Saturday, October 30, 2010

Corporate Convention Disaster, Take 2

Naturally, I did not have the foresight to book a taxi the night before, so they were all busy. I was handed a map, and I set off on foot to the convention center. A 30-minute brisk walk in heels at 7:30am is not my type of exercise, and I was in a sour mood upon arrival. I became even sourer when I finally found Catarina. She was sitting at a large table in the front of a giant auditorium, where the day’s presentations and ceremonies were to be given.
“Oh. You’re here,” she said. “Um. Let’s see if we can’t find you a chair…”
I was placed awkwardly at a table full of “Ruby Directors”, all Italians, on the floor of the auditorium. All around me were bleacher seats filling up with people; I was told that there were to be about 2,000 people in attendance. The Americans filtered in sleepily, gave me a wave, and the ceremony began. What pomp! What circumstance! Fog machines roared. Bad, inappropriate pop music of the Katy Perry variety blared, confetti dropped and lights strobed. Thankfully, professional translators, people who were actually trained to do these sorts of things, had been hired, piping their perfectly timed English into the heads of the Americans via headsets. I just sat at my table and ate cookies and listened to the drivel coming from the people on stage for 4 hours, until the merciful lunch break. I doodled, I wrote, I observed the crowd. Unbelievably boring, and this was to go on until midnight!
Lunch was awesome, though. The Americans were herded into a tiny room with cloth-covered tables and a catered meal. Catarina snipped at me that I was to wait until everyone was seated before taking my place at a table, so as not to interfere with the hugely important business deals that were sure to take place during this hour of “VIP” buddy-buddiness. Had my plate in hand, and just as I was about to sit at a lone chair against the back wall, Stephen Hammons, CEO, called across the room.
“Eleanor, would you like to join us?”
I smiled modestly and tried not to stick my tongue out at Catarina, who had been poised to take this seat herself, her spackled beam cracking across her face. I caught a moment of utter disappointment and daggers in her eyes, but she regained herself and squeeled, “oh, yes! The girl can sit here! Good, good.”
Total B.
Ceremonies continued for the rest of the evening. I was forced to sit and listen, and do no translating, even for tiny conversations, what so ever, as there was no time to talk. About 9pm, just as I was convinced that I was in the clear, I was waved over to Catarina’s table. She informed me that the translators needed to be on their way, and so I would be given the great honor of translating for the last 2 hours of the meeting. I was the only hope.
My stomach dropped. This was not a group of ten Americans who needed help understanding the weekend’s itinerary. There were close to 200 people, I had heard earlier, who were using the translating headsets- people from Spain, Germany, France, Russia, and the Netherlands, who did not speak Italian.
I was presented with two immediate options: I could tell Catarina no, absolutely not. I am so sorry, dear Catarina, but this is just way out of my league. Or, I could just buck up and give it a try. I thought about what FL would have advised me to do, I knew exactly what he would say: To just do my best. If I didn’t understand, or if I got lost or confused, if there was something I couldn’t translate, then so be it. I was not a professional translator, and therefore I should not beat myself up about not being able to perform like one. I should just do my best, and when it was over, it would be over.
So I did it. Psyched myself up before hand by running over my theme song, Miley Cyrus’ ‘Party in the USA’, flapping my hands and wagging my hips to the music in my head:
My tummie’s turnin’ and I’m feelin’ kinda homesick
Too much pressure and I’m nervous…
So I put my hands up, they’re playin’ my song
The butterflies fly away
(Noddin’ my head like yea, movin’ my hips like yea)
So I put my hands up, they’re playin’ my song
I KNOW I’M GONNA BE OK
Yea, it’s a party in the [ITA]

The ceremony commenced. I was situated back behind the giant stage, so that I could peer around the corner under cover of a potted Cyprus tree. The boxes of headsets had been emptied, meaning that there were hundreds of people in the auditorium poised to hear me explain to them, enthusiastically and fluently, the pompous, unbelievably self-important closing speeches of all the important LiquiLife Italians.

As Catarina, who was to give her speech first, began, I had the horrible realization that hearing these people speak while sitting in the front row, directly in front of the speakers, and hearing them speak while back behind the stage- the sound muffled by curtains, typical back-stage chaos, and impromptu potted plants- were two entirely different ballgames. If I couldn’t see their lips move, and observe their so often explanatory hand gestures, it was incredibly difficult to comprehend without giving it my complete attention. Setting my complete attention to listening and comprehending, obviously, made translating and speaking pretty much impossible. It became clear that this was going to be a disaster.

I did what I could, I can promise you that. When I understood well enough to repeat a bit with the proper gusto I did; but then, if the rest of the speech ran on and I lost the train of thought, I would just make stuff up. I imagined what each of the people were talking about- creepy bald man with his barely post-pubescent daughter on display, briar-patch-haired crazy woman still inexplicably clutching her Gucci bag, Catarina and her complete asshole of a husband (who had not once looked me in the eye all weekend). All of these people, I could tell well enough, were up on stage talking about themselves! Crying and wailing about their success in the company, their dreams being achieved, and the vacations they take with the money they earn as Ruby (and Double Ruby!) members of LiquiLife. Catarina even had a 10minute slide show with nothing but pictures of her! She said her son made it for her, and pulled the poor, pimple-faced 14-year old boy on stage to embrace her, but I was not fooled. Those pictures were carefully photo-shopped, especially the ones of her in a bikini.

So I made up the ridiculous, new-money, capitalist nonsense that was pouring out of their mouths, and I am sure I could not have been that far off base. When my mind went blank, either from honest confusion or from shock at the utter embarrassments that they were subjecting their international audience to, I clicked the microphone on mute, or rubbed it on my shirt, creating the illusion of static interference. I could see through the branches of my Cyprus tree that the Americans were either fooled or did not care. Some, I am sure, had their headsets switched off, anyway. It was almost midnight! What nonsense to have to listen to. Others tapped their ears and made confused faces.

“Is yours working? I’m not hearing anything”, I could see them mouth.

My pal Scott had a conspiratorial grin on his face, and I knew he was on to me.

When the whole ordeal was over- when the fireworks had erupted over the stage, and the huge nets of balloons and confetti were opened and store-bought “party!” came raining down in sparkly wisps- I let out a huge sigh of relief. Catarina came up to me, suddenly thrilled to see me.

“So easy, right! Did you have fun?”

Gave her two thumbs up, and followed the crowd into the reception hall, where I was pounded jovially on the back by the Americans, who were quick to not hurt my feelings or shatter my hard work with the embarrassing reality that the microphones had been malfunctioning.

“Great job,” they howled, and shook my hand. I could detect a note of sarcasm when congratulated by Scott, but only slight- I think he genuinely meant it, regardless of whether he was talking about my flawless translating, or the fact that I so smoothly got out of an absurd situation which I was incapable of performing, and my amazing capabilities at creating monologues and electronic feedback in a pinch. I wondered how many people in how many jobs get by on just that?

There was cake, and champagne, but I was almost dead. Caught a ride back to my hotel (at this point clear on the fact that my transportation was up to me) and called FL, recounting my whole evening. He was so proud of me, told me I was a genius and “full of brave” and that he never had any doubt that I could pull it off, even if it was 80% BS.

The Americans left the next day around 11; we were on hugging terms by the good-bye point. I had arrived at the convention center suitcase in hand, so that I could head directly to the bus stop when the time came. I had a wedding to get to in Friuli, and a boy with a brand new haircut and a freshly pressed suit jacket waiting to pick me up from the train station.

When my bus showed, and I was boarded and had my head phones on for the 3 hour journey back to Friuli (2 busses, 2 trains), I felt like the past 48 hours had been a dream. They had flown by, hardly even happened; I was none the worse for wear and 500 euro richer and had made the important realization that even scary corporate CEO’s are just regular people, really. What I did take away for sure from all of it was that I was right where I was supposed to be. I didn’t belong at a fancy corporate dinner or on stage claiming my brand new golf clubs gifted to me for making some company lots of money. I didn’t belong in some bizarre, high tension job filled with words like “marketing” and “excess” and metaphors of roots and capitalism. I didn’t care how many Gucci purses they would give me, I never wanted to be on the floor of some auditorium with a briar patch on my head, barking orders at interns or trying to talk people into buying gross Omega-3 gel packets with the stench of salmon poorly masked by the flavor of “orange creamsicle”. The weekend was fine, but when Catarina, inevitably, asks me to give the company some thought, I know I’ll tell her no.

Where I was supposed to be then, on that ride home from all that weirdness, was right there: on a dirty bus, heading toward a smelly train, that would take me back to my beloved Friuli, where I was awaited by a gorgeous blue-eyed boy who wears cowboy boots to weddings, to eat another 7-course meal (this time all red meat!) and drink a little wine and dance with some of the kindest, oddest “crotch of the Adriatic” people that exist. I changed into my dress in the train station bathroom, as is par for the course, and set my exhausted-ness aside for a couple of hours in order to just have fun.

Unfortunately, I had to cut out before the cake was cut: there was more work ahead for the night. But that, naturally, is a whole ‘nother story…

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

part one of who knows how many

I fly out for Sicily tomorrow morning. There was so much to write about this weekend, and so much to do this week when I was home, that I haven’t had time to write it all down. Here’s part one, and when I can finish, I will.

*Names, of both people and corporations, have been changed

Am both traumatized and amused, an absolute failure and a huge success. My life choices up to this point have been vindicated, and have come back to slap me in the face. I reckon the nutshell here is that I have made my bed, and now I am lying in it; Or, in an effort to keep things interesting, bouncing on it.

To clear this up right now, all that the woman who had asked me to come to this (we’ll call her Catarina) had said, in regard to the entire weekend, was this:
“Oh, it’ll be fuuuuuuun! We’ll have a nice dinner, and we’ll stay at a hotel. You just come and help with the Americans; they’ll be so happy to meet you, and you can help with our conversations!”

Seemed like an easy gig. I left around 1:30pm Friday afternoon. A quick lunch, and FL took me to the train station and kissed me goodbye. I hung out the window of the train long enough to see FL reemerge on the other side of the tracks and disappear into the station, long enough to see the town of Cormons lose itself to the trees and surrounding hills, long enough to watch even Mt.Quarin get swallowed up by larger, darker mountains. It was the strangest sensation: even after weeks of walking around chomping at the bit to get out, I would have given anything to stay in Cormons that day. The sky was crisp, and the air so clear that we could actually see the Dolomites, silver and sharp as glass, peak up over the molehill that is Mt. Quarin. There were vineyards to be walked and townspeople to be watched and the oddly inexhaustible excitement of a Friday night at Porchis ahead. Plus, who knew what sort of dangers this weird weekend held, at whatever the hell this thing was I was about to attend. My snowglobe, my precious Cormons, was so much safer.

Catarina had given me extremely vague instructions, which I had mistaken as “simple” instead of just plain “lacking”. She had said to show up at 5pm, to the Palazzo del Turismo in Jesolo, which is a small beach island outside of Venice. I did just that, hopping off the bus at what was, instead of a conference center with a hotel attached, a convention center: cinder-blocked, large auditorium, fluorescent lighting. No hotel. When I entered, I saw a girl who works for Catarina standing at the front desk, speaking into a walkie-talkie. She saw me, looked at my suitcase, and shook her head.

“You’ll have to get changed in the bathroom”, she barked. “There’s not much time”.
Managed to wiggle myself into my tights and dress, wedge my feet into my heels, and shove my heavy-beyond-all-sense suitcase into a closet, just as close to 100 people flooded into the front hallway, chattering and waving their LiquiLife catalogues through the air. I had read through this catalogue on the train- this was pretty much the extent of the fill-in that Catarina had supplied me as to the nature of this company and the event which it was hosting.

Basically, the company is a pyramid scheme, though a very successful, legitimate one. They sell vitamins and minerals in a gel form. Gels for your hair and nails, gels for weight loss, gels for Omega3 fatty-acids, gels for endurance and performance. Each gel is sold in a nifty little packet, colorful and artfully designed, with a tear-away flap, allowing the blessed consumer to hold it to their lips and suck the gel directly into their mouths. The catalogue not only had information on each of the 20 different products on the line (each, obviously, doctor/scientist/athlete/supermodel approved and endorsed), but was filled with at least 15 pages allocated for nothing other than “introducing” the higher-ups of the company. There were photos, bios, and a personal letter written by all the big-shots, both those in America and in Italy. This is how, before even ever laying eyes on them in person, I knew the names, backgrounds, and tacky tastes of the people who I would meet on this weekend away from home. One photo showed an Italian family of 4, the mother and father both “Ruby members” of the company, in a creepily sexual pose, the daughters put on display for no fathomable reason in lycra skirts, holding tiny puppies against their blossoming breasts. Another photo showed the director of international communications lying on a polar bear-skin rug with her husband, who looked like Sigfreid, while she clutched an inexplicable Gucci purse and laughed up into his face, her spiky, teased blond hair gelled to resemble an overgrown briar patch. The Americans all seemed bland and normal enough, and as the weekend progressed I was even ashamed to remember that I had described them as “nerds” based on the impression of their bios.

The front hall filled up, and I stood at the front desk, a plastic grin on my face, awaiting some sort of instruction. Finally, Catarina breezed in, followed by a pack of men who were clearly American. Their suits were pressed and navy as night, their cheeks healthy and apple-like, giant leather briefcases and grim expressions that I imagine accompany business trips and financial success. I was introduced briefly to each of them, and then Catarina clapped her hands and announced that we were all a bit late, and the conference was about to begin. I followed them into a room filled with chairs and a tiny stage, and just as I was slinking toward the back wall, Catarina caught my eye and mouthed, “here!”, meaning, I was horrified to discover, in a chair smack in the middle of all the Americans. She sat me down, handed me a microphone, and said, in her tiny, impotent English, “translate.”

There was no time to protest. Some man that I recognized from the catalogue as being one of the top Italian salesmen took the stage and started off on a spiel regarding the format for this weekend’s “Team System Meeting”. Simple enough stuff, but as I attempted to translate into the microphone, I found that A) It was turned on very loudly, so that not only the surrounding 10 Americans, but the entire room, could hear me, and that B) translating is extremely difficult, if not, at least at my level, absolutely impossible.

Let me insert right now my impressions of the life-and-time-consuming endeavor which is Learning a Foreign Language. As far as I am concerned, languages are like mathematics: there are people who just get it, and there are people who have to struggle, rethink and attempt to conceptualize every tiny aspect of the task. From the start I found myself comparing learning and speaking Italian to working with math formulas, even before I could even explain why I felt this way. Each word has it’s tense, it’s definition, and it’s direct correlation to whom and what and when you are trying to speak of. It is not merely enough to know that “fare” is the Italian verb “to do/make”; you must know, immediately and definitively, that “fai” means “he does/makes”, that “facevamo” means “we did do/make”, that “faresti” means “you would do/make” and that “potresti fare” means “you could do/make”. Basically, each word is not just one, but multiple, as one single verb can then be conjugated 30 to 40 different ways to mean 30 or 40 different things, and if you have to stop and think of the root verb and then conjugate from there you are out of time, lost, over. One must hear the conjugated verb and understand it completely and totally for what it says. This is why I used to say that speaking Italian was like doing math. Constructing a sentence took an unbelievable amount of effort for me. I would have to start from the base verb/adjective/noun, and then add and subtract, divide and multiply, weave and snip and embellish, so that one, perfect phrase would emerge from the over-simplified wreckage that is basic Italian101. In order to do this I had to train my brain to STOP TRANSLATING. I could not, for example, hear a sentence or a command, and then try and figure out what it meant to me in English; doing this would lose me time and the flow of the conversation and I would be left with a perfectly translated sentence standing alone, without the rest of the idea or paragraph to put it into context. I had to train my brain to only hear the Italian, and to understand what they were saying in Italian, not my native language. Another thing: because of this, and because I have learned a lot of my Italian without the aid of a direct English translation, a lot of Italian words, phrases, and concepts to me do not translate at all. The word proprio, for example. I can explain to you that it means, kind of, directly, exactly, really…all of these things and more. This word strikes me specifically, because I know how to use it in Italian, and because it makes so much sense in Italian and I like this word so much, and we don’t have a direct translation that makes as much sense in English, and because of this, I find myself using this word even when I am speaking in English.

So in this way, with my Italian up to this point being constructed and known with these parameters, I was asked by a woman I can now only describe as irritatingly ignorant to translate. And this guy wasn’t even doing me the courtesy of speaking for a moment, and then pausing for me to translate. Oh, no. He was just plowing on, full steam ahead, leaving me there with my head on the verge of explosion. I found myself understanding fine, but then getting tongue-tied when trying to turn it around to it’s English equivalent. I found myself speaking Italian to the Americans. I couldn’t explain fast enough, I couldn’t even think of the words in English! It was like suddenly English was my foreign language. And every time I stopped to explain, I would miss the next sentence, and then have to struggle to find my footing again. It was a mess. My face was red, I could hardly breath, my heart was pounding, and all around me the Americans were leaning in, whispering, “What?? What did he say?” and Catarina kept watching me and mouthing, “Speak! Speak!”I was just about hysterical. The first 3 people to make speeches were fine; at least, I could convey the general gist of their monologues. But the 4th guy…he was speaking in metaphors! About how business is like a tree or a leg with veins or two trunks and ants or tendons or good Christ, I had no fucking idea where he was going with that.

Found myself saying, “well, you see this company is…there is a large corn field. Wait, no, just a field. And he is standing on one leg. Big leg with circles? Oh, rings like the age of the tree, I bet! Oh, a scarecrow? No. Business pulses on the right and on the left…this is capitalism? I’m sorry, I’m too confused”.

This guy went on for almost 30 minutes, and after the initial kick-off to his stupid metaphors, I was lost. There was nothing I could do. I just sat there, mouth ajar, silent, watching this guy talk and trying, desperately, to put the individual words that I was hearing come out of his mouth into an intelligible sentence. To no avail. I felt like an absolute failure, I felt mortified. I wanted to bolt, but I was in the middle of a giant pack of men in suits and Catarina was staring me down and I couldn’t even feel my legs to get up and move. All I could do was wait.

Finally, it was over. I fled the room and went into the stairwell outside, which was dark and cool and I just sat there for a minute and tried to catch my breath. I had not signed up for this, and I felt utterly humiliated. My phone wasn’t working, so I couldn’t call FL for any encouragement, and to be honest I knew that I couldn’t call him, that if I did I would just burst into tears at the sound of his voice, and my god, I wanted his chest so badly, why wasn’t I there against his chest talking about what to do for dinner instead of here in this cold stairwell???

Ah, dinner. I remembered that there was still that ahead of us, and the only shining light in this scenario was that surely there would be champagne. I put on my composed/professional face and emerged from the stairwell, where I had been no longer than 1 minute, to find the front hall completely empty. Outside there were a few people scattered about, but Catarina was not among them. Neither was anyone I could recognize. I walked all over the place looking, no one. She had left me.

So there I was: 5 euro in my wallet, my high heels already killing me, traumatized and lost, no working phone (and there was no public phone, either), and a huge suitcase. I didn’t have the name of my hotel or the name of the restaurant. Just as I was about to lug myself across the street to the McDonalds, where I imaged I could at least sit until I came up with some idea of how to get in touch with FL to come save me from this stupid situation, a man in a tuxedo came up.

“Are you supposed to be at the dinner with us?” he asked, smiling gently at my stricken face.

Rode with him and another man, both in tuxedos and both very kind, in a fancy BMW SUV to a restaurant about 30 minutes away, where the party was already in full swing. Catarina saw me when I entered and said, “Finally! Could you not find a taxi?” Wanted to strangle her, but instead I just smiled and gracefully swooped a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter.

“We’ll call you if we need you”, she said, and then turned her back to continue talking to the crazy briar-patch-haired lady from the catalogue.

Fine with me. I sipped my champagne and considered the mountains of fried seafood that had been laid out for appetizers, beginning to feel myself calm down, thanks to the presence of calamari and Ribolla Gialla. Back on my own territory, if only slightly. Felt a tap on my shoulder, and turned to find one of the Americans. I had noticed him right away when he walked in, but had been too freaked out to give him much thought. He was much younger than the others, probably in his late 20’s/early 30’s, with punkishly-sculpted hair and a white tux, tie decorated with skull-and-crossbones. He smiled and thanked me for my translations earlier. My immediate reaction was to bluff, give him an “oh, yars, yars, certainly, sir”, but I found myself just smiling tiredly and letting out an amused sigh.

“I gave it my best shot. I hope I at least made it clear that your head of sales is possibly a little batty, talking all that nonsense about scarecrows and roots surging through the soil. Might want to keep an eye on him”.

He laughed and said, in a spirit of relieved camaraderie, “Yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing here either”.

He introduced himself as Scott Goodman, and his picture had not been in the catalogue. He was the guy who had named LiquiLife, and he was the guy who came up with all the snappy titles for the products, and who designed the logos. Usually, he didn’t have to travel with the rest of the corporate crew, but as this was a Team Systems Weekend, he was required to come to show his support as a member of the team. He seemed a little out of place with the rest of them, and I eventually indentified him as a confidant in this bizarre dream I was in.

Just as we were on the topic of the reality of Salt Lake City, Utah, Catarina came up to me and gave me my instructions. I was to sit at the head of the table, smack in between the CEO and the VP. I was to be their translator, I was to make them feel welcome, I was to help them with whatever they needed.

Assuming this was to be an unbelievably boring evening from then on out, I glugged the last of my champagne, and took my seat.

To my right sat the VP of LiquiLife, a hefty, blond man in his 40’s, the type, I imagined, to play golf as a primary form of exercise. I began to rack my brain as to what to say to a VP- were we suppose to talk about…? - but he beat me to it. He introduced himself as Donald Martin, with a firm, swooping hand shake, one I appreciated.

“Do you know how to ask for a diet coke? With ice?” he asked.

From there the conversation was easy: we talked about how ridiculous it is to drink warm cokes without ice, the terrors of European travels during the summer when there is no air conditioning (still!), and how their hotel didn’t have wireless internet (“an obvious oversight”, I supplied, in a cruel, peckish attempt to get back at Catarina, who had been in charge of finding them suitable accommodations). He was so nice! Not a scary corporate VP at all, just some guy, who could have been an uncle of mine. To my left, eventually, came Stephen Hammons, CEO of LiquiLife. From the start he was a bit sterner and reserved, but I came to realize over the course of the dinner that this was probably more of just a personality trait then some sort of put-on airs. He made conversation, too, and we managed to get along just fine. He told me about his family (6 children. Mormon), how his son was playing wide receiver in tonight’s homecoming football game, how his wife was going to certainly send him minute-by-minute texts from the game this evening, messages he would not at all mind being woken up to receive. We talked about Japan, where he had lived for 2 years when he was 20 (already a college graduate), about the food and culture.
So weird. I found myself in a blazer and heels, eating a marvelous 7-course meal (all seafood!) in-between two corporate millionaires, talking about family, football, and the pro’s and con’s of European travel. There was nothing to it.

The dinner wrapped up about midnight, and people began to disperse back to their respective hotels. I found Silvana, with whom I mistakenly assumed I would be traveling. She looked at me like I had three heads.

“I don’t know what hotel you’re at. Ask Martina.”

Jesus. Who in the hell is Martina?

After half an hour of asking around, I finally got the name and a vague address of my hotel, but was then instructed to call a cab. Still had no money or a working phone, and was saved from once again becoming completely abandoned by my friend with the BMW. He still had my suitcase in the back of his car, and a navigation system, and would be happy to take me to my hotel.

Arrived, exhausted, tottering on blistered feet and full to the gills (har har) with bony island fish, at my hotel, which was, thankfully, very nice, by 1am. Found my room, which had a large bed, a bathtub, and a balcony that over looked the sea. No time for a bath, though; I had to be back at the convention center at 8 am. Set my alarm for 7, but there was no need: at 6:30 the shutters over the balcony began to raise themselves, and I blinked my sleepy eyes at the blinding red light, which was, I was thrilled to find, the light from the sun rising over the sea. It was beautiful.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

After a trip to four separate stores in three separate cities, I have acquired the ingredients to make a Thailand-style dinner. Chilled Thai basil rolls, filled with shrimp and rice noodles, and Thom Kha Khai soup (the mushrooms for which were acquired directly from the forest!), with lime zest and coconut milk. No lemongrass to be found, and regular ol’ Italian basil will have to be used in the place of the sweeter “thai basil”, but I think it will all work out. So thrilled that FL is an adventurous eater; such a novelty among his countrymen.

I cannot wait to have a kitchen of my very own. If yall haven’t noticed, we have not yet moved into Bosc di Sot. The bank is jerking FL around, refusing to give him the right to purchase the house outright until they can prove that he is “eligible” to purchase it, or something inexplicable. I really am not sure how this system is set up, regardless of how many times FL has tried to patiently explain it to me. To be honest, I’m not sure he understands, either. All we know is that we are waiting on a call, the go-ahead, and then the house is ours. In the meantime, all of our home-cooked meals are grilled out in the garden, the odd Friuli weather oddly accommodating to late-night October cookouts, huge steaks and cuts of meat from Bonelli’s, varieties of fresh seafood, vegetables, and polenta. Paola is more than happy to share her kitchen with us, but I can tell that ethnic food makes the family a tad weary, so we try and limit our oven-and-stove based endeavors for weekends when the house is free. Lately, we have been spending our Sunday mornings making blissful brunches, and I have introduced FL to the most wonderful breakfast of all (aside from eggs benedict): egg-in-a-whole, which he pronounces as one word, “egsinole”.

Tomorrow I go to the corporate conference, and will try my best to understand and translate for the Italians, or at least bullshit to the best of my ability. My take on this will be to put myself in the mind-set of some sort of David Sedaris story, one in which I humorously observe. Detached professionalism. In order to fully look the part, I went to the H&M in Udine yesterday and bought an absolutely gorgeous grey dress, perfect professional attire. It fits me like a sausage skin. I won’t be able to eat anything 24-hours before putting it on, and I certainly won’t be able to breathe, but, if I may say so, I have a bangin’ figure for ‘business chic’ fashions. Pencil skirts (with control-top lycra underneath, naturally) and breezy blouses show off my hourglass figure perfectly. I figure as far as the Italians are concerned, it really doesn’t matter how well I do my job, as long as I look like fabulous. For this amount of cash, I will happily oblige.

I wanted to touch a moment on the job search, just to make a note here in writing about the generosity, helpfulness, and encouragement of the people here in Cormons. It seems that everyone has their eyes and ears open for me, talking amongst themselves about finding me a good set-up. FL’s father brings my resumes with him when he goes to work at vineyards and agrotourismos. Fabio and Nadia at Porchis, and their parents, in fact, are always offering me little odds-and-ends, and hints on places to send my information, putting in a good word for me here and there. The other night I was offered a job at a cute local wine bar, Jazz and Wine, on a call-in basis. I was flattered, as I had never even really talked to the woman there. She dates one of FL’s close friends, and had heard through the grapevine (har har) that I need work. Naturally, a contract is needed, so tomorrow I go to speak with someone who can clear up for me once and for all all of the mess about work visas, etc. Even if it doesn’t work out, it’s nice to know people care enough to want to see me settled, or at least occupied.

As far as free time goes, I am pretty proud of myself for not having taken to spending my afternoons at the enoteca, blissed out on wine, as is common for the begrudgingly unemployed. When I get bored, I go run instead, hike the mountain and explore the forests, which are vast and unbelievably beautiful this time of year. Wild boar and baby deer run free, there are figs to be picked from trees, mushrooms to be discovered, chestnuts falling like spiky orbs from the sky, and the red wine grapes are getting sweeter every day. We are having a bit of an Indian summer right now, so the early-afternoon walks are turning into late-afternoon hikes, as I continue to widen my circle around Cormons, walking just a bit farther every day, taking new trails, finding new towns, exhausting my New Balances gallantly.

Ah! FL has arrived. The Thursday night Thai food party can begin!

A domani, loves.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

I realize that I have not written in almost a week, and really I have no excuse. I guess it's just cause nothing has really been going on.

Last Wednesday I made ajvar, the spicy Serbian red pepper spread. I broiled halved red and yellow bell peppers and spicy chilies till their skins where black, then let them steam in a covered bowl. The roasted eggplant was so soft that I could scoop it out of it's rubbery skin like avocado, and I tweaked the recipe just a bit to include sweet, chewy roasted garlic instead of fresh, the cloves popping, steaming and golden, right out of their husky paper. Fresh basil, a little apple cider vinegar, salt and a secret pinch of definitely-not-recipe-regulation cilantro went in the food processor with the meaty vegetables, and the result was absolutely blissful. I hopped about on one foot stealing ajvar from the jar by the spoonful, waiting for FL to come home and see how miraculous I am in the kitchen. He was beyond impressed, said that it was hands-down the best ajvar he's ever had, and insisted that we take it to the opening night party at Porchis.

Cut to, then, Thursday night. I had arrived earlier than FL with my friend Nadia, the witty blond bombshell and co-owner of Porchis that I crushed relentlessly on for the entirety of last summer. She has recently given birth to her second baby girl, also blond and gorgeous, with huge, laughing blue eyes like her mama. Poor Nadia now has a new born and a 2 year old, and between the colic and the teething her sleep schedule is out of whack, if not nonexistent, and she finds the late afternoons the only possible time that both of her little bundles are in any condition to leave the house. So, a couple of afternoons a week, I ride my bike over there, we pack the kiddies up in their strollers, and take them out for some fresh air. Nadia! What a champ! She has never yet missed a Porchis opening/closing party before, and the hell-stations of post-childbirth and the imminent threat of rain were not about to stop her this time. She squeezed herself gallantly into the same damned jeans she was wearing in high school, ran her fingers through her golden locks, pinched her cheeks for some color, and we loaded the little girls into the car, the new born riding in my arms (soooooooo Britney Spears, it cracked me up). We drove the 1 mile down the road at 4 miles an hour, being passed on both sides by elderly Italian grandpas out for their evening stroll, and arrived at Porchis to find the party already in full swing.

FL came in after a bit, jar of ajvar in his hand, and, as we often do, we took a seat at the table by the window, and reenacted the scene in which we first met. Basically, the point of this is to be cutesy while discussing what to drink, and it never fails, we always take the same route: Sauvignon for me, a Lasko for him. It is as though not a day went by, Porchis is just the same. The opening night party is a kick-off for autumn, the grill outside cooking sausages and thick slices of pancetta, polenta and pounded breasts of veal. Pasta with ragu' is cooked in a giant pot and handed over to the people to devour communally. There are fresh olives and loaves of bread, cheese and all the cured ham one could ever want or need, house wine and imported beer. As far as I am concerned, one could not ask for more in a good party. The ajvar was devoured, slathered over grilled meats, and requests for more were made by anyone who could stand the heat.

The weekend was quiet. We took a date night to Udine Saturday, to see the new Sophia Coppola and have dinner. In bed by midnight.

Yesterday afternoon I got a call from a lady who asked for English lessons, and I rode over to her house to chat and figure out a good time to make a real appointment. She started off by explaining that she needs to speak English for her job, which is some sort of import/export thing having to do with vitamin supplements. One thing led to another, and she invited me to go to a conference with her and her family this weekend in Venice. There would be people from all over the world, she explained, including America, and it would be a good opportunity for me to meet some of the Italians who would in future need help with translating. She would get me a hotel room, she said, and there would be a wonderful black tie dinner on Friday night, what fun! Also, my compensation would be 500 euro, the standard, she said, for a weekend conference. My mind started to spin with the mathematical reality of 500 euro, $700 US, for attending a black tie dinner Friday night, sleeping at a hotel in Venice, walking about with this lady on Saturday, doing whatever it is that people at Corporate Conferences do (seminars, product demonstrations, lectures, etc?) and translating back and forth between her and the Americans, and then having brunch Sunday before heading back to Cormons. Seemed like a good gig to me, so I told her sure, I'd be happy to go.

Who knows who I'll meet? Or where this will lead. At least for now it takes some of the stress of not having the cash to get my camera repaired away. And it'll give me a little bounce for my trip to Sicily next week.

So la la la, I am skilled and jobs abound!