Everybody is told that life is more creative than any novelists out there, but two things happened to me today that only a genius writer could have imagined.

The first is the time that I was able to spend in the MIT Library of Science today for my own pure research pleasure. Having been so frustrated about how hard it was to find valuable information to satisfy my curiosity, today was a dream coming true: walking around the stands with my laptop at hand, querying Barton (the library search engine), collecting a bunch of books and reading them.

Something that is not widely known is that the MIT Library is open to the public! You can just walk in, grab a book from the stands and read it! Why didn’t anybody tell me this? I would have come to Cambridge just for that! Can you do library tourism?

Anyway, geeky-ness aside, for a stimulation addict like me coming to work for the MIT libraries would not have been such a big surprise for the audience if this was a movie, but the way I came to be here, with the open source thing and all that, bypassing all the normal academic curricula things, it was ingenious. Definitely more creative than I would have never thought.

The second thing comes hand in hand. Paul sent around the picture of his last poker tournament win. How can I meet a computer geek doing open source stuff, become good friend with him, than he sells the company, becomes a professional poker player and actually one of the few who ever managed to win more than million dollars in one tournament? is the writer of my life on crack or what?

Life is a box of chocolates and all that. And not all of them are so sweet, but so far I like the script. It would make a watchable movie. There are some parts where I would have liked to have a way to fast forward a little, but overall it has good rhythm. Now I’m just curious about what the next episodes will bring.

I really hope this doesn’t end up being like “The Matrix” where the first movie is just brilliant while you ruin the whole deal in the following ones by diluting a few good things in hours of painful slowness and dry mental activity.

Who knows.

But one thing is for sure: I’ll try to enjoy every minute of it and, no, I’m not saving anything for later.

I came back from my 2 weeks vacation on a desert island in Croatia (see the pictures), trying to disintoxicate myself from civilization. Interesting enough, I didn’t miss my computer or being online (I had cellphone coverage but I kept it off for most of the time) but at the end, I started to miss the action. When you have to catch your own food and clean it and cook it and prepare everything for the next day, well, you realize how much time you save

In a few hours, I’ll be departing from Ecuador and I’ll be back in hot dry Italy.

I’ve been in South America three months: did bunch of things, learned enough to get understand most of it and getting around without sounding too gringo, crushed against several cultural walls, tasted fruits that I never even knew they existed, met all sorts of people (from crazy Israelis traveling without underwear to avoid having to wash it, to peruvian congressmen weaving the free software flag to help their countries exit third world state), dated girls, learned to dance the basics of salsa (but I want to continue the lessons in the future, it’s too cool), body surfed in the ocean, hiked thru Incas ruins, evangelized cocoon, spent nights talking geeky with Ricardo (boy, I’ll miss that!), heard Alejandro screaming while running naked around the house (won’t probably miss that!

In short, it was a lot of fun. The south american attitude toward life is close to the italian one, but it’s still different and, in many ways, far better, far more positive, powerful and relaxing. Soul enriching, I would say in two words.

I will be back. That’s for sure.

Ricardo is moving either to Argentina or back to Colombia. Almost everybody here says that colombian women, especially in Cali, are the most beautiful and open (in all senses, eheh), so, well, I guess I’ll have to test if this is true or not

End of part Stefano’s world tour - part 2. Let’s see where part 3 will end up being because, no, I’m not stopping: this is too much fun.