Numero 4
Well,
This week has been a lot quieter and I am not sure actually what is this email will contain. As I mentioned in my last news update, it was snowing last week, well on the weekend, the consistent snow turned into consistent rain. It rained for the entire weekend! This made for a very quite indoors type of weekend. Whilst Melbourne was suffering under intolerable heat, I was trying to avoid getting saturated. Interesting contrast…
Well, ignoring the rain I went to a friend of a friends birthday party last Saturday night. The party was in Savona, 50kms west on Genova on the coast. Savona I was told has nicer “beaches” than Genova, so in summer is full of beach goers. I went with Ottavio, Chiara and Ottavio’s sister. We trundled off at about 6pm in the howling wind and driving rain following what I believe is the oldest autostrade in Italy along the coast towards France. Any other day, I think this trip would be brilliant!
The party was fun!! The house where it was held was a bachelors pad, a foosball table, pinball machine and darts. The house also had a cat named Tiger. May I say that the name suited the cat down to the ground. Not only was the cat the size of a tiger, but was also as verocious as one. I met lots of different people, “communicating” in my pigeon Italian (I’ll cover my limited knowledge a bit later) and their generally brilliant English.
One interesting person I meet was named Enrica. She is actually a Naval architect. Now it seems that Naval Architecture and boat building is something that Liguria (the Provence that Genova is in) is very proud of and has been historically very strong in. Enrica was telling us a story about her current project. It is a 32metre (100ish foot!) motor yacht for a wealthy 70 year old Greek and his 38year old American wife. This yacht is worth €10Million! Anyway here are some of the stories that we were told about this dingy.
1) The wife would like an ice machine in the kitchen. But the ice HAS to be cubed, not round or any other shape. Now with my limited knowledge of ice machines normal domestic ones do not make cubed ice. Generally only industrial ice machines make cubed ice.
2) During a client meeting in the London offices of a Designer friend of the clients, Enrica said she found out at the end she had been sitting on chairs worth £2500 each…
3) The wife found lovely Venetian hand made champagne flutes in a London store that she decided would suit the yacht perfectly and as such requested ALL the glasses on board be the same. Each glass in London was worth £250. Enrica took the details and went looking in Italy for the same glasses, at a trade fair in Milan she spoke with the manufacture and found that they are sold for €6 each.
4) Now I offered if they needed a crew member onboard the yacht, as I think this will be bigger and grander than any house Vilija and I will ever live in. Unfortunately to this I was told that the wife is very attractive and the husband very jealous. As such it has been requested by the husband for an all gay crew.
It was a fascinating conversation. I am sure that I can get mates rates on a new multi-million euro yacht next time in the market!
Life during the week is pretty simple. Work during the day and Italian study at night. I have lessons every Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings after work and “try” to do as much study at other times as I can. At the moment I can stumble through a conversation so long as it doesn’t stray outside the following topics
1) Where am I from
2) Why am I here
3) How long have I been here
4) How long am I staying
5) That’s about it…
During my lessons I keep getting flash backs to my frustrations at high school in French class. Its hard to learn concepts in a foreign language when the analogy is English. I don’t the difference between an indeterminate/determinate article is in English let alone be able to grasp the difference in Italian. Which might I add is quite complex.
House hunting in continuing. One is looking promising, but I don’t want to mention too much in fear of jinxing it… Will you on this later. One interesting anecdote of my house hunting adventures though. I went to look at one place in located very central in the Old part of Genova, 50m away from a 600 year old cathedral. The place was quite nice, excellent sized living room, OK sized bedroom but a TINY kitchen featuring… a bar fridge and a tiny bathroom. Now the later is highly impracticable once Vilija gets here. (heheheheheh, sorry honey 
) When speaking to the landlord I was told that “If I wanted, I can get a woman to come and clean the house once a week or once every 10 days. Not, Not (waving hands) a YOUNG woman, but an older woman. (The later said with a conciliatory tone)” I think I might have “Domestically Useless” stamped on my forehead.
This weekend I am going to the mountains for a country break. It was to see a bit of snow, but given the exceptional improvement in the weather we’ve had in the last 3 days, I might see a bit of melting snow. I will update you all next week on this.
I hope you are all well.
James