Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary

Long time, no post. I have said it before and I will probably say it again some time in the future. No excuses this time, just havent made the time to post. Last weekend, my brother and his wife came to visit. Of course, having a child, they came in order to get some rest, but I managed to drag them through the entire city in addition to that. Of course, the regular sights, such as the Cimitero Monumentale, Hightech and Duomo were included, but we also just spent an entire afternoon lazing in the park. The weather was lovely, so it was a perfect opportunity to simply chill out in the park. Rachel, my sister-in-law proved how lucky she was by finding 4 lucky clovers within 5 minutes, plus a 6-leaved clover (is that still luck? I am not too sure about it...)

Since Monday I have been doing some real work again, and I discovered a very significant mistake in my paper (the one I will present in Izmir in 2 weeks), but now that I have solved it, the results look kinda different. Worse in one way, better in another way. Difficult to explain, but it simply means I have a lot of work to do...
And tomorrow, I will meet my class for the first time. The class whose tutor I am going to be, that is. The only thing I know so far is that the group is significantly larger than I had expected, but I will see how much work it'll turn out to be... This weekend, my friend Marie (aka Bloody Mary) is coming to visit: she is very unlucky with the weather, because it suddenly turned quite miserable (winter is back), but I am sure we will have un anyway!!!
Ciao,
OJ

Review of Income and Wealth

Woohooo, our paper on Consumption Growth Accounting (see bar on the right) has been accepted for publication in the Review of Income and Wealth!!!! Hopefully it will already be in the September edition, after about 3 years of waiting and revising.... I am very excited! It will be my first really, really official publication in a peer-reviewed journal!!! And good for my CV as well, of course. I bet the director of the PhD will be quite satisfied when he hears this (not that the subject matter has anything to do with my PhD, but still...)

For the rest it has been a busy stressful week. Too many things to do, too many things to think of. Not much fun. But at least the weekend was nice and free. We spent Friday in Mantova with Fedor's colleague Bellinda and her fiancee Enrico. We had a lovely time seeing the different sights, as you can see on these pictures:

 

 

 

 

Bellinda and Enrico will unfortunately be leaving Milan very soon. He has just accepted a job in Kortrijk, Belgium and they will thus move there. Very unfortunate, because they are great people. At least their wedding will still be held in Milan, early May, so that will be a great goodbye party!

Last night we went to the birthday party of Fedor's boss Carolyne, where we also had a great time. In advance, I had told Fedor I wasnt planning to stay late, because I was very tired. But the party was so much fun and there were so many great people, that we did end up staying until about 1.30AM. This was not such a problem, because today's calendar was EMPTY... So we had a lovely lay-in, enjoyed our strawberries for breakfast and cleaned both the house and the mailbox.. A good day!
Tomorrow is a day of work again and on Thursday my brother and his wife are arriving! I am looking forward to that very much!

Ciao,
OJ

O M G

They tricksed us, dammit... Blogger tricksed me into transferring to new Blogger. And as everybody knows, it sux. Damn... (and it's impossible to return to the old blogger, unfortunately)

Anyways, onto happier news. And there is a lot of it, actually! Lots of happy happy news (although I am actually having an I-hate-Italy-Day today, but we'll ignore that). First of all, I AM GOING TO IZMIR!!! I was accepted for a conference in Izmir, Turkey in April, where I will go for 4 days. I am really, really looking forward to it!!! And my friend Idil will also be in Izmir at the same time (coincedentally), so that is really nice too!

In other happy news, my Permesso has been found! The Secret Bocconi Permesso Office (ssshhhhhh, don't tell anyone it exists...) has found out what happened to my Permesso. It is a bit too complicated to explain, but it includes the fall of the Italian government a week ago and a law implemented in april last year. Anyways, the SBPO have arranged that my Permesso will actually be ready in 3 weeks! Of course I have not actually seen it, so I dont really really believe it just yet... But there is some hope!

This weekend we had some lovely visitors from the UK, as well. Matt and Anthony came to visit us for the second time... We had a really good time, consisting of much of the regular programme (pizza@Padellacia, beer@Fontanella, dancing@Johann Sebastian Bar), but we added a lot of chilling and relaxing this time. Sunday was particularly nice, chilling out and sunbathing in the park all afternoon. A lovely visit it was, altogether...
btw, I still have not been able to get my data of my old computer (yes, I am starting to get a little worried now). But more about this some other time...

Ciao,
OJ