Don’t Name Your Kid Friday in Italy
December 19, 2007
Interesting article. Take a quick read. I’ll wait.
Ok, for those of you who are looking for the Cliff’s Notes version: an Italian court decided that a couple who named their child Friday had to change the name to something less “ridiculous or shameful.” When the couple refused, the court legally registered their son as Gregory.
Apparently there’s something in the administrative code that prohibits parents from aforementioned “ridiculous or shameful” names (who determines the ridiculousness or shamefulness is beyond me), but as the article rightfully mentions, this obscure law didn’t seem to hinder soccer star Francesco Totti and his wife when they (or rather, their other toddler son) named their newborn daughter Chanel. Same goes for the young Fiat vice-president Jaki Elkann and society wife Lavinia Borromeo when they decided to call their second son “Ocean” (first son is named “Lion”, so go figure).
Anyhoo, little baby Friday was renamed Gregory because, according to the article, “The tribunal said it was protecting the child from being the butt of jokes and added that it believed the name would hinder him from developing ’serene interpersonal relationships.’ ”
I’m just a bit worried about what this might mean in terms of future “serene relationship” possibilities for little Apple (Paltrow) Martin. Maybe she can find companionship with a boy named Sincere, or a girl named Lexus.
Says Friday Germano’s mother: “I am livid about this. A court should not waste its time with things like this when there is so much more to worry about.”
Amen, sorella!
Thoughts?
Topics: Only in Italy | 34 Comments »
Holiday Light Fugliness
December 18, 2007
I can’t take credit for the term, that goes to my dearest pal Finny, who is now into the 2nd year running of a fugly holiday light review on her blog. If you haven’t been following the fun, then I suggest you grab a mug of eggnog and pop on over to ruthlessly ridicule some serious Clark Griswold wannabes. Nothing brings out the holiday spirit like bitterly chastising your neighbors for their over-zealous displays of Christmas cheer!
For your viewing pleasure, I have helpfully arranged some more, complete with, and I quote:
“The deer’s main food source is luminous ground squirrel droppings. And I won’t have this phenomenon of nature go unrecognized at the holidays.” See for yourself:
More Fugliness
Fugly House 2007
Fugly House 2006
I didn’t think that fugly houses existed here in Rome. Maybe namely because we just don’t have a lot of houses and/or yards here in the city, so the potential for fugliness is drastically reduced. But alas, this year my assumption was proven wrong, and on one of the most majestic houses in my neighborhood, no less. The horror.
You see, in a piazza near my house (apartment of course, although we all call them “casa”), there is a grand old building that dates, well, I don’t know exactly when it was built. I do know that it was restored in the 1200s. So that tells you something. It shows up in some watercolor paintings of my neighborhood from the mid-1800s as well. Behold:
Nevermind the arch on the right, what I’m talking about is the grand old villa on the left, as it is in the watercolor painting and as it is today. It was abandoned up until about two or three years ago, when some mega-millionaire came in and did a gorgeous restoration job and rents out apartments inside (not for holiday stays but for residents). Love this building.
So, you can imagine my shock when I was walking home the other night and spotted a circus variety of holiday lights strung haphazardly from various windows in the building. Oh, for the love!
In the 4-second video above (click through to post if you’re in a feed reader), I encourage you to note not only the blinking mess in the upper right corner balcony (which, when not defiled by said lights, looks as dignified and beautiful as something out of Romeo and Juliet), or the “I’m so artistic” Christmas tree design in the middle, but also the blue nonsense below it and the flashing madness on the left side (the front of the building as seen in the previous images).
I know, they’re just trying to spread a little Christmas cheer. Fine, fine. I don’t mean to be the Grinch here. Just doing my part to showcase that the Fugly Holiday House knows no geographical or historical boundaries.
Shall we extend Finny’s Fugly House 2007 to international proportions? Submit your photos for her perusal and sarcastic commentary.
Ho, ho, ho!
Topics: Take a Roman Holiday | 5 Comments »
It’s Looking A Lot Like Christmas in Rome
December 17, 2007
A couple signs you know it’s Natale around these parts…
Panettone, anyone? Pandoro? Christmas cakes lining the sidewalk outside an enoteca… they’ll throw in a bottle of spumante for less than €5 total. Not a bad deal!
I think this is one of the most common Christmas decorations in all of Italy. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that these little Santas trying to get into windows are hung on apartment buildings all over the city, and the country for that matter.
Apparently a cold front is coming in and it could even snow in Lazio. It snowed here in Rome for about 10-20 minutes about four years ago. Seeing the snow come through the oculus in the Pantheon is a pretty rare event!
Topics: Take a Roman Holiday | 9 Comments »
Why Italy is in a Slump
December 14, 2007
Photo I took last night at my local supermarket. Shortage of perishable goods due to this week’s trucker strike.
I know I said I’d get off the ‘problems in Italy’ track for a bit, but I find this very timely so I wanted to share it. Even the New York Times has noticed that we are feeling the pain over here. A reader sent me a link to this article by Ian Fisher, and I found it to be an excellent analysis of the current, sad state of affairs here in Italy as it relates to business, economy, and general quality of life. An excerpt:
“It’s a sadness that what could be isn’t — that we are not a normal country,” said Gianluca Gamboni, 36, a financial adviser in Rome, summing up how he feels about Italy, which he loves, but which drives him insane.
Unlike the older generation, he travels and sees how much better things work elsewhere. He does not spare himself: he still lives with his parents, not because he wants to, but because only now, after seven years at his job, can he afford Rome’s high rents. He is finally considering a place of his own.
The statistics in this article are interesting as well. For example, the article states that “70 percent of Italians between 20 and 30 still live at home.” When I first moved here I thought it was a cultural phenomenon due to some kind of attitude of laziness, but since I’ve lived here I’ve found that it usually has to do with the same problem that Gianluca, quoted above, has—they simply can’t afford to move out, and it’s not only for the exorbitantly high rents in cities like Rome.
Here’s an example. I’ve been told that the average age of a graduate of La Sapienza University law school is 30 years old. The age a person graduates depends a lot on them, how they’ve stayed “on track”, since it’s totally up to each individual student to take the requisite number of exams to pass each subject required for the degree. They take the exams when they personally feel ready and when the exams are offered, and the profs (at least in the law school) are notorious for being totally unpredictable and subjective in how they grade the exams, all of which are oral interviews usually based on snippets of facts from books assigned on the course.
After graduation, he or she must then serve a two-year apprenticeship with a laywer which is usually unpaid and during which time they aren’t able to start their own law practice or build up their own client base. The Italian education system is so incredibly theory-based that apparently this is supposed to compensate for the fact that when Italian law students graduate, they often have never stepped into a courtroom before and would have no idea what to do in terms of the daily errands and tasks a lawyer might need to complete inside the courtroom’s various offices. Unfortunately, the apprenticeship is usually little more than a glorified secretarial/gofer position and although the law graduates are required to attend a certain number of hearings over a two-year period in order to qualify to take the bar exam, often the lawyers they apprentice with take advantage of the free labor and don’t cultivate a mentor/mentee relationship.
The bar exam is held only once a year and consists of a written and oral exam, spread months apart and graded independently (one must first pass the written to be later admitted to the oral). Both parts of the exam are graded/judged by commissions, usually with an extremely low passage rate across the board, which can further delay entry into the career field by a year or two.
Once a law graduate finally has a license to practice, he or she then must spend a few years finding clients and building up their own business, since it’s highly uncommon to enter a law firm as very few big firms really exist. Given the long lag time of the Italian justice system, the first years of work probably won’t bring any worthwhile dividends until the 3rd or 4th year. Those who do go to work for a lawyer with a large practice report being hideously underpaid (something around the equivalent of $5 an hour in some cases), with no real chance for advancement, unless they decide to open their own practice, at which point they’d have to start from square one because they wouldn’t be able to take clients with them, since those are clients of the lawyer whose firm they worked for. With over 16,000 lawyers in Rome, competition is fierce, and when the economy is bad, there is less work to go around.
When all is said and done, six, seven, or more years have easily passed since graduation and one can easily be well into their 30s with still little hope for financial independence or security. This is just one example of the extended adolescence that the “system” seems to promote.
I was surprised that the article didn’t touch too much on “raccommandazioni” or the “who you know” factor that is truly all-important (at least here in Rome), especially in terms of getting a job. People who don’t want to go through the work and struggle of setting up a freelance practice are often lured into the idea of getting “sistemati” (squared away?) in a government job, where they feel the security of guaranteed pay and no possibility of being fired. The problem is that most of these jobs go to people with connections, even though technically most of the positions are assigned through public exams, the exams are often just a thin veil for hiring the “raccommandati.” Until you can find someone who can get you an “in”, you may be on a fruitless job search. The job market here, at least for public sector jobs, is highly inflexible and very immobile.
In the video that accompanies the article, Italian pop-culture author and humorist Beppe Severgnini says that in order for change to happen, each Italian needs to start taking personal responsibility for his behavior, specifically citing “pay your taxes” or “don’t ask for favors when you’re looking for a job.” (It’s probably easy for him to say this: Severgnini comes from a wealthy notary family—notaries are the highest-paid professionals in Italy, often earning six or seven figure annual salaries—and Severgnini himself is no doubt quite well-off as well, given his job writing a popular newspaper column and the enormous success of his various humor books.) Granted, I’m not an Italian but a foreign observer; however, I find his observations to be a bit simplistic and idealistic. In my chats with Italians, I’ve been told that if they paid all the taxes levied on them, they wouldn’t have enough money to live off of. Many freelance professionals and business owners report less income in order to avoid increasing their income taxes, which can hover around 60-65%. I’ve heard many Italians say they would be more than willing to be 100% honest if they felt that the system supported them and that they were getting some value for the high level of taxes they were paying. But other Italians just shrug and say that taking advantage of the system is part of the Italian mentality.
Personally, rather than espousing a blanket statement like “play nice” such as Severgnini seems to be saying, I would tend to side with the Italian who feels betrayed by an incompentent and corrupt government and therefore tries to take whatever small advantages he can from the system. Severgnini seems to be saying that Italians like to take the easy road of blaming the government for their problems, but truly, when the government sets a blatantly corrupt and inefficient example for the entire country, using the system to their personal advantage while neglecting the day-to-day management of the business at hand and neglecting to solve the real problems that exist… it’s quite hypocritical to expect citizens to be honest just for the sake of being honest.
Topics: Only in Italy, Soak Up Italian Culture | 18 Comments »
