Scribbles

I love Italy, but there are things I, as a foreigner, fail to understand. The system “Pagare prima alla cassa” – “Pay first at the cashier” is one of them.

It is common when taking gas, you first have to go to the cashier and “deposit” money before allowing to fill your tank. Like I would know exactly how much I need to fill up?!
So I park the car next to the pump, lock the car, walk over to the cashier, queue up, deposit 50 Euro, walk back to the car, put in as much as I can, walk back to the cashier, and claim the difference. And when I find out I deposited too little to fill the tank, I leave the gas station unfulfilled. As if I, and not my tank, were half empty.
I will spare you the description how it works if you pay with credit card. And how you can claim the difference back.

Nowhere else in Europe I encountered this system.

But it is not only at gas stations you pay first. When going to a coffee bar, for my morning shot, I have to queue up at the cashier first, order what I want, pay and I get a ticket. Then I queue up at the bar, with my ticket in my hand – which I figured out to be the standard sign meaning “I am waiting to be served”. When it is my turn, I put the ticket on the counter, the barman tears it half way and puts it back on the counter. When the coffee is served, only then the ticket is taken away.

I understand the rationale but can not understand the logic as more often than not, they forget to ask for the ticket. Or don’t tear up the ticket. So I wonder how effective the system really is.

And obviously, I confuse the hell out of them, as my regular shot is a ‘Doppio Latte’, a “double Latte”, which most cashiers register on the ticket as two Latte’s, which the barman translates into.. two Latte’s. So I have to make sure I snatch the barman’s attention during the two seconds he grabs my ticket, deciphers the order, tears it up and turns around to prepare the coffee, to make sure he heard my “Doppio Latte, per favore”…

There are many things I don’t understand about Italy. Probably that is why I love it here…

More on The Road about Living in Italy

You might think I am a moralizing doomsday prophet, but I can not help but thinking how greed linked most events impacting the world in the past years.

Was the food crisis last year not merely the hiking of food commodity prices by creating an artificial unbalance between supply and demand through a hijacking of the food futures market and diverting more and more crops to biofuel production? (remember this post)

Is the current global economic crisis not triggered by the inflation of a financial bubble, a consciously constructed artificial pyramid scheme, based on unhealthy mortgage loans. Loans based on zero collateral. And loans based on these loans, induced into the investment market like hormones in a pig. (remember this post)

Talking about pigs. And greed. Swine flu. An interesting reading by Jane on the Trackernews Blog:

Confined Animal Feeding Operations, a.k.a CAFOs, a.k.a factory farms have revolutionized agriculture over the past 20 years. This is agriculture on steroids. Sometimes literally. Poultry, cattle and pigs are raised in such ferocious, relentless quantity, the animals require a battery of drugs and chemicals simply to live long enough to be slaughtered. The waste streams and accompanying stench are a nightmare for anyone and anything down wind or down stream. Stats defy comprehension.
According to a 2006 Rolling Stone’s Jeff Tietz’ tour de force expose on hog CAFO king, Smithfield Farms (of which Granjas Caroll, the CAFO in Vera Cruz, is a subsidiary):

“Hogs produce three times more excrement than human beings do. The 500,000 pigs at a single Smithfield subsidiary in Utah generate more fecal matter each year than the 1.5 million inhabitants of Manhattan.” (..)

“The immobility, poisonous air and terror of confinement badly damage the pigs’ immune systems. They become susceptible to infection, and in such dense quarters microbes or parasites or fungi, once established in one pig, will rush spritelike through the whole population. Accordingly, factory pigs are infused with a huge range of antibiotics and vaccines, and are doused with insecticides. Without these compounds — oxytetracycline, draxxin, ceftiofur, tiamulin — diseases would likely kill them. Thus factory-farm pigs remain in a state of dying until they’re slaughtered. When a pig nearly ready to be slaughtered grows ill, workers sometimes shoot it up with as many drugs as necessary to get it to the slaughterhouse under its own power. As long as the pig remains ambulatory, it can be legally killed and sold as meat.”

“Industrial pig waste also contains a host of other toxic substances: ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, cyanide, phosphorous, nitrates and heavy metals. In addition, the waste nurses more than 100 microbial pathogens that can cause illness in humans, including salmonella, cryptosporidium, streptocolli and girardia. Each gram of hog shit can contain as much as 100 million fecal coliform bacteria.” (Full)

Surprised something bad came out of all of that, are we?

Interesting note of interest: in the past three days, my news clip about the Avian Flu virus which was incidentally shipped around the world, got more hits than ever before.

More on The Road about Swineflu

Picture courtesy Parris Whittingham

Bad news all around in the aid world. It is difficult, as an aidworker, to remain positive these days, and to see a light at the end of the tunnel of poverty.

Oxfam, one of the leading UK aid organisations, released “The Right to Survive”, in which they estimate almost 250 million people around the world to be affected by climate-related disasters in a typical year. They project that by 2015 this number could grow by 50% to an average of more than 375 million people.
To cope with this increase, the world needs to increase its humanitarian aid spending from 2006 levels of $14.2 billion to at least $25 billion a year. (Full)

According to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) the world is already spending a whopping amount of money on development and aid:
US$136.2 billion (2003)
US$175.4 billion (2004)
US$319.8 billion (2005)
US$323.5 billion (2006)
US$470.4 billion (2007)

These figures (which include “humanitarian aid” to which Oxfam refers) combine government aid (so-called “ODA”), private donations and aid-motivated economic assistance (Source).

I have always compared the “aid world” to the “commercial world”. In the latter you have a supply and demand mechanism that comes to a certain level of economical balance, in the “aid world” you have a similar balance between “a need for help” and “a supply of assistance”. While this balance always ended up with a deficit, it seems the world’s “need for aid” is rapidly overwhelming the world’s “capacity to give” even more.

In the past year, the need for assistance increased to unprecedented levels because of the rocketing food prices which affected the poorest the most, the effects of global warming – as Oxfam stressed in its report, – and now the faulting world economy.

I do not believe, despite the best fundraising efforts, the world’s “capacity to give” can increase to meet the demand. The only thing we can do, and must do, is to ensure the aid funds are spent with better targets, with a higher accountability and short term aid measures MUST be combined with longer term development.

If not, we will continue providing plasters on wooden legs. As clearly we have been doing in the past decennia.

Pictures courtesy Logan Abassi (MINUSTAH)

After the Abruzzo earthquake Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi was quoted saying the victims living in tent cities should think of themselves as being on a camping holiday. He hit the news again a day ago by telling a female doctor “I wouldn’t mind being resuscitated by you”.

The press took it badly, but Dr Carrieri from Milan took up the Prime Minister’s defence, saying he had paid her a “gallant” compliment to “take the drama out of the situation”. (Full)

Which makes me think of men, women and Italy… After living in Italy for two years, I still find it remarkable how women are given remarks by Italian men. Women who lived in Italy for a while might easily see them as compliments, but foreigners would surely be surprised if not insulted:
Not only is staring almost an art, but it is also usual to be greeted in a shop with a “Ciao Bella!” (“Hi beautiful”) and to get a “Arrivederci, cara” (“Bye, sweet”).

It is usual to be talked to when sitting (as a woman) alone at a table in a restaurant or bar. Getting whistled at is a daily occurrence, remarks about the way a woman looks or dresses are common. Most women don’t react, or (pretend to) see it as a compliment. Only they can tell if deep down inside they do. But if you, as a female tourist, visit Italy, don’t be surprised…

More on The Road about Living in Italy