This is the result of an investigation published in The Lancet, a British scientific weekly. After the analysis of more than half a thousand articles on flying and health, they have found reports of weak cognitive performance and mental health problems. The investigators became also aware that the female crew can suffer from perturbation of their menstruation cycle.

This is all due the timetable and the hour changes. So, a piece of friendly advice given by the researchers: in case you stay less than three days in another country, maintain your homeland eating and sleeping habits, because some changes are just not supposed to happen!

Labels: psychosis, travel

# posted by SAM @ 13.4.07 4 comments

Labels: bahai, religion, travel

# posted by SAM @ 12.3.07 0 comments

Arriving at Rome and passing through her, anyone’s life could change. Having been in Italy, before, in the North, I am amazed with the difference and the beauty that Rome so proudly exhibits.

And I am not even talking about that pride in being pretty, but about that one pride that can lead an entire civilization to such a decline that converts it in the tale of the world. Lets look at history: what happened to the Macedonia of Alexander (the Great!!!)?, where is the Mongolia of Genghis Khan?, where did the Egypt of Ramses loose itself?, in which atrocious situation we can find the Persia of Cyrus, of Koorosh or of Darius?

The arrogance of the lords of power leads always to a fall, with the consequent difficulty in getting up. It is said, in physics, that all that goes up has to go down. I should disagree! We can rise and progresses, piano a piano, we can even toddle, walk, and even run, and go lontano. But we do not need to consider ourselves the holders of divine and absolute knowledge!

The extreme organization of Milan and the extreme chaos of Rome…

The taciturn monotony of the fashion city versus the joyful life of the capital of the Empire …

In Rome, people is capable to love and hate, simultaneously. They step on each other (literally) to get into a bus, they offend to demonstrate anger, they mock the unknown at the same time they appreciate differences.

The Rome of the Empire is today the lost Rome, the Rome in search of si stessa, looking for her place in the world. Fluctuant between lefts and rights as almost every European capitals, Rome symbolizes the world civilization, incapable in conceiving her origins in a past that melts cultures (how much of the Roman Apostolic Christianism, for instance, isn’t resulted from the Mithraism Zoroastrianism?), that looses herself in a present of high diplomats and sages at the same time that underestimates herself as the tale of Europe, struggling to go back being who she was not knowing who she is …

ROME, ROMA, the first letter of ROMANCE! ROME, city of Christianity. ROME, cradle of the old order. When shall you wake up, rise and strive to become the City you were once?

The city that can held the bridge towards new world order, where worldly dichotomies between nationals and foreigners, between northern independentists and southern nationalists, between poverty and wealth, between religious exclusivity and the impetus of integration nullify themselves and your citizens are converted in the heralds of a new world order?


When will your paúra be converted in an active force?
Let it be Let deeds, not words, be your adorning, oh sweet and long-missed Rome!

Labels: feelings, human nature, leadership, love, relationships, religion, travel, world citizenship, world unity

# posted by SAM @ 16.2.07 28 comments

5.500 days that are multiplied into centuries when I think of my friends, left behind, of my lost childhood, of the fun of being a junior-citizen. 5.500 days divided in mere seconds, invested in my adolescence and youth, in the present and in my profession.

If I were there, how would it be? Each of life’s decisions takes us towards the following decision, in a meaningful opportunity, gaining autonomy, with more human plenitude. I would not have the friends I have now (I’d have others) or even work where I work now (perhaps I’d have another profession)… But, despite all, I would be me!

Today, despite the difficulties a foreigner feels, I feel not like a citizen of this or that country, but of Europe. Here I have found a continent that assumes itself as an organic entity, searching for meaning, not knowing how to grow, not knowing what to do… Today’s Europe is no longer the one oscillating between conservatism and excessive liberalism: it is the Europe of the cultural and social renewal: the Europe of integration; the Europe of Union!

From Europe, I absorb the pillars of Western knowledge, from Europe I take the linguistic plurality, with Europe I find the future in unity in diversity. But also there, in the Americas, I’ve found the idealistic dream of progress and expansion, we can find innovation, we find the capability to reflect and create; there, we also have pluralism and integrationalisms: the functional and real, not the theoretical one.

Thus, at the same time I feel an European citizen, I feel an American citizen (and even, an Asiatic citizen). We learn half-dozen tongues in a life time, we can pass through a dozen countries, meet half hundred people from the countries of the world and, certainly, we are not who we were before our previous decisions, or fifteen years before!

Mankind walks, in large but firm steps, towards that position in which, surely, no more we pride ourselves for being citizens of this or that nation, of this or that continent, but in having our role in this garden whose beauty comes from its multi-colority, in this garden that is but one country called Earth!

15.500 days later, thank you to all my friends that have helped me to strive this path towards plenitude, as a citizen of Earth!

Labels: Americas, Europe, travel, world citizenship

# posted by SAM @ 25.1.07 1 comments