Rocking the barca

There is a well known saying in English, which is often used as a retort. It goes ‘don’t rock the boat’ which means ‘don’t attempt to change things – or you may/will regret it’. In Italy there very few attempt to rock the Italian boat. Why is this? Well, there may be two reasons, firstly, nobody wants to end up in hot (possibly boiling) water – to coin another old adage, and secondly, they are so much a part of the boat that they fear losing the advantages of being connected to it.

The Italian boat is particularly complex. It contains many levels; from the captains’ (no the apostrophe is not in the wrong place) quarters, to those of the passengers and all the crew. The captains’ quarters is intrinsically connected to the engine room. The crew do not really follow the wishes of the captains, but they get things done just the same and seem to prefer the status quo: with the captains believing that they are leading, whereas the captains wish to retain the status quo because they know they are leading, although they know that they are not really totally in control, which means they have to play with the freedom of the public address system to keep the crew and the passengers guessing a little.

Then there are the passengers, some of whom are just there for the ride, while others lust after the life of a captain. Some of the passengers would like to change a few of the captains, because the cruise they paid for is not exactly going in the direction they paid for.

Oh, and by the way, some of the crew have made a film entitled “Viva Zapatero“. It’s all about the manipulation of the public address system aboard the Italian ship. Got a standing ovation, for some reason. Don’t know if there will be international versions. Not sure the captains would like that too much.

Batteries of batteries

Almost everything I use these days runs on a battery. They are everywhere. Big ones, little ones, minute ones, light ones, heavy ones, new ones and old ones. No wonder the power generation plants are going into meltdown, it is everyone using up energy to create more energy. Hardly a night goes by without the need for something to be plugged in and recharged.

When I was a wee boy I detested battery powered toys, mainly because the batteries would suddenly run out and interrupt your fun and we never seemed to have any spares in the house either. Now, all my stuff seems to need the things, albeit they are now all rechargeable, well almost all. I often wonder what would happen to this old world if we ran out of electrical power. At least no-one could watch trashy telly, I suppose, which would be a benefit. As for the rest of those things we do from day to day, where would we be? Wouldn't do much good for the likes of Microsoft or even Google. No power, no PCs, no internet. No blogs.

Here is a list of all the things I have that need batteries: No, wait. There are too many and I can't be bothered to write all of them down. Suffice it to say that batteries are everywhere.

Do you ever think about such inane things, dear reader? I do hope not.

Exactly the Punto

Fiat, that Italian manufacturer of cars in recent years that nobody bought unless they did know much about or like cars or were able to get a huge discount, may have got it right this time.

This partly state owned megalith is now run by the guy from Ferrari, and it shows in the new Punto, as I hope you can see from the picture:

I don't think it looks at all bad, quite snappy it is actually. It's a little less anonymous than the other CAD, mathematically perfect buzz boxes on the roads today and this gives it a few extra points (or should that be 'Punti', ho ho) in my book.

Things started to go well, er, better for Fiat with the new Panda, which is a nice little car and may even obtain the cult status of is predecessor, although maybe it won't because it is now a 'real' car, whereas before it was a bit of a 'pretend' car, but good fun all the same.

I haven't seen one of these here Puntos in the flesh, so to speak, yet, but I'm looking out for one and hoping that I have not been conned by cool photographers and Photoshop fiddlers. We'll see, but first impressions count, so, so far, I'm impressed.

Oh, did I ever mention that I like cars? No, well I do, it's just that, apart from highly priced exotica which is a wee bit out of my price range, most other modern cars bore my little cotton socks off, so they do.

Next Page »