BUZZURRO

A commenter’s comment led me to this article. I’m not sure if it’s the one she suggested I read, but I like it a lot all the same and if it wasn’t for her suggestion I wouldn’t have even looked for it. It is very interesting; a mirror image of what I would like to say. (but the author of the article says it better, so I’ll just shamelessly copy and link it.)

A holiday in Italy can make you wish you lived there - but the reality, says Sebastian Cresswell -Turner, is that it’s a land of almost unbridled anarchy.

“How lucky you are to be living in Italy.” “That must be heaven.” “I do envy you.” If you live in Rome, as I do, you get used to comments like these. But you soon realise that the idyllic vision of Italy suffers from just one drawback: it is almost complete rubbish.

For the first few months after you move here, all is indeed perfect. The sun is warm, the people are welcoming, the language is a joy, the food is delicious, the wine is cheap, and everyone is a pleasure to look at. You congratulate yourself on your wisdom and you pity your friends who are still locked up in their grey, northern offices.

But then you begin to realise that in this new paradise you face a major problem: it is virtually impossible to earn a living.
Take Rome. To live here with a minimum of dignity (renting a small flat, eating out occasionally, but no car and no proper holidays), you need a good 3,000 euros a month pre-tax, say 1,800 euros post-tax (roughly £2,100 and £1,250 respectively).

However modest this seems, it is not what you will get. While in the Anglo-Saxon world most adults expect to be able to live independently off their salaries, in Italy most don’t. They stay with their families.

Indeed, a staggering 70 per cent of single Italian men between the ages of 25 and 29 live in subsidised comfort at home, where their meagre earnings do very nicely as pocket money. And when they do move out to the stability of marriage or cohabitation, it is generally into a flat that is provided by the family.

Read the whole article here.

Hat tip : Tiff.

This summer in Italy I received a phone call. The conversation went something like this:

Caller: “Is someone there looking for a job ?”
Me: “Yes, I am looking for a job.”
Caller: (who must have heard my foreign accent) “Are you Italian ?”
Me: “No, I am American.”
Caller: ” And how many years have you lived in Italy ?”
Me:”I have been living here for 3 years.”
Caller: “Ahhhhh, but this job requires that you speak Italian.”
Me: “But I do speak Italian,”
Caller: “OK. Bye.” And then hung up the phone.

Note: This conversation was in Italian, and even though the caller did most of the speaking, I understood her so it should be assumed that I have some ability to speak Italian, yet I was dismissed because I was not a native Italian speaker. Not even given a chance to prove myself.

Obviously I cannot speak with 100 percent clarity, because in the United States I am a native speaker, but I highly doubt that Buzzurro will suffer the same humliating experience as me if he gets a phone call from an American job recruitment agency.
Many Americans speak with accents. Just because you have one doesn’t signify that you don’t know the language enough to work in a job that requires it.
I also think that if a US recruiter were to have any doubts at all about a client’s ability to speak English he would arrange for a more comprehensive speaking interview, perhaps he would give a proficiency test.
After all, conversing on the phone is the hardest part of learning a language, and if one can do that, even if only for a few seconds, shows a knowledge of the language not worth ignoring.

J.Doe ed io ci trasferiremo negli Stati Uniti entro poche settimane.

In un altro post, tratteremo piu’ in dettaglio delle motivazioni che ci hanno spinto a questa decisione.

Per il momento, diciamo che ci stiamo trasferendo li’ allo scopo di migliorare la nostra vita.

Invece di fare come tanti, che si lamentano, e basta, delle cose che non vanno nella loro vita quotidiana, noi cerchiamo di cambiarla in meglio.

Quindi, tra un po’, i post del blog Buzzurro verranno sparati non dall’Italia, dove siamo attualmente, ma dagli Stati Uniti.

Ciao ciao

Now in English:

J.Doe and I are moving to the United States in a few weeks.

We will discuss more extensively the reasons of this choice.

Now I will just say that our move is aimed at improving our life.

We are not acting like many who just complain about things that don’t work in their lives, without doing a thing, instead we try to improve ours.

So, in a short time, Buzzurro’s blog posts will be published not from Italy, where we currently are, but from the U.S.

Ciao ciao

This really pisses me off. Sure, workers have a right to ask for more money, but did they ever hear of mediation ?

Piero Fassino complained that the government had “blocked the country’s growth and made Italians’ jobs precarious.”

OK, now do you think going on strike every other month is going to help the Italian economy? Do you think losing one days wages is going to make all Italians richer? And, how do you think the jobs got precarious, you bozo Fassino? Perhaps by going on strike every month?

Every other month it seems there is another large strike affecting something important.
This time the strike is to complain about the proposed budget cuts for 2006.
Why they can’t just write letters to all those politicians in parliament, I don’t know.

These strikes are stagnating everything. The Italian Economy is either growing very little or not growing at all. If they keep on striking, the ‘growth’ will be negative…

…to my wife, to my in-laws, to all American people who I know in person, to all Americans who read this, and to all of you who celebrate the spirit of Thanksgiving.

A week after I first arrived in Italy I developed a headache.
I walked to my local Supermarket to buy aspirin, but alas, I could not find them anywhere in the store.
When Buzzurro came home from work I told him that I looked all over for aspirin in the supermarket, and could not find them. He asked me if I had gone to a pharmacy.
“No,” I answered. “Of course not. I went to the supermarket.”
He replied that in Italy, ALL medicines, those requiring a prescription as well as those who don’t, by Italian law can only be sold in a pharmacy.
The next day I went to a pharmacy and saw a box of aspirin on sale. There were 10 in a box and the price was 3 euros and 80 cent.
“What !” I thought to myself “3 euros and 80 cent. For 10 aspirin? Are they crazy here?” (but bought them anyway because I still did have a headache).
This was my first experience with the miseries brought upon the Italian nation by the monopoly of pharmacies, Federfarma.

Federfarma is opposed to the selling of over the counter OTC medications in any place other than a pharmacy.
Of course this keeps the prices of the non-prescription medicines such as aspirin extremely high.
They set the prices.
Competition is not a factor at all.
Their reasoning being that selling non-prescription medicines in a store other than a pharmacy is dangerous and will create grave risks for diseases caused by misuse or overmedication.

They want the public to buy all medicines in a pharmacy because the pharmacist explains the doses of medicine needed and how to correctly use them.
I for one have never had a pharmacist explain to me how to take an aspirin.
I buy them at their extremely high price, go home, and read the instruction booklet for the medicines which is included in the box of them.
I assume that other people in Italy can read and do this too.
Non-prescription medicine is the costliest in Italy than in all of Europe, the US and for all I know, the rest of the world.
I read somewhere that there is a small group of Italian consumers that they have a petition requesting the sale of non-prescription medications in stores other than pharmacies.
I don’t know who they are, I’ve never seen a petition, but sign me up ! It’s a worthy cause.

According to ANSA news service, getting jobs in Italy requires contacts.
You just figured that out now ANSA reporters? You didn’t get your jobs based on skill I see.

Recently a survey was done showing that ‘raccomandazioni’ (connections) are still thriving.

The poll of 100,000 private firms by the Union of Italian Chambers of Commerce (Unioncamere) found that almost 43% were in the habit of hiring people they knew.
Only 43 percent ? Just looking around, I think the true number would be 99.9 percent.