the soupmenu

The Italians are an interesting breed.  Somehow they have their cake and eat it too.  Back home…most things are organized, on time, and efficient.  When people disturb the system of things…they personally feel pressure from society to get their act straight.  Here in Italy, nothing is on schedule and everything runs on a system of half-chaos.  Yet somehow the Italians are able to force the same pressure on a person to perform properly.  I’ll describe.

You have to bag your own groceries at most places here.  This is terribly inefficient as the lines back quickly when one person doesn’t want to put that new shiny brick of cheese on top of their eggs.  When there’s any kind of slow down, the people in the line jump into death-stare mode.  These line people give a stare that is locked onto your nose that says ‘you are the most ignorant human in the world and I wish I could make you explode in front of me right now so that no one will have to put up with your stupidity again’.  Vicious.  Yet, somehow this does not phase the normal Italian.  Today I watched a woman slowly pull items out of her bag as she realized that one can not purchase 60 euros worth of food for 40 euros.  She did not care how many people wanted to kill her.  She was on her own timetable and nothing would change that.  Yet when I fumble around with putting 10 kilos of food into two bags in a matter of 1 minute, I feel like the line dwellers have already lit their torches and sharpened their pitch forks.

They can’t get away with this.  Either run an efficient where it’s expected for people to be efficient and considerate…or just dive into chaos where nothing matters and everyone can do as they please.

Maybe I just have some left over anxieties from the states, but I just want to buy my zucchini in peace!!

I thought to myself…I should write a blog post….i pull up good old pete3 and look at the last post…..hey…I saw that guy.  Last week I ended up going to a lecture by Jon Maeda  (Blog, Clog)whom I linked to in the last blog post.  The lecture was fun.  The content was disconnected, but he still has a great mindset for how to live life.  Perhaps the most entertaining part of the lecture was once the question and answer portion began…the Italians tried to rip into him.  I know it can be fun for some people to try to prove that they are more intelligent than whoever is speaking….but as a tip….don’t try to do it to a tenured comp sci professor from MIT.  No, he didn’t speak down to the audience…he just didn’t play in their game which led to many disgruntled Italians, and a few highly entertained people like me.

A good portion of Domus has their first project due this Wednesday.  It’s been fun seeing everyone run around like mad figuring out flash, doing renderings, and yelling at each other.  The professors like to keep us on our toes by pushing through revisions at the last second possible.  My group spent yesterday filming a new video. Galan worked editing the video last night, I spent 10 hours today putting sound to it, and Roberto has been working the last few days on our flash presentation.  I think we’ve put together a decent project and I’m anxious to share it when we are done…stay tuned.

Next weekend I’m going to meet up with my brother in Paris. I’m excited.

http://weblogs.media.mit.edu/SIMPLICITY/archives/000410.html

Nice rules of life…..well at least two of them.

{website might be down for a bit in the next few days due to registration issues…….when in doubt….don’t panic}