I have a theory about overweight in Italy

I have a theory (which is of course without any scientific base), that the reason Italians haven’t completely the same problems with Obesity (overweight) as the rest of the western world, is because a normal conversation is as we do it, is not just a process of interchanging word among people, but more a dance accompanied with stream of words in multiple levels of intensity. As boring it can be to look at danish politicians talking with their hands on the podium, without any feeling of or motivation, as lively it is to see Italians shout their meanings while throwing around hands, arms and even body to further their opinion.

This conversation dance is also very nice to observe when an eager Italian speaks on the phone, because the fact that the opposing part of the conversation is on the other end of a phone, doesn’t discriminate most Italians, so this dance is made often while in a bus or just simply walking on the street.

The back side of this problem is that when driving a car, one fast run out of hands. Here in Italy people are by law required to use hands free phone sets, but instead of providing more safety it seems that this only enlarges the problem, since without restriction it seems that it only provide an extra hand to draw the conversation and not (as the purpose of the law) enable the driver to use both hands to drive.

It is great to be among Italians.

How many worlds would you prefer.

(Can I have another one on the rocks)

Sorry, this is not about my stay in Rome, but about given you a bad conscience next time you leave the water running or take the car instead of walking. Because you are also part of the problem of the global warming. Everybody is discussing whether its good or bad that the USA hasn't ratified the Kyoto agreement, while we are not willing to save a little bit of energy or leave the car once a while. There are people which says that global warming is not caused by the immense amount of co2 but in fact caused by disturbance on the surface of sun (link). But not matter how it happened, it is a quite big reminder, that we cannot expect to continue to live the way we do, if also the poor people in African and so many other places are going to have our life standard. So please think about how much you pollute, and ruin everything for the next one.

Try thinking about this, right now it is getting illegal to smoke everywhere because of the well being of the fellow humans. But why is it the god given right to every rich fat guy (or girl (no reason to discriminate)) to drive around in a huge environmental disaster because he can afford it, who has allowed him to use my clean air to run that 5 liters monster. When the air gets unbreathable I will not care how much he payed for it, because we are all the ones paying for pollution.

But why stop there, remember next time you trow something in the drain that shouldn't go there, will have an influence on the fish which have to live in the water, when you say yes to all the "free" commercials coming in your door each week or when buying food packed in non recycle material. Every were they preach buy and throw out, buy and throw out.. but where does it all end, nobody wants a garbage dump in the backyard because it smells and pollutes. maybe we could buy a little bit less, and don't throw out so much. Please...

Anyway I am so often called "the activist", I once again try to tell my activist ideas. So to have some interactive fun in the end. Go to the following website to see how many worlds do we need if everybody lived they way you did?

http://ecofoot.org/

Try looking at the small picture...

Ps. This post is an reaction of peters post, which can be seen here (link), I do not disagree completely with him, I just think there is a lot other things to put in the equation.

Happy polluting polluter

I survived my first week of work

Monday morning my phone had mysteriously decided to die instead of wake me up at 6.30 as it had promised me way too late Sunday night, but Sara's mum got us up, me jumping in the shower in the good believe that it was around 6.30 and I, in my sleepiness, just had turned off my alarm on the phone. It wasn't before I was sitting enjoying the nice breakfast Sara had prepared for me, that I realized that I was in fact suppose to be present in my new office only 15 minutes later.

After a to fast and furious run to the bus(We currently live 15 min walk from it), and a 20 min fish-in-a-can sensation (in the metro), I was waiting in the center for my next bus. It came pretty fast, and drove me another place than it should (they had changed the route). Finally after half a kilometer of running I was in front of gate to my new workplace, ringing the door phone. Nobody answered, I tried ringing a little bit more, while wondering if the ringing-the-door-bell time of being rude was the same as in Denmark. Anyway finally somebody said "Pronto!" and I was let in.

The first day went primarily with setting up my new computer, installing stuff. And speaking a little bit with the technical staff in Italian. The company is ISO 9000 certified and have a pretty advanced and also in Italian. And they bought my excuse of wanting to be sure everybody was present, before I arrived excuse for being there 9.26 (I should be noted that they had just said after nine)

My first assignment was to help one of my new colleagues solve a problem with performance, which I had no idea how to do, luckily they didn't expect me to either, and they didn't know much about it either, so they figured that I could bring some fresh ideas to the problem. And I did (mostly by chance), and it got faster, its still not perfect but better.

I try my Italian daily, and I am improving a lot, even though I have the feeling that they are very kind to me, because in retrospection I know it must be very hard to understand my homemade language constructions. But I am getting better. Also my colleagues are starting to talk a little bit more to me. English is not something you take for granted as in Denmark, and there are in fact not many who speaks better English than my Italian, (or they are just as embarrassed to speak as I am). So I haven't talked to much with everybody yet.

All in all the first week was good, I am happy to be here, and I think that I will get some good assignments. I miss the tall tables in TE, and lunch buffet. But the pasta we can get next door, or the pizza from the corner isn't bad either :-).

Tomatos big enough to eat me

It is no wonder that tomato is called "the golden apple" (pomodoro) in Italian. The watery tasteless small things we call tomatoes in Denmark has nothing to do with these juicy explosions of taste that you can buy down here. A common day at the market is a fantastic trip around in what feel like a trip in a very exclusive shop of specialties, except for the beggars and the garlic guy, who always shows up when you least expect him, with a great smile and small plastic bags with garlic for only one euro. And this is garlic, if anybody (in dk) ever complained garlic was strong, they should have a taste of these suckers, they are smelly and taste great :-). Or spring onions that actually curve at the bottom, like onions... The pepperoni which is not salami, but in fact what we call red peppers (or green or yellow..) the size of toy firetrucks.

Not description of the market without mentioning all the funny people that wants to sell you strange things, from toilet paper, black olives, fresh fish to herbs to go to the toilet and jewelry. Remember to say "e lo sconto?".

A surprise danish lunch for dinner.

Today when I arrived home i was greeted by my lovely girlfriend and a foul smell of lever. Sara had decided to make danish leverpostej ( the following is a recipe leverpaste from a guy, which have the following headline on his site "No one is listening until you break wind". (I dont think it was the one sara followed)). Even though I have tried to convinced Sara (and myself apparently) that I actually love Italian food it was great to eat a "rugbrød med leverpostej", and a tomato with eggs. Sara have even found red beads (rødbeder) to put on top of the lever paste.

While stuffing myself, it was funny experience to see the interest and enthusiasm of Sara's mum showed in trying it. strange for me, to think that anybody would ever think that this was exotic food :-). Sara was happy too, but was more confident. For the food interested reader I can tell that leverpostej with egg and tomato also was invented tonight.

So without ever hearing the danish radio program (sig det med... (translated to "say it with")), sara said it with leverpostej. Good night.

The day I announced to Italy that I have arrived.

In the mean time we have found another office to enter Rome, and we were late - Sara's mum and I. So there was already 119 people in line. Or "in line" is maybe bit misguiding, lets just say there was 119 people close to the entrance of the door. Number 9 of these were a man which had announced the hood of a parked car as his office, and giving him self the honour of being the one how gave out numbers to people who show up to stand in line. we were there at eight, the office opens at nine, so numbers sound like at pretty good idea to us - but we pushed all in front just in case his numbers was just numbers :-D We heard (Sara's mum Dea also understood) that number guy was a employee of a company, who rents out apartments, and each morning he had to come to the office to get the contracts registered. He said that he had seen people literally fight to come first in line, so now he came each morning to make numbers and take care that they were given out to people.. (And maybe also because its probably a good place to meed new tenants for their apartments (but that's just my theory))

Anyway to my big surprise it actually worked, the self appointed leader was allowed to dictate the order of which people were allowed to enter. and within only 15 min (9.15) we were in, and ready to get another more official number from a machine and a form which I should register my name and address ect.

It was a very impressing number system they had, I am sure that the Asterix creator could have made a long scene in his cartoons about this. The numbers seemed to arrive in random, both 136 and 132 came before my 134, and instead of making the waiting more relaxed, it made all the people very uneasy, it should be noted that most of these people didn't speak much Italian, and didn't understand what was happening. Luckily they had borrowed the butler from the Adams family to take care of business, he stood as a big tower and took care of two very important things, he read out loud the numbers which was written in very nice calming red letters on the screen, and took care of making a corridor through the masses of uneasy foreigners (non of the two things really succeeded)

At 10.30 we was allowed in, and a man (only speaking Italian) checked my papers, and told a very funny story about a Romanian (A person from Romania) which had great difficulties in figuring out the difference between being Romanian (A person from Romania) and from Rome - sadly I did not understand the joke, either because it wasn't funny or for my lacking Italian abilities.

Anyway... I received my codice fiscale.

How not to get a Codice fiscale!

One way not to get a codice fiscale (Italian social security number), is to call the local police station and ask how we do it, who will tell you to come down and report yourself, where they put you in line with the extra communitarian's the police have caught earlier this morning, until we convince them that Denmark was in fact a part of the European union, and the fact that I wanted to stay in Italy was a formality, as decided many years ago in the EU.

Anyway after the police understood I was actually a person from another EU country they send us out to this prison inspired building, with tall metal fence around. The three policemen guarding the building kindly pointing us in the direction of a queue with around 400 people already standing in front of us. At a average speed at 3 meter pr hour, we arrived at the gate of the fortress after only three hours in line, where we were guided into a new line, shorter, with an accelerated speed at a impressing 6-7 meters pr hour. Finishing this we finally reached the actual building, where we were meet by a woman who greeted us with "What do you want". Sara explained that I needed the "residenza", the woman looked strangely at us and told us that we shouldn't be here before I have gotten my Codice fiscale. Anyway we got a number anyway, and since we only need to wait 110 numbers we decided to wait, and talk with one of the people behind the bulletproof glass.

The man which called our number looked at my papers, and told us what the woman had told us. He did however tell us where we should have gone in the beginning - "ufficio di entrate di roma no 1". This was of course the other side of the city, but we called them and they didn't close for two hours so we thought we had enough time (except for the fact that we were hosting a surprise party two hours later :-)). But when we arrived we found that they had already the number of people in line, which they could serve before closing. They told us that they opened at nine, but if we wanted to be helped in the morning we should arrive at eight. Anyway it was okay, because then we could rush home and prepare the surprise party... which was a success.

This was a long day. But all in all it was an experience to experience, and after the nice party and Sara's Lasange it wasn't such a bad day :o).

In Rome

I arrived in Rome, just in time to rush to my new work place to get a letter which stated that they will employ me as soon as I have registered myself in Italy and received an Italian social security number which I had understood I needed to get the number (which I didn't but more on that later).

Thereafter we rushed to the train station to get Peter, which was coming for the weekend to inspect my new place of living ( and to torment me with the fact that he was here even before I moved in, and I haven't been to visit him in the states yet). Anyway the weekend went fine. Friday evening we went to this nice restaurant close to the Colosseum (where they serve among others danish streak, but we didn't go for that), where we got some very nice pasta.

Saturday was the long walk day, to show peter some of Rome, once again we saw the Colosseum, foro romanum, the Spanish stairs (which actually is the stairs on the Spanish piazza).

Sunday we sent Peter to Prague, and we went up north in our car, because Sara needed to handle some family matters Monday.

Sunday night we was invited to a "thank you" dinner giving by group of Chinese to their teacher (which is Sara's mum). We was heroes because we knew how to use sticks, and they were because they could use a knife and fork (actually I never saw them use a knife, but they were present).