Just another manic Monday

Today was a little hectic. We had to get up early and head off to a hospital on one side of town so our son could have some blood samples taken. The doctors want to know why his level of anti-corpuscles is falling slightly and this means they want to carry out series of tests at one hospital followed by another test at another. A consequence of this wish was that yours truly had to fly across Milan to the San Raffaele hospital complex with a small phial of my son’s blood.

I only just managed to get to the San Raffaele in time – the section which I needed to take the sample to closes at 11 o clock in the morning. Still, mission accomplished. What I don’t really understand is why the hospitals could not have had the sample transferred internally – but then this is Italy, and one has to expect these little things.

The lowish level of anti-corpuscles floating around in my son’s body does not come as a great shock to me – after all, he has been on antibiotics for around three years and although I’m not sure whether this would have had an effect, I would not be overly surprised to find out that it had. Italian doctors, however, maintain that there is no correlation between extended use of antibiotics and reduced levels of anti-corpuscles.

A family friend, who just happens to be a retired doctor, was a little surprised to hear that my son had been kept on antibiotics for so long, and in his opinion, it is probable that the antibiotics are no longer performing any useful purpose. I don’t really know – I’m not a doctor, and in Italy antibiotics seems seem to be used almost as widely as aspirin. Italians demand the things after only a few days of what might be bronchitis or what is more likely to have been not much more than a bad cold.

I think it would be fair to say that the Italian medical profession has a different attitude towards the use of antibiotics, especially when compared to the accepted use of the things in the UK, for example.

My feet

I think it may be true to say that my feet have quite a lot in common with Italy’s current bunch of politicos.

For a start I have one left foot and one right one, but when I cross my legs the left foot becomes my right foot and vice versa; much in the same way as Italian politicians flick from the left to the right wing, and from the right to the left wing of the political spectrum in Italy.

Close Feet

My feet are also rather close to one another, despite one being on the left and one on the right, again in much the same way as Italian politicians who tend to form rather unholy mixed left and right alliances. And when my feet are next to one another, such as when I am standing, they could be said to be on the centre left and the centre right, which is where most Italian politicians find themselves, when they are not in the crossed legs phase, that is.

Smelly Feet

If I don’t wash my feet, they become rather smelly – in much the same way as Italian politicians who tend to smell a bit iffy as a result of the continual investigations into alleged corruption and other activities which are not generally in the best interests of the Italian people.

Webbed Feet

Tickle my feet and they will try to escape. Beppe Grillo has been tickling Italian politicians rather a lot of late, and the politicos are doing their level best to escape his attention.

If you really irritate me, I may use one of my feet to give you a kick. Levi plus the much tickled Prodi have been trying to kick bloggers off the web with their senseless anti-blogging legislation.

Alas, my feet are unable to use the Internet, and they do not really know, nor want to know, what the world wide web is. And one may understand from Prodi’s recent assault on bloggers that, much like my feet, he probably has no idea what the Internet is all about, and does not want to go to the trouble of finding out.

Feet With Connections

Of course, my feet, although being apparently separate, are controlled by a much larger interest, which in my case is my old brain. And indeed, the further you dig into the convoluted world of Italian politics, the more likely it is that you will come across one single large interest that leans neither to the left nor the right, but that manages to guide the movements of all of Italy’s politicians, in the much same way that my grey matter influences the actions of my own left and right feet. Indeed, it probably would not be all that untrue to say that the actions of many Italian politicians, whether left or right, are governed by ‘connections’, almost in the same way as my brain connects to my feet and commands them to act.

Old Feet

Finally, the combined age of my feet is around that of the average age of most major Italian politicians. Well, I will admit that my feet are a little older than Mr P and Mr B, but not much younger than the Italian president, Mr Napolitano.

Yes, my two feet have rather too much in common with the stars of Italian politics. But at least my feet cannot speak, and, you will be pleased to hear, they will never be elected into power. At least the Living Museum is safe from my feet, and their ‘connections’.

Celtic Invasion of Milan

Well, almost. If you are in Milan this weekend, there is quite a nice ‘Celtic new year’ fair thing in Parco Sempione this Sunday. There are people in full costume and quite a few stalls were you can buy just about anything from dragons to swords for dragon slayers. A smattering of Roman soldiers are on hand to make sure the Celtic celebrations don’t get out of hand, or so I imagine.

It all looks quite fun and could liven up a Sunday afternoon, especially for youngish children who can even obtain wooden swords and shields….

Heck I’ve been a bit slow – Prodi is trying to gag Italy’s bloggers!

Those erstwhile politicos who purport to ‘run’ Italy, have come up with a nice little proposal for a law that will effectively ban personal blogs. Obviously Beppe Grillo’s efforts to bring Italy’s public employees to heel has got them all rather worried.

The politicians control just about all the official press here, and the TV. Now they want the Internet to be censored too. Heck, I thought Italy was supposed to be a Republic, a free country, and now this. Talk about despotic regimes – Prodi and his mob are up there with the worst of them. This whole affair has stirred up a worldwide commotion and the proposed law is becoming obfuscated by the recent introduction of Article 7. One wonders whether Italy’s politicians a) really represent the interests of the people of Italy b) realise that they are in the 21st century. The Times also has an article that give some more details of this blatant attempt to end freedom of speech in Italy. The headline sums the situation up nicely.

If anyone sets up a fund to fight this ridiculous proposal in the European Court Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, I’ll be one of the first to donate. This cannot be allowed to continue.

The sheer fact that Prodi is trying to get such a law passed is probably evidence enough of the possible absence of worth of the large majority of Italian politicians. And dear old Bertinotti – the er ‘communist’… Has he ‘the representative of the common man’ come out against this? Well, if you find anything referring to his comments, do please let me know, coz I can’t. But then again, ‘communism’, the ex-Soviet Union type and that practised in China, has always done its level best to stifle the voice of the populous.

And so Prodi, the, er, non-communist (I think he’s a funny sort of socialist) is trying to put a definitive end to democracy in Italy. And this guy was voted in?

Jeepers, can you believe it? Funny country Italy. Beppe Grillo – work your magic, and work it fast. Your country needs you, desperately.

What an appalling situation in this day and age in a western ‘democracy’.

Cv’s, Resumes: mug shot or not, that is the question

Many of my students at the business school where ply my language teaching trade are going through the traumatic ‘looking for an internship’ phase at the moment and one of my charges raised quite an interesting question. He asked ‘Should I include a photo with my CV?’. I’m afraid I was unable to answer this question directly, aside from replying with a decidedly non-committal , ‘It depends’.

In today’s world, it appears that more and more companies here in Italy do actually want a mug shot included with job applications. However, it is very difficult to know which companies want one and which do not. Sometimes you include a photo and do not get invited to interview, other times you send no photo and don’t get an interview.

The trouble seems to be that nobody knows which companies are photo-friendly and which are photo-allergic, so to speak. Net result – confused job seekers, and both candidates and companies losing out in the search for the perfect job/employee, simply because the CV/photo policy is not at all clear. Indeed, some departments in an organisation may require a photo, while other departments may not, which further confusticates what is already a confused issue.

Personally, I’d prefer to see a ‘no photo at all on a CV’ policy, because I think that a photo may subjectively and unfairly bias those seeking potential employees. After all, just because someone does not look like Brad Pitt or Cate Blanchett should not prejudice their chances of getting work. I do accept that ‘pretty people’ are a priority in some work environments, but if this is the case, then the aesthetic worth of a candidate can be judged as soon as they walk into the interview room.

I don’t think it will be long before potential interviewees discover the joys of Photoshop and start touching up their photos to make them look more appealing. In which case, the value of photos forming part of job applications will diminish and interviewers will need to resort to actually inviting someone to interview (or should that now be ‘audition’!) so they can judge a candidates’ aesthetic value.

Looks as though those who look like Shrek better start thinking about setting up their own businesses, or resign themselves to life long unemployment. What an odd state of affairs.

Oh, and the photo of my good self on the About page of this blog has been edited a wee bit, coz I hate photos of myself and I do not think I am at all photogenic. Luckily, I work for myself!

Italians are superb networkers!

I just wanted to say this, because it’s true.