March Obsessions

It seems, it's been quite a while since I've decided to write a blog for this website. So far I've been busy with school, then work and then most recently my university and many other things in my personal life. I've forgotten how fun writing blogs were so today while I found one hour of time I decided to write down my march favorites. Well I don't know how the convention for my favorites of the month posts work, they're just for fun anyways so I hope you do not mind we're only 3 days into march of 2025 and that I am already counting down my favorites. It's crazy how I've been writing in this blog for the past 2 years now, it feels like just yesterday I got tired of mainstream internet and decided to delete instagram for a while. In fact, as an update to that post "I'm exhausted from social media", I returned to ig countless times because I had to talk to friends, had to do something etc. then I got frustrated again and I deleted it again but I could not find anyone who has anything common with me - sharing interests, in my own age group etc. - on other websites except discord so it has been this one vicious cycle of being mad at social media but continuing it anyways. Up until much recently I've noticed something I could do, which brings me to my first favorite item of the month: locking myself in a room.

Interestingly enough, solitude and quiet has brought me an immense joy and made me appreciate life a bit more. Ever since I moved countries, I have become a homebody as I have become a traveler, some days, I just lock myself inside my room, at my desk with a cup of tea and my computer and I just read, write, study and do whatever brings me serenity. Apparently just sitting down and doing world's most boring task is extremely underrated. I get extremely excited opening up a pdf file that is perfectly readable, has chapters you can skip to by clicking on the contents table etc. And these sessions -if you can call them that- of locking myself in a room, or sometimes the library, has taught me some important lessons about fun. I thought I was seriously lacking fun in my life for not going outside the traditional way. I dared to try drinking for the first time since I've turned into a legal adult and it wasn't even closely satisfying as my other interests. I tried going outside with friends, met up with internet strangers in real life and none of them fulfilled me as much as simply starting up my computer on a clean desk with enough extra space for a notebook and a drink. I think I truly am an introvert. I love my low number of friends and staying inside to read a book and only going out once in a good while. That which you might now ask, to where?

The second item I have on my list is travelling. Turns out in Europe there are these things called trains which can magically transport you into another city for a very cheap price and provide scenery while you're at it too. Ever since I've figured out I am now a legal adult and I can travel to places, I've been doing exactly that as much I can. In Italy you can also visit museums for free on the first sundays of the month, so I tried doing that as well and saw an impossible-to-underestimate amount of christian art (including a cathedral completely filled with divine art from the smallest detail). I started traveling from exploring the area I live which is now for more of a sunday stroll than it is sightseeing, so one morning I hopped on the first train to Turin and met up with a friend of mine. The realization I had when I learned I could just go to places was incredible. Following my amateurish, unprepared trip to Turin, I've made several other visits to small villages in the north of Italy. The sights were incredible and each time I left that place saying "I'll definitely return here someday". Traveling does give you a sense of smallness in the face of our enormous earth, and something to wait for at the end of the month. This weekend I'm returning to Turin, then my plan is to visit Bergamo sometime in the spring. The trip I'm most excited for is Paris on my birthday this summer after I finish my exams and be able to go for a weekend trip. For this reason, even if you got no where to go, I urge you to explore your neighborhood, see your local museum and stay curious about the part of the world you live in.

a view I captured in lake como

Talking about beautiful sights, the bel paese does lure you into the inescapable trap of wanting to learn art, it's just that with a country this beautiful, you feel obliged to capture its beauty at any capacity. My loyal readers (hi me from 2 weeks later!) will remember that each time I write one of these obsessions of the months posts, I mention a new form of art to explore. The thing is that being creative is quite fun actually, and it makes our meaningless existence on our a bit more aesthetically pleasing. This time, I approached art as a tool for capturing the beautiful essence of nature and humans. One day, I was bored of going to the same places over and over again but I knew that every single day I commuted to university from a beautiful place on earth which required more of my attention than just watching the architecture while waiting for the traffic light, there was literally a huge advertisement for a brand in front my university building with complete red background and led lights, and I noticed it just today. I've been going on this route for the past 4 months now. This alarming rate of missing out on the beauty which gives my brain a hard time processing it, has made me turn myself into sketching, going outside on the cold of February, while its 4 degrees Celsius outside, sit in front of a beautiful church and sketch out the exterior of the building. I noticed how beautifully symmetric every part of it is. I sat and I marveled at its beauty. I remembered all the famous people who've passed here that contributed to the world, from Nietzsche to Leonardo Davinci, hoping one day I'll be as relevant as them. Then I drew the towers of a castle, sketched out the front silhouette of a cathedral, found a statue of Napoleon and attempted to make something with somewhat realistic portions and miserable failed. After this, I sketched out some renaissance like nonsense coupled with funny portraits of my friends and had a good laugh.

Once I had my fun with sketching, I realized that I should move on to experimenting with filmmaking to advance in my artistic career. One day I found myself crying to videos of Switzerland and Italy, the intense natural beauty that was captured this well gave me an idea so I decided to finally document my journeys properly in Italy with my phone. I watched several videos on how to film things, then I went to the piazza and just filmed the cathedral for a few moments, then filmed my walk back home. I plan on collecting this footage then turn it into something meaningful, hopefully into a full fledged vlog or simply a lengthy showcase of footage without any plot someday.

Now, I've not only gained what are seemingly intellectual interests this month. In fact one of the greatest, most humbling experiences as a person of refined taste - that being a listener of jazz and classical music - was that I became an absolute fan of Stromae in just a few days. I used to hate his music with a burning passion, I used to find it particularly annoying when I was little but now I approach it with a more informed perspective and I appreciate all the different ideas he integrated into his music and still managed to make it into the top charts. I had no idea that sometimes clever and well made music gets on the charts. The amazing musical ideas he drew from world music complimented with storytelling profound lyrics make him an amazing artist. I cannot stop listening to the weird rhythms of his songs. He draws ideas from latin even turkish music which is an incredible range in my opinion and gives so much spice to it. Speaking of popular music, I also want to include the Sanremo music festival and radio italia in this. So one of these days I was thinking about the most popular ways of language learning I haven't tried out yet and I remembered the stereotypical old fashioned recommendation of "just listen to the radio in the language you're learning!". Nowadays, this has been replaced by "just listen to podcasts!" which is quite sad because I think radio is a beautiful and sincere form of publication and I love to see it thrive in the face of time. Anyhow, once I started listening to radio in Italian I learned about the music culture of Italy. This really did help me connect with people, understand references to popular music and even yesterday I saw the host of the sanremo music festival grafittied as a caricature on a wall outside and I was able to recognize him because of the rabbithole I've fallen into. I quickly noticed they were constantly mentioning a music festival and turns out just that day I got curious enough to google what the sanremo festival was, the festival had started on that exact day. So I sat in front of my television, turned it on with the intention of catching a program for the first time ever, and watched the sanremo festival for 5 nights straight. The end of the festival, people wanted Lucio to win and I agreed but I was also thinking that Olly was okay but again, not enough for eurovision. I was satisfied to find out he turned down the eurovision request and we're sending Lucio. I am actually hoping he will bring Italy a win or at least a high place on the leaderboard. At the end of it all, I found myself surrounded in so many conversations with Italian friends just because I decided to turn on the radio for once. And now I can't get "Damme 'na mano" out of my head, goddamn it.

Talking about popular and regular things, I also want to mention my recent discoveries in the gastronomical science. Apparently, tiramisù is the best thing on earth, and the second best thing in the world is lasagna. The world of culinary arts is vast, major and I have not given the Italian cuisine the appreciation it deserves in my life and there is no better time than right now. So far the italian food I've tasted is as follows; Tiramisù, cacio e pepe, pizza al taglio (the pizza squares), gnocchi, lasagna, pizza margarita, gelato, spaghetti with various sauces - pesto and pomodoro - la piadina, risotto alla milanese and if it counts, aperol spritz. My experience with these have been mostly overwhelmingly positive, except for the fact that I am sure I hated risotto and gnocchi di patate or there was just something wrong with the ones I had. I also disliked aperol spritz but solely because I hate alcohol in general, it was like orange juice but worse. Besides this cooking using my a1 level Italian is a surreal experience. Because Italian is used in classical music terminology cooking terms feel like they're these extremely cool and mysterious ways of describing something. "A fuoco lento" just means at low heat but it reminds of how composers would used "con fuoco" to describe a lively piece. And the "fare la scarpetta", literally meaning doing the little shoe thing (with the bread on the leftover sauce of a pasta) sounds like I'm achieving something major even though I'm just doing what I always did, cleaning my plate with a piece of bread. I am definitely not stopping here with my journey with Italian food, next on my agenda is the carbonara, fettucini alfredo, ravioli and panzerotto.

The last on my list for my favorite things recently is language learning and particularly learning Italian. I would say that currently I am on A1 level of Italian. If I need to ask for something real quick, order a coffee at a bar and read the labels on items at the grocery store, I can. I believe this places me at some sort of beginner level. What I'm particularly obsessed about language learning is that the ways of studying language through interactive immersion that I recently discovered. Here are the strawberry approved ways of practicing a language effectively:

• Make a list of DLC's of a language. This means to make a list of all the most interesting skills you can gain using this language - this could be studying french to learn ballet in its original terminology - or content you will be able to understand originally - studying German to understand Nietzsche from his untranslated scripts - this will motivate you to understand the original contents of something and be able to appreciate it as it is or provide some immersion practice whenever you feel low in energy and don't want to study.

• To effectively learn to write, read and listen in a language, try translating it. Find a video or a song to translate, make sure it has some sort of english translation or a transcript provided for when you get stuck. Cheating is absolutely encouraged as it is still teaching you something. The attempts you make at decoding words while listening to a clip will take your listening comprehension to the next level in no time. I cannot describe how much fun I had translating Italian songs I enjoyed.

• Keep a diary - sounds simple yet it's still a fun activity to do to make sure you write down something in your target language every day. Makes you look up a lot phrases people use to describe their daily activities.

• Watch youtube in your target language - not only should you watch youtubers from your target language, you should dedicate an entire youtube feed to have it recommend you videos in the TL (target language). When you want to quickly fix something, search it in your TL if wont be so confusing. If you're planning a trip, looking for a recipe, want to learn about particular people's biographies, why not do it in your TL? This is a great way to start effectively using your TL and gives you a bit of confidence boost when you notice that you can navigate the world with your TL.

• Read books and watch movies - even if you won't understand them. The first thing - and I believe it was the best thing I've done - I did when beginning to start studying Italian was to buy a copy of my favorite book Frankenstein and listen along to an audiobook. I had no idea how you read the letters, didn't know how they formed their words and structured their grammar. But I had complete knowledge of the story progression in the book following the most similar words because I've read Frankenstein about 3 more times in english before that. This gave me an understanding of how italians speak, I noticed that they stress the second to last syllable in most cases, that they had a particular tempo in their speech and their R's were rolled. I highly encourage anyone learning a new language to start with what I call an "immersion week". Don't study, just observe the language, you will never be in this position of being uninformed every again and it's the best time for you to do journaling and record your observations about the language to later compare and form a greater understanding on.

• Is there anything more fun than having to do your 10th grade German homework all over again? Go ahead, film a daily vlog or write a paragraph about your dream vacation in your TL. This as a mundane task made us all bored from learning the language we want but in my honest opinion, as a grown up (I was a minor 7 months before writing this blog btw lmao) I find doing things meant for younger people to be kind of funny. Now I find it kind of cute and low pressure because there is no grade given.

• And for my final and sort of stupid tip is to use the keyboard in the language you are learning. How does this help? you may ask, well it helps with typing unique characters - if there are - and helps you look native in a crowd of native speakers in a group chat. You can also use this keyboard to search up things in your TL and get used to the characters.

I hope these will be of any help, feel free to take these and modify them how you wish and have fun!

Anyways, it seems I have written quite a lot for an article about the most interesting things about the month of march. And I haven't even gotten to the parts about preparing tea parties, going for picnics and the traditions of la pasqua! But oh well, I will let you be my reader, until next month where we discuss the beauty of springtime in Italy in great detail.