Lasagna.

313. Sitting across the globe from each other, we are comparing weather notes. "It's cold here," she says, shivering on the Mac screen. "13 degrees, to be exact." "12 degrees here," I tell her, a statistic learnt from the Facebook status of Daisy, who offered it as the reason for her upcoming holidays outside of Belgium. "How is it that our winter is warmer than your summer?" Victoria wonders out loud, and we think about her question for approximately two seconds before moving onto another topic, the way that close friends talk endlessly about random things. "I am making lasagna tomorrow," she informs me. "Wanna come over?" "Yes, yes I do," I instantly reply, and both of us grin, at the familiarity of the invitation, at the impossibility of the acceptance, and then I realize, once again, just how much I have missed her.

314. Eating vanilla ice-cream spiked with baileys while watching Charlie Wilson's War with Gaston and Smurfette. Maybe this whole bonding-with-a-new-flatmate thingy is not so bad.

315. "Can I click on the button now?" asks Gaston. "No, wait, let me see," I put my head closer to his Mac screen, reading out for Zoe -- who is heard but not seen on my Mac screen -- the tiny writing on the top left corner. "August the sixteenth, two thousand and eleven. Sounds good!" "Done," Gaston sends off his credit card details, effectively finalizing the transaction for our flights returning to Brussels, at the end of what will be our ten-day trip of eating, drinking, reading and swimming through the mysterious but much heard about country. Later, Gaston forwards the itineraries to me. "Italy, here we are!" reads the Subject. 

Come butta amico! I guess I need to start seriously practising my Italian hand gestures.