Same
place, nothing going on... well, nothing spectacular, at least. Just
to make a post I started collecting short thoughts...
Weather
Report
I
was told here that wearing only a shirt on the New Year's Eve is not
unusual, but are more common the years when you have to put a light
jacket on, too. Unless I'm here. Read it on the newspaper, it was the
coldest (and wettest) winter in the last 25 years. Snow all over
Sicily, here luckily just for a few hours. And temperatures below
zero only for 3 or 4 days. In mid February... 20 C with noon peaks
over 25. But during night even today, mid March, we have one digit
temperatures. To make it worse the sunshine hits the front of this
house around 10AM - great for summer, but at the moment is driving me
crazy. When I wake up I have to put on winter clothes and start the
fire in the stove.and then I take an hour or more for my morning
coffees before I venture out. Around 9AM the air is breathable and I
can chop some wood for warming up. Then the peeling starts until
before lunch I'm only in my Tshirt. Soon after lunch the process is
reversed and it ends with the fire for a cozy evening. This was just
theory - most of the days I'm too lazy or too busy to follow the
proper "dress code" and I'm catching a cold every third
day. Luckily Giancarlo provides me with ginger as I wish so I can
heal me in a single night.
The
Evangelion Messiah
That
would be me, of course.In the last four months I spent here I wasn't
really all alone all the time and I'm not talking about the drinking
excesses with Giancarlo and his friends. There were two couples of
returning wwoofers who came back for a short visit. Both couples were
curious as to what do I do in the evenings here, all alone. "Well,
mostly I drink and when I don't I watch my animated Japanese series."
Luckily in Italy the otaku culture is still quite popular and I'm not
looked at as some brainless freak. And then comes, always, The
Question: Which is my favorite anime? And The Answer, always, is: "
It is, was and will be Evangelion!" And then we watched it
together. Twice in 4 months to add to al least 7 times before...
well, I'm buying a beer to everyone who watched EVA more times than I
did!
Rue
Rue
is growing wild on the property. When I found some bushes I asked
Giancarlo why he's not putting in the grappa. He looked at me as if
something was wrong with my brain. But his friend Enzo was more
interested in such a "crazy experiment". So I did it and
hid the bottle for a month. Now Giancarlo is a grappa drinker (he was
never keen on it before) and Enzo regards me as his best buddy.
Thinking of it, I'll have soon to go to pick some fresh rue, the old
is washed white with all the refills done...
Lemons
Giancarlo
gave me an amazing gift when I told him that I'm flat broke. He gave
me all his lemons - they were anyway fated to rot. I had to pick them
and he took them to a local dealer. A bit more then 500 kilos at 30
cents per kilo. I'm not rich, but I sure am grateful.
Booze
Not
a single beer since the beginning of November.
Smoking
I
have to save money so I smoke mostly joints. Tobacco costs. I got a
bag full of weed for free.
Language
It's
not that difficult to understand Sicilian unless they swallow half of
the word. A strong Spanish influence, like muliera
for
moglie
or travaglio
for
lavoro.
As for joke I found some similarities with Istrian because here
they've never heard of red wine - they only make black wine. And
white, too, similar to malvasia,
14%, great to mix with water. The folks I met all speak proper
Italian with me, but between them they easily slip into dialect and
mostly I can follow them. Once they asked me if I could understand
what were they talking of. Yes, almost 80% of the words and basically
all of the meaning of the conversation. "You're amazing,"
was Enzo quick on the comment, "I don't understand half of what
I'm saying..."
