I have not posted anything on this blog for quite a long time. My personal academia these days was too filled with different duties to leave me enough time to actually blog about it. Do, or write about doing, is the eternal choice. My doing these days was concerned about filling very thorough applications for research grants. It takes time and I think that those application forms are intended to discourage most of the potential applicants. Anyway, I did it, without getting discouraged. While struggling through proposal descriptions and amounts of money, confidential financial information and checking proper boxes on the proper forms I stumbled upon the most surprising demand: I was required to write an “Essay describing my special interests and activities, other than academic or professional”. It was really like the little essays we had to write for school when I was 12, and I took it as a joke. But, when I started to write my thoughts drifted away: the ridiculous essay ended into 2 single-spaced pages, and I finally found the exercise rather funny and playful. I then submitted it to my personal adviser in those matters, my friend A*, who is the sharpest mind I know. She bluntly replied that it was too long, too self indulgent: “But it is dumb you know, to ask a senior academic about his interest in life—it is a dumb exercise, treat it as a dumb exercise. Be short and concise, you do not even mention the most exciting things you do”. I am fond of A* for many reasons, but one of these is that she reveals to me fascinating aspects of my life in the most surprising circumstances, like a grant application. So I wrote again a more concise note, thinking that, after all, both essays would do decent (though in one case, long and self indulgent) postings for this blog.