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.

More Machiavellian naughtiness

You may have heard about a couple of corporate battle royals which were going on over the taking over of a couple of Italian banks by nasty foreignors.

Italians, it seems, are quite averse to control of Italian businesses going out of Italy. I suppose one can understand this on patriotic grounds, and other countries have done their level best to keep national insitutions, national, too.

One way of keeping the Italian things, dear to you physically close is to seek the help of old school chums. The old school buddy or old school tie network is an integral part of society, throughout the world, and it is widely exploited here in the living museum. I suppose it's a bit like keeping it in the family, but on a larger scale. The 'family' is very strong here – if an Italian had made Star Wars, the famous saying would quite possibly have been 'may the family be with you'.

Well, in order to keep what is now Italian, in the family for the foreseeable future, a certain gentleman, who is the boss of a bank which goes by the unassuming name of the 'Bank of Italy' was caught giving a little help to a few of his friends as a result of the monitoring of phone calls between an old chum of his and whosoever this chum called up. This old schoolmate was being bugged in order to find the ins an outs of some scullduggery he had reportedly been up to. Well, I imagine the investigating team got the shock of their lives when they realised who their suspect was chatting to. Alas, this big bank boss did himself no favours by demonstrating his willingness to help his old mate out. Bad banker.

The overall result of this banker's example of rather dubious business practice is that Italian integrity has taken a(nother) knock for six (Italian readers – that means that Italian integrity has been badly damaged). Needless to say, the governor of the Bank of Italy has been having a bit of a tough time trying to explain away his helpfulness. Lots of people have been saying that this big banker should no longer be banking.

Never a dull moment here.

Jogging along, well cycling actually.

My exercise phase is going fine and I washed 5 kilos off so far, but I'm not running, which does not do your back a whole lot of good, I'm cycling instead. (I never really liked running anyway – but I may have a go once I'm much fitter). Keeping my heart rate between 126 and 144 beats per minute and staying out for over 50 minutes every other day.

While beetling around on two wheels I was watching the other types who were keeping fit in Milan's main park. Interesting to see all the different types doing their thing.

There was 'I just started this coz I need to get fit', who sort of hobbled along, running, if you can call it that, about as fast as I can walk. The poor chap was very red in the face and did not look as though he was doing himself much good. Several types look like this.

Next we have the female, who quite honestly does not need to lose any kilos, and she probably knows this because she runs, slows down to read a message on her mobile, runs a bit more and walks while looking at another message.

After that there are the couples, him and her. He is often fitter than her and she seems to get dragged along in his wake. It will be interesting to see how long the 'let's do it together' enthusiasm will last.

Another type of couple, the girlfriends, often a wee bit on the round side. They start off at a quite impressive trot, which lasts for as much as ten minutes and then becomes a walk and gossip session. Good exercise – for your tongue.

Mr Stretch is another character. He will run for a while and then park himself up and spend the next half an hour contorting his body, usually up against some park bench or other fixed object. He goes home and proudly declares that he ran for an hour. But we know the truth, Mr Stretchy.

Now we are coming up to the pros. Young, fit and mostly male. They hunt, sorry, exercise in groups of seven or eight and will often try to out sprint each other. Well, boys will be boys.

And then there is marathon man/woman. A seriously fit loner who keeps on going for hours without looking as though he or she is about to keel over and have a heart attack. These people make the rest of us mere mortals seem real slobs.

Finally, there is me. I'm in a minority. Not many cycle. I may get told off before long, as I'm not sure that my speed is acceptable – I'm not pushing very hard, but I still seem to go flying past most of the other cyclists. I would consider cycling on the roads, if is weren't for the fact that there are lots of cars around when I want to go out and there are the blasted traffic lights which mean I often have to stop and thus wrecks my rhythm.

Anyway, the slight pain is worth it. I always feel better, more alert and less tired when I'm fit.

But, those nasty smoke sticks have been calling out my name and, stupidly, I feel tempted. It's mad, I know, but I can't help myself. Living in a city and one or two other things also make me feel the 'need' for the calming effect of a cigarette. Weak willed, that's what I am.

An earful, skin full weekend

An inquisitive mosquito came to an unfortunate end last night. It flew right into my ear and does not appear to have come out again. Initially, I was aware of it moving around, and this was quite an odd sensation. My other half tried to see the wee blighter, and shone a torch up my left lug hole. She saw nothing, but I could still feel it wriggling around. I lay on my side in the hope that the daft little vampire would find its way out, but I'm not that sure it did. So, what did I do? Well, we live in the era of the enormous encyclopaedia known as the world wide web, so I hunted around and low and behold, I found quite a lot about removing objects from ears and noted that a few sites suggested dripping olive oil into your ear canal as this will, a) kill the offending invader and b) flush the thing out.

I tried the olive oil trick, but nothing came out, alas. Then I attempted to squirt some sterile saline solution into my ear, however nothing dripped out, either.

This evening I went off to the casualty section off our local hospital to see if they could see anything.

Was I worried? Not really, but I was not sure that having a decomposing mozzy inside me would do me that much good.

It was just too weird to be true.

Anyway, I cycled down to the casualty section, armed with my trusty electronic diary and my MP3 player, as I was expecting a long wait.

As it happened, there weren't that many people, in fact I walked up the the check in any briefly explained my predicament to the rather gruff nurse who was on duty. She took my I’D card details and told me to go and sit in the waiting area. Suffice it to say, I was very pleased with how quickly everything happened. The staff were of the 'long suffering, but courteous' variety. There was one of the local crazies in for his injection and he seemed to find my use of a mobile irritating and then, while drooling, muttered something, which I was only able to understand after some other Italians translated it for me into normal Italian. Our not of particularly sound mind friend wanted to know whether the psychiatrist was a man or a woman. Why this fellow thought I would know, I cannot fathom. Oh well, it livened of proceedings a little I suppose.

You may be wondering just what the doc found lodged in my ear. The answer is nothing. The little beast had not come to a sticky end as a result of encountering my earwax, nope – it had somehow found its way to freedom.

Apart from this little lowlight, I had an excellent weekend, ate too much (diet went on hold) and imbibed no small amount of red wine.

I suppose you could say at I had an earful and a skin full!