News from the World

Woah, another fortnight ebbed away. I won't deal with the third week, when I had a not-so-unusual tonsillitis -.- and the resulting weekend, which was also damn rainy and humid. Although the fourth week is going much better, moisture hasn't left the area - and it'll never do it until the season ending - and showed itself yesterday with an unpredictable shower. Of course, rain started in the middle of my journey home for the lunch break, as I was riding my Honda, resulting in a soaking Alfred who had to take a warm shower to avoid wasting one week of antibiotics.

The cool thing is that weather changes quickly, so that rain stopped quite early in the afternoon spurring me to go out for some shopping. Also, I had some more free time 'cause my working days are very short recently - not much stuff to do this week, I'm waiting for some items I ordered for the warehouse. Therefore I could go to the Galleria, a local shopping mall, to buy a pair of jeans at Banana Republic for some 85 $. The same amount I spent at Sports Authority to buy a pair of training shorts, a t-shirt and a sports bag (all Nike's). So I fired out some bucks out of my wallet, but I should be still below my monthly budget (I am entitled to a 500-dollar reimbursement). However, I plan to subscribe to a gym to get back in shape, so every argumentation miserably fails in front of the shopping spree.

Tomorrow it's time to go for a daily trip, destination Key West. The Key Islands are an archipelago coming in form of an arc-shaped ramification. Everything is linear and connected via a series of bridges jumping from one island to another, leading west to Key...West. This is the southernmost point of the United States. They told me there are weird signs such as "the southernmost trash bin of the US" and so on placed on all things. Americans...

Things at Navalimpianti USA are going on quite well. Apart from my assignment on inventory control, I started challenging my colleagues in the office and some Hispanic warehouse-guys at tabletennis (ping pong). I became an aficionado when my best friend was constantly beating me in London last summer. Then I "took lessons" from a Polish classmate in Rotterdam, a guy who used to play at some level, and we also subscribed for a tournament - where I got a sound thrashing by the rapid Asian players. Since then I took any occasion to practice and play. Now things in the warehouse got serious: we're playing for dinners.

Outside the company things seem to be also fine. To be honest you wouldn't spot as much "crisis" as they say. Florida was one of the hardest-hit States in the '29 Crisis (let's assume that it began here), but in this one it plays quite normally. California, on the contrary, is on the verge of a financial crisis, with Schwarzy fighting an over-50% deficit. Texas, instead, is faring much better and seems to be the next leading State of the Federation.

Oh, enjoy a shot from Fort Lauderdale Beach ;)


(Game: spot a quotation from the rock band The Queen in this post)

Fortnight n. 1

First two weeks have gone so far. I cannot feel whether it was yesterday or one month ago that I left Italy. Now I'm getting used to life in the United States, where I have the pleasure to reckon the presence of loads of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. If you have to try some real good stuff in your life, try Ben & Jerry's "Vermont's finest ice cream", with fancy product names such as Chunky Monkey, Cooke Dough, Strawberry Cheesecake and my favourite Chocolate Fudge Brownie. Urban legends want that the incredible flavour comes from the milk produced by the company's "Happy Cows".

The past week's other interesting things sum up to: my internship, my moped, the beach, the...hooters. My current job (for other 8 weeks) is at the US subsidiary of an Italian company that offers spare parts and maintenance for ships (cargos, cruise ships, yachts). So I landed in an office where doors are topped with writings like "When all else fails, try doing what the captain suggested", "Life Boats: Children and women first", "Surfin' USA". However the sea is distant at least 3 miles. Palm trees are not missing anyway. Anyway, I'm taking care of reorganizing the inventory, which translates into spending half-day in a freakin' hot messy warehouse and the rest in a damn cold air-conditioned office. I've been entitled to use a company-owned apartment and a scooter, a Honda Metropolitan 2008 that I now ride quite safely.

The apartment is quite large, every guest has an own room with a double bed, plus a common space with kitchen and living room. The house is quite recent and is organized on three levels. I still have to understand some things, for instance the way toilets flush, which caused some little clogging problems - courageously solved by using a specially-made toilet plunger to unclog it. Guys, this product is gold, write that down!

Last Sunday, and surely also this weekend, was beach-time. Beaches in this part of the US are quite curious: 60% of guys are lookalikes of Big Gym, while more or less the same percentage of women carry heavy fake breasts. This people's concern for appearance is very...concerning. Women are particularly subject to this: now, my sight usually concentrates on boobs (lol), but it seems that also quite a lot of noses (and booties, they say) undergo a nip'n'tuck process. You cannot become a waitress or serve in a bar if you don't have fake breasts, dear ladies. But this is a strange country. Breasts were in origin for baby's milk. Here it's not fashionable anymore to feed babies with own milk...well, welcome to America!

Intro

Things always happen so fast. The few times they happen slowly, however, you just don't consider them. I came back from 4 months in Rotterdam one month and half ago, and now I'm in Florida. In the middle there's been a painful haze in which any possible short-term life goal seemed unreachable. But surprises never come to an end - eventually I got an internship and swiftly packed again for a two-month American experience.

I'm not going to tell everything at once: there will be a short dose of stories every now and then. Also because I'm not the most reliable blogger on Earth, hence my narratives accrue and I tend to tell something that happened days or weeks before. But in the end it doesn't really matter. One week ago, after an endless trip, I landed in New York. Quite sleepless, I have to admit - staying overnight in Rome waiting for a flight at 9am was not the happiest moment of my life.

Things turned out to be decent when Giacomo picked me up at Grand Central and welcomed me in his apartment in the East Village. He got an internship too, some stuff in budget & control, downtown Manhattan. So we spent together a couple of days, 3 and 4 of July, when Macy's fireworks lit up NY's sky to celebrate the Independence Day. Notwithstanding the long hours of journey, I recklessly endangered my feet's state by wandering the city for two days. I was deadly tired, but it was worth the effort. We managed to sightsee properly and to take some pictures of the places to be.

On Sunday I left from La Guardia airport in the late morning and embarked on a cattle-cargo airplane bound to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Three hours later, after having picked my luggage and having ascertained the Americans' tendence to pump up the air conditioner, I finally took my first breath of Southern air. The impact was terrific: humidity here is at tropical levels. Imagine Milan on a typical day in August: well, multiply that by two and you get an idea. I promptly understood why the team is called Miami Heat.

The day after I stepped into the premises of the firm I'll be working for during the summer. Cool office - more in terms of temperature than metaphoric - and damn hot warehouse, the place where I'll spend half of the time. But this is enough for a first post. Enjoy a photo of New York.