Invoicing ‘n stuff

I’ve been having fun finding the time to even produce invoices and no invoices, no income. This is a problem. So, to resolve the weeny problem, I invested in some software, which should automate the invoice producing process quite well and speed up the production of invoices. Well, that’s how the theory goes, doesn’t it? And we all know that theory and real life are not always closely related.

I’ve finally managed to get this wonderful application to print off invoices the way I want them. This was no mean feat and included installing a really neat pdf writer program and a ghostscript printer driver. These two handy snippets of code mean than I can preview print jobs by sending draft invoice layouts to a pdf file. No more wasted paper. Cool. Before solving the layout problem, another little problem was getting a clients reference number to show up somewhere on this magical invoice. I finally found a spare data field which allows me to do this. Big sigh of relief.

The software seems to be a little over the top in some ways seeing as it contains price lists and other business related gubbins which do not really interest me too much. I did look for and at other applications, but discounted them on the grounds of too simple, too expensive and miles too complicated. I even mulled over building an application by fiddling with MySQL and OpenOffice, but decided that I really did not have the time to do the job properly, even though it would have been a fun thing to do. Well, it would have been for me, but then I quite like putting PC’s together, was quite handy at the old home mechanics thing when I had the space and took quite a lot of pleasure from ‘tuning’ the various airguns I had back in the UK. Messing is in my nature. I just have to have something to mess with, otherwise I become the world’s biggest couch potato. Not that this is an option now, becoming a couch potato, that is, seeing as the sproglet dislikes people trying to relax when he is not sleeping.

Talking of sprog, his first regularly used English word has made an appearance finally. After idly repeating the word ‘snow’, but forgetting the word after that, he now has added the word ‘here’ to his vocabulary. Strange choice of word when you think about it. I mean ‘here’ of all words. Well, it seems odd to me.

Enough, must head for bed.

A gap and Italian ‘fun’

Busy week. Not had enough time to get everything done. No different from usual really.

Tried to get hold of the copies of some x-rays my son had last year. I phoned the hospital to ask if the copies were ready, only to be told by a very helpful woman that I needed to go there personally to ask the same question. I protested, ‘But you (The hospital – not this particular dunderhead) gave me this number and said to call before I came.’ ‘Well, you have to come anyway, we’re too busy.’ So she wanted me to waste my time, turn up at the hospital, open my mouth and ask the same thing, so she, in turn would have to go and look for the copies, come back and tell me that they are not ready, again. Could she not have just looked in the first place while I was on the phone? I mean, it would have been the same thing. Obviously not.

Now, I shall wander over to the hospital and ask the same question. I’m just waiting to be told that I should have phoned first.

The above is an example of Italy at it’s worst. It is not always like this and I’ve been pleasantly surprised on a few occasions by real efficiency, when I was expecting a real disaster. You never know here, and that’s part of the ‘fun’.

Busy day

Not enough time for a proper entry today. Too hectic. Had loads off stuff to prepare for courses and the accountant called to get me to get all 2004′s stuff together so that the tax year can be closed. Tax bill coming soon, I suspect. Boo hoo!

Culture 1

Although 'Culture' is quite a short word, it refers to an exceedingly complex concept. Our culture gives us, often, they way we think and reason. If you have never lived for a length of time in another country, or you are not someone who has extensive dealings with foreigners, you will only have a vague idea of what cultural differences actually are. This entry in my blog is my own personal attempt to get my head how the two cultures differ. This episode will deal with an issue which is close to my heart, seeing as I am a father.

Before I go on let me say that on the surface there are similarities, Italian people get up, go to work, get home and go to bed and then rinse and repeat this process in much the same way as English people do. Lots of Italians would rather not work at all, much in the same way as lots of English people would like to avoid work. Both countries have lottery and pools schemes which have always attracted millions of people hoping for a get-rich-quick solution which will allow them to remove themselves from the routine drudgery which is life for most people. Not much difference here then. However, when you start scrubbing away the thin veneer of daily life and start taking a closer look at family and parenthood, you start to notice some differences, or at least I think you do.

As most of you will know because lots has been written about this, Italians regard the family as being one of the most important units in their lives. English people, on the other hand, seem to regard families as a not so pleasant fact of life. At the moment I'm referring to families in the sense of all close relations. One of the differences between Italy and the UK, which I have noted, strangely enough, father that I am, is in attitudes to children.

I would say that many women in both countries seem to have a semi-automatic longing to have children almost as though it were a type of psychological need. Men, on the other hand, in the UK, are not always so keen to get in the family way. Many English fathers suffer in silence whilst putting up with their parental duties. When pushed, though, they will often admit that children do provide them with a lot of pleasure, although it's often not too clear whether the pleasure outweighs the pain or vice versa. A father I know, once said that if he had not had kids he could have had a nice fast car instead and it seemed that a good car would have been a more than acceptable alternative to children. Another chap, bought his wife a cat to try to take her mind off becoming a mother. Another group of men spent their time trying to get time off from their families so that they could do something more interesting instead. I once ran a section of a youth club, something which I did for a good few years and I had boys and one or two girls from 8 to 18 years of age in the club. In all the time that I was involved with all these kids, I only came across one who seemed to be the sort of child I would have liked to have had. This experience made me decide to leave the fatherhood thing to my brother, who although rather reluctant, was a much better candidate for the parent thing than I.

As a possible consequence of entering fatherhood reluctantly, fathers in England seem to do their utmost to impress on their children how important it is to be independent and how you are unnatural if you don't leave home at the earliest possible opportunity. However, it is not just the fathers that encourage their offspring to leave the family nest. Most UK children really like the idea of living alone, or at least not really alone alone, but living away from home. Often children will leave their town of origin and probably never return there. This is especially true of graduates, but may not be the case with people not lucky enough to end up with high flying careers. Some people, of course, are happy with their lots and going or staying in the area where they grew up in makes no difference for them. There are always exceptions to any rule.

Now, as you may have been expecting, let's take a look at Italy. Here, despite the fact that the country has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe, if not the world, children are viewed through completely different eyes by the men of the country. Kids are doted upon and many dads just wouldn't want to be anything else. I remember one guy who did nothing other than devote all his time to his son in the evenings and at weekends, another did the same for his daughter. One bloke went out and spent €800 on a baby suit for his newly born little one. Oh, there are ructions and arguments in Italian families and teenagers cause plenty of problems too, but many will still have a nice new scooter to run around on and the latest trainers on their feet. Parents do not really encourage their children to leave home, quite the opposite. A friend of ours announced to her parents that she was off to live with her boyfriend and her announcement was greeted by tears from the mother and dissuasive comments from her father. I've read articles about children staying at home until they are well into their thirties, only to finally move out once they get married. Now where do you think many of them move? Well, sometimes it is a flat next to one of the in-laws or above or below them, or at least in the same appartment block. Other times, it is a flat which is within walking distance of the in-laws. The braver Italians may actually manage to get a flat on the other side of their town of birth. A very senior manager at a major multinational here in Milan, who I taught once, told me that it was nigh on impossible to get Italians to move from one town to another. None of them wants to leave friends or family. This was a few years ago to be honest, but I still don't see any real evidence that the situation is changing. To tell yet another story, I know of a chap who moved up here from the south of Italy, but could not get his wife to move. This chap is now divorced, but spends much of his free time going down to the other end of the country to see his young son. I trust you have got the picture by now. For Italian fathers, children have great significance, particularly if they happen to be male, in which case they will continue the family name. Mothers also seem to love their sons in what sometimes seems to be an almost unnatural fashion. The Italian for 'mothers boy' exists and it is in wide and common everyday usage. Mothers will often smother their little darlings with affection and often interfere once the lad is old enough to start seeing potential brides. Parents will cry when they see their little ones go off on their first school trips, I read on another website recently. Being a parent is different here. Not all fathers are quite so devoted and not all mothers dominate their children, but there are many more parents who do this in Italy than there are in the UK, of that I am sure. Kids are not disciplined so much here as in the UK. And they go to bed just about when they start to collapse with tiredness, or 9:30ish. It's different.

So, what happens when you throw a rather reluctant English father in with an Italian mother? Well, you get sparks, flames and some eruptions. My other half was not too impressed with the way she saw English people bringing up their kids, she thought the method was too mechanical and that the child on the receiving end seemed to be rather sad. This does not bode well for my hopes with regard to imposing some Anglo-Saxon ways on my son and heir. The road ahead, sorry that should be tunnel ahead, seems rather long and so far, I have not been able to see even a glimpse of any light. As my better half commented, 'E così'. 'That's the way it is.'

All the snow has gone

It’s true. All the snow has melted. However, it has been a wonderfully sunny day here in Milan and it has even been quite warm. There is some wind too, which is something of a rarity in this city. Might blow away some of the pollution if we are lucky.

Behind bars

Nope, they haven’t sent me to jail, but when I have a look out of the window of the appartment, it feels a bit like being in one. You see there is a security grating thingy over each of the windows. You can open these things, but they are a pain and the key is never where it ought to be.

We did not put these bars on the windows, they were installed by the previous owner. These security measures are another difference between the UK and Italy.

If you drive around Milan, or wander about on foot, particularly in the evenings, you will notice lots of shutters.

The shops, more often than not, are hidden behind huge steel shutters, and it is not always clear what the shop behind the shutters sells. This means that making a mental note of just where that interesting hardware shop was, for example, can be difficult.

Looking up, which is something I encourage everyone to do here, on account of the amazing terraced gardens to which I’ve already referred in a previous entry, you may notice that the appartments take on a sort of bunker look after dark.

Italians are not into curtains and tend to install shutters everywhere because they are more secure and I think, help keep some of the burning heat of the sun out. However the resulting effect, once all the shutters are closed, can be a little bit disconcerting. Everything looks closed and abandoned. This was very strange for me at first, coming from the UK where shutters are almost unknown and where windows are always visible giving, me at least, the impression that the neighbourhood is more open and friendly. Which is more than can be said for Milan in August, when almost everyone leaves the city for mountains or sea, and the city does a good impression of a ghost town, with all those shutters being kept down for ages. You have to experience the sensation of seeing all these shutters down to get an idea of what I am on about. It’s as if all the houses have closed their eyes and gone to sleep. A funny feeling.

Not only do 99.9 percent of appartments here have shutters, but many also have bars. Either the openable things we have or immovable cast iron gratings. These gratings cannot be removed, unless you happen to be handy with an angle grinder or an oxyacetylene torch, that is.

Usually, it is the first two or sometimes three floors which have been turned into mini-fortresses. And we must not forget that the door to the appartments, all of them, just about, not just the fortress entrances, will be a ‘porta blindata’. This can be roughly translated as being ‘armoured door’.

My translation may well be a little rough, but it does explain exactly what they are. Often they are made of steel and have a locking system which many banks (in the UK) would be proud of.

Then, there are the keys

The keys to these super secure doors come in many shapes and sizes. In our last place, where my other half installed an nice solid steel door, we had short, flat, high-techy keys, which were OK to carry around in your pocket. My in-laws, instead have these funny double sided keys which are about four inches long, well in fact there are two keys like this, one for each lock. These keys are heavy and a bind to carry around, and they do a pretty good job of ruining pockets too.

You will often find that a door here has two or more locks. You may also note that turning the key just once is not enough. You have to turn keys at least twice to get the key out, and something like four times, if you want to be sure that all the door locking rods are buried deep in their sockets.

Many Italians carry around, an alarmingly big bunch of keys. Actually, such grapefruit sized bunches could quite successfully be used for self-defence purposes, if necessary.

All this security, which does not seem to be fully justified, in my humble opinion. (You have windows, which are often double glazed, on top of which there are the shutters, which are sometimes, admittedly, flimsy plastic things, but are also quite often heavy solid wooden or metal structures, and finally your steel grating things.)

And Just what do you do in the event of a fire?

This fetish for security begs the question: ‘What the blazes do you do in the event of a fire?’ when you find yourself all nice and ‘safe’ behind all the armour. I guess all that security would turn many burning appartments into very effective ovens. There are very few fire escapes here too. Just as well that many, but not all, appartments in Italy have balconies.

I imagine that the local fire brigade has to go around with all manner of equipment for opening armoured doors, steel and iron gratings, and such like.

You could, of course, equip your house with a nice axe, or a handy angle grinder (petrol version – seeing as the electricity may be off in the event of a fire), or just go the whole hog and invest in a trusty thermic lance, plus a course on how to use the thing. You may need at least once lance per room, just to be on the safe side, and it would be advisable to instruct the kids as to how to use the things.

I can see it now, courses at the local church hall for 9 to 11 year olds – Thermic Lancing for Beginners – Lesson One – Burning your way through steel shutters in the event of a fire – Classroom 8 – 9am to 11am with Father Fuocorosso.

Sounds like fun when I think about it. But all in all, I prefer to be in front of bars, drinking a coffee or a beer, while reading my valued copy of ‘Thermic Lances for Dummies’, maybe.