Your hostess on this site is Deirdré Straughan (that’s pronounced DEAR-druh STRAWN).
Professional bio
Tech industry veteran with 30+ years’ experience and deep expertise across a wide range of technologies, companies, roles, and geographies.
Product experience: consumer applications and devices, cloud services, enterprise software, kernel features, open source.
Toolkit: messaging, content marketing, inbound marketing, personas, marketing campaigns, technical writing and editing, websites, blogs, mailing lists, communities, all aspects of events, public speaking, social media, curriculum development, and training.
Content: wrote or edited over 4,000 pages of published technical books, filmed over 400 technical videos, written or edited hundreds of technical blog posts, and organized dozens of technical meetups, conferences, and conference talks. Managed content teams.
About this site
This personal site collects my writings, photos, and videos – mostly about living in Italy and travelling in Italy (and elsewhere). But there are also sections on my career, my life, the international school I attended in India, and what I think about it all – in short: my life in Italy, India, the Internet, and other countries beginning with I. You may not agree with everything I say (intelligent disagreement and other feedback welcome via the comments!), but I hope you enjoy reading it anyway.
Please do not contact me about hosting your articles or links on this site. I’m not interested, thanks.
The views expressed on this site are my own.
Hello Deirdre,
I’ve written you several times in the past and each time you have a new setup. How wonderful that you are so talented.
I loved the music for “Countries that start with ???” (I just moved all the songs on to a CD because I’m getting a new computer in October.) I loved all of them and enjoyed “Concert for Priest and Bells Musical” – you also had a whole list of Italian songs which helped me to learn some of the words Italian-English. Which brings me to ask if you still have the same list in your Countries Beginning with I . . .
Once again, I thank you for your help.
Grazie,
Marie
Thanks! I haven’t had a lot of time to do translations in recent years, but you can find them all here: https://www.beginningwithi.com/comments/tag/italian-songs/
Hi, what I’m looking for are Italian phrases used in bocce games. I think I was told many years ago, that if I wanted the ball to go further I was to shout the equivalent of “give it the oil!”. Do you know of any good phrases?
Thanks!
My grandmother mother would pinch your cheeks or grab under your chin your chin and would say this phrase which have no clue how to spell correctly but sounded something like gubedda say gullla and follow with jezzle jezzle. I think jezzle means how pretty. She also said the word ah Dalia. Any ideas. Hope I did not butcher the words and nobody can figure what I am saying.
i have a question. I have travelled since age 10 when I became an expat and we moved to The Virgin Islands. I have very good friends in New York and whenever I travel to Italy or meet an Italian on the plane he laughs at BOTH the surnames of my friends. I do not understand this. I am wondering if perhaps my friends’ great grandparents were mafia and gave phony funny names or if the Italians I have spoken to (mostly from the North simply do not know of weird surnames. The two surnames I mention are 1. ciavatta which means “slipper” and makes Italians from Italy laugh wen I tell them it is a surname, and the second is cinquarana which I am guessing means “5 grains”. The officials at Ellis Island could not have come up wit these names as they are direct translations so what do you think is occurring -have you heard of these surnames?
Can you answer a reverse question about a Italian slang word? I was mispronouncing the word cappuccino as “cappucio” (cap-pu-chio). My Italian friend told me that had a different (bad) meaning. I haven’t found it in any slang reference.
Can you help?
I haven’t heard cappuccio used as rude slang, though at a guess it might mean the foreskin on the penis since cappuccio translates literally as “little hat.” But cappuccio is also used in some parts of Italy as short for cappuccino – so you would be perfectly right to use it that way, especially in Rome.
I remember reading that you had a pseudomonus infection infection in your sinus that you were having a hard time getting rid of. I am in the same boat. Have had two skull base sinus surgery , and one through the nose. Also have been on numerous rounds of I’ve antibiotics. My infection still exists. Have you gotten rid of yours and if so,how?
We eventually conquered that particular round of pseudomonas, but nothing has permanently fixed my sinuses. Having cancer and undergoing chemo didn’t help. California wildfires don’t help – smoke in the air tends to set off yet another round of infections, as do allergies, winter, dust… The bacteria living in there tend to form biofilms, which makes it even harder for antibiotics to have any effect. About 15 months ago I had a procedure (under anesthesia, though some people do it awake) which my surgeon described as power washing my sinuses. That worked for maybe 6 months. It’s a constant battle, unfortunately. As my doctor explained it to me, there are something like 30,000 different kinds of bacteria living in the average sinus, and we don’t know which ones are beneficial. So when you clear out everything, you hope that the “good guys” will repopulate the neighborhood before the bad guys come back. So far, that hasn’t worked for me. Maybe someday they’ll be able to transplant healthy sinus bacteria, as is currently being done with gut bacteria, and rebalance the sinus biome.
Hi Deidre, I listened to your podcast with Corey Quinn and really connected with it. I too left my established and prestigious job to go independent a few months ago, and am having the best time of my life. Thanks for being an inspiration.