BUZZURRO

One year ago today Buzzurro and I relocated to the United States. While no place is perfect, we are both very happy to be here.
Happy anniversary to us !

As our longtime readers know (yes, all 3 of you), Buzzurro and I moved from Italy to the US in January 2006. For us 2006 has been a great year, and I am very thankful for that.
Buzzurro is very happy to make the move. A “life changing move”. Buzzurro found a job that pays well for U.S. standards which is an amount unheard of in Italy. The salaries there are ridiculously low. In Italy we were poor and spent all our free time at home. In the US we are able to pursue hobbies and go to restaurants if we want. We have also taken several mini-vacations, as well as many day trips.
As for me, an American who resided in the US for more than thirty years, sometimes leaving all the things that you know behind for 4 years allows you to appreciate those things more.
I remember my first job in the US in 2006. At the interview they didn’t ask my age, marital status, desire to have children or place of birth, as they do in Italy. That was pleasant, as being a married woman in my upper 30’s, being born in NY (the US) and wanting children excludes me for 99 percent of Italian jobs. I almost forgot that age, sexual, marital and other discriminations are not legal in the US.
When I got to the actual job site I remember looking all over the fancy “coffee” machine that dispensed everything from cappuccinos to decaf chai tea, for a slot to insert money. I couldn’t find one, and a coworker told me that there was none because the coffee or whatever beverage you chose to drink was free.I remember being overly joyed that bottled water was free too.
In Italy nothing is free. I remember that Buzzurro and other workers in Italy brought their own water to their places of work, or just bought it in the vending machines.
I forgot that in all of jobs that I worked at before the coffee and water were free.
I remember exclaiming to my mother a week after my first work assignment was over “Look, I got paid!!” She just stared at me like I was nuts, because she knew that the agency told me before I took this job that I would be paid one week later. In Italy only one job I had actually paid me on time, when they said they would. The others paid days and even months late, and usually not without a few verbal fights and emails from me. I forgot that getting paid on-time in the US was rather normal.
Daily life in the US is much easier in the US too.
1. Cars stay in their lanes and motorcycles follow the rules too. They don’t all weave in among cars and rush to run the traffic lights.
2. Stores are open late and on Sunday. It is such a pleasure to go to the grocery store at 8PM so that we can leave our 2 weekend days free to do whatever we want.
3. Customer service is much better ! You can return something to the store 30 days after purchasing it and with a receipt get a full refund. For a while I suspect that Buzzurro was buying things in stores only because he was able to return them and get cash back instead of a lousy one-time only store credit !
4. Gas and electricity are much cheaper here, and our bills aren’t that high even after we use the air conditioner non-stop in hot weather.
Well, I could make a list forever why I think life is easier in the US, and why I prefer it to life in italy, but I won’t do that. Just suffice it to say that I’m very happy to live here, to be able to work and contribute to my family and society as whole.

I do hope though that 2007 is even better. Happy 2007 everyone !

This morning I heard “The most dishonest professions are used car salesmen, used car salesmen and used car salesmen.’

“I don’t believe that old stereotype of the dishonest used car salesman’ I thought to myself.

This afternoon I went to several car lots and met several different salesmen, and now I changed my opinion. Perhaps who ever invented that sentence had a good point after all.

The first place we went to featured a guy who would probably be more comfortable in a Godfather mafia scene. I told him that I was interested in a USED car and he spoke about a NEW one.

My opinion is that if you work in a car lot with both new and used cars, you need to be able to differentiate between those two words. I told him what we wanted to spend and he immediately talked about cars that cost the double and then said “You’ll never find anything for the price you are looking for.”

This guy gave me the impression that he would attach 4 wheels to a fallen tree and then sell it to his mother as a luxury vehicle, for a luxury vehicle price of course. If I could rate a person on trustworthiness he would be in the negatives.

The second place we went to had a car for less than half of what we wanted to spend. When we saw it we understood why. The car was definitely on it’s last wheels, and I don’t just mean because it had 143,000 miles on it ! I really don’t want to spend a lot of money on a car, but nor do I want a Fred Flinstone type car with holes for your feet to run on the ground either.

In the third place we went to we saw 2 beautiful cars. The person we spoke to who worked at the car dealer was also nice.
‘I knew car salesmen weren’t all dishonest sleazebags.’ I thought triumphantly, but as it turns out he was not the salesman. He invited us to meet the salesman though.

When we went inside the building to meet him he wanted us to buy the car immediately and then offered to lower the price when we looked hesistant. We told him that we would like to go home and look at reviews of the particular car models we saw, but he kept on insisting that we test drive the cars and buy one (or both) that same night. He told us not even to bother looking at other people’s opinions.

“Just test drive it.’ He said again and again. He even mentioned the generous 30 day warranty on the car which is only on a very few rarely-breaking parts like it was a super deal that only he could offer.
His pushiness to make a sale definitely turned us off so we left the lot empty handed.
Why are used car salesmen so pushy ? It makes them live up to their bad reputation..

In a simple phrase: They are completely different.

I have a temporary job now. I work with many people who are Americans of Italian origin. They are of the third or fourth generation, and their grandparents (or great grandparents) originated from a different part of Italy that I lived in.
Take that, plus the difference in time from when they had a link with Italy. 2006 (for me) versus the late 1800s, early 1900s (for them), and you will find that they are indeed very different. Almost like night and day.
At first they were excited that I came to them from ‘Bell’Italia’.
Now maybe not so much.

My coworkers often say “I bet you eat a lot of ___!” and I reply “What’s that?” ” I never heard of such dishes.”
They ask me how I cook dinner. “Do you take hours to cook each meal?”, they ask. I tell them “No.” I like to cook quickly so I can eat quickly.”
“I bet your tomato sauce is nice and thick!” they say. I then tell them that I hope not, because if so I would add more cooking water. I like a nice watery sauce that can cover the pasta lightly so that you can taste both items instead of just one. I think they are disappointed with my responses, but really, who in this day and age of work can come home to spend 5 hours in front of a stove!
Then they ask me if I eat pasta with every meal. (I don’t) They don’t either, but it seems by my admission I shattered a lot of illusions. I obviously don’t give them the answers they expect. I don’t ‘act Italian’ to them.

They have said words in their Italian which I cannot understand.
One example being Malushay or something which I could not even imagine what they were talking about. (It ended up being Melanzane, which is Italian for eggplants).
They explain some of their habits and customs to me which I do not do. One example being a Sunday dinner at 2:30. We eat much later, and don’t have a special early dinner on Sunday.
Italian -American culture is not modern Italian 2006. It is it’s own culture.

Overall I like American TV. It is much much better than Italian TV. The newscasters are serious and respectful. The gameshow hosts are all different (instead of the few in Italy who seem to host many shows), and here are no half naked girls dancing around on any show for no purpose other than getting male viewers interested. It’s not all great though. In the US there is trash-talk TV. Back in my day the hosts of such sleazy programs were Jerry Springer, or Geraldo Rivera, but now, I just don’t know who they are.

They talk about anything. Nothing is sacred on these shows. I’m not saying that certain subjects should be taboo and never talked about, but not as a trashy TV program, with the most sleaziest, classless people found in the US to discuss their private stories, which in my opinion should remain private.

It shocks me how people can sit on a stage in front of presumable millions of people, and share personal details. I mean, on one show a girl was telling the audience (and TV) when was the last time she had sex. The girl in question was 5 months pregnant. Obviously she had it at least once in her life, but I did not think it was appropriate to tell exactly when to the world.

Then she told everybody that her boyfriend was cheating on her with a ’skanky old whore.’ Well, whether the other woman in question is skanky or a whore is business between them both and not the world. Perhaps the other woman didn’t even know about the first girlfriend being pregnant. In`that case, the man should be the skanky person, shouldn’t he? Then she gets out of her chair on stage and parades around the room saying that she looks beautiful and nobody should cheat on her.

Then her boyfriend comes on the TV and says that he is not cheating. I didn’t stay to watch the ’skanky whore’ other woman, whom her boyfriend defines as a ‘business associate’ defend herself. Who cares anyway about such smut! Keep it amongst yourselves!

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.