BUZZURRO

When I lived in Italy I didn’t use to watch TV. That’s what was on TV on January 28th: during an interview, Italy’s premier Silvio Berlusconi said, according to Aldo Torchiaro:

• I financed Arafat with my personal money because Israel uses tanks and poor Palestinians have only stones to defend themselves

And:

• I don’t love American Republicans, I’d vote Democrat, in the USA
• I’ve always supported a social economy over a liberalist economy

I thought Forza Italia had a pro-Israel stance..

Buzzurro and I have been in the US for 17 days so far. In that time period we have eaten:
1. Malaysian food
2. Thai food
3. Mexican food
4. Italian food (coming from Italy this is a given)
5. Mongolian food
6. American food (being that we are here in the US now ,this is also a given)
7. Vietnamese food.

With meals of Hummus and Baba Ghanooj in between.

It’s been great. I really, really, really missed the variety of cuisines while living in Italy.
Don’t get me wrong, Italian food is great, but sometimes only a Pad Thai will hit the spot.

Last night at about 8:15 Buzzurro said to me “I’d like to look at some new books about computers.”
And I replied “Well I want a coffee at Starbucks”, so being a happily married couple that thrives on compromises, we went to Barnes and Noble, which is a bookstore with a Starbucks Coffee shop inside.

While drinking my vanilla latte I thought about a conversation I had several years ago with a friend who lived in California. I lived in Italy at that time. I said to her on the phone:
“I really miss the caffe lattes at Starbucks.’
Silence. Then she responded “But you live in Italy. Surely they serve caffe lattes there. Starbucks was modeled after an Italian coffee shop.’
‘It’s not the same.’ I replied.
And it’s not. The Starbucks coffee roast is different, the cup sizes are different, and the only Vanilla powder I’ve ever seen in Italy is the kind of vanilla flavored yeast used for baking, and I never wanted to experiment and try that.
Italy has a well-deserved reputation for wonderful, fresh food, and of course of the very tasty Italian cuisine, but sometimes a person misses the American versions. Maybe now, in a few months, I’ll miss the Italian versions.

Today I overheard someone talking on the phone complaining to someone how they stopped at a red light next to a cop and the next thing that happened was the cop pulled him over and gave him a ticket for not wearing seatbelt and something else, I’m not sure what.

Upon hearing that I thought to myself, “J.Doe, you’re not in Italy anymore!’ The cops here not only give out parking tickets but moving violations as well, which could be a good thing if you are a law abiding driver who likes safe roads, or a bad thing if you are a Nascar driver wannabe. I am the former. I like orderly roads where everyone follows the rules of the road.

In Italy they seem to like disorder. No one seems to follow any rules, except the rule of physics, i.e. if there is an empty space anywhere, fill it. It also seems that the Italian police only give out parking tickets. At least in central Italy that’s all they seem to do.

It still amazes me that cars in the US stay in their properly marked lanes, don’t pass on the right when your right turn signal is blinking, and actually park in between those lines meant to designate what is a legitimate parking lot area, and what is not.

Today I crossed the street at a little stop sign in front of a store and the cars stopped and let me cross! Amazing!
Driving is a nice, relaxing experience in the US.

This morning I showed up for what was supposed to be the first day of a two day temporary assignment.

I actually only worked for 5 hours because at the last minute the big guys in the head office in another state decided to cancel the project us temp workers were supposed to do, so the office in which we were located sent us home after 5 hours of doing ‘busy work’ such as filing, making tabs for notebooks, alphabetizing mail and hole-punching documents, boring stuff that everybody in the department obviously didn’t want to do because some of the stuff I was filing was dated from October.

The company had a coffee machine, and the actual employee who actually requested the service of temporary workers offered us both some coffee.

I have never seen such a machine before in my life. It was free, like in most business places in the US, but none that I have seen in Italy.

There were numerous choices too, some of them being teas and hot chocolates. You can even turn the flavored coffees into cappuccinos!!

The coffee/tea/hot chocolate comes in little sealed packages. You insert them, still sealed, into the machine which opens them and adds water. Like many coffee machines there is a digital display telling you when the coffee is being prepared, or is in fact done.

Having lived in Italy for several years, I have become accustomed to the habit of drinking several cups a day. I started my day with French Vanilla Roast. Then 2 hours later I took an Espresso Roast Un po’ schiffo (a little disgusting) as they say in Italy so I spilled most of it out and drank instead a Hazelnut blend.

Before lunch I slowed down a little and drank a decaffeinated House Blend. It tasted pretty good, so after lunch I had a caffeinated House blend.

I washed it down with a Japanese Green tea. Later on in the afternoon I drank a Columbia blend. I was pretty much well caffeinated by then.

Tonight Buzzurro and I met a friend for dinner at a Malaysian and Thai cuisine restaurant. I’ve never had Malyasian food before, but I’ve never met a cuisine of food that I don’t like, and Buzzurro ,unlike many Italians, likes new and different cuisines of food too.

We went to the restaurant and met our friend. We then were seated at a table, all 3 of us.
Then 5 minutes the waitress came by, took my friend’s order, and then walked away. She didn’t take our orders.

Since when does a waitress come to a table of 3 people and only take one person’s order? The last time I looked neither Buzzurro or myself were invisible. Eventually we flagged her down as she was clearing the dishes off a nearby table and she did take our orders too.
The food was very good. I haven’t had Thai food for so long and the Malaysian cusine was very good too! The conversation was good. We had a wonderful meal.

At the end of it the waitress came by and asked if we wanted any desserts. We were all pretty stuffed and said ‘No.’ Then my friend asked ‘Can I have some water?’
And the waitress replied ‘Do you want a menu?’ For water? What a strange waitress.

Yes, bad service exists in the US too.

I took my written test for the NJ driver license for the second time today. I only got 4 wrong out of 50. That means I passed! YEAHHY ME!

Honestly though this test seemed easier than the first one that I failed last week. It had me wondering if there is a second level NJ driving test for idiots who failed it the first time.

It is true that I studied the driving manual, like all the good 17 and 18 year olds in the room with me, but really there were only a handful of questions regarding fines for young drivers and provisional drivers which throws me for a loop. I’m just not good at learning all those rules. Perhaps a little bit of Italy has rubbed off, huh?

There were also several questions that to get wrong really would defy logic. ( such as’ Do you (a)stop at a stop sign , (b) slow down, or (c) honk the horn?’ If you don’t know the answer to that, then you really should NOT be driving.)
I even got the question about ‘highway hypnosis’ right, although I’ve never heard it referred to by that name.
I was so happy that I passed, that the girl sitting next to me (who I didn’t even know) congratulated me.
After I passed the test a clerk took my 24 dollars which is required for the license, and then asked me if I was happy with my photo or wanted to retake it, as if I were in a photography salon instead of the Motor Vehicles agency! Not that it was a bad photo, the clerk explained, but this is a service they offer their ‘clients’ who are trying to get a driver’s license. In Italy they make you bring in your own photos, and if you try to save a few Euros by going to one of those photomat machines you get what you get. Not only that, you have to pay the eyedoctor for the visit as well as pay for the written test and the actual license.
I even got some free job advice! Now, THAT is service!

Buzzurro and I have been doing a little shopping while in the US and comparing those prices to Italy.

Clothes are much cheaper in the US by far. Even when you are a bad girl like J.Doe and buy the most expensive coat in the whole store! OOPS. Sorry Buzzurro!

Shoes are very, very much cheaper too, even those shoes that are made in Italy!

Beef, chicken and pork seem to be cheaper, but I cannot really say the food is cheaper because eating styles are different. What we were used to eating in Italy is very expensive here (but at least available) and when we were in Italy the food that we became used to eating while in the US on vacations was very expensive, if even available.

Aspirin and other OTC medicine is very much cheaper. We spent 3 hours in Walgreens checking out the prices in amazement. They are so low, and then on top of that everything seems to be available in the generic store brand.

Buzzurro is still to this day, surprised by the low cost of gasoline in the US. Gasoline costs 4 times as much in Italy. Where we used to fill up the gas tank of our little Fiat with 60 Euros, here in the US, on a much bigger car, a 20 dollar note will do.