Holland, 2-3 May 2008

buried in an offline computer

I thought I had all the time in the world to present my tiny master thesis by the beginning of June. This was until Friday. Up to now I'm 8 good pages ahead, but still nowhere near on schedule. Got to get used to rejecting evening meetings, movies and long dinners: the circadian rhythms are so much stronger here in Italy that it's impossible to work around the clock. It used to be so easy in May.

I'm still having some trouble creating connections between work and study - now, finally, they're both in the same area, but I still haven't got a clue how a good theory is supposed to be practical. I can go on for hours on discourse analysis and other such nonsense, but it doesn't seem to matter much. Theories, even if directly about my job, seem to be something I should know about, but only as a background to everything else. It's like the first-year general exams that one has to pass in order to be properly initiated, though it doesn't have any connection to the following studies and no-one will ever know if you remember anything or not.

Maratona degli sportelli, or: how to go to a doctor in Valdagno. vol 1

This morning I took half a day off to go hunting for Papers. Namely, what I really would like to have is this little piece of plastic that allows me to go to a doctor here. I have put it off for 2 years, having seen only the emergency rooms in various occasions, so by now I'm sure some sinister illness will come along out of sheer probability. Better be prepared, then. "ULSS", that is Unità Locale Socio Sanitaria, or the social health insurance office, is an obscure network of districts, offices and suboffices, so obviously nothing will move fast there. I don't even dare to dream of an online portal such as xtee.ee where I log on to check if my university is still covering my medical costs or not, and I know from Liina's great experience in Germany that switching from one national system to the other is not a walk in the park even in countries where the bureaucracy is not notorious for making the people run from one office to another and end up where they started. Luugijooks, that's what I call it. Hatchmarathon.

My first attempt at the ULSS was fun, because I turned up with all my papers, having been informed at the municipality before that both employees and students of public universities have a right to health insurance, and the nice lady on the other side of the glass told me that this somehow does not apply to foreigners, even if enrolled in the university as regular students. Then I asked her if I would be able to use my Estonian international health insurance card to visit a doctor for a general check-up. After 20 minutes of phone calls (among which, YES!, the standard phone call to determine whether Estonia is in the EU or not) she informed me that this card would be perfectly valid for a tourist, but the fact that I'm a resident excludes me from the system. I must have looked so perplexed that she started to laugh and said the only way for me to get assistance is probably to pretend as though she never told me the last bit and hope I can pass with the foreign card all the same. And to come back when I have a job, so I could get an Italian card.


This morning I started off with three facts:
1. I'm properly registered as a resident of Valdagno;
2. I'm properly employed from mid-February;
3. as follows from points 1 and 2, I have the right to a national health insurance card.

8.00 sleep deeply. Will not have to be at work before 2 pm.
8.30 wake with a start. Car parked in the 1h area on the wrong side of the street. Last time the fine was 25 euro. Get up, go and repark the car.
9.00 breakfast. Sorting the documents. Sure that nothing can go wrong. Armed with a list of documents to be presented: the residence certificate, job contract, Id number, passport. A feeling of absolute certainty.
9.10 looking for a parking space in front of the hospital. No idea how many sick people drive cars in this tiny town. Could they all be inside that building?
9.20 waiting for the nice lady at the ULSS office.
9.30 presenting the documents. Still smiling. Unfortunately the residence certificate doesn't pass. They need another document altogether. The certificate of residence regularity for EU citizens, or something like that. Got to see the other, not-too-nice lady at the municipality registry office that has a degree in making people feel like they're beating their heads on a brick wall. The paper will cost 15 euros.
9.40 go home for a cookie. The Brick Wall Lady will need some courage. Check bank account. 10 euros. Of course, it's the 10th. I should get paid today or tomorrow. Rummage in the purse. 5 euros and red cents. Rummage in bags and jacket pockets. Find 10 euro in coins. Yes!
9.50 municipality office. Try first with another, friendlier-looking clerk. No. Got to see the Brick Wall Lady. Wait for the Brick Wall Lady.
10.00 Brick Wall Lady arrives. I explain my situation and present my humble papers. - Job contract? - Yes. - Salary sheets? - Huh? - She needs salary sheets in order to confirm that I'm really working. - Well, as she can see, it's a new contract, so I only have half a salary from February. - And March? - It's the 10th today, I'll have it today. - Go and get it then. - Signora, I work in Vicenza. It takes 2 hours to go and come back. - Come back next week when you have March. - Can't I present the one from February? - No, it doesn't make sense, it's already April. - Listen, signora, I took a morning off to be here, I can't do it every week. Is there nothing I can present today? - No. - What else do I need? - Job contract and a full copy of the passport. - All the pages? - Yes. - Even if they're empty? - Yes. - Anything else? - 30 euros. - Huh? - A stamp of 15 euros for each copy. And copies of the contract too. And the salary sheets. And fill this form. And it will take a month before the certificate is ready. Maybe more.

10.20 go home, feeling of having beaten the head on a brick wall. Until the next time then. Surely there's nothing else they can throw at me now. I wrote everything down. I'll have the salary sheet, and 30 euros along with it, and the copies.

Next time, nothing can go wrong.

Bufala 2: destructive individualism

Watching the Report's edition on the Neapolitan environmental issues, I started to wonder about one thing. It's all understandable that there is no industry, people are poor, don't pay tax, public administration doesn't work and all that, but there is something else fundamentally wrong with a society where 1) someone will openly burn car tires to extract copper and 2) nobody will stop them. No wonder that the sheep are dying and the mozzarella is no good.

That thing that is missing, I think is the understanding that they all breathe the same air and their actions have a direct impact on the life of their neighbours and of themselves. I won't even start about the planet. I'm talking about the region. Mario gets his little bit of copper and his lunch. Alright, but the guy next door, living from agricultural products, will lose who knows how many lunches for illegal amounts of cancerogenous elements in his cheese. The region and the whole country gets a whole lot of Europe-wide bad publicity, products sell less and there is even less money to go around. It sounds simple enough, so how bad does it have to be to ignore?

If people look the other way when someone is dumping rubbish in a field in broad daylight, it's that simple to close their eyes to other atrocities going on every day. I think it's just that they don't care. If they fail to understand the basic idea of a community, it can only mean that everyone only thinks about themselves and their own gain or muddling through as best they can. It's so bad that nobody has time to think of the others, but this is the very thing stopping them from struggling out of the mess their in. They just get in deeper.

Italians are always described as a collective people. From this point of view the Neapolitans are just not.

Cleaning up Campania would be a great election promise these days. But I have no idea how long it will be and how bad it has to get for the things to change.

See for yourself: Report: Terra Bruciata (in Italian)

Che Bufala

"It (EC) has warned Italy to take further urgent action, or risk a ban on exports of the cheese from the Campania region.
Higher than permitted levels of dioxin, which can cause cancer, had been found at some mozzarella producers.
Italy says it has traced the farms at the source of the contamination, and destroyed their milk. (BBC News)"

Now this is really a cheesy story, isn't it? With all the rubbish that people put inside themselves at McDonalds and street corner sandwich kiosks, suddenly mozzarella is cancerogenous and all Neapolitan cheese might meet an export ban. "Higher than permitted levels" sounds very much like a game of numbers to me: something along the lines of the EU regulations on fruit size and colour. Well, with all the garbage lying around the Campania countryside, I guess the food that grows out of it will not be exceptionally healthy, but in any case the families living and working there are in much bigger danger than any Japanese person buying cheese from halfway around the world. Much ado about nothing...


PS - "destroying someone's milk" is most certainly a linguistic precedent. Never heard a phrase like that before.

The Difference: anime vs wolf&rabbit

Alright, I've finally found one for-sure indicator of cultural identity. It's not a big thing, but has it's own very significant force over the cultural subconscious:

I share an apartment with 3 Italians. This is quite fun and I enjoy it very much, except on the rare occasion when they pull out that one dinner conversation topic to which I just can't relate, no matter how hard I try - the cartoons of their childhood. These are mostly Japanese translated into Italian, and if I'm particularly unlucky, then Riccardo will make me watch some of the titles complete with theme songs. He'll have a slightly manic glint in his eyes, being completely convinced that the theme songs found on the net are some sort of a treat and I could be nothing but very deeply interested in them. Obviously I can't sense the long string of innocently happy moments these theme songs have accompanied in my friends' past. I can try, but it will not work. All I will see is a cartoon from some 20 years ago.



Now, I've never really watched Japanese anime, as I was 8 when the Soviet Union collapsed and it was only afterwards that they started to be shown on TV. When they did, I was a little out of the right age group and I never really liked them, because the characters didn't move while running. I grew up with Russian cartoons, so, obviously, the songs that make me remember granny's cooking and the good old days are completely different. Once I tried to get back at my flatmates and make them listen to the Nu Pogodi scores and others of this style, but they wouldn't play along (meaning that they kept up with it, said it was interesting, and found an excuse to leave the kitchen).

I later understood that presenting someone with an old cartoon they are unfamiliar with is unfair to the extreme: stripping it from all the affectionate memories and placing it under the scrutiny of an adult of another cultural context is... well, it just can't turn out well. Here is proof:



It's a part of culture that's impossible to learn or to fully comprehend, across cultures as well as across generations. Another example of this phenomena are the fireside songs, though these are slightly less sensitive to age differences. They are not usually something that people normally listen to or talk about, but they are very present in the cultural subconscious and have an awesome force of isolating the foreigners. There are some bridges, of course, and during the night someone will come up with "Stairway to heaven" and other such songs too, but the Italian ones are buried deep and I have no idea how to appreciate them for what they are.

Nato/a a...

The other day I received a piece of paper by mail certifying that my taxes are paid properly. This was good news, but taking a closer look at the paper I couldn't help but burst out laughing right there on the street:

Name: Maris
Born in: the Soviet Union

Well, it's true. Except that geographically it could mean anything from Lake Baikal to Kazakhstan to Murmansk, as the Soviet Union reached from Japan to Sweden and from Pakistan to the Arctic Ocean. It included Estonia too, of course, but "born in the Soviet Union" sounds very much like telling a 70-year-old Italian that they were born in the Italian Social/Fascist Republic. It's true, but not completely correct.

The Invisible Lake

Lago di Garda, 23. 02. 2008

Calling March, 2008

Last time (2006) the Chiamata di Marzo up in Recoaro was just something mildly interesting - people dressed up, a little party, some mulled wine. This year the weather was perfect and accordingly everyone acted their part with much more enthusiasm, both the procession and the audience. So it was still people dressed up, but cheering; mulled wine, but stronger; a party, but bigger.



More of my pictures on Atpic.
Vana's pictures on Flickr.
Also, it seems, I wasn't the only foreign blogger present: Rowena on Chiamata di Marzo.

Che marzo l'è qua

Yesterday was another Fora Febraro night. It seems the explosions have really driven out the winter... or it was only cold here because I had guests? After Vana and Jamie left we suddenly have excellent sunny weather and 14 degrees out. Not bad.

I went to Agrizoo to celebrate and get a nice plant for the office. When I entered though, an unexplainable something came over me and it was all I could do to keep myself back from buying a full aromatic garden complete with spare pots, earth, and then some roses to grow on the balcony. Agrizoo is this shop where you can find most anything to do with plants and small pets. The back resembles a small hangar, full of flowers of all kinds and the twittering of parrots. Today it looked very much like spring and all the boring evergreens were replaced by small roses, primulas and strawberry plants. I do consider myself lucky to have got out with only a rosemary, a dragon tree and a big azalea that will probably burst into full red bloom one of these days.

I looked around in Estonia this winter and it's all off balance: the cut flowers cost half, a third or a quarter of their price here in Italy and it's exactly the opposite with anything growing in a pot. Alright, the man-size rubber trees and that sort of thing cost a lot here too, but you can get young aromatic plants, cacti or spider plants for next to nothing. I wonder where the difference comes from.

I've already potted the rosemary into something bigger than the tiny plastic pot it came in, so this post is written with a significant amount of earth under my fingernails. The urge to pot, prune and water hasn't really subsided yet, so I'm seriously considering getting some basil, a mint and a red pepper plant as well.