It's kind of funny in a smirky sort of way (as opposed to a laugh-out-loud sort of way) where and how you'll see English words used in Italy. One local merchant's circulars (pubblicita') curiously use the phrase 'low cost' in English as part of its slogan, with the rest in Italian. And a large sign at a shopping center entrance near us proudly states "tutto il tuo shopping!". Could it be that Italian doesn't have an equivalent word to 'shopping' as a verb, or is it more along the lines of not having a word to describe the recreational purchasing of items as an end unto itself? Or, could it be that it's more trendy to say 'shopping' to evoke the American practice of purchasing for purchasing's sake in a hope to encourage that same practice in the local population? Sounds like a great pseudo-intellectual post-drinking conversational topic, doesn't it?
Speaking of drinking, it seems that partaking in some might assist in attempting to discern any meaning in many T-shirts worn by Italians around here. Large typeface is preferred, I suppose to try for maximum impact, sort of like Orson Welles' famous line in "Citizen Kane" , "if the headline is big enough it makes the news big enough". For some real-world examples we've recently seen, picture the following in large letters, one word per line, reading from top to bottom:
"I'VE GOT YOU NOW"
"THIN REGULAR LARGE"
"I AM A NOUN"
"FUN BEACH" (you'd think there would be a picture with this one, of the 'actual' mythical place, but no.)
Another type of T-shirt you'll see is the kind that is slathered with all sorts of American place names with superlatives mixed in, like "Brooklyn New York City Best Athletic Professional" or something like that. I suppose it's sort of like an American builder when they bulldoze an old farm and divide it up into lots and build spec houses and name it something like "Adjective Adjective Nouns", maybe "Springy Leafy Acres" or some such (although they should respectfully name it after the family history they just obliterated from the earth, but I digress).
I suppose it could be a purposely half-hearted and self-deprecating attempt to make the clothing appear to have style street-cred. For instance, LeAnn recently brought me home a very comfy burgundy wool-acrylic blend sweater with that type of treatment on the front. In ivory sewn-on block letters like an old varsity jacket it says "VINTAGE WEAR" and in between the top word "vintage" and the bottom word "wear" is a large ivory patch stating in black print:
EUROPEAN ART GALLERY
5, MAIN STREET
EASTHAMPTON
What does it all mean? Who knows. We probably shouldn't give it too much serious thought, for as Sherlock Holmes remarked to Dr Watson in one story, "to run the brain on too little information is like racing an engine, it cracks itself to pieces". I certainly wouldn't wish that fate on any of your brains! Certainly not for a stupid T-shirt.
I will be interested, though, on wearing my sweater on my next road trip down the autostrada and seeing if it makes me look sufficiently un-touristy to the cashier at the autogrill. I'll know by ordering un caffe' and NOT being asked any followup questions like "espresso?", or "caffe' americano?", which are two examples of the coffee-ordering equivalent of a Microsoft Windows confirmation dialog box asking me "Are You Sure?".
Yes I'm sure. Give me my coffee. And tell me where'd you get that cool T-shirt? Allora, andiamo shopping!
Monday, September 27, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
The Electrical Walk of Shame
Time and again when reading or hearing about how the Italian people live, you'll be told how 'passionate' or 'exhuberant' they are, how the Italians 'live life out loud'. And as true as that continues to show itself to be, there is one area, one niche, one grotto if you will of the Italian lifestyle that is by comparison remarkably restrained. I'm talking of course about their use of energy. (This may in fact be a hallmark of how Europeans on the whole, or heck, maybe anyone-but-Americans use energy, but instead of overgeneralizing and quickly exceeding the limited pool of supporting information I possess I'll just stick to what I've observed firsthand.) And at no time is the Italian rule of frugal energy usage brought closer to home, figuratively speaking, than when it is actually, literally speaking, brought into your home. After a few occurrences of being the surprised recipient of the Great Circuit Breaker Dope-Slap, where you're forced to trudge humbly through your darkened house and outside in your bunny slippers at 3 am and down the sidewalk to unlock the electrical panel on the fence to reset the main circuit breaker that feeds your home, you come face to face with the undeniable truth - that you're no longer living in the land of 'infinite wattage for me!'.
From what I have discovered, the situation has its roots in two basic structures. One is the structure in which you live - your home. Or more accurately, the design electrical capacity of the electrical wiring in your home. The second is the service level you have agreed to get from your local power utility. In the USA you call your local power company and say, "I would like electrical service please" and you get it, with your home's total electrical usage limited by the current rating of the Main circuit breaker in your breaker box (typically between 100Amps and 200Amps) ,in most homes sized large enough that you can run whatever appliance or appliances you want without running into a problem and you simply pay for what you use. In Italy you can't simply use as much as you want. The power company will normally have on record what the wiring of your individual home is rated for, and apparently most Italian homes don't have wiring that is rated very large capacity. When you set up your service with the power company you have your choice of tiers of service, and each tier has its maximum power usage level. Let's call them A, B, and C. (They are actually rated numerically based on killowatt-hours or whatever it may be in metric-speak, but for here we'll just call them A, B, and C.) Now if you want to get the cheapest tier of electrical service, you say to the power company "I want electrical service to my house, and I'll take Power Level A." Fine. You'll be on a cheaper rate structure, but the trade-off for you is that you can't run two major appliances at the same time, say, the oven and the dishwasher. Or the washing machine and the dishwasher. The power company imposes the agreed-upon limit on the power it supplies to your home, and if you attempt to exceed that limit, the circuit breaker out on the sidewalk trips, and you have to go outside to reset it. So you learn to live with that limit, or you can decide that you want to pay more for your electrical service so that you'll be able to run your washing machine and your oven at the same time. So you call your power company and say, "I would like to upgrade to service level B", and after about 8 weeks they make the necessary changes on the supply end (they either reprogram the circuit breaker supplying your house or physically change it out, i'm not sure, but I do know that your circuit breaker to the house is a 'smart' breaker that also serves as your electric meter, so it's tripping may be more than a function of an old-fashined bimetal element that overheats. Anyway, they do something on their end to enable the higher power supply to your home.) So now you're on Power Service Level B. However, we have talked to folks who have done that and STILL can't run their oven and their dishwasher at the same time, so then they're just paying more for the same old electrical lifestyle, so it's not always doable. And if you want service level C, well, your house may not even be rated to handle it, so that may not even be an option for you. Anyway, that's how it works. But regardless of which plan you're on, you still have to learn to live within your means, electrically-speaking.
And LeAnn and I have managed to do that. It's not that tough, really. Take last night, for example. At 7:45 pm I loaded the clothes washer and set it up to run. Recognizing that it wasn't yet the magic hour of 9 pm (at which time the cost of electricity is reduced due to it being off-peak time) I chose to use the washer's delay start feature, deciding to play it safe and setting the delay to 2 hours. Fast forward to bedtime (around 11:30 pm), when I finished loading the dirty dishes into the dishwasher and setting it also to run overnight. After my quick mental calculations, I set the dishwasher to delay its start for 3 hours, so that the clothes washer and the dishwasher wouldn't be running at the same time. See? Easy. You just have to learn to get yourself into a routine so you don't wake up at 3 am to use the bathroom to find your power out!
Anyway, that's how this whole power thing works.
Did I mention how nice and peaceful it was outside our house at 3 am this morning?
From what I have discovered, the situation has its roots in two basic structures. One is the structure in which you live - your home. Or more accurately, the design electrical capacity of the electrical wiring in your home. The second is the service level you have agreed to get from your local power utility. In the USA you call your local power company and say, "I would like electrical service please" and you get it, with your home's total electrical usage limited by the current rating of the Main circuit breaker in your breaker box (typically between 100Amps and 200Amps) ,in most homes sized large enough that you can run whatever appliance or appliances you want without running into a problem and you simply pay for what you use. In Italy you can't simply use as much as you want. The power company will normally have on record what the wiring of your individual home is rated for, and apparently most Italian homes don't have wiring that is rated very large capacity. When you set up your service with the power company you have your choice of tiers of service, and each tier has its maximum power usage level. Let's call them A, B, and C. (They are actually rated numerically based on killowatt-hours or whatever it may be in metric-speak, but for here we'll just call them A, B, and C.) Now if you want to get the cheapest tier of electrical service, you say to the power company "I want electrical service to my house, and I'll take Power Level A." Fine. You'll be on a cheaper rate structure, but the trade-off for you is that you can't run two major appliances at the same time, say, the oven and the dishwasher. Or the washing machine and the dishwasher. The power company imposes the agreed-upon limit on the power it supplies to your home, and if you attempt to exceed that limit, the circuit breaker out on the sidewalk trips, and you have to go outside to reset it. So you learn to live with that limit, or you can decide that you want to pay more for your electrical service so that you'll be able to run your washing machine and your oven at the same time. So you call your power company and say, "I would like to upgrade to service level B", and after about 8 weeks they make the necessary changes on the supply end (they either reprogram the circuit breaker supplying your house or physically change it out, i'm not sure, but I do know that your circuit breaker to the house is a 'smart' breaker that also serves as your electric meter, so it's tripping may be more than a function of an old-fashined bimetal element that overheats. Anyway, they do something on their end to enable the higher power supply to your home.) So now you're on Power Service Level B. However, we have talked to folks who have done that and STILL can't run their oven and their dishwasher at the same time, so then they're just paying more for the same old electrical lifestyle, so it's not always doable. And if you want service level C, well, your house may not even be rated to handle it, so that may not even be an option for you. Anyway, that's how it works. But regardless of which plan you're on, you still have to learn to live within your means, electrically-speaking.
And LeAnn and I have managed to do that. It's not that tough, really. Take last night, for example. At 7:45 pm I loaded the clothes washer and set it up to run. Recognizing that it wasn't yet the magic hour of 9 pm (at which time the cost of electricity is reduced due to it being off-peak time) I chose to use the washer's delay start feature, deciding to play it safe and setting the delay to 2 hours. Fast forward to bedtime (around 11:30 pm), when I finished loading the dirty dishes into the dishwasher and setting it also to run overnight. After my quick mental calculations, I set the dishwasher to delay its start for 3 hours, so that the clothes washer and the dishwasher wouldn't be running at the same time. See? Easy. You just have to learn to get yourself into a routine so you don't wake up at 3 am to use the bathroom to find your power out!
Anyway, that's how this whole power thing works.
Did I mention how nice and peaceful it was outside our house at 3 am this morning?
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