The Palazzina is safe - St. Julian's, Malta

A stroll down the promenade
by St. Julian's bay,
from Spinola to Balluta
on a warm autumn day.
The sky is clear,
the wind is strong,
people in swimsuits
read books or doze off.
At Paradise Exiles,
a hip bar by the sea,
locals and foreigners
have snacks and cold drinks.
A sailor from here,
tattoos on dark skin,
with longing reveals,
while sipping beers,
that in two or three weeks
high waves and big rain
will gradually sweep
the magic away.

The legendary Suzhou's wind - China

Motherly instinct: her kid can as well burn in hell as long as her princess skin is screened from the sun light

It's hot in Suzhou, a demotivating kind of hot. As a result I've decided to suspend my daily jogging sessions. Who would have thought that I would suffer it like this after all those years spent training at the tropics? Fortunately on our side we have the proverbial Suzhou's wind, as my friend L likes to call it. Besides cooling your skin the gusts can also knock down your parked bicycle, throw a handful of dust in your eyes and uncover a curvy girl's thigh or boob, in case you are lucky and she's not. The best part of it, though, is spotting one of those affected city ladies nervously grasping the handle of her closed parasol, forced to let the sun scorching her skin like a simple mainland farmer girl. Asian girls actually tend to look quite good when they are tan: I find them more sensual, feline and spicy. Far Eastern people in general though, especially the wealthier ones, consider a dark complexion a loss of status, a stain that must be washed away with expensive beauty treatments or crappy whitening creams, which turn out to be mere sunscreen products in disguise. 

An ancient Venetian saying applied to a luxurious shopping mall - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Look at that fine round toilet bowl...

An old Venetian saying goes: "The weather, your ass and the rich will always do as they please." (Original version: "El tempo, el cul e i siori li fa sempre quel che vol lori".)
And in fact, no longer than ten minutes ago I was surrounded by a crowd of arrogant little assholes on the hunt for christmas presents in the luxury shops of this fancy shopping mall, while a monsoon storm was raging outside. There you have it, you proverb-loving readers: as expected, the weather and the rich are doing their part. Only my ass is missing, I was thinking, but I was underestimating the jet of plutonian atmosphere that was hitting my guts while I was absentmindedly watching those fanatics coming and going. I kept thinking about it while that cold air was working away at my ribs and, most important, at my belly.
And that's probably why I'm conceiving this silly post in a restroom while, seated on a toilet bowl, I'm trying to relax my stiffened bowels. Finally my ass (never before so proverbial) has started to do as he pleases too. Fortunately in these shopping malls even the bathrooms are spotless and luxurious. Moreover, though it might seem paradoxical to someone, the pieces of shit that float in here are less sniffy than the ones that trot out there.

Tropical cold - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Cold. As impossible as it may seem, I'm feeling cold. And it happens quite often: I'm forced to take shelter from cold in a city where for most of the day, twelve months a year, the thermometer needle exhaustingly staggers over 30ºC.

No, I'm not under a violent attack of tropical fever. The fact is that in Kuala Lumpur, for some reason that escapes me, the unrestrained use of air conditioning must have been enforced by law. I've been wondering why. Could it be the ancestral terror of the equatorial climate? The rather questionable choice of a status symbol? A substantial difference in the perception of heat between the local population and myself?

The LRT ride from the hotel to the training center is brief, only three stations long, and it doesn't take more than ten minutes. And yet, if I don't adopt tactics worthy of a polar expedition manual, chances are that I'll get off the car with the clumsily symmetrical limp of the penguin. Or worse, belly-flopping like an adult male walrus.

Little chance of rain - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Time, your ass and the rich will always do as they please (Old Venetian saying)

The sky looks clear, there’s a small cloud up there, but it’s not the type that anticipates a storm. Maybe today, as it often happens, it will let out its raging cry only in the evening. A taxi is coming. Come on, let’s walk, it seems that today there’s little chance of rain. The ride is cheap, but I don’t do it for the money. The fact is that I’ll have to sit for most of the day. Everything is fine until I reach halfway, when my eyes spot the fluttering skirt of a girl. At first I’m not worried about the gloomy omen, focused as I am on the smooth skin of that knee, the slender calf, the lower thigh muscle that is intermittently emerging from under the hem…