BUZZURRO

Last week I went to the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles to apply for a New Jersey driver’s license. The employees were very nice to me. It’s good to be back with civil civil servants. The clerk asked me for some identification documents, and if I had a current driving license. I proudly handed her my documents and my international driving license which I got 2 years ago in Italy.

The clerk said to me “You know this license is expired, right ?’
Very surprised by this development, I replied ‘But they told me in Italy that it was good for 3 years. I thought it expired in 2007.’ (they took enough money for it too)
And she responded “It’s only good for 1 year.’

Great. I’m driving around on an expired license.

Not even 1 week in the United states and already I’m breaking laws. (well, not exactly, as a tourist I can drive on my Italian driver’s license which still is valid. As a resident of the US however, I cannot drive.)
To make a long story short, the employee used my Italian driver’s license, finished with her part of processing me, and I advanced to the next desk.
So I wait in the line of 1 person, pay my 10 bucks and they take my picture. Then I go to the Eye Doctor, who looked at my documents and then asked me if I wanted to read the eye chart in Italian. HA HA HA.
After that I go over to the computer to take the written part of the driving test, which as Buzzurro mentioned in a previous post I failed. In defense of myself I only barely, leggermente failed. I got 11 wrong out of 50 questions when you are allowed 10.

One of the questions had to deal with road rage. It asked ‘If you are upset or angry, what do you do?’ and the answers were ‘A. drive or B sit or rest awhile to calm down’.
They wanted B as a response, but I chose A. I mean, what if you are already behind the wheel ? Are you just supposed to turn the car off and sit in the middle of the road? Or what if you have some place to go? Maybe I’ve been living in Italy too long. I don’t see a little bit of road rage as an abnormal event. Surely nothing to delay your plans about.
Other questions had to do with the penalties for 17 year old drivers who drive after midnight and cause property damages of less than 500 bucks. How do I know what happens to them ? Put the young road criminals in jail forever and throw away the key. It’s not relevant to me ! Why do I have to suffer while sitting in front of a computer test ?

Well, in short since I did not pass the driver’s test I will study and take the test again next week.

…but we have a good excuse. We moved. I had things to do, I got a permanent resident visa, we did food shopping, bought a cabinet of drawers, sent our resumes around, we unpacked SOME of our clothes, struggled to stay awake despite jetlag, J.Doe had a written test for her driving license and FAILED, I applied for my social security number, we had a walk around home, we bought Dorito chips…
In the next days I’m pretty sure we won’t neglect the blog anymore, but we gave our lives priority over the blog. Thank you, dear readers, for your great patience.
We are organizing our lives.

It’s done. Tomorrow we will leave Italy for the United States.
I’m nervous. J.Doe is nervous too. This is not a “vacation”, despite we filled suitcases, bought plane tickets, like for a leisure trip. We mailed many heavy boxes overseas.

When we mailed our first box, a few days ago, we found that shipping is more expensive than we expected — about 100 euros for a 5 pounds box. Then, shocked for the expensive price, decided to rethink the list of things to mail — i.e., we brought less stuff with us for saving money.
Nonetheless, the sum we finally spent was again a lot. In these cases you have to be selective, to decide what to leave behind you; what is necessary and what is not. Not a very easy task. If it is easy to pick just one of two clothes that look very similar (for instance, two black shirts or two dark pants), it’s hard to leave back stuff you’re affected to, things that remind you nice moments in the past, things that we think we cannot do without but that probably it’s useless to bring because are things easy to find and cheap to buy in the USA.

We are also carrying with us heavy suitcases. We spent part of our time weighing them more times, finding them heavier than the maximum allowed, redistributing the excess weight among the other suitcases.

You know, we knew that we are allowed to bring up to two suitcases up to 26 Kg each, and one carry-on suitcase up to 12 Kg. This lets us bring up to 128 Kg in 6 suitcases. Believe me, they’re not enough.

Is it anti-economic to bring one’s own clothes instead of buying them there ? It depends on how expensive clothes are, and how much you like those clothes on you. It’s not easy, and stressful to leave pieces of your life behind you.

Yesterday we had a farewell dinner with a couple of friends. We gave them our left food supplies. Obviously, They were only closed boxes of food.
They were two huge bags stuffed with food. It was our supply to be used in case of nuclear attack !
Obviously, it was all unexpired food. I told them: “anyway, you double check the expiry date, just in case !”
That food was A LOT. J.Doe and I have been repeating each other: let’s not make food supplies, because we are gonna move… sure, last famous words.

She is Canadian and he is Italian. I will miss them.
I am grateful to her because, in these 3 years of marriage, and of J.Doe’s life in Italy, she was J.Doe’s closest friend. I’m happy that J.Doe found this friend in our town.

I should have told them all these things yesterday night, instead of just writing them on the blog…

Today I went into a bar and asked for 2 coffees.
The cashier rang up my order and said to me, “That will be 1 Euro and 60 cents.”
I shuffled through my wallet and came up with a handful of change. There was a line behind me so I quickly counted out what looked like 1.60 and handed it to the cashier.
“Look!” she demanded. THIS isn’t 1.60!”

So of course I looked. (and so did everyone else within earshot) By mistake instead of giving her a 50 cent coin I gave her a 20 cent coin. Therefore the amount of money I actually gave to her was 1.20. OOPS!
Those familiar with Euros will know that while the 50 cent coin is bigger than the 20 cent coin, they are the same color, and in a hurried situation can easily be mistaken for each other.

I said to her. “I’m sorry.”, and handed her 3 ten cent coins.
She took the 3 coins without a word but glared at me.
I wanted to say “Truthfully lady, I wasn’t trying to rob your fine establishment of 30 cents.” But I didn’t. Perhaps if the barista already prepared the coffee and I drank it already I would have.

Honest mistakes do happen all the time.
Give the client the benefit of the doubt.
I always said customer service in Italy sucks, and every day they prove me right.
P.S. Did I mention that I used to be a regular customer?