FT is one of my favorite places on the web. A group of fun, interesting, and above all decent people as has been confirmed by this thread.
I found out about the site by reading a WSJ article about Pudding Guy and his healthy choice caper.
My name is Marco (another one
) and I am 31.
I grew up in Italy, attended boarding school in England (Canterbury),college in Chicago, and Law School in Washington DC. In law school I started training to be an Opera singer and am still in training though have had various other jobs over the years to support my habit.
I am currently in STL(not a bad city, nice people and lovely big park that we live next to as big as Central park in NYC which is great for our dog Lupo) following my wife around as she is doing an Allergy/Immunology fellowship here (Capt. Mike e-mail me if we can be of help). We have been married for 10 years now and have had the opportunity to travel to/dine in many wonderful places around the US, Canada, and Europe (though my wife traveled solo as a young woman throughout India and China before we met and is ethnically Chinese though born in MN, USA) and our favorite is SFO(Masa's)/South of France(Le Lutrin in Avignon). A dream lifestyle for us would be a live aboard sail boat across the bay from SFO(can't wait to take a crack at the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon) within a half hour drive to Napa valley with lots of travelling and sailing around the world/anywhere on a sailboat along the Cote D'Azure. It will be a long time before anything like that though as my wife has another and longer fellowship planned in oncology +couple yrs. research (BMT specifically the immunology of GvHd) next (could be in Seattle though which is also a great place, did the skyline trail in Olympic a couple of years ago and would love to explore the Cascades, not to mention the great Wagner at the Opera House there).
All our travelling is done out of pocket. Fellows and Opera singers (now a full time dad of our 10 month old daughter Alessandra) don't have very deep pockets so miles are slow to accumulate. All the tips found on FT make the whole process that much more fun and far more efficient too(keep 'em coming Doc).
BA is my favorite airline by a long shot(as far as transatlantic goes) and I love reading Merry's posts(the BA FF god) though I am only a lowly blue (appropriate colour
) level executive club member. I have just taken on a job to do some MS Office integration for a Spanish and Italian company so hopefully that will involve a bit of transatlantic travel that will rack up some more miles. As I plan on homeschooling my daughter (and hopefully some future siblings) I am saving the miles up to take her on educational trips around the world. If she was a little older I would have been all over the Latin Pass run and the 1w bonus.
Anyway, thanks for all the great tips and postings. I enjoy travelling vicariously with you through them and hopefully in the not too distant future I will be able to join some FTers in person at one of the get togethers and regale you (if you can stand it) with an aria or two
[This message has been edited by Mvic (edited 06-11-2000).]