BUZZURRO

Why Santa Fe is so special…

A thousand grazie mille to Cyndi of Reboot: A New Life in Italy for the package of food she so kindly mailed from Italy to us in the USA.
I would have like to post a photo but one of the things she sent was chocolate.
I have mentioned before how I do not like the chocolate sold here, be it Hershey’s, Dove or Nestle. Neither does Buzzurro.
Cyndi sent us some Italian chocolate and Buzzurro and I devoured it like a pack of hungry wolves, so as they say in Italy, niente foto.
It tasted so good!!! Thanks again.
I just hope the package I sent with American foods arrives soon.

That’s the beauty of communism !
Price controls, food shortages, communism… deja vu.

(Hat tip to Sandmonkey).

In a nutshell…

Positive aspects of living in the USA:
- I earn 4 times what I was making in Italy for the same job
- if I want to quit my job and find another one, I have realistic hopes to find it (instead of Italy, where, once you find whatever permanent job, you’d better keep it until you retire)
- if we’ll want, for any reason, to leave New Mexico for another state, I have hopes to find another job soon somewhere else in the USA, see above
- people here are MUCH more civil than in Italy
- customer service is, generally speaking, much better than in Italy (see below what I write about customer service in NM)
- I do not live anymore in a country (Italy) where WHO you know is 98% the key to success
- United States has many beautiful places to see (New Mexico included)
- I don’t live anymore in a country (Italy) where a lot of left-wing people are communists, and a lot of right-wing people are bigots
- since 2006, I have again the hope that, if I want to improve, I can. I didn’t have this hope at all in Italy.

Positive aspects of living in NM:
- weather (among other things, I LOVE the lack of humidity)
- stunning landscapes and amazing skies
- laidback lifestyle
- generally speaking, low cost of life (with the exception of Santa Fe)

What I “complain” about living in the US:
- sometimes you have to struggle against your insurance to have it pay your medical expenses they HAVE to pay
- I try to keep in touch with my Italian friends, but apparently, after my move and the initial curiosity, a whole bunch of them… doesn’t seem interested in friendship anymore.
Friendship is a two-way thing, if only one gives and the other doesn’t, in the long run I will get bored and I stop calling and sending emails. To them (the whole bunch, not my few real friends), I say, cordially: go get screwed
- the “language barrier”, that, with time, and improvement effort from the two only neurons of mine, becomes more and more thin
- US chocolate sucks !! It is gross !!

What I complain about living in NM:
- they don’t have a clue on how to clean roads from snow (or they are too lazy to do it properly)
- NM’s motto is “the land of enchantment”. NM’s REAL motto is “the land of mañana”, where, with “mañana”, they mean tomorrow, the next year, maybe….
I had great expectations about the efficiency levels in the US, after experiencing bureaucracy Italian style for more than 35 years. Plus, I was spoiled by the real American efficiency after spending three months in New Jersey + New York.
So…
Italian customer service oftentimes is not courteous neither efficient.
NM customer service sometimes is not efficient, but courtesy is never missing.
Inefficiency with a smile.
So…
I don’t know where, in the United States, J.Doe and I will be in five years, maybe here in NM, maybe not.
Surely, we won’t be in Italy except as tourists.