Even more lessons from Southern Italy

We're not done with this Southern Italy business yet...

1) SECOND-HAND MEMORY CARD

I needed a memory car for my camer, so I went into a little camera shop, where an ancient man sat behind a counter chatting with a friend on the other side. I asked for a memory card, so he took one and put it in my camera.

"Let's take a picture to check that it works," he said. 
He tried taking a photo, but a message appeared on the screen: "Memory full".
"How can the memory be full?" we both said, bemused. "It's a brand new card."

He put the card in a different camera, and it worked fine.

“You have to reset the camera,” he told me.

So I took it home, and I reset it. But it still kept giving the “memory full” message. I reset it with the card, I reset it without the card, I turned it off and on again, I tried everything I could think of. No luck. So I took it to work the next day.

“There must be somebody here who will know what to do,” I reasoned.

And there was.

“The problem,” announced one of the air traffic controllers, “is that the memory is too big. It’s 4GB, and your camera can only take 2GB.”

So off I went back to the little old man in his shop, to explain that I needed a 2GB card, not a 4GB one. He shook his head regretfully.

“They don’t exist anymore,” he told me. “All cameras these days take 4GB and up.”

Then he paused, an idea appearing to occur to him. “Just one minute!” he instructed me, and marched off to the phone. He talked for a minute, then put down the phone, turned to me, and beamed.

“Problem solved!” he announced. “My wife has a 2GB card which she’ll give to you. If you come back tomorrow afternoon, we’ll exchange cards.”

Can you imagine going into a camera shop in the UK or some other country where camera shops are all big chains, and being told that the owner’s wife will give you her card?

2) PUBLIC RELATIONS

“You know why I talk so much and leave chaos in my wake everywhere I go?” said one air traffic controller, who certainly did leave a trail of pandemonium everywhere he went. “Because many years ago, when I had just become an air traffic controller, when I was working in Rome, there were 600 of us working there. And one day, one of our colleagues died. And none of us could work out who he was! We were all saying, ‘Who was the guy who died?’ And I said to myself, imagine if I were the one to die. Could I have everybody saying, ‘But who was the guy who died?’ No! So that’s why I decided that everywhere I go, I’m always going to make a noise and make sure that everyone knows who I am.”

3) ROUNDING DOWN

People kept giving discounts in the south. I went to the supermarket, and was going to get rid of some bits and pieces of change cluttering up my purse. But the bits and pieces were a little bit short of the desired amount, so I pulled out a note instead.

“It’s OK,” said the man at the till. “Just give me the coins.”

“But they’re not enough,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” he replied, and took them anyway.

"That wouldn't happen in central Italy," commented my colleague. "They won't even let you off a cent there."
He went to buy a take-away pizza one evening. It was €6, so he took out a €5 note and started looking for a coin.
“Don’t worry,” said the guy behind the counter. “Just give me €5 for it.”

Our housemate went one better. He went to buy credit for his phone, and procured himself not just a discount but an entirely free top-up, courtesy of the shop employee who had taken a shine to him. 

4) JESUS

Coming back home one evening after a walk in the town centre, we noted that the road, normally heavily trafficked, was deserted.

“Where are all the cars?” we wondered.

As if in answer to our question, an ambulance appeared and drove past at a leisurely pace. It was followed by a very relaxed police car.

Then, as we crested a bridge, a flood of humanity surged up in the other direction. Humanity wearing desert robes tied with rope at the waist. Humanity waving its hands in the air. Humanity brandishing palm fronds and riding donkeys.

“Hosanna!” cried the people in their desert robes. “Hosannaaa!”

It was like a scene straight out of the New Testament – with the addition of policemen and ambulance workers weaving through the procession, occasionally stopping to exchange greetings and gossip with some friend or family member watching on the sidelines.

As we pushed past some people who had stopped to watch the procession, and who were blocking the pavement in the most oblivious manner, I heard a man informing a child in a somewhat condescending manner, “It’s just a man dressed as Jesus. It’s not actually Jesus.”

5) LEAVING HOME

My colleague and I were sharing a flat with a 19-year-old girl and a 34-year-old guy. When we arrived, neither of them was there – they were both home for the weekend. We had a nose round the house and were astonished to find that there was no food in the kitchen. There were several bottles of water and a box of salt, but that was it.

“What do they eat?” we asked, bemused.

The guy, it turned out, had just moved into the house. He had brought some food with him, but hadn't transferred it yet from his bedroom to the kitchen. But what about the girl?
"Where do you eat?" I asked her.

She shrugged. “I don’t, really,” she smiled.

“Do you eat at the canteen at university?” I persisted.

“No,” she replied, unconcernedly. “I go home at the weekend, and my mother cooks a feast. So I eat, and then I'm OK for the week.”

Every now and then, if she had friends round, she would buy crisps and Coke, but apart from that, she really did appear to survive on fresh air.

“You know,” my colleague told her sternly, “your body needs nourishment, and if you don’t eat, you’ll get ill.”

She took fright at this, and he continued, “I am cooking a steak now, and making a salad. You must join us for one or the other or both.”

“OK,” she replied, trembling.

But she insisted on making her own salad.

“Why don’t you have some of this?” I asked, pointing to the salad on the table.

“Because there’s olive oil on it,” she said, with a worried look. “I can’t eat oil, because it gives me spots.”

So she ate her undressed salad. It was the only time she ever ate with us.

The guy didn’t cook either. He was 34, and had just become a security guard, because he needed a change from his previous job – as a chef. Restaurants, he said, were too stressful, and a chef works very unsociable hours. (A security guard, it emerges, works hours that are if anything even more unsociable.)

“But I still enjoy cooking,” he said. “I’ll cook for you sometime.”

But he never did. And he didn’t cook for himself either. Once a week or so, he would go home, and he would come back laden with a week’s worth of meals which his mother had prepared for him.

The girl had been there for six months, and she still didn’t know how to use the washing machine.

“Would you like me to show you how to use it?” I offered.

“No, it’s OK,” she said. “I just take my washing home at the weekend and my mother does it. It’s easy enough.”

Well, perhaps at the age of 19, one still has something to learn about home-making. But how do you explain a 34-year-old man who takes his washing home? Easily.

“It’s much simpler,” he explained. “I just give it to my mother, and the next day she gives it all back to me, washed, ironed and folded.”

6) FAMILY VALUES

I went to visit a friend in a nearby town. 

“I’m looking for somewhere to go,” he told me.

“What, on holiday, or to live?” I asked.

“Possibly to live,” he said. “At least for a while. I think I’ve had enough of living here for the moment. And now while I’m still young, and I don’t have commitments, this is the time to do it. After all, when I’m older, I’ll need to be here to look after my parents.”

"That's really nice," I said. "I don't know many people of our generation who are planning their futures around being near their parents to look after them when they're older."
"It's a southern Italian thing," he replied placidly. "Family is very important to us."

More lessons from southern Italy

I did tell you it was a lifetime's worth of experience. And that much experience doesn't fit in one post. So here's some more:


1) WHERE ARE THE STATUES?

The cathedral had a series of statues of saints lined up along the top.

“They’re all made of plaster,” I was told. “A few years ago, the building was in a state of disrepair, so it was renovated. They pulled a whole lot of stuff down, and they looked at these statues, with their missing arms and missing heads, and said, ‘This is trash’ and threw them all away. Then when the renovations were finished, the bishop came to look and said, ‘Where the **** are the statues?’ So they had to make new ones out of plaster.”

(Author's note: I don't use language like that. I'm just telling you what I heard.)

2) WARM TODAY, EH?

The weather was beautiful, and it would have been stifling to wear winter clothes. So I wore short sleeves. Well, I may as well have been walking around with a sign above my head saying "Foreigner". No Italian would dream of switching to summer apparel until the day spring officially starts, no matter how sunny it is. 

One day, it was fairly warm, if not actually hot, and I was in short sleeves and perfectly comfortable.  I was out walking, and in the course of half an hour, the following things happened:

1)     As a car drove past me, it slowed down and the driver shouted something at me.

2)     Another car actually stopped as it passed me. The guy in the passenger seat lowered the window and shouted out, “Hot today, isn't it?”

3)   As I passed a parked car with its windows open, a guy sitting inside it called out, “You're not Italian, are you?”

4)  Outside the train station, the taxi drivers were sitting on a bench waiting for business. As I walked past them, one of them called out, “France?”

5)     I passed a group of old men standing on the pavement chatting. They broke off their conversation, and one turned to stare at me.

“Good morning!” he cried out.

“Warm today, eh?” boomed his friend.

All of this in the space of no more than half an hour.

3) THE PRAWN

My colleague and I were taken out to dinner one evening at a seafront restaurant.

“When I know the restaurant,” our host announced, “I never even look at the menu. I ask the manager straight away what he recommends.”

And so saying, he summoned the manager and demanded to know what he recommended. We were then treated to a positive banquet, a spectacular array of seafood. (And for me, since I didn’t eat seafood, they did a spectacular array of vegetarian dishes.)

Course 17 (or possibly 18 - I lost track after the first ten courses or so) was fresh tiger prawns. Very fresh tiger prawns. So fresh, in fact, that as my colleague dished one up onto his plate, it waved its thorny legs at him. I gasped and pointed at his plate. Senses slightly dulled by numerous glasses of red wine, he just smiled languidly at his plate.

“It's very fresh,” he commented. He poked at the prawn then looked up at me.

“Their nervous system is different from ours,” he said, and he tore its joints apart with his fork.  Its legs were still waving on its severed bottom half as he devoured the flesh from the top half.

“I can’t believe you ate it!” I said afterwards. He shrugged.

“It's a temporal difference,” he remarked, unconcerned.

4) FIFTY EUROS

As my colleague and I walked past a fountain in the town centre, we were surprised to see a €50 note sitting at the bottom of it.

“Take it out!” he said.

“You take it out,” I said.

“No, I’m wearing long sleeves,” he complained. “You’re wearing short sleeves. You take it out.”

It just didn’t feel right to me to take €50 that didn’t belong to me. Fair enough, at this point it didn’t seem to belong to anyone, but even so, there were so many people who could have made better use of the money than we could, such as the beggars we had just passed on the pavement. And anyway, why would €50 just be sitting at the bottom of a fountain?

I couldn’t justify my unwillingness any further than, “It’s not our money,” and this was highly unsatisfactory to my colleague.

“It’s fifty euros!” he groaned.

“Listen,” I told him, “you didn’t have fifty euros before, and you don’t have fifty euros now. You’re no worse off than before. You haven’t lost anything.”

“Hmm,” he mused. “It’s probably a trick anyway. If it were real money, it would float.”

An hour or so later, he turned to me and smiled.

“I’ve understood about the €50 note!” he announced. “It was a fake – there was an advert printed on the other side! I’ve just seen someone walking around with one.”

5) POLICE CHECK

I went to a nearby townone afternoon, to meet up with some former students of mine. As we were standing around outside the station, going through greetings, two policemen bustled up.

“Documents, documents!” the one barked out.

“Three documents for every four people!” barked the other one.

The others all pulled out their ID cards. Not being Italian, I didn’t have one, and I didn’t have any other ID on me. (Having lost my passport once and my driving licence twice in the  space of six months, I have stopped carrying important things around with me.) But that didn’t matter. After all, the policemen only needed three IDs for every four people. They took the cards, wrote down the details in a tatty notebook, and bustled off.

“What was that about?” I asked. The others shrugged.

“Sometimes they check people. Especially around the station,” they replied. 

Lessons from Southern Italy

I recently spent a month in the south of Italy, examining in English exams for air traffic controllers. Well, only a month it may have been, but it was a lifetime's worth of experience. Which I shall now share with you. 

1) ITALIAN PILOTS ASK WHY

The air traffic controllers whose English I was examining were all, without exception, the most delightful, cheerful, friendly individuals. (It's a southern Italian thing, my research leads me to conlude.) And they were singularly un-precious about their work. At the slightest hint of a question, they were only too happy to give me comprehensive explanations on their job.

As one controller showed me around the radar room, I asked, “When you deal with pilots of different nationalities, do you see national characteristics coming through?”
“Yes,” he replied immediately. “British pilots are precisi, precisi, precisi. They are precisissimi. Also German pilots. Turkish and Chinese pilots, on the other hand, are impossible, because you can’t understand a word they say. They’re incomprehensible. And the worst,” he declared decisively, “are Italian pilots. Because you tell a British pilot, ‘Do this or that,’ and he does it. You tell and Italian pilot, ‘Do this,’ and he says, ‘Why’?

2) BOTHERSOME WALLET

During the listening exam, a minor uproar broke out in the back row.

“He’s put his wallet on the desk!” shouted one of the candidates, pointing accusingly at his colleague, who had indeed placed his wallet conspicuously on the corner of his desk.

“It was bothering me!” insisted the accused, pointing emphatically at his pocket. 

3) BOTHERSOME JACKET

My co-examiner, a gentleman of gentlemen, introduced himself to me on the first day, then set about preparing the exam room for the listening exam. He broke off from his preparations and approached the coat-stand.

“Do you mind if I take off my jacket?” he asked courteously.

It had never occurred to me that anyone might worry that their removing their jacket would offend me.

He had his initials embossed, small but conspicuously, just under his shirt pocket.

“Did you put your initials there?” I asked, fancying that he might have had unpleasant experiences at the launderette in the past, with his shirts getting confused with someone else’s.

“No,” he replied. “I have my shirts made specially for me, because I have a big neck and short arms. And a lot of people, when they have shirts made to order, have their initials embroidered on.”

4) ODD THINGS THAT PEOPLE SAY UNDER EXAM CONDITIONS 

A) Why to travel

We tended to ask the same questions over and over again in the oral exams. Apart from the fact that our imagination only stretched so far, the candidates were expecting certain types of questions, and panicked if we asked anything too different. (One candidate cheerfully informed me after the exam that when I had asked him to tell me something he was proud of, he nearly bolted for the door.)

We asked about holidays and travel rather a lot.

“Why do you like travelling so much?” we asked one candidate.

“Because you can know new places,” he replied. “You can see different people and know their rabbits.”

This took me rather by surprise, but I proceeded as if he had not said anything out of the ordinary. It was a good five minutes or so before I realised that what he had actually been trying to say was “You can know their habits.”

B) Where to travel

“Do you travel a lot?” we asked another person.

“Oh, yes,” he replied. “I always travel. The last time was on Mars.”

Now this was certainly novel.

“Really?” I said, most interested. I was just about to ask what Mars was like as a holiday destination when I realised that he had meant “in March”.

One candidate told us that he had recently been to Cuba.

“And who did you go with?” I asked.

“With my wife and children,” he replied.

At this point, my co-examiner, who was supposed to sit silently on the sidelines, just to make sure that procedure was being followed, cut in.

"Excuse me," he said politely to the candidate. He turned to me.

"Do you know what we say?" he said to me. "We say that going to Cuba with your wife is like going to Oktoberfest with your own beer."

C) Why to join the Air Force

Some of the candidates had come to air traffic control via the Air Force.

“Why did you join the Air Force?” we asked one of them.

He didn’t hesitate for a moment.

“Because I liked the uniform,” he said.

D) Why to leave the Air Force

“Why did you decide to leave the Air Force?” we asked some of them. And every single one of them, without fail, answered, “For the money. You earn twice as much as a civilian air traffic controller.”

5) PERILS OF FLIGHT SCHOOL

We were discussing a certain flight school which sends some of its trainee pilots to go and to a six-month training placement in Texas.

“And they come back,” one of the controllers informed me, “you know Top Gun? What’s the guy’s name?”

“Tom Cruise,” supplied someone.

“Tom Cruise,” he affirmed. “They all come back Tom Cruise, wearing sunglasses, and speaking something which isn't American and isn't Italian, which is impossible to understand...."

6) THE CONTROL TOWER

“What’s the inside of the control tower like?” I asked one of the air traffic controllers

“Well, there’s a bank of computers and radios,” he replied. “There are windows all the way round. There’s a coffee machine and a big comfortable couch. And –“ he paused for dramatic effect – “there’s – the – Playstation!”

“You sit around playing on the Playstation in the tower?” I asked, aghast.

“Yes, yes,” he replied breezily. “After all, there isn’t traffic all the time. And during quiet periods, you need something to do. You know,” he chuckled, “there was one time when I was on duty at night. It was about 2 in the morning –“

“Are there arrivals and departures and 2 in the morning?” I interrupted.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “Postal flights, things like that. Anyway, this pilot called ahead to ask for a weather report. ‘Clear skies,’ I told him. ‘Visibility 10 kilometres.’ And I went to sleep on the couch. I woke up half an hour later, when the pilot radioed in to announce his arrival. I opened my eyes and looked around – the airport was shrouded in fog so thick you couldn’t have seen your hand in front of your face. The pilot was not impressed! He shouted over the radio, ‘Hey! Tomorrow morning, you’re going to buy me a coffee!’ So the next morning, I went to the airport bar, and I met the pilot there and bought him a coffee.”

7) SUNDAY PILOTS

In the same conversation as above:

“I was dealing with this VFR,“ the controller. He turned to me. “You know VFR?” he inquired. “Sunday pilots!” he spat. Then he continued. “So this VFR was approaching the airport. But there was this military jet coming in behind it, so I gave the VFR instructions to get out the way.

“Meanwhile, I had an Alitalia plane on the taxiway, waiting to take off, giving me hassle.

‘Stand by, Alitalia!’ I told the pilot.

So I had this VFR puttering along towards the airport, and the pilot just wasn’t getting out of the way fast enough. And picture this – the military jet, going three times as fast as the VFR goes ‘wzhoom!’ right up behind it! And the problem was, they were in each other’s blind spots, so neither even knew the other was there!

“And while this was going on, I had the Alitalia pilot complaining that he wanted to take off. ‘Alitalia, shut up!’ I yelled, then I bellowed at the military jet pilot, ‘You’ve got a VFR in your blind spot! Do an emergency climb!’  So he did an emergency climb, and avoided a collision.

“The next day, I saw the pilot at the airport bar. He thanked me for getting him out of the difficulty, and I apologised for the fact that he had got into it in the first place.”

“But it wasn’t your fault!” I interrupted. “It was the VFR pilot’s fault for not getting out the way when you told him to!”

“Yes, I know,” he sighed. “But just as a gesture of goodwill. Then I bought him a case of beers too, to apologise.”