots of joggers, even though there's definitely fewer now that it's getting cold; my favourites are the man who must be in his 70s running around in very short shorts, and the mum running in tiny lycra clothing pushing a pram complete with very covered up baby (with very rosy cheeks indeed). During the summer there was a multitude of other mums with their prams; I now only see them in the afternoons, from our window, participating in some odd exercising class, with babies and prams in tow. There are the dog walkers, usually very posh looking North Oxford housewives, in full rain gear and wellies (and with associated poop scoop). There's the nice security guard who appears regularly at the gate near home, waiting to catch naughty students cycling through (to my great joy, bikes cannot enter the parks, whether ridden or not) - we actually exchange hellos now. Occasionally there's a young man wearing long leather gloves and leather boots, with a falcon on a string. And of course, there's the students walking in both directions, going to the Science Area or to the Colleges and Departments in North Oxford; they usually include an English girl or two wearing flip flops in November, and the very young looking undergrad in the beige duffle coat.
It's great fun walking through the parks.