Italy's 3Rs...missing a letter?

This week, I heard that J.K. Rowling’s very first Harry Potter book, signed with her full name, Jeanne K. Rowling, sold for the hefty sum of $40,000. Amazing news… especially if you happen to have a first edition signed copy lying around the house (I don’t).


But, what struck me was how important that signature was to the very value of the book, and, even more so, the importance that her name was completely legible and therefore valuable to the buyer (not to mention the seller!). And, I certainly hoped that news hit a great many of us here in Italy, and not just their awesome collection of brilliant writers. Italy boasts the most number of bloggers on the internet. We obviously have a lot to write about.


It made me recall Mean Miss Ferguson (only to avoid a lawsuit for calling her by her real name, Cruella DeVil), my 6th grade teacher who, in her sadistic ways, forced us not only to write with liquid ink pens last used by Benjamin Franklin, but, also to write legibly, with no drips of ink on a page (you’d be suspended first from recess, then from her class altogether, not to mention the rather large E you'd find scrawled atop of your page, and decidedly not written with a nice black cartridge pen, but rather a felt marker – in Red).
She’d ridicule you in front of everyone, tape your hands to the pen, do things that today would land her in jail. Needless to say, I became pretty good with that pen, real fast.


And so, it came as quite a surprise when coming to Italy, a country that has penned their fair share of parchment, starting with those tablets of stone to St. Paul's letters to the Corinthians, right up to dozens of monasteries, filled with monks’ stunning miniatures painstakingly penned in great big books, ‘til today, to find that people merely scribbled their names on documents. In fact, nearly everyone here has the same signature…one form or another of a straight line going across the page. It’s no wonder everyone thought Leonardo was such a genius--his penmanship is gorgeous and, he did it all backwards!


Now, I can think that maybe people are just copying the graffiti writers they’ve grown up with…but even those scribbles have loops in them sometimes. So, you start to wonder why no one signs their name properly. Have one look at the penmanship, and Miss Ferguson would have simply keeled right over in an apoplectic fit of rage; pens held with the entire hand (all fingers and thumb on the utensil), pencils thrust between two fingers, thumb freely waving in the air -- it’s no wonder they don’t serve Chinese with chopsticks here. Nobody could begin to handle the opposable thumb.


Of course, all this breeds your own little Italian conspiracy theory, since Italians pretty much spend about 7 years of their lives just signing documents and registered letters. They really don’t want anyone to know whom, exactly, made the signature. This theory is not my own-- it was actually related to me once when I asked someone if they could please sign legibly on a contract.
It’s no wonder those monks invented the very first printing press. They were the ancestors of comedian Rodney Dangerfield; they just got no respect.


You can buy a print of Leonard's writing here.

Internot Redux

Well, as the saying goes, I guess I put that cart before that ol’ horse… or, as the Italians say, I put the cart before the oxen… That's because in Italy, things move a lot slower due to the weight of the red tape, value-added tax (iva) and other charges that find their way in between point A and point B…

And so it is, after properly sending in via telefax all of my web domain registration info to the proper office, I found a number of various emails in my inbox telling me that, no, Dorothy, we were still decidedly not in Kansas anymore…

On Friday, I was informed (twice) that my request for a domain name was rejected because they did not receive my myriad documents. This, due to the Regulation of 1 March 2007 regarding the awesome website registry, telling you it would still take a week to register my name.

I was also informed in the same mail that, if I had already posted my docs and various i.d.s (including those of my unborn children), NOT to simply disregard this message, but to start over from scratch following their easy steps. It would appear that in Italy, they have no get out of jail free cards in the deck.

So, back onto the website, and off it was again. Eureka!

But, on Sunday (and, I’m happy to report someone was taking care of my domain on a Sunday… but please keep it to yourself or else someone will be bound to shut that service down)… I received another email from register.it.

This time, stating that they had, in fact, received my documents, but they could not read them due to a problem with the fax. They then list how to go BACK to the website and reprint them again in a nice font size. They print out fine at my end, so, I imagine that it’s the actual fax transmission that’s tripping us up.

Adding another 40 minutes (and a 5 day waiting period, should all go well) to my 3 day affair…I wonder if I tapped the heels of my ruby red slippers together if I might not get a home page...

A Week of Magical Thinking

Now, I don’t want to take full credit for this week’s events, but…the stars seem to have aligned in my favour on a number of issues:

First and foremost, the HEAT did go on today! (see entry below). And yes, we are back to our wonderful no-coat weather, albeit with a slight drizzle. It doesn’t matter, seeing that my building went coop, and, as true democracies do exist (I like to refer to it as mob rule), the heating arrangement basically favours those elderly and infirm (and the little ones) at the subsidized expense of us worker bees. After all, Italy is a socialist country.
You see, unlike in enterprising Milan, where the heat’s on before you wake up, and shuts off during the noontime sun, only to go back on each eve before you get home from work, well, our heat was voted to go on at noon.
So, it’s not enough you have to wake up at 6am to make it to your office, you can’t take a shower because you would not be able to survive the subzero temps in your uninsulated abode when you got out. They would find you only in the spring, with your arm extended toward your towel, in much the same way as they found the mummy, Ötzi in the Alps. Take a shower in the evening? Fugettaboutit. The heat goes off again at 8pm.

Despite having to sleep with a wool hat on my head, I like the entire arrangement anyway. I work from home, so appreciate the daytime heat (even though the sun is blazing). And, it gets me to the gym more often, where I can enjoy a hot shower in a steamy locker room.

And then, my favorite man from Italy’s Antitrust Office decided to go after the Pasta producers too! It appears that they, like their bread brethern, may have formed some sort of pricing cartel. Or, perhaps they all just happen to go to the same tarot reader when looking at the future market.

Not only this, but Rome’s Mayoral office has decided to simplify the subscription process for going onto their site. With much fanfare, they announced this week that their – at this point totally demoralized -- potential visitors no longer have to start printing out documents and sending via fax all sorts of forms just to pay their taxes or look at the FAQ’s.

One small step for man, One giant step for humankind…

If you can’t stand the cold…

Get into the Kitchen! As I write this, I am sitting at my desk, flannel sweatpants on, a wool t-shirt under my sweater, a hat on my head, and my winter coat over all of it. On my hands I don those kind of gloves where your tips are exposed, so they’ll only have to amputate the tops of my fingers once they’ve turned dark purple from the frostbite.

It’s not the incredible cold front that arrived in the Land of Sun from Siberia that’s the problem; after all, even global warming can’t stop that kind of air pressure system (although I wish it could). It’s the fact that it’s October 25th, and, the heat won’t come on in buildings in Rome until November 15th; the day the authorities have predetermined that it’s cold inside.

While this was a terrific measure during the ‘70s gas crisis to save money, I say, let’s abandon tradition (something very hard for our nostalgic Italians to do), and, maybe turn on the heat when the cold arrives. The system is so absurd, that at the tail end of winter, if we get a heat wave in April, the heaters are still pumping out, because they don’t go off again until April 15th. So much for Energy Conservation.

I remember coming down to Rome and finding my great-aunt standing, fully dressed with a hat and winter coat, in front of an open oven running full blast while she prepared her espresso; sometimes all four burners going, too. I used to laugh at the scene—but now make a mad dash to the oven each morning. In a portrait reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting, my dog is curled up right there with me; it’d be perfect if only we had a fireplace.

Thankfully, the powers that be, with an eye to their ever-aging populace, will no doubt decide that the heat can actually go on early, especially in schools and hospitals and the like. I’m sure just in time for the cold front to move on out.

Kneading the Dough

Last week, I heard a terrific lecture from Italy's President of the Antitrust Agency, a remarkable man with an amazing background and excellent presentation skills. Unlike most of his paesani, who usually just sit up there and read out an excruciatingly boring internal report, he was witty and spoke off the cuff, and we all learned quite a lot, which will be food for my fodder later. He only touched lightly on a subject that is rather close to our hearts, and even closer to our stomachs, and even more closely, to our wallets. He had announced just the day before, that they would be looking into what's up with the price of bread (err, above and beyond the stratospheric price itself).

See my previous entries: Getting Milked at the Pump, Post Scriptum on Inflation and Hunger Strike.

It would 'appear' that the bread guys have formed a sort of cartel and that's why prices, overnight, seem to just keep rising (maybe it's the yeast). The bakers say it ain't so, but, in one day last week all the bread around the entire city of Rome went up 79% - literally overnight. Hmmmmm... In their (collective) defence, each and every baker, independently of the other, stated it was because they had just happened to be holding a terrific sale on bread the day before. Mr. Antitrust certainly has his job cut out for him.

In Milan, that totally inaccessible city, remotely located like for example, Bermuda, the price is double that in Rome and even more compared to Naples. Must be the difficult transport of the wheat across the Lombardy flat lands. It's no wonder we associate Bread with Dough meaning Money.

Don't ask me, but it's stuff like this that kicked off the French Revolution. Except back then, it was purely economic: Short supply, high prices. The Italians, on the other hand, have never been terribly fond of Milton Keynes & his ilk. So, prices just keep rising -- maybe the bakers are just burned out...

Milano & Rome ban traffic [sigh] - again

Each year, someone posts the listing of the state of the environment of Italy’s top 100 cities. Mostly smog and small particles. Not surprisingly, the big metropolises are more polluted then say, lovely Belluno. Last on the list? Ragusa in Sicily. Now, Sicily is not known for its industry, so I was pretty surprised by this, thinking it was due to exploding Mount Etna. I’ve since learnt that it’s due to a huge petro-chemical plant there. Wow. That should be a wake-up call. And trapped Florence which everyone considers the most polluted of all, comes in under Rome and Milan.
In short, it’s all those vehicles. Italy, after all, has the greatest number of cars pro capita in Europe. They have one car for every driver. And, considering the exorbitant costs of keeping, driving, and maintaining them here, not to mention that most of the roads people actually drive on were built for donkey carts, well, you’d think there’d be a deterrent somewhere. Not here.
But, I don’t get bothered by the smog, except that it blocks a once-terrific view of the mountains around Milan. What irks me, on the other hand, are the ludicrous measures that City officials, across the entire boot, put into action in an attempt at ‘containing’ the smog. Talk about spitting in the wind. Their measures actually serve to increase the very smog they were trying to get rid of.
It goes like this:

From Monday to Friday, more cars than any city can handle clog the roads as people try to get from here to there. We are constantly admonished to take public transport: average wait, over 20 minutes (the time it takes to get to the center of Rome by car), while the other night, past midnight, I waited a full 40 mins., finally flagging down a cab for my 6 min ride home. So we drive.

On the weekends, (Friday evenings, to be precise) and holidays, cities literally empty out. Off to the beach, their mountain retreats, the countryside. In Milan, I would go rollerblading down the fantastically empty streets.

So, what do our omniscient city officials do? They block all autos on Sundays. All 11 of them.

Not allowed in the City until after 8pm (or you are met with heavy traffic fines, with police out in force all day long, with overtime pay, to boot), what do you suppose takes place?
Instead of letting us trickle back home to mamma, in time to enjoy a banquet that is Sunday pranzo, we get miles and miles of cars, idling in traffic at 7:45pm, crawling back to their homes, as if it was top of the morning rush hour.

This exercise in futility is almost as senseless as taking shoes off at airports. Talk about what happens when decisions are made by committee.

Italy's Dirty Secrets

I wanted to print the whole list of Italy's cleanest to dirtiest cities, but the full report was not published. So, here's what I've managed to glean from a variety of sources:

no. 1-Belluno Home of my favourite Company, Luxottica. It goes to show you that even plastics can be clean.
2-Bergamo Set in the midst of Italy's industrial north, I don't think this fares well for the economy, but, their zero tolerance for traffic bodes well for pollution.
3-Mantova
11-Venice Incredible, with all that drilling and shipping & cruise ships, but, of course, they don't have autos. But where does Mestre fit in in the report? Mestre is to Venice as Oakland is to San Francisco.
13-Genova If the Italians could figure out a way to drive down those streets once configured for the bazaar, they would.
17-Firenze Florence is always chastised as the most polluted, and yet, it beats out all of the major cities in Italy.
23-Bologna
55-Roma
58-Milano Although it seems worse, with its grey ceiling overhead.
74-Torino Well, what do you expect from the car capital of Italy? It's still one of my favourite places, & you can still see the mountains from there.
77-Verona Lovely Verona, we hardly knew ye...
82-Bari (We're headin' south)
91-Naples Having lost 24 spots, probably due to the garbage pile-up, well, there's a lot of truth to that See Naples and Die saying
98-Frosinone This is the town where all the major pharmaceutical cos. ran to when the govt in its eternal wisdom gave tax incentives for Italy's South. It's right at the Rome border. Besides, their Directors probably never go there.
99-Benevento One of my favourite little towns...
100-Ragusa (Sicily) Hard to find pollution in a place with virtually no industry, but, here we have a petro-chemical plant & all that that signifies.