Category Archives: Experiences

Bloody people.

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It has to stop. No, really it does!

I don’t really get angry. I just feel disappointed. I should feel angry but, you know, there’s just too much effort in being angry. And, anyway, it doesn’t solve anything. However, I could be, shall we say, firmer. You could say ‘more of a bastard about it’. And that would be true ….. to some extent.

But, overall, I’m just disappointed – both with the people concerned and with the resulting situation for me.

I don’t know why I do it really. The ‘planning’ bit. Even as I’m doing it I think, ‘don’t do this ‘cos it won’t all work out like this at all’. Still, I do it.

In this case, I’m talking about my students – but, to be honest, it applies to most things. One of them, who has to complete this test before the end of this year or else he loses his degree that he worked so hard for. But he doesn’t work hard enough (in his own time). There are excuses, of course. They are reasonable excuses – he works full time, also runs a business (a nursery) with his wife, has a baby daughter and fights with his wife most evenings. Oh yes, and he’s just bought a new flat which needs work to be done. Not really a recipe for success when the English thing is difficult for him.

So, as he hasn’t worked hard enough, he wants to stop the lessons. This is fine by me. His Monday, hour-and-a-half lessons at 9 p.m. were a real killer for me. It meant not getting to sleep much before midnight, making me have a lack of sleep that is showing in my face as I rapidly approach old age. He says he wants to self-study. He won’t pass his exam ….. even if he does actually take it. But he has no intention of using his degree; it’s too difficult for him to get work in his field without working for a while as an intern (meaning no money – which with all his other commitments is impossible) and he’s unlikely to get an internship at his age (being a few years older than is normal). Anyway, his long-term plans means that he doesn’t really need a degree. He wants to open a tobacconist (he works for the one below my house). You don’t need to be an architect to do that.

And so, he cancelled a lesson a few weeks ago and said he didn’t want to do any more. But he had pre-paid. I said he had two lessons left. And so, he booked for last night and next Monday.

I sit in my kitchen. Everything is ready. Well, I say ‘ready’. I have no real lesson plan. I’m not sure what he wants from the last two lessons. I will play it by ear.

F is packing for Spain and trying to do the music (see post below). He knows the lesson is until 10.30 so he isn’t rushing. He ‘does beauty farm’, as he says. After he comes (which is always after the lesson), we will eat the remains of the Cottage Pie. It is too late, really, but the other option is to throw it away.

I had, previously, rushed round to his place to show him a ‘solution’ that didn’t really work and rushed back to be sitting in my kitchen, with a cup of tea, by nine.

It reaches two minutes past nine. I have a ‘sense’. It’s not a good sense. I decide to text my student. I attach his message which gave the dates and ask ‘Are you coming or have you forgotten?’. I already know he has forgotten or, if not forgotten, chosen not to come.

I wait for no answer and am rewarded.

Ten minutes later, I text again, this time putting a delivery receipt on the text. This one just asks ‘Are you there?’. He’s not. Or he’s ignoring me. Or his phone has been stolen. Or he’s arguing with his wife (again). Or he’s in hospital or dead or something. But his phone’s still working and there is a receipt to say the message was delivered.

I am a little pissed. At least have the decency to let me know you’re not coming? I had turned down a drink with A (who is away the rest of this week) because of my errant student.

I decide that I will charge him this anyway. Stuff him. Unless he has a really good excuse like he’s in hospital. Or his daughter is, or something. Then I couldn’t do it. There’ll be some excuse, for certain. Also I had told someone else they couldn’t have a lesson at that time. Goddamn them. Bloody people.

But this keeps happening. People cancel. At the last minute. Now I have to be upfront about this. I have to set rules. It will make me seem like I am a money-grabbing bastard. But so be it.

As I found when running a business before, rules only need to be brought in when people start taking the piss. And so it goes.

It’s bloody people that are the problem!

iTunes is crap!

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OK, so that’s not entirely true.

Actually, iTunes is a wonderful program. It does the things you want. It keeps all your music in one place, you can create playlists as you want, you can play songs in shuffle mode – and you can make CDs for people (apparently).

I don’t really use it much. I have moved all of my CDs onto iTunes and find it great to be able to play a certain album or track – easy to find, etc. The quality is quite good and, I suppose, if I could be half-arsed, I could set up my stereo to play the music through – except music is nice but not that important to me.

To F it is. F creates CDs for people. He used to DJ on a local radio station (local to where he came from) for a number of years and likes to create CDs where the music follows correctly. It is beyond my understanding, to be honest, but just because I don’t understand (why, even, one song follows another and another song cannot follow) doesn’t mean I don’t like the result. F has something over 2000 CDs and buys individual songs as well so has a collection of something like 15,000 songs on iTunes. He has given me an appreciation of Italian music that a) I never knew existed and b) I would never have had without him.

Since he’s always used iTunes (or, rather, used it for years), he loves it.

But ………

He wanted to download a special playlist to a USB key instead of burning a number of CDs.

And you can’t. Well, you can but you lose the playlist order.

He’s spent days doing this special playlist for someone and now he can’t give it to them. Worse still, whilst he was trying to do this thing, he nearly, but oh so nearly, lost all his songs – and, in the process, lost all his playlists – including the one that he had specially prepared.

And I have trawled the internet looking for a solution and can’t find anything that seems to do the job properly.

I had heard/read that iTunes could just wipe your music (if you were used to synchronising with your iPod) but since I don’t own an iPod (I know, you can hardly believe it,I know) I just thought ‘oh well’. Now, however, I feel bad for F who only wants to do something so simple and yet Apple won’t let you do it.

And so, my conclusion is that iTunes is great – as long as you just want to do everything within iTunes.

Whereas, if you want to do something a little bit ‘out of’ iTunes, it is crap with a huge dose of crapness on top.

Porca Vacca!

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Tick ……. tick ………. tick ………. tick

The sound seemed so loud. I cannot hear it now but then, at 4 in the morning, it was so loud.

I am in the kitchen. It is dark. It isn’t exactly my fault that I’m up. As I said to F at the time, it was very nice but a little too salty. In fact, it was very salty and I am now paying the price. Damn the Italians and their seemingly passionate affair with salt. Why? It’s not necessary and it does take away from what would, otherwise, have been truly wonderful.

We had been to Porca Vacca, near my flat. I had a Groupon voucher. Of course, this voucher was not so fantastic. Only €40 off the meal. So, by the time we had finished, we still had to pay nearly €100. Still the food was lovely, beautifully presented, etc. The wine was good. But the salt in the main dish, for me, just far too much.

And so, here, at 4 a.m., I sit trying to take away my raging thirst and unable to sleep because of it. Damn, damn, damn (which seems appropriate given the name of the restaurant).

Update May 2015. Sadly, Porca Vacca has closed. We haven’t yet been to the restaurant that took it’s place – although we keep saying that we must go – as it’s the closest restaurant to us and is now a Tuscan restaurant!

Raining. Really?

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Well, since I live here, I suppose I’d better wish Italy a very happy 150th birthday.

In the mean time it is ………. erm …….. raining. Again.

It seems like it’s been raining for a month, even though that isn’t true.

The clarinet is playing above me. I mean, the clarinet is being played by someone above me. I think it’s the girl that I see every morning, more or less. I should ask, really. She speaks some English. Or maybe it’s an oboe. Today, I can hear she is playing a record or a tape and playing her instrument to it. It’s kind of jazz or blues – I can’t hear it so well. Still, I like the sound of her playing. It’s kind of mellow.

F has gone home to make some CDs for someone. It’s a customer from Barcelona who keeps offering him a job and, as he says, you never know. I said I could always teach English, which is true, although the real meaning behind that, I think he missed. Or maybe not. He’s difficult to fathom out at times. He said ‘yes’ anyway.

And he’s working tomorrow, he said. Although one can never be entirely sure. I used to like to know what I was doing. To have some plan. But I gave that up, mostly, when we moved here. Now I don’t plan so much. It’s not really important anyway. And things keep getting in the way of plans. It’s better to ‘go with the flow’. It’s more relaxing. It makes me more relaxed.

Yesterday, in spite of the teeming rain, I went for lunch with FfC. We talked about many things but nothing really important. I had wine. She didn’t. But I’m on holiday and she’s not. Still, it was lovely to do that. She’s working today and tomorrow since she has to work when the stock exchanges are open – which is most of the time.

I had been doing lessons last night and F came round early or, rather, earlier than usual. He wanted to see some of the stuff I had done. Particularly the correction of errors. He is funny. For most of the errors, he corrected them or said them in a different way. His English is quite good really. Being as competitive as he is he wanted to be better than any of my students. Which he was, more or less. But he was far better at the listening exercises that he did. He makes me laugh. He wants to be the best all the time. Sometimes I think that we have absolutely nothing in common. But, when I look at him, playing games on my computer, as this morning, I truly adore him.

And now I really must do some things – put away the ironing that my cleaner guy did yesterday, do some computer work, maybe, even, make a start on the bedroom.

And so, I leave you for now. For those of you who are Italian, I hope you have a lovely celebration day. And for the others a nice day anyway. I hope the weather is better where you are than it is here!

Auguri!

Stuff I have done and not done.

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Well, let’s see what I’ve done.

Firstly all the windows have curtains now. Well, except for the kitchen, they had curtains before. What they now have, in addition, are nets. It means I can walk around naked without anyone seeing :-)

Not that I do that – it’s just that now I can ……… if I want to :-)

The bedroom has dark blue nets and the lounge, cream-coloured nets – floor to ceiling stuff (well, not ceiling, but top of windows). It makes the flat seem more private. I like it.

The kitchen used to have a cross between nets and blinds. These have been washed and are now back up. I leave the shutters open all the time in the kitchen and although no-one can see in unless they crane their necks, it’s nice to have that feeling of privacy.

And I have a printer/scanner/copier – and it seems to work, well, the scanner and copier work anyway. This means I can give people the stuff from my lessons without having to do stuff at work. Or, at least, when I’m not AT work, I can still give them stuff. OK the quality is not the same high quality but at least it doesn’t stop me or mean I have to do a ton of scanning when I get back. I must try out the printer, of course.

And it’s all wireless stuff so it means I can move it so it’s out of the way – but that’s a job for tomorrow, or Friday.

I say tomorrow or Friday because I need to move some stuff to make room for it. And moving some stuff means moving some other stuff. And that means trying to sort out the bedroom …. a bit. And that’s not for now.

I also tried to watch Black Swan again. But it kind of fell apart when I had to sort out the printer and so, halfway through, I gave up on it. I don’t think I actually like the film very much. I took note of TSM’s comments abut it being a psychological thriller but, you know, at that level it just fails so badly.

Tomorrow is shopping and lunch with FfC. Or the other way around. I don’t mean nice shopping – just grocery shopping. I was going to do my favourite pasta today – pasta with broccoli – I have broccoli but, horror of horrors (considering the country I live in) – I HAVE NO PASTA! To be honest, I was a bit shocked. How can I have used the last bit of pasta and not got some more? I was devastated and somewhat embarrassed. But I have a lesson tonight so not really enough time to go out and get some and come back and cook it (AND get the printer working). So on a priorities basis, pasta will be got tomorrow. Well, not cooked tomorrow ‘cos I will be out to lunch. But Friday, maybe. Not Thursday because F HATES broccoli. And cauliflower. He is a bit strange, sometimes. Thursday I might do a Shepherd’s Pie for him – as I know he likes that a lot. And, maybe, Rice Pudding, which I haven’t made for ages. Or we use one of my Groupon vouchers – else they will have run out. Yes, probably that. It’s a holiday, after all.

Oh, yes, and it’s still raining. This is exactly why I didn’t want a holiday now. Grrrr.

p.s. My student for tonight, M2, just Skyped me to ask for the meaning of quadrifoglio. I looked it up and the answer was four-leaf clover. I thought it must be wrong and he means something else but he was happy with the answer. Now, why on earth would someone want to know the English for quadrifoglio? Why? What sort of conversation is he having that he needs to know that?

It could be much simpler.

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I had measured, of course. Using my trusty measuring tape.

It said ’18’. I’m looking in the shop and see the rail I want. It says 120. Good, that will do all four windows.

The rods said they were extendable to between 30 and 40 so there was a lot of extra that I wouldn’t need.

I am using the rods for the kitchen. I got up at 6.30 this morning and, despite having had two large mugs of Italian coffee (so, about 4 or 5 for an Italian), I’m not quite ‘with it’. I find that the ‘extension’ comes out completely quite quickly and have to modify, slightly, where I make the holes for the holding brackets. It’s OK. I think one of the curtain-things is a bit higher than the other. For me it’s OK. F might mention it though. After all, we did ‘hang the pictures on the floor’ before committing them to the wall in his place – to ensure the spacing and everything was right. Oh well, I can always lower one of them. For me they’re fine and do the job.

I didn’t really think about the extension parts coming out of the rods.

I measure the rail. I measure 18.

Hmmmm. Hang on, this isn’t right! I won’t be able to do three windows, let alone all four. I feel a bit peeved. They have lied ……… of course …….. on the packaging.

I measure again. And put the rail up to the window. No. Whatever it is it isn’t 120 as it says on the package. I get the tape measure and measure the rail.

Ah, yes. The 120 is centimetres and the 18 is inches. Damn! Now that means I have to and brave the rain this morning to get another rail.

Why can’t everything be done in inches? So much simpler, after all!

Printers; I want to learn English NOW!; Update to weather and stuff.

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Those of you who know me or who have been reading this blog for long enough will know this is me.

I have been putting it off for about 3 years. But now it’s simply not good enough and I really do need to do something about it.

I am going to buy a printer – which has a scanner and a copier as well. I did a lesson today and I need to scan the resulting log sheet AND copy a couple of other things. I am not in work for over a week so I have no choice but to get one.

About bloody time really, to be honest. As usual (like the shirts I was going to buy the other week (and for the last couple of years) but didn’t),I keep ‘managing’ until it just becomes so difficult or so much of a pain or I have no choice.

I am, indeed, very lazy!

Or, maybe, very, very tight ;-)

Either way, sometimes, I do seem to make it difficult for myself.

Maybe I’ll get shirts tomorrow too?

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Today, for the second time in four days, I get told that the person wants ‘to be perfect in English’ – giving themselves an impossible timetable. Of course, it’s not ‘impossible’, just highly unlikely and impractical.

But, what does one say?

I want to say, ‘Did you learn Italian in one month?’

But I don’t. I say nothing or try to guide them as to the impossibility of this.

One wants to be in the UK soon. The other has, kind of, told her new employers that she speak English well and is now, rightly, scared that the reality won’t match their expectations. And, anyway, we spent the whole lesson talking about her inability to progress to the third date with her boyfriends – in spite of me trying to move on to different things.

Hmmm. Does this make me a bad person? Should I just say, ‘Don’t be stupid’ or something?

_________________________________________________________________________________________

The weather forecast, unfortunately, was right. Heavy and prolonged rain. In fact, heavy rain all day. However, the forecast for most of the rest of the week has significantly improved. On the minus side, F informed me last night that he was going to work some of Friday after all. Ah well, it’s not a disaster as we hadn’t planned anything. But I think I might try and persuade him we should go to Mantova for the day next Saturday :-)

I have a blanket.

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I have a blanket ……………… in my mouth.

Also, to coin a very old phrase, I came over a bit queer as I was walking up the stairs to the office this morning. And everything has to be a little more ‘deliberate’. Like breathing.

I blame A. He ordered a bottle of wine and then said that he couldn’t drink much because he had already been drinking. Oh yes, and then I had a Mirto which may not have helped. But it was his birthday or, rather, it IS his birthday today.

That’s why I got away with paying for the meal. I said that, as it was not actually his birthday, I could pay for it.

Still, the wine was good and nicely fits in with my ‘wine diet’. Although I must admit to breaches on the ‘Mars Bar front’, since I picked some up the other day and have, some nights, had one. Still, I am managing NOT to have bread at lunchtime.

So, in reality my so-called non-diet remains a non-diet. God knows what I would be like if I really had to stop eating anything. Well, actually, I know. I would be crap.

So, the blanket in my mouth also doesn’t really taste very nice and I might even go and clean my teeth again in the hope that it will help.

Now that I’m older, the ‘coming over all queer’ bit is not nice either. I always think ‘Is this it?’ – a little like the start of Meet Joe Black, a film which I love and not only because it has Brad Pitt in it (although in this film he is particularly sexy – it was his best period for looks, imho).

And I’ve started having these quite strange happenings in the morning.

The alarm goes off and I set it to snooze for another 5 minutes.

Except that, when it goes off, as I am waking up, I think that this is already the second time it’s gone off. And then I look and spend a few seconds (which feels like minutes) working out that this is the time of the first alarm, not the second. So I put it to snooze. I turn over in snuggle up in bed but, by then I am awake because I’ve had to do some thinking and stuff and so I get up within a minute or so.

Or I worry that I’ve made a mistake and dismissed the alarm.

Either way, I get up and so don’t get the extra 5 minutes after all. Bah!

But tomorrow will be perfect. F is away. I do not HAVE to get up and so I will sleep in. And then I will have a leisurely coffee and then take the dogs out. This has been a very busy week and, not helped by last night for sure, I am very tired.

You’ll be pleased to know that my blanket seems to have become a little less fluffy in the time that I’ve written this. Onwards and upwards. It is Friday, after all :-)

More or less, God

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In this case it was as I got out of the shower.

Usually, these crazy thoughts occur when I’m under the shower.

A realisation came to me. It was, kind of, about my father but it could be anyone. And, in some way, it was about me. No, not in some way. It WAS about me. It was a bit like a waking dream, dreaming whilst I am awake which, in any case, is a mute point since, at that time in the morning, there is a blurring between being fully awake and fully asleep.

Anyway, back to the point of this. I realised that, those people whom we put up on a pedestal and think that they ‘know’ everything are, in fact, like me. I mean to say, they may know something or some things really well and in depth – but they don’t, in spite of what we think, know everything.

When you are a child, your parents are like gods. They know everything. Except, of course, they don’t. They know more than you. That’s really not difficult. As you grow older and learn more, you start to question their knowledge, their experience. Or, at least, I did. I also questioned their values since my experiences and my knowledge suggested that their values weren’t shared by me, aren’t shared by me.

Their place is usurped by others – who, again, know more than you. Until your increased knowledge and experience makes you realise that, in fact, these new people don’t really know more than you, have not really experienced more than you. Or, rather, may have experienced more than you but in different ways or have different experiences. People’s knowledge on certain subjects may be more than yours. That doesn’t make them god-like.

And then you get to my age and you realise that no-one knows like you do. They may know more than you do about a thing but in something else they know less. They may have experience in some things but they don’t have your experience.

In fact, no-one has your knowledge and your experience. How can they? It doesn’t matter who they are.

This fact does not make you a god either. Unless we are all gods, in which case it does.

But, it’s an interesting change in perspective.

It doesn’t mean that other people don’t deserve your respect. Indeed, in my opinion, all people deserve your respect as they have knowledge that you don’t and have experienced a different life to you. It doesn’t mean they can’t lose that respect if they turn out to be idiots or jerks. But they deserve a reserved respect …… just in case.

Of course, as I stepped out of the shower and dried myself, all these thoughts I have written down didn’t fill my head, exactly.

No, what I started thinking was that I didn’t know everything and hadn’t experienced everything and that’s how it must have been for my father when, at the age of 5 or 6, I thought he DID know everything and HAD experienced everything. And I wondered if he thought the same as I, even when I was thinking he was, more or less, God?

Ticket hunting after rash promising

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We have visitors coming over in July.

I like it when visitors come from the UK. There is so much to see and do in Milan and I do like to ‘show it off’ for, as you know, I love this city. F was talking about taking them to Venice as, for him, Venice is better. But, since the Sunday will be their anniversary and they would prefer to ‘be alone’, we probably shan’t go.

I have, of course, promised something that now seems to be a little more difficult than a) I thought and b) it was in the past.

I have, rashly, promised tickets to go and see ‘The Last Supper’. Given that my old telephone ‘died’, I lost the telephone number I had and, stupidly, I didn’t add it to this blog.

Searching the internet was not the easiest of tasks either but, eventually, I got a few different numbers. The one that is supposed to be ‘direct’ is constantly engaged. I don’t believe it. I am persistent. I am Taurean, after all. It seems that this is a false number or they only actually put it on the hook for an hour a day or something like that. We are in Italy so either is a real possibility.

There is an online booking service (but I think you will pay more). However, on that service, the tickets for June were only made available today. I checked this morning, several times. June tickets were not ‘up’. I checked again, about one hour ago. June tickets were up and everything was sold out apart from four days towards the end of June – and then, only at certain times. Bah! Sometimes this country really does annoy me.

And so I keep trying. I am quite determined. I will also try some of the other numbers – just in case.

I also thought of taking them to the Dialogo nel Buio (Dialogue in the Dark) as this is a great experience. It might not be open at the end of July but I only want to ring and ask once I have tickets to The Last Supper.

Obviously, as this is their first time in Milan, they have to see the Duomo. Also a trip around Via Montenapoleone and Via della Spiga is essential.

Plus some really nice restaurants. And some time for ‘bar sitting’, especially as it will be hot.

But, first, The Bloody Last Bloody Buggering Supper! Grrrrrr.

Update: I got through to one number. She can’t book for July yet and doesn’t know when they will be come available but about a month from now, she thinks. However, she explained that she has more days/tickets available than those shown on the website. Double grrrrrrr.