Wearing it on my (pants) Sleeve

I recently spent time in Oslo attending a Women's Networking Conference. Now I'm not going to bore you with the obvious differences between these 'orderly to the nth degree' Scandinavian countries and our beloved mediterranean societies. After all, if we wanted order, we wouldn't have chosen a wonderfully chaotic place like Italy to live in in the first place. But, in (the only) country in which I discovered just yesterday that has more women than men in the Cabinet, where their (male) Minister for the Family and Gender Equality can state, "the opposite of equality is injustice", well, some things just sort of stand out. Like the bathrooms.


The Oslo hotel boasts unisex bathrooms (albeit temporarily, to accommodate the 700+ women guests here). And, as any woman the world over could attest, this very basic concept would go a very very long way in a country with stadiums and concert halls as big as in the USA. And although it might diminish gay-bashing politicians' pick-up rates tremendously, just think--not getting caught by undercover cops would allow them to keep their jobs and fabulous addresses. And, a few more of us women might just get lucky.

Italy also could go this route, and in clubs and restaurants, already do.
The only problem is, they use as their unisex toilet those ubiquitous 'holes in the ground', commonly called Turkish Toilets. There is no amount of explanation that will resolve the question as to why, in 2007, you not only can purchase these ceramic marvels new, but are still forced to use them. Men are obviously driving the purchase decisions in this niche market.
Italians of both sexes will inform you that the choice is purely hygienic; a case of living in such denial that they will actually argue that they are more sanitary. Ask an Anglo-Saxon, and absolutely no one can divine how wading through 3cm of...errr liquid, dropping your pants into that very substance, and then, ahhh, spraying your pants legs and ankles (even if you're a good shot) can, in the most optimistic of circumstances, be related to any form of cleanliness. At least dogs are still allowed in restaurants here. As far as I can tell, the bottoms of their feet are infinitely cleaner than the bottoms of yours.

But, I do know that this practice, like many others, is actually steeped in tradition. If you stop by any ancient ruin, you can often find a place called a 'Fullonica'. This was the public laundromat -- your sort of 1 day dry cleaners -- And the cleaning agents? Urine collected in little clay pots strategically placed throughout the city, some even right there (maybe you got a discount, or better yet, maybe closeted politicians got lucky). They say it really cleaned well, although I'm willing to offer that togas were never quite the white ones we think of, perhaps tinted a strange sort of yellow instead.

And, in keeping with tradition, I bet that back then, you probably still didn't get your tunic back within a week.

For your very own instructions for use, go here.

Turn Me On!

Judging by the number of cellphones per person in Italy (the highest count in the world), and automatic everything here, I assure you, Italians are great technophiles. After all, it was Marconi who gave us the fax machine, Da Vinci the flying machine & Volta, well, volts have played a pretty significant role in making it all work. Italians brought Robotics to Detroit, & even invented the fast lanes which automatically deduct the highway tolls (of course, as a former Detroiter, one can always make the case that we shouldn’t be paying for them in the first place). I was introduced recently to a fantastic gadget which allows you to automatically set your parking meter with a pre-paid thingamagig. They even have vending machines which serve hot pasta.

And so, it’s with great surprise, that they invent or introduce these things, but can’t manage to actually run them.

I remember when I first arrived in Italy in 1985, it was the year that companies decided they would go Pc (and I don’t mean politically correct). There they were, on every single desktop from the Director to the Doorman, turned off, bearing plants, and draped with covers that made them look like mini-coffins. Everyone just carried on doing the work as they always had, by hand (and I worked in a bank)!

With an almost maniacal fervor, those technologies are hooked up faster than white on risotto. At the Borghese Gallery, they installed a million-dollar x-ray machine, placing it strategically in the most prime retail slot in the entire gallery, and then, left it turned off for over 8 years. Every time I asked them to move it, and let us provide visitor services there instead, I was told that the machine was an essential security measure. I guess they were counting on the power of suggestion to dissuade would-be terrorists intent on blowing up the luggage room.

The Milan train station once installed dozens of automatic schedule notices, and in their zealotry, they ripped down all the paper ones. Aside from creating kilometer-wide lines desperate for a glimpse at the schedule, before long, none of the machines were working. And none of the posters were put back up. I must say, though, they had a record year of schedule book sales (I think I had purchased at least nine myself).

On buses and commuter trains throughout the boot, you’ll find handy little electronic boards running scrolling messages. Too bad the message tells you nothing else then the final destination. Aside from that small detail being posted handily on the outside of the bus, what one needs is an idea of the NAME of their actual STOP scrolling by while you're actually in the bus.

Traveling around a country which prides itself on Tourism, I wonder when, exactly, the on-switch will be turned on to make it easier for the tourists.

Day Off

A friend of mine who is currently in between jobs has been calling me regularly with updates from the field (although I must admit, the same thing happens to all the husbands left behind to fend for themselves in the city every August). Ever since he arrived in Italy, he had a pretty good job with a personal assistant. Turns out that that assistant did everything for him, so he wouldn’t have to deal with it himself. Now, he’s been seeing for the first time, what many of us (especially women, even working women) have known all along:

- did you know that you can’t get anything done at lunchtime? All the stores are closed.

Yes, except in the city centre, and although I find it an endearing (and an unfortunately changing) part of the Mediterranean lifestyle, it does, in fact, beg the question: If all the retailers take Mondays off only, when do they get their errands done?? I have often wondered this and still do.

- did you know that you can’t buy stamps at the Post Office? But, you can pretty much pay all your bills, go Christmas shopping, open a mortgage, invest in mutual funds and buy tickets to a show?

Yes, and, when you do a Christmas mailing you have to actually go to a dozen different tobacco shops to buy them, because each one will only sell you a few of their stash in order to ‘save’ them for other clients who may ask for them (see excellent link to 'The American' magazine on the sidebar for a story that all of us have experienced).

- did you ever notice how many grandpas are in the parks pushing little babies around in strollers?

Yes, and, while it makes it easier on the family, all psychological results are in—with the verdict that the absolute worst place for little babies is with their grandparents (on a day in, day out basis). They just don’t have the energy to interact & deal with them. Lord knows I can handle my nephews for a max of 72 hrs. at which point I have been known to hang white sheets out the window, with the words AIUTO scrawled across them.

Another friend noticed that her baby was up all night on the days she left her with the in-laws. Turns out, they’d close her in a room shutting off all the lights and then declare, “She’s over-tired. She sleeps all the time”. To wit she would respond, ‘if you closed anyone in a room and turned out the lights, they’d fall asleep too!’

Marketing 101

I rarely watch TV, but, every now and again, I take in a favorite show or a good movie. Always new to the ad campaigns, I am usually quite taken by them (and, truth be told, I don’t have a working remote to zap the stations). So, I watch them.
You can imagine my surprise when the “university” to obtain a sort of mail-order degree actually advertised their curricula and their students using the voice of an enormous red monster who is quite popular on TV. Let me explain: he looks like a big red Barney, or a larger-than-life-sized Elmo, but talks even more stupidly.

I’ve never quite understood the Italians’ knack (or lack) for advertising. On most occasions, I think it’s the boss’ kid or even younger mistress who comes up with most of them. In a country known for its supposed ‘creativity’, the sleek, tongue-in-cheek ads almost inevitably come from a foreign multinational.

Their ads often border on racism, using stereotypes of foreigners that back in America would have protesters rocking the airwaves and calling for people’s heads. Women are usually fair game. A baby suckling at a naked breast to promote fruit juices (for you, not the baby). A Filipino housekeeper who can barely manage to speak Italian, let alone spread Philadelphia cream cheese on a slice of bread. A Samsung (Samsung!) ad for a camera, plastered over every single bus and subway in Italy stating “Shoot her” (this, in a country where a woman is killed ever 3 days by her lover, husband or boyfriend).

I stopped buying Grana Padano cheese after they showed a decidedly pregnant woman, cradling her protruding stomach, only to close in on it, and reveal that her beautiful round tummy was actually hot-branded with the Grana Padana label (just like on the enormous cheese wheels). Years on, I still don’t give them my business. And this was before tattoos were even fashionable.

But, my favourite for errr…poor marketing was when Luciano Pavarotti (may he rest in peace) was finally nailed for tax evasion. The guy was arguably one of the wealthiest entertainers on record – and certainly in all of Italy (if you don’t count Berlusconi’s past as a cabaret singer). It seems he neglected to declare a property in France or two on his tax forms. Doing the right thing, rather than going to jail (imagine what that might have done to his figure and his vocal chords), he admirably offered to pay up in millions of back taxes and was absolved. Next thing I knew, there was his picture all over nearly every bank window across the country – as the bank’s new spokesperson -- talking about what good investments you could make at Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena.

Call me a prude, but while Americans go overboard, I still prefer to see Michael Jackson or Michael Vick lose their contracts with Nike and Pepsi, or women protesting outside Bloomingdales rather than be titillated by these sort of advertisements.

Ad below for English language course (admittedly, tied into the Gazzetta dello Sport)

Italy's Fountains: Spilling out money

Rome’s former Mayor Veltroni announced during his watch a few years back that the City of the Future will be more Green. This is exciting news. In fact, just two years prior, Rome was named the “Most Green City” in Europe. And it deserves it. There are so many parks and public spaces, people don’t even realize it. Nearly every corner has a quiet place where the elderly go with their little grandchildren, usually filled with sculptures, ponds, playgrounds and even dog fountains now and again. It's wonderful.
But, I guess with all this greenery, the Greens have sort of sat back and relaxed. More precisely, those politicians representing the Green Party. All I know is that they’ve been sitting pretty quietly on fairly major ‘green’ issues which affect us Romans (or rather, yours truly in specific).

But, where were the ‘greens’ when the greenery had to go? I didn’t hear a word when they cut down dead or dying trees, leaving 2 ft. high stumps in their wake, never to be replaced. Or, when they brought down all of the amazing trees lining one of the most beautiful streets of Rome, just off the Via Veneto. Walking down that street made you feel like you were in Paris. And maybe that’s why they had to go. They cited, ‘Security Reasons’. From my point of view, it looked more like they needed to make way for parking spots and a bus lane rather than snipers hiding out in trees. Nonetheless, seeing that the U.S. Embassy is right nearby, well, I knew one way or another the Americans would be blamed for this disaster too.

It goes unreported, but those wonderful water fountains with the long snouts (charmingly called the ‘nasoni’) spout water day and night. And while my dog is most certainly grateful to receive some cold clean water in his lifetime, the amount of money going literally down the drain is incomprehensible. What’s even more unbelievable is the fact that all it would take to stop the flow is a little spout with a turning mechanism. To think of the amount of bribes one could garnish from fitting these sprouts across the city, well, it’s all the more unthinkable that it hasn’t happened yet.

What makes this situation even more preposterous is that Italy is consistently levied steep fines from the European Union precisely for their --errr turning up their noses at the problem. The water problem, cited repeatedly in the documents coming out of Brussels, costs the taxpayers billions. And yet, no greens pipe up (pun very much intended) on the issue.

They say that our next wars will be over water. One of these days, I’ll bet we’ll see an astute Italian entrepreneur team up with the Saudis and just start bottling and shipping the free (and exceptionally clean) water coming out of the nasoni before that happens. Maybe they’ll even garner the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts.

The Big Kahuna

Now, everyone knows that it was the Greeks who gave us the true democratic system; with votes and senators, and probably perks of special gymnasiums and private chariots. But, it was the Romans who somehow managed to get that system down pat: running it fairly successfully (with a strong Defense Ministry, I might add) from Tunisia to Great Britain.

Given what we know about Italian politics today, 33 Governments in the last 50 years, most of the success stories in the centuries prior came from despots or dictators, not to mention a few miserable monarchs, well, one could make a strong case that politicians, don't do such a swell job of it.

And so, when we discover that Italy’s politicians are the best-paid in Europe, the Business Manager in me comes out: it’s like paying out golden parachutes to guys who have not only run the entire company into the ground, but, overseen the merger that put it out of business altogether.
And, Italian politicians don’t even bother with the golden parachutes; they’re quite happy with their platinum handcuffs, thank you very much. In fact, their decrepit senators for life seem to hang on to those positions for a very long lifetime. Now I know why Italy has such a long life expectancy.

Italy’s Prime Minister Prodi is so proud of his country’s success as an economic miracle (when you toss in the black market, the rampant tax evasion, and the mafia-controlled parts of the country), that he actually makes three times that of France’s Sarkozy. Perhaps that’s some sort of premium for having to work in a 'hardship placement' in the first place.
His office loves to say well, he’s dropped his salary by 30%…well, if he hadn’t, he’d be making more than Leader of the Free World. Russia, for all its faults, has moved to a capitalist system -- with Putin’s salary, a mere 1/4 of Prodi’s. You begin to wonder who is handling the world’s nuclear power, manning dozens of borders, defense, a war in Chechnya, the oil oligarchs, their own mafia, kgb and of course, keeping it all together while offing the opposition and pesky journalists along the way.

But this spending for good work is not limited to the powers that be: the Parliament barber does such a good job, he’s paid 130.000 euro per year (that’s over $180,000) – isn’t baldness rampant in Mediterranean populations? – according to the Espresso magazine article, that amounts to more than a magistrate with 13 years in service. An accounting dept clerk makes more than the President of the Republic. The stenographers, who obviously need enough money to supply themselves with large cups of Starbucks daily just to sit through the sessions are rewarded along the likes of Enron executives: 253,700 euro/year – that’s $352.643 which could buy you a lot of treatments for your carpal tunnel. Too bad in Italy, that’s paid for from the public coffers too.

Prodi’s office has responded with stating that these are all true professionals, with tremendous experience, who bother to show up each day: “professionalità, presenze, esperienza”. With these qualifications, doormen should be making more than the head of Exxon.

The whole thing is as if, since Garibaldi rode ram shod over all of the petty fiefdoms that once demarked the boot, uniting the country in only 1867, that they simply replaced those same monarchs with parliamentary seats, their courts with a new kind of courtier, the privileges, with private planes, cell phones, gyms and apartments; every modern convenience that the modern age could supply.

And yet, as the saying goes, Italy works not because of its government, but despite its government. But from where I sit, it would appear Italy is its government.

Crimes & Misdemeanors

A (very) long time ago, I’m sorry to say, I used to take my sister’s driver’s license and make booze runs at the local 5 & dime…obviously, my friends and I were under aged drinkers, as the legal drinking age had just been raised, on my watch, to 21. (I know, I know, there go my chances for running for public office… but hey, in Italy, there is no age limit, so all of this is just pure science-fiction).

And, this went on quite nicely until one fine day, I ran a yellow light. And got pulled over. For “disobeying a traffic signal”. I even argued with the cop who politely informed me that, yellow means slow down, not speed up. So, he was right, and, I didn’t really want to push the issue seeing I was probably 14 years old at the time (another confession: I’ve been driving since I was 12). But fortune smiled on me that day, as I just happened to have handy, my sister’s driver’s license.

I paid the ticket promptly, and no one was the wiser.
Until, that is, the day she applied for a job in a law firm or for law school and, when she checked the box ‘no infractions of any kind, not now, not ever’—after all, this was a woman who wouldn’t steal a single penny from someone’s piggy bank – well, wasn’t she surprised to find, to my horror, that she had been caught running a light (which, on paper didn’t look yellow at all…it looked in fact, quite quite crimson).

Fury be a woman scorned? Nuh-uh… FURY be a sister who is applying for law school who just found out her spotless record has a big stain right down the front of it. She was not hired, nor would she ever be. She thought her career was over. I thought my life was. Fortunately for me, she did become a lawyer despite all the aforementioned drama – otherwise, I’d be writing this column from somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, place unknown. I still cringe at the memory.

I mention this because over the weekend, something remarkable took place in Italy: a popular comic let out the war cry that perhaps Parliamentarians, many of them lawyers themselves, should perhaps not be allowed to sit in the senate or run for office, if they have been indicted for crimes or are under investigation.
Now, I’m not going to go into the Berlusconi litany of alleged crimes, after all, he’s no longer Prime Minister. And, I won’t even mention the ‘Senator for Life’, Andreotti who has always been plagued by allegations of connections to the mafia, in much the same way Larry Craig has been plagued by allegations of homosexuality, or Bill Clinton, by his albeit, alleged, ‘zipper problem’.

But, the comedian’s cry for the heads of senators, has shockingly caused a great deal of debate here. Shocking, because it seems so totally obvious at least to one voter, that we should not be represented by criminals, past nor future ones.

Just stop and consider the repercussions: if Mayor Barry can get reelected after a cocaine arrest in Washington DC, no less, it can happen anywhere. But, did anyone truly believe that Washington is a better place with him at the helm? It is, in actuality, a cesspool of crime, with the highest murder rates in the country. Like the pusher in the school playground, its closeness to our State Government, well, must have some sort of 'trickle down' effect.

Given my own (checkered) past, I’m certainly not for electing prudes: but, I think drawing the line at criminal records would be actually something worth signing up for. In Finland, the Prime Minister lost her job for using her government credit card for personal expenses – even though she always reimbursed them. And, no one is going to argue that in Finland, things don’t run like a greasy wheel.

As Mayor Giuliani once said, if you get them on the little things, like jumping the subway turnstyles, you won’t have to fight the bigger things: like theft and homicides. Likewise, if we don’t let them in office after having paid bribes or committing other white collar crimes, we should feel that much less worried about people stealing from the public coffers, or worse.