Whiskey, Painkillers and Fight Club

Well it's been a couple of weeks since I last wrote in this thing, it hasn't been a fun couple of weeks. The short version of the story is that I developed a tooth abscess and spent a full week in incredible pain because there was some confusion (on the dentist's part) as to whether it was in fact an abscess (of which I never had any doubt, having had 2 of the bastard things in the past). So, basically I spent a week on my sofa nearly going mad with the pain, taking a combination of incredibly strong pain killers, which seemed to do very little but would probably have been impossible to live without, and very strong antibiotics which thankfully did their job but also managed to contribute to my zombie-like transformation. My only other means of survival was that I figured out if you hold a mouthful of whiskey in your mouth for about 2 minutes it'll completely anaesthetise all your teeth for about 20 minutes, so that's 20 minutes of respite when you would otherwise happily take part in a scene from Fight Club, suddenly smacking your own face off a brick wall (repeatedly) becomes a very attractive prospect. I'm really only getting over it now. It has all been resolved though, if not financially, at least I'm not in pain anymore and am returning to the land of the living.
Other than that, I've lost my shitty sandwich making job partly because they weren't making any money and partly because the owner has been diagnosed with some illness and has to stop work completely, so they've closed. I'm not all that upset about losing the job but I am relatively worried about my financial situation. I'm teaching english (doing private lessons) and I have 3 students at the moment, which just pays my rent so if I can manage to find a couple more I should be set. Strangely enough I'm really enjoying this kind of work, it's certainly a lot more intellectually fulfilling than the sandwich making gig :-) I was supposed to be starting a job in Orte to teach little kids but with perfect timing I couldn't go to the training meeting because of the tooth abscess. Even if I could have put up with the pain and pretended to be enthusiastic about lesson plans and "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star" renditions, I think the swelling all around the right hand side of my face and complete lack of concentration might have stuffed my chances anyway. The good news is that they're recruiting again at the end of December and they've said that there should be a job for me then, maybe even in Perugia. So we'll see...

Berlusconi Bollocks...

I only recently discovered an interesting and perturbing aspect of Italian employment laws, which is supposedly Berlusconi's fault: If you are over 25 years old your employer is required to pay twice your wages just to employ you. The employer has to pay you a certain amount per hour but he has to pay the same amount to the government. What this means is that while you can pay a 23 year old €5 an hour, a 25 year old doing the same job will cost you €10, €5 for them and €5 for the government. As a result of which anyone who's over 25 is either unemployed or working illegally (or still a student). As for the students, well, there are too many of them. Everyone either has a degree or is in a long and convoluted process of getting one, at the end of which there are no jobs... or so my Italian student friends would have me believe. At the moment I have a work contract, yes that's right, a work contract, for a shitty €5 an hour sandwich making job! You can't have a job legally without a work contract so even temporary part-time mcjobbies have contracts, that's assuming that you are working legally. What's more, I am officially an "apprentice" sandwich maker, it'll take me two years to complete my training, which'll be just in time for me to turn 25 and be fired. You gotta love this country. Don't worry, I'm not planning on making a career out of it, although obviously the buttering bread training will come in handy in future employment. €5 an hour in Perugia is actually fairly normal, and given costs of living I can just about keep my head above water with my part-time hours. The teaching is going well and that's bringing in a little bit more money so at least I won't starve.

Mwa ha ha ha

well, hello there.
I've just spent the last hour writing a blog in Italian, trying my utmost to not make any glaringly obvious mistakes. Every time I have to write something more than a post-it to Marco I realise that my Italian isn't as good as I generally think it is. I'd say that my comprehension is pretty damn good and I can get my point across most of the time but when you actually have to sit down and write something, something that's going to be in black and white on the screen for everyone to scrutinise, you realise that there are huge holes in your comprehension of grammar structures. My big problems are conditional and subjunctive, I really haven't got the hang of them yet. Anyhoo. There have been complaints that my blog isn't funny, my apologies Ronan, I can try to have a bit of a hunt around for some Christmas crackers and see if there are any half decent jokes in them, course they might be in Italian so that probably won't work. Ah well, if you know me at all you'll know that I'm not a natural comedian, that I'm much more likely to tell some story which everyone else finds incredibly depressing but which I find funny for some strange reason, something involving traumatizing tragedy, just at the perfect moment to bring the atmosphere crashing down to the point where everyone wants to get their coats and go home, ending the story with "no, no, if you'd been there...". Which in itself could be considered amusing. Not much happening these days, I'm gonna go home and have lunch I think, and then I'm thinking about going to the swimming pool. This morning I found a market right in the centre of Perugia that I never knew was there, so I bought some nice stuff to make dinner with. Marco and his sister are working at the Fiera dei morti (The Fair of the Dead) for the whole week so I've been given the task of making dinner every night. The fair is in this massive park and it's a bit of a nightmare really. I went with them yesterday just to have a look around. There are about 500 stalls selling pretty much anything you can think of, pots, pans, pottery, wicker chairs, chocolate, sicilian pastries, candy floss, clothing, tractor engines, hookas (sp?), dried fruits, pasta making machines, porchetta - a whole spit-roasted pig with head and feet still attached, gutted, stuffed with various herbs and then sliced in huge chunks which are then made into impossibly big sandwiches - salami, ingenious slicing machines like you see on tv, pets to take home (puppies, kittens, parrots, ferrets, goldfish, terrapin, rabbits, guinea pig, pot-bellied piglets, and very strangely, squirrels and a deskunked skunk...). In fact the pet stalls just made me a bit depressed, the puppies seemed to have been drugged to keep them calm with all the people crowding round so they were all lying limply with their tongues hanging out and eyes rolled back. There was a parrot that was in the process of pulling all its feathers out. And there was a love bird, in a cage on its own, that was just running back and forth from one end of the cage to the other in a really demented way. Given the fact that love birds are never supposed to be kept on their own ( there was even a sign saying that they all had to be sold in pairs) I don't know what was going on. I remember when I was little that I loved going to pet shops but these days it just makes me angry, not that I'm going to go on some crusade to save the animals of course, I'm just going to write about it disapprovingly in my blog and make some tut tut noises. I think one day at the fair of the dead is enough to be honest...

e per gli italiani

Ciao tutti!
Adesso che hanno cambiato il mio orario, un'altra volta, lavoro solo al fine-settimana e quindi sono completamente libera gli altri giorni. Sto provando ad organizzarmi ad insegnare l'inglese e domani farò due lezioni con due degli amici di Marco, almeno sarà un po' di soldi. Il lavoro in paninoteca è più che noioso ma mi serve almeno per stare in questo paese. Devo dire che la burocrazia in questo bel paese è una cosa incredibile e il fatto che sono un'apprendista con il contratto di lavoro (e faccio i panini tutto il giorno) mi fa ridere. Come forse sapete, in irlanda non ci sono i contratti di lavoro per un lavoro così provvisorio e normalmente si prende il lavoro, si dà il numero fiscale al titolare, e così hai un lavoro e sei in regola. Qua, ho fatto così tanti giri a mettermi in regola, la questura che era veramente un piacere, l'uffico dei vigili sanitari 2 volte - una volta per il libretto sanitario e l'altra per la visita medica, l'uffico del lavoro per il codice fiscale e poi a registrarmi, ed io sono del unione europea! Ho visto come la polizia si è comportata con la gente dagli altri paesi, e come mi ha trattato prima di sapere che io fossi irlandese. Sono grata ad esserlo! Comunque, sono apprendista, sto imparando a fare dei panini buoni! :-) La prima settimana ho imparato come si mette la maionese sul pane, e la settimana prossima imparerò il metodo per il burro... una cosa alla volta, ovviamente, c'ho due anni ad imparare il mio mestiere e poi quando avrò 25 anni sarò pronta ad essere licenziata. Nonostante tutto questo, non sbagliatevi, mi piace questo paese, mi piace da morire, è solo che l'italia è un posto molto molto diverso del mio e mi sto abituando piano piano. Infatti, sono queste differenze che mi fanno sentire che sto realizzando qualcosa, vivere in un'altro paese non è facile e forse non dev'essere. L'altra cosa è che ho imparato un sacco mentre parlavo con la gente negli uffici, si impara per forza e mi sento un po' più sicura di me, ce la posso fare. Mi piace vivere in italia, mi piace lo stile di vita, e mi rendo conto che l'italia mi fa bene. Qua, non bevo, cammino dovunque ed a Perugia non è un'impresa piccola con tutte quelle salite (qualche volta ho pensato che avrei fatto bene portare le corde per alpinismo!) ed ho persino cominciato ad andare in piscina a fare l'acquafitness. Ho degli amici buoni e sopratutto mi trovo bene qui. Non sono veramente sicura cosa sto facendo, voglio dire che non ho dei progetti per il futuro, non ancora. Sto pensando di fare una specializzazione in traduzione, c'è un corso a Trieste, un altro a Siena, e c'è anche una scuola qui a Perugia. Ovviamente, però, dovrei metterci tanto più tempo a migliorare il mio italiano prima di fare qualcosa del genere. Devo cominciare a studiare sul serio. C'è anche il problema di soldi e devo pensarci molto bene ed organizzarmi. Ci sono degli organizzazioni che danno le borse di studio e ho il vantaggio di essere d'irlanda del nord, posso chiedere al governo d'irlanda e di gran bretagna... vedremo. Per il momento però sto godendo il tempo libero a fare i cazzi miei. Adesso però me ne vado, sono le 14.43 e non ho ancora pranzato, guardate lo sforzo che faccio per voi... a presto. Tanti baci.