MILAN, ITALY — Milan is the title and the location of the reel-life love story of Piolo Pascual and Claudine Barreto. This city boasts one of the largest concentration of OFWs. Our consulate general services over 120,000, and counting.

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Secretary Romulo plucked Antonio Morales from San Francisco to replace Consul General Pete Chan in Milan. Tony is an Italian hand with three years experience with our Rome embassy. He is ripe for promotion after six years as minister and grows a barba cerrada to convince mandarins he is not too young for chief of mission.

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Milan has emptied with everyone flying off to the sun – middle class and blue collar to Cinque Terre... the moneyed to bask in Porto Fino or Rapallo... and the really Agnellis, Armanis and Berluconis in their Sardinia islands away from prying paparazzi.

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Europeans are all serious about their leisure and will need to take a few days off to recover from their holidays. And they must do it altogether in August.

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Milan Mayor Letizia Brochetto Amaboldi Moretti tried to tempt the fashionable boutiques in Via Neaplitane to stay open for tourists in August. They all took the money, but then some rushed off to the beach, anyway.

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It is a human right here to holiday in August. According to Italians, if Christmas is on December 25, would you celebrate on December 10 or 30?

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We were pampered by the Principe di Savoy GM Signore Enzio Indiana when Milan was bidding to host Expo 2015. The hotel is one of the sybaritic breakfast-in-bed accommodations in the collection of the Sultan of Brunei. I delivered RP’s vote for Milan over Izmir.

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This time, with my champagne taste and beer-bottle pocket, we stayed at the Windsor, whose claim to fame is that it has the Principe di Savoy at its backyard.

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I agree with Asi Taulava that Powerade Team Pilipinas overachieved. It beat the Japanese and Taiwan teams and did us proud in giving the Iranian champions a good run before running out of steam. Against Koreans, the lesson is that it ain’t over until the fat lady sings (or the hot-shot Won scores).

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Feedback: jaz@mb.com.ph