Archive for the ‘blogging’ Category
a few stolen moments
I’ve been away from the blogosphere for an entire week, and believe me, it’s not by choice. Even now, I am typing from a work computer where I’m supposed to be doing some translation, but, well, there was a working Internet connection, and that’s all the window I needed.
Let me assure everyone that I am fine, P is fine, Luna is fine–the only thing that’s not fine is our damn phoneline (and accordingly, my Internet connection), which has been down since last Friday. It’s been rough, but I’ve learned several things through the experience, and I’m going to do a Friday Five, taking a page out of Stefanie‘s book.
You can’t imagine how long it just took me to link to Stefanie on this ancient computer that won’t even accept my memory stick, which would’ve meant that I could’ve just copied and pasted what I had already written last night.
Five Things I’ve Learned in a Week Without the Internet
1. I hate Telecom (the phone company). Yeah, I knew that one, but now I hate them even more. Most of my town is without phone service, but they don’t even have an estimate on when we might get it back. Ain’t that cute?
2. I can carry on a decent conversation in Italian over the phone with a utility company. Information I’d rather not know, but whatever. I’m most proud of the fact that I haven’t (yet) yelled or cursed in either language.
3. I spend a lot of time on the Internet. I knew this one too, but it wasn’t completely obvious until I was faced with considerably more free time this past week. I’d be lying to say it wasn’t nice to get other things accomplished too, so I think I can take this is a warning sign to re-balance things around here. See, it’s not all bad!
4. Murphy’s Law of the Blogging World: You may get writer’s block on a frequent basis while you have the full ability to post, but once you can’t, the ideas will abound. That said, rest assured, this last week was not completely wasted, blog-wise. I have at least a week’s worth of posts ready to pull out when I most need them. Again, trying to look on the positive side here.
5. And finally, the best of all–I have made a lot of wonderful blog/Internet friends. I’ve gotten emails from people who had never even commented on the blog wondering if I was OK. Wow. That is just awesome, and I thank you all for your concern. I promise I’ll get back to everyone just as soon as I’m up and running from home. It’s hard to even borrow computers to use around here, but perhaps I’ll splurge and hit the Internet café one of these days (but hopefully I won’t need to…come on Telecom!).
I, too, miss being a part of your daily lives, and I can’t wait to catch up on all that has happened in my absence. I wish I had a time frame for when I’d be back to the regularly-scheduled program, but, you know, since Telecom doesn’t know, I don’t know either. You’ll come back, though, right? I miss you!
P.S. I’m not sure how this post will look as this computer doesn’t even have the font I normally use. Bear with me, and say a little prayer, would you?
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[tags]telecom italia, life in italy[/tags]
calabrian women’s summit 2007
I’m going to go ahead and say it. The Internet is the best invention ever.
I’m speaking from the perspective of an American who has moved to the middle of nowhere, and although beautiful, is not the cradle of expats by any means.
If you’re a regular reader, you probably get the impression that I love living here, and, indeed, I do. But sometimes you need some female, English-speaking companionship–next to impossible to find down here, but this past weekend, it was the order of business as we held the first Calabrian Women’s Summit, which also served as our belated celebration of International Women’s Day.
And all this came together because of this fancy network of invisible wires that make up the World Wide Web. Thanks Al Gore!
Blogger-to-be (no pressure!) Dawn and I traveled to the big city of Catanzaro to meet fellow blogger Cherrye of My Bella Vita who is in the process of opening a Bed and Breakfast with her soon-to-be-marito Peppe.
In fact, Dawn and I were their first guests. We were greeted with adorable welcome baskets complete with my new favorite Kinder snack–and Cherrye only had to make up our little tags twice with Italian help from Peppe.
Bless her heart, Cherrye’s going through what both Dawn and I have experienced already–the early days of learning Italian. I’m not sure that Peppe will be happy with the types of information we shared this weekend, but we thought it all rather essential. Cherrye’s in for some interesting times as she perfects her language skills–more frustrating than fun, to be sure, but she’s doing fabulously.
And speaking of fabulous, the B & B is simply gorgeous–comfortable, homey, and a great location.
Other than hanging out at the B &B, we had a nice if expensive lunch at a pizzeria, which surprised both Dawn and me since nothing is even open for lunch where we live…and pizza? During the day? Unheard of!
But we went, we ate, we got charged 3,50 euro for flat Cokes, and now we have organized a campaign against such unscrupulous business practices. So, yes, if you’re down in these parts, that’d be us wearing signs that say “We got robbed at Ciro’s” on the side of the road.
Unfortunately it rained most of the time, so we were stuck indoors with only our mouths to keep us occupied. Luckily, as it turns out, we do rather enjoy talking.
But it wasn’t all bad weather. Once the rain stopped, we were able to go down to Lido on the seaside for a walk and an aperitivo before lunch.
Now I wouldn’t want all of you who couldn’t make the gathering to feel left out, so I’ve compiled the minutes of the inaugural Calabrian Women’s Summit at which we discussed and reached conclusions on many important topics.
Some highlights:
(1) We will be settling our own village so that we can invent our own language that we’ll call Calatalglish.
(2) In that village, there will be only what we call “delusional mirrors,” i.e., those that instantaneously perform the type of airbrushing that magazines do all the time on stars. It’s only fair.
(3) For fear of offending anyone, some words in Italian should simply never be used: scopare and fico are at the top of the list. Some tips on avoiding them: Say you’re cleaning the floor instead of sweeping it, and always refer to figs in plural even when it’s incorrect. We concluded that they’ll forgive you faster for a mistake in number than for an offensive remark about a vagina.
(4) Leaving someone at the altar can actually be quite a funny story years later, but only if it involves gnocchi.
(5) Not all gay men have good taste in ties.
(6) When you call your own home in America, you shouldn’t call back when the person who answers tells you that he doesn’t know you and to stop calling. It’ll only end in assumptions that a non-native English speaker has broken into your home and is willy nilly answering the phone saying “hel-lo?” And that won’t go anywhere good.
(7) The movie “The Da Vinci Code” would have been greatly enhanced had the nun simply shrugged and responded “Boh” when when Silas asked where the key was.
(8) The southern Italian response of tsking while jerking the head upward should be outlawed. It’s confusing for foreigners when the mouth says no but the head says yes.
(9) Attending southern Italian weddings can make you poor.
(10) Fancy soap dispensers, even if they cost only $8 in Wal-Mart, should be screwed into the sinks if possible, because they are fair game for visitors.
I know, now you’re all wishing you had been there to bat around ideas on these pressing issues, but don’t worry. There will most definitely be another summit soon, and I’ll keep you posted.
The admission price is simply a book or magazine written in English that will likely end up spread across a kitchen table and discussed in great length.
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[tags]calabria, girlfriends, friendship, first meetings, life in calabria, learning italian, learning a language, bed & breakfasts in italy, bed & breakfasts in calabria[/tags]
A Blog By Any Other Name…
I’ve gotten quite a few questions about the origin of the name of my blog lately. Maybe others are also wondering where it came from and are just too shy to ask. Or, most likely, you haven’t given it any thought at all and couldn’t care less about my creative process.
No matter. You’re all getting an answer right now. And we’re going back to when I first moved to Italy in 2003.
I’m a journal-keeper by nature, and so it was only logical that I’d be recording my experience of making a new life in my family’s old village. Remember this was around the time of Under the Tuscan Sun, and I was thinking about at some point organizing my experiences and observations into something larger, which for the sake of argument, we’ll call a book.
So I brainstormed some names for chapters and came up with “Mozzarella Dreams,” (this because I had recently had nightmares on two separate occasions after eating mozzarella in the evening; the chapter would be about food habits); “Questi Uomini” (“these men”; chapter to discuss the culture of machismo); “The Young Girl and the Sea” (talking about my aversion to the beach despite living so close to it); and (I bet you saw this coming) “Bleeding Espresso” (about the coffee-drinking habits around here, including the no cappuccino other than first thing in the morning “rule”).
But that still doesn’t really explain where I got the phrase from, so stay with me here.
“Bleeding Espresso” first came to mind because when I was in college, there was a rather flamboyant football player who was always good for an entertaining quote. One day he let loose with: “I believe if you’d cut me, I’d bleed Duke blue.”
It immediately became a catch phrase among my friends and me because it was so over the top and hilarious. I mean, I like my alma mater and all, but that’s a little excessive. Surprisingly, it’s not as out there as I thought because when I just did a quick Google search for the phrase “bleed Duke blue,” I got 5 pages of results. And none of them were said by this particular athlete.
In any event, that phrase has always been somewhere near the surface of my consciousness, so when it came time to chapter name, I wanted something along the lines of espresso, cappuccino, and the like. I thought about just how much coffee people drink here, and that probably even I at this point would bleed espresso if I were cut.
So I scribbled “Bleeding Espresso” on the inside of a manila folder where I kept random tidbits that I wrote, brochures from travels, etc., and there it sat for a few years.
And then one fateful December night, I got the inspiration to blog, but I drew a complete blank on a name. I thought and thought for a couple days until it occurred to me to go back to the beginning of my Italian travels quite literally.
I went to the folder, and Bleeding Espresso was born. The tag line below it came a few moments later, and my name “sognatrice” (“dreamer”) came from the “Mozzarella Dreams” phrase.
So now you know.
sharing a wonderful discovery
In honor of the Ultimate Blog Party, I’m going to direct you to one of my newest favorite blogs, The Life of Riley.
Now before you mistake “Riley” for one Mr. Bill O’Reilly (and me for a right-winger), let me show you a picture of the blog’s author:
Meet Olive Riley, a 107-year-old Aussie who has been graciously sharing her life and memories with the blogosphere since mid-February. Her friend does the typing for her “blob” as she has called it, and what comes out is nothing short of brilliant.
This is the beginning of Olive’s first post:
Good Morning everyone. My name is Olive Riley. I live in Australia near Sydney. I was born in Broken Hill on Oct. 20th 1899. Broken Hill is a mining town, far away in the centre of Australia. My Friend, Mike, has arranged this blog for me. He is doing the typing and I am telling the stories. He thinks it’s a good idea to tell what’s going on. He already made a film about me a few years back and people liked that, so they might like this blog too, he says. We’ll see.
What we’re seeing is that Mike was right. By its Third Post, The Life of Riley had amassed over 190,000 visits from all over the world.
With photos and stories from the last 100 years and topics ranging from Olive’s sipping shandy on a trip to Brisbane to see her son to her campaigning for a local “lettuces”-grower being kicked off his land to how she ended up with the same set of teeth since 1930, how could we do anything but read, read, and read (and want!) some more?
Olive’s blog is beautiful and inspiring, and if you don’ t contract a severe case of warm fuzzies from seeing how much she enjoys life, well, I doubt you’re human. It would be wonderful if more of our elders follow Olive’s lead and record their thoughts on this international forum; too much oral history has already been lost.
And especially during a time of war, we could all use a course in real human history.
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[tags]olive riley, world’s oldest blogger[/tags]
you’re invited to the ultimate blog party!
It’s finally here, the beginning of the Ultimate Blog Party, and everyone’s invited!
Now get thee to 5 Minutes for Mom to find out how you can show off your moves, mingle with other bloggers, discover new online friends, and even win prizes!
So, part of the deal is that I’m supposed to introduce myself to all the fellow party-cipants (hah!). As you can see over there on my “about me” section, I’m an American expat writer living in southern Italy. Bor-ing, I know. We expat bloggers are a dime a dozzina these days.
But there are also 100 things, another 100 things, and a “me, not me” photo meme to learn more about me too–those could keep you busy for a while.
Nothing interesting there either?
Hmm…well, just the other day, I was tagged by lovely Loulou (my first tag!) to list 5 Things No One Knows About Me. One might think that since I have previously written 200 things, posted a bunch of pictures, *and* done a 6 Weird Things About Me meme, I’d have nothing left to share.
Well, to paraphrase Bugs Bunny, “One don’t know me very well, do he?”
1. I love corn on the cob (or as my niece and nephew call it “corn on the dog”), but I didn’t eat it for about 15 years from the ages of 10 to 25 or so. Why? Because when I was 10, my mom and I were eating at Long John Silver’s. Come on, you know you loved that batter-dipped stuff too.
Anyway, I had a loose tooth and wasn’t really into eating anything, but particularly those little butter-smothered corn on the cobs. But my mom made me. And my tooth came out right in between two kernels on the cob. *Big* but (I believe) completely understandable aversion to corn on the cob ensued.
2. I have never had anything professionally waxed–eyebrows, bikini line, car. Nothing. Well, paper, but that doesn’t count, because it already comes that way. What about candles? Crayons? OK, you get my point.
3. I was placed on a diet by overanxious doctors when I was about 9 months old. I wasn’t allowed milk or formula, only juice. I’m convinced this is why I’m short, have weak teeth, and lifelong weight issues. And probably why I never wanted to be a doctor.
4. Speaking of weight issues, I don’t own a scale and have no intention of ever owning one. Even though I’ve recently lost weight, and I’d love to know how much, I’ll just wait until I go to the doctor. I can’t imagine that it would be a good thing to know my weight down to the kilo every day, which is exactly what I would do if I had a scale. I’m like that, and I know it, so it’s best to avoid the whole temptation.
5. Until I was about 16 years old, I was convinced that it was the LAW that one could not drink soda before noon. This was my mom’s rule, and the funny thing is that my mom is the polar opposite of a disciplinarian–this may have been her only rule come to think of it. Anyway, I really took it to heart, and to this day obey the LAW OF NO SODA BEFORE NOON.
So, regular and new readers alike, I hope you’ll stick around, let me know you’ve stopped by, and then party on back to The Ultimate Blog Party for some more fun!
Blog party on!
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[tags]ultimate blog party[/tags]
Michelle Kaminsky is an American attorney-turned-freelance writer who lived in her family's ancestral village in Calabria, Italy for 15 years. This blog is now archived.
Calabria Guidebook
Recipes
