There is a lovely breeze blowing through Reggio, reaching me both in classroom 4 on Local Language School and my third floor bedroom here in the center. They are holding the penultimate Notte Rosa downstairs and some guy is playing an agreeably allegre song on his guitar practically under our hallway window. I was quite productive at work today, which is always satisfying. Also, I have a barchetta of blueberries here, which are delicious in general, and I just ate a perfectly ripe one, which was very delicious in particular.
Life is pretty good.
Um... I should get back to that translation I'm still meant to be doing, though...
Really, by productive, what I meant was "did everything ever in the whole office except the translation which is what I was actually supposed to do". Sigh.
Wednesday, July 7
Monday, July 5
Me vs. the Evil Painters
"Oh, and if the painters have any questions, just go ahead and answer them," says my boss. The phone connection is crackly, probably because she is on the highway, speeding towards her summer holiday. I am at the school, watching the sun set (I have been here since shortly after it rose this morning) and playing with a paperclip.
"I gave you the map of where the colors go, right?" she queries, with horns beeping in the background.
"Yup, I have it right here," I muster a cheerful, confident tone.
"Good. And you'll let them in tomorrow at eight?"
"Sure, no problem."
"Great. I trust you," she adds. Oh, brilliant.
"Right," I say. "Have a good week!" I chirp. We disconnect.
I review the color map. It is complex. Most of the school will be painted white, except for one wall in each classroom, which will be painted a color, but each of the classrooms will have a different color. I take a deep breath. Okay. All I have to do is communicate this information tomorrow morning. How hard can it be? I haul myself out of the front desk chair and head home.
- - -
"Buongiorno, signorina, do you know where I can find the English lady?" I am accosted by a short man in painters' garb the next morning before I even open the front door of the building. Aha! I smile pleasantly.
"Si, si, that's us; we're a language school," I tell him.
"No, I'm looking for an English lady," he dismisses me, and turns to walk off.
"But you're here to paint?" I call to him (how many "English" ladies can there be in our building doing paint work at one time?)
"Yeah. Do you know the English lady?"
"Yes. She's my boss. She's not here right now. I can let you in, though. I work there, too," I inform him, speaking quickly to get it all in before I lose his interest.
"Oh. Well. Okay, then," he relents with a big sigh. (Why is this a disappointment to him? Weirdo...)
---
I am sitting at the front desk, idly checking the office email while really watching the painters jabber and gesticulate together as they move their stuff in, simultaneously wondering what dialect they are speaking and when would be a good time to interrupt and tell them about the colors. I gather up my courage and jump in the next time there is a two-second pause in their conversation.
"Scusate, signori!" They both look at me with their eyebrows raised. "I was told to give you instructions for the colors.
"Colors?" queries the one who seems to be in charge.
And this is the source of our first disagreement. It seems they were told to paint everything white, while I was specifically told to tell them where the colors go. I sigh. This is why it is bad when your boss ends a thought with 'I trust you'.
After an unnecessarily complex discussion, I manage to convince him to start with the walls that should definitely be white, while I try to reach my boss and have her confirm for him that there should indeed be some colors. He stomps off in a huff. Super.
---
Half an hour later, my boss is on the phone, not really sure why there is any problem in the first place ("but did you tell him where the colors go?" - "I tried, but he doesn't believe me" suddenly seems like a lame excuse, but what can you do?) and I go in search of the painter.
Naturally, he is enthusiastically painting white all over one of the walls that has to be colored.
"That should be blue," I announce to him (just the tiniest bit caustically, I'll admit). I thrust the phone at him. "The English lady."
There is yelling on both sides (I can hear it across the room coming from the phone, and I can definitely hear his end of it). He hangs up, rants at me for a while about how confusing the English lady is and how he can't understand a thing with her crazy accent, and finally concedes:
"Okay. We'll do some colors."
"Ottimo! Let me just tell you which colors go on which walls," I say very calmly. He rolls his eyes and sighs like this is the most stressful and ridiculous request ever. I bring out my color wheel sample thingie and my map and show him which wall in each classroom should be painted. Then I list the colors for him and demonstrate with the color wheel. The colors are: sea green, periwinkle blue, blinding fluorescent yellow, and blinding fluorescent orange.
He rolls his eyes halfway through my color wheel demonstration, grabs it and the list from me, and tells me he'll figure it out. I am skeptical about this. Just to be sure, I make a sign for each room, and tape it to the table there. Each sign lists the color of that room, in big, and has an arrow pointing to the wall where it should go. The signs are even done in marker so that they are color coded. I feel that this is idiocy- and stubbornness-proof.
I leave to teach a lesson, telling our awesome, long-suffering secretary to keep an eye on them.
---
"Cri," says the secretary, as soon as I open the door, "meno male - I think you should go look at the colors. They look a little strange to me."
Well, the fluorescent colors were pretty strange anyway, I think, but I get a sinking feeling in my tummy all the same.
I peek into the first room. Okay. Not exactly the color we wanted, but close enough.
From there it all goes downhill. We have a sort of terra cotta color instead of neon orange, butter yellow instead of neon yellow, and a vomit-y sage green instead of sea green. Super. I take a deep breath and prepare for yet another confrontation.
My polite "Excuse me, sir, can I talk to you about the colors?" gets a very now-what-does-she-want look in return. I forge ahead.
"Did you get a chance to look at the samples on the wheel? Because the colors on the wall are not really the same..."
"Well, you can never get the exact same colors," he says, "I mean, we try to be exact, but it's not such a precise science. You have to allow a little leeway..."
I get a ten minute lecture on the science of mixing paint, etc., interspersed with affirmations that this is his mestiero, not mine, and that he's been doing it for twenty years, and I haven't, so really I should just listen to him.
And anyway, they're not so far apart, are they?
He leads me by the arm into the blue room.
"See?" he holds up the sample, "that's pretty close, right?"
"Yes," I concede. "It's not exact, but it's pretty close. Just come into the next room with me, okay?" (I refrain from leading him by the arm and just sort of hope that he will follow. He does.)
I hold the sample (DayGlo) up the wall (terra cotta).
"Can you at least get these to look as similar as the two in the first room?"
He sighs like it is a big imposition on his day, grumbles under his breath that his version is prettier anyway (true, admittedly, but I didn't pick the colors).
---
A few hours and two lessons later, I check on them again. The terra cotta color is ever so slightly lightened. It is still nowhere near DayGlo. Not even really within Crayola crayons range. I confront him about this, and while I'm pissing him off, tell him to fix the other two rooms, too. He starts to grumble again. The secretary, cleverly, is already getting my boss on the phone. I quickly recap the situation for her and tell her to tell the painter that he needs to listen to me rather than telling me about his twenty years of painting experience.
"Here," I tell our wayward painter, "here. Talk to the English lady."
Five minutes later, he is yelling about how he can't understand a word she says and how he's been a painter for twenty years, etc. I intercept the phone before he slams the receiver back down.
"Do you need some moral support?" asks the boss, almost kindly. I resist the urge to yell at her to get her behind back to Reggio and deal with her own damn painters, and instead tell her that what I need is for her to send an Italian person, an adult older than me or the secretary, to talk to this guy. Preferrably a man, but an authoritative woman will do in a pinch. She promises to send one first thing tomorrow morning. (Does she keep people in reserve to order around or something? Strange, but I wouldn't put it past her.)
I turn back to the painter, who is still ranting about how he doesn't understand the boss.
"Okay," I yell over him, "but do you understand me when I speak?"
"Yes, but- " I cut him off before he goes into the I've-been-in-this-mestiero-for-twenty-years speech again.
"Then why don't you listen to me? I understand the English lady and you understand me, so there should be no problem, yes?"
"Fine. Explain to me what you want," he says resentfully. This is uncharacteristically cooperative of him, though, and I am encouraged.
I explain, one more time, that I want one wall colored in each room, and I want the colors to match as closely as possible to the samples. I add that I don't understand why they create samples in such varied colors if it is not possible to reproduce them more exactly, but this is a mistake as it launches him back into the mestiero speech.
I cut him off again, "Just do your best, okay? And we'll see tomorrow."
He concedes.
I go home and eat half a bar of dark chocolate, practically swallowing it whole, and then call my mother to recount the chaos to her. She listens sympathetically. My mother is a saint.
---
The next morning, I arrive after my first lesson, in a good mood because the student was his usual hilarious self. The secretary smiles and rolls her eyes in the direction of the painters before miming pointing a gun at her head. Oh, dear.
I make my rounds of the rooms. The terra cotta is edging slightly towards tangerine. The yellow hasn't changed. The sage green is now a lighter sage green, but nowhere closer to sea green than it was yesterday. I sigh.
The painter is gearing up to start our habitual I-want-more-exact-colors vs. that's-not-possible conversation, but I cut him off, saying the boss' new representative will be here soon. It transpires that this is the person who picked the colors to start with.
---
Twenty minutes later:
"Oh, but that's not the right color at all!" she exclaims at me, "you should tell him to change it!"
I refrain from giving her a Look. After all, she only just got here. I suggest to her that she's welcome to try.
"Look here, sir," she tells him, "these are not the right colors. You need to paint the walls in the colors we chose."
He recounts the whole sorry affair, starting from how he thought things should be all white, passing through how the boss is utterly incomprehensible when she speaks, and ending with the fact that you can't get the colors exactly right when you're mixing them/it's not an exact science/he's been doing it for twenty years, etc.
She seizes on the penultimate statement.
"You're mixing them yourself?" she queries.
"Yes, and I have been for twenty-"
"Well, no wonder," she cuts him off, "you have to take them and get them professionally mixed!"
"Oh, well if you want them to be exact..."
I refrain from smacking him.
---
A week later, it is done. The colors are right. The DayGlo is awful and blinding, but at least it is accurate.
The boss waltzes in, all tanned and stuff, and she is pleased.
I refrain from smacking her, as well.
"I gave you the map of where the colors go, right?" she queries, with horns beeping in the background.
"Yup, I have it right here," I muster a cheerful, confident tone.
"Good. And you'll let them in tomorrow at eight?"
"Sure, no problem."
"Great. I trust you," she adds. Oh, brilliant.
"Right," I say. "Have a good week!" I chirp. We disconnect.
I review the color map. It is complex. Most of the school will be painted white, except for one wall in each classroom, which will be painted a color, but each of the classrooms will have a different color. I take a deep breath. Okay. All I have to do is communicate this information tomorrow morning. How hard can it be? I haul myself out of the front desk chair and head home.
- - -
"Buongiorno, signorina, do you know where I can find the English lady?" I am accosted by a short man in painters' garb the next morning before I even open the front door of the building. Aha! I smile pleasantly.
"Si, si, that's us; we're a language school," I tell him.
"No, I'm looking for an English lady," he dismisses me, and turns to walk off.
"But you're here to paint?" I call to him (how many "English" ladies can there be in our building doing paint work at one time?)
"Yeah. Do you know the English lady?"
"Yes. She's my boss. She's not here right now. I can let you in, though. I work there, too," I inform him, speaking quickly to get it all in before I lose his interest.
"Oh. Well. Okay, then," he relents with a big sigh. (Why is this a disappointment to him? Weirdo...)
---
I am sitting at the front desk, idly checking the office email while really watching the painters jabber and gesticulate together as they move their stuff in, simultaneously wondering what dialect they are speaking and when would be a good time to interrupt and tell them about the colors. I gather up my courage and jump in the next time there is a two-second pause in their conversation.
"Scusate, signori!" They both look at me with their eyebrows raised. "I was told to give you instructions for the colors.
"Colors?" queries the one who seems to be in charge.
And this is the source of our first disagreement. It seems they were told to paint everything white, while I was specifically told to tell them where the colors go. I sigh. This is why it is bad when your boss ends a thought with 'I trust you'.
After an unnecessarily complex discussion, I manage to convince him to start with the walls that should definitely be white, while I try to reach my boss and have her confirm for him that there should indeed be some colors. He stomps off in a huff. Super.
---
Half an hour later, my boss is on the phone, not really sure why there is any problem in the first place ("but did you tell him where the colors go?" - "I tried, but he doesn't believe me" suddenly seems like a lame excuse, but what can you do?) and I go in search of the painter.
Naturally, he is enthusiastically painting white all over one of the walls that has to be colored.
"That should be blue," I announce to him (just the tiniest bit caustically, I'll admit). I thrust the phone at him. "The English lady."
There is yelling on both sides (I can hear it across the room coming from the phone, and I can definitely hear his end of it). He hangs up, rants at me for a while about how confusing the English lady is and how he can't understand a thing with her crazy accent, and finally concedes:
"Okay. We'll do some colors."
"Ottimo! Let me just tell you which colors go on which walls," I say very calmly. He rolls his eyes and sighs like this is the most stressful and ridiculous request ever. I bring out my color wheel sample thingie and my map and show him which wall in each classroom should be painted. Then I list the colors for him and demonstrate with the color wheel. The colors are: sea green, periwinkle blue, blinding fluorescent yellow, and blinding fluorescent orange.
He rolls his eyes halfway through my color wheel demonstration, grabs it and the list from me, and tells me he'll figure it out. I am skeptical about this. Just to be sure, I make a sign for each room, and tape it to the table there. Each sign lists the color of that room, in big, and has an arrow pointing to the wall where it should go. The signs are even done in marker so that they are color coded. I feel that this is idiocy- and stubbornness-proof.
I leave to teach a lesson, telling our awesome, long-suffering secretary to keep an eye on them.
---
"Cri," says the secretary, as soon as I open the door, "meno male - I think you should go look at the colors. They look a little strange to me."
Well, the fluorescent colors were pretty strange anyway, I think, but I get a sinking feeling in my tummy all the same.
I peek into the first room. Okay. Not exactly the color we wanted, but close enough.
From there it all goes downhill. We have a sort of terra cotta color instead of neon orange, butter yellow instead of neon yellow, and a vomit-y sage green instead of sea green. Super. I take a deep breath and prepare for yet another confrontation.
My polite "Excuse me, sir, can I talk to you about the colors?" gets a very now-what-does-she-want look in return. I forge ahead.
"Did you get a chance to look at the samples on the wheel? Because the colors on the wall are not really the same..."
"Well, you can never get the exact same colors," he says, "I mean, we try to be exact, but it's not such a precise science. You have to allow a little leeway..."
I get a ten minute lecture on the science of mixing paint, etc., interspersed with affirmations that this is his mestiero, not mine, and that he's been doing it for twenty years, and I haven't, so really I should just listen to him.
And anyway, they're not so far apart, are they?
He leads me by the arm into the blue room.
"See?" he holds up the sample, "that's pretty close, right?"
"Yes," I concede. "It's not exact, but it's pretty close. Just come into the next room with me, okay?" (I refrain from leading him by the arm and just sort of hope that he will follow. He does.)
I hold the sample (DayGlo) up the wall (terra cotta).
"Can you at least get these to look as similar as the two in the first room?"
He sighs like it is a big imposition on his day, grumbles under his breath that his version is prettier anyway (true, admittedly, but I didn't pick the colors).
---
A few hours and two lessons later, I check on them again. The terra cotta color is ever so slightly lightened. It is still nowhere near DayGlo. Not even really within Crayola crayons range. I confront him about this, and while I'm pissing him off, tell him to fix the other two rooms, too. He starts to grumble again. The secretary, cleverly, is already getting my boss on the phone. I quickly recap the situation for her and tell her to tell the painter that he needs to listen to me rather than telling me about his twenty years of painting experience.
"Here," I tell our wayward painter, "here. Talk to the English lady."
Five minutes later, he is yelling about how he can't understand a word she says and how he's been a painter for twenty years, etc. I intercept the phone before he slams the receiver back down.
"Do you need some moral support?" asks the boss, almost kindly. I resist the urge to yell at her to get her behind back to Reggio and deal with her own damn painters, and instead tell her that what I need is for her to send an Italian person, an adult older than me or the secretary, to talk to this guy. Preferrably a man, but an authoritative woman will do in a pinch. She promises to send one first thing tomorrow morning. (Does she keep people in reserve to order around or something? Strange, but I wouldn't put it past her.)
I turn back to the painter, who is still ranting about how he doesn't understand the boss.
"Okay," I yell over him, "but do you understand me when I speak?"
"Yes, but- " I cut him off before he goes into the I've-been-in-this-mestiero-for-twenty-years speech again.
"Then why don't you listen to me? I understand the English lady and you understand me, so there should be no problem, yes?"
"Fine. Explain to me what you want," he says resentfully. This is uncharacteristically cooperative of him, though, and I am encouraged.
I explain, one more time, that I want one wall colored in each room, and I want the colors to match as closely as possible to the samples. I add that I don't understand why they create samples in such varied colors if it is not possible to reproduce them more exactly, but this is a mistake as it launches him back into the mestiero speech.
I cut him off again, "Just do your best, okay? And we'll see tomorrow."
He concedes.
I go home and eat half a bar of dark chocolate, practically swallowing it whole, and then call my mother to recount the chaos to her. She listens sympathetically. My mother is a saint.
---
The next morning, I arrive after my first lesson, in a good mood because the student was his usual hilarious self. The secretary smiles and rolls her eyes in the direction of the painters before miming pointing a gun at her head. Oh, dear.
I make my rounds of the rooms. The terra cotta is edging slightly towards tangerine. The yellow hasn't changed. The sage green is now a lighter sage green, but nowhere closer to sea green than it was yesterday. I sigh.
The painter is gearing up to start our habitual I-want-more-exact-colors vs. that's-not-possible conversation, but I cut him off, saying the boss' new representative will be here soon. It transpires that this is the person who picked the colors to start with.
---
Twenty minutes later:
"Oh, but that's not the right color at all!" she exclaims at me, "you should tell him to change it!"
I refrain from giving her a Look. After all, she only just got here. I suggest to her that she's welcome to try.
"Look here, sir," she tells him, "these are not the right colors. You need to paint the walls in the colors we chose."
He recounts the whole sorry affair, starting from how he thought things should be all white, passing through how the boss is utterly incomprehensible when she speaks, and ending with the fact that you can't get the colors exactly right when you're mixing them/it's not an exact science/he's been doing it for twenty years, etc.
She seizes on the penultimate statement.
"You're mixing them yourself?" she queries.
"Yes, and I have been for twenty-"
"Well, no wonder," she cuts him off, "you have to take them and get them professionally mixed!"
"Oh, well if you want them to be exact..."
I refrain from smacking him.
---
A week later, it is done. The colors are right. The DayGlo is awful and blinding, but at least it is accurate.
The boss waltzes in, all tanned and stuff, and she is pleased.
I refrain from smacking her, as well.
Sunday, July 4
Che caldo
"You should see if you can get some research experience at the hospital," says a well-meaning acquaintance one fine day during a conversation about my future and my staying in Reggio another year. "At the very least, some translation work."
This strikes me as a good plan, and so I offer my services as a combination research assistant/translator/editor/general voluntary slave in a series of emails written in very carefully worded Italian. (Seriously, every time I have to write an email - or anything - in Italian, it takes me the better part of half an hour just to bang out three or four lines.)
"Yes, absolutely we'll take you on," says a young man who does something related to psych, "we have loads of stuff that needs translating."
I ponder this for a moment. I do not generally translate for free and I can't really justify doing it for him if I make everyone else pay for it. I am trying to figure out how to extract myself from this situation when he presents me with a book in English.
"This, for example." I look at it.
"Wait, but I don't usually do English to Italian - my Italian isn't that great," I protest weakly. On the other hand, this partially fixes my situation: I can't possibly charge anyone anything to translate from English to Italian, because I'm so far from qualified for it that it's not even funny.
"No, no - your Italian is fine. I saw it in that email you wrote," he reminds me. "I'll just have my secretary copy the parts we'd like!"
TWenty minutes later, I am holding a packet of rather overwhelming thickness (it's not actually that thick, but do you know how many words there are on a page? and how many of those I don't know how to say in Italian? well, it starts with 'a' and ends with 'lot').
And that is how I find myself here on a Sunday night, slogging through the third page of exceedingly dense stuff at a pathetic pace while sweat all but dribbles down my back despite my being parked less than a meter away from the fan and the fact that I've taken at least four showers so far today (the sweat is because it's hot, not because I'm stressed about translating... just, you know... to be clear).
On the other hand, I now know how to say "evidence-based" in Italian, and surprised myself by coming up with "spicchi d'aglio" (cloves of garlic) all by myself a few minutes ago. I have no idea where I heard that or how I retained it, but I'll take what I can get. It's nice to feel, sometimes, that pian piano, my Italian is indeed improving.
In the meantime, though, it is ridiculously hot for 10 at night and apparently it's only going to get worse next week and I have the window wide open despite having the light on... which puts it at risk for bats coming in, and if a bat comes in I will scream so loudly that probably they will hear me in Scandiano. Also probably a million mosquitoes are going to bite me in the next hour or so. Also I am hungry but if I cook the kitchen will be even hotter than it already is. And also I will have to wash the dishes after. Quite the dilemma, clearly.
Sighhh.
Oh, in other news (well, not really news), happy birthday to the land of air-conditioning and 24-hour pharmacies. Um, and freedom, etc., of course.
This strikes me as a good plan, and so I offer my services as a combination research assistant/translator/editor/general voluntary slave in a series of emails written in very carefully worded Italian. (Seriously, every time I have to write an email - or anything - in Italian, it takes me the better part of half an hour just to bang out three or four lines.)
"Yes, absolutely we'll take you on," says a young man who does something related to psych, "we have loads of stuff that needs translating."
I ponder this for a moment. I do not generally translate for free and I can't really justify doing it for him if I make everyone else pay for it. I am trying to figure out how to extract myself from this situation when he presents me with a book in English.
"This, for example." I look at it.
"Wait, but I don't usually do English to Italian - my Italian isn't that great," I protest weakly. On the other hand, this partially fixes my situation: I can't possibly charge anyone anything to translate from English to Italian, because I'm so far from qualified for it that it's not even funny.
"No, no - your Italian is fine. I saw it in that email you wrote," he reminds me. "I'll just have my secretary copy the parts we'd like!"
TWenty minutes later, I am holding a packet of rather overwhelming thickness (it's not actually that thick, but do you know how many words there are on a page? and how many of those I don't know how to say in Italian? well, it starts with 'a' and ends with 'lot').
And that is how I find myself here on a Sunday night, slogging through the third page of exceedingly dense stuff at a pathetic pace while sweat all but dribbles down my back despite my being parked less than a meter away from the fan and the fact that I've taken at least four showers so far today (the sweat is because it's hot, not because I'm stressed about translating... just, you know... to be clear).
On the other hand, I now know how to say "evidence-based" in Italian, and surprised myself by coming up with "spicchi d'aglio" (cloves of garlic) all by myself a few minutes ago. I have no idea where I heard that or how I retained it, but I'll take what I can get. It's nice to feel, sometimes, that pian piano, my Italian is indeed improving.
In the meantime, though, it is ridiculously hot for 10 at night and apparently it's only going to get worse next week and I have the window wide open despite having the light on... which puts it at risk for bats coming in, and if a bat comes in I will scream so loudly that probably they will hear me in Scandiano. Also probably a million mosquitoes are going to bite me in the next hour or so. Also I am hungry but if I cook the kitchen will be even hotter than it already is. And also I will have to wash the dishes after. Quite the dilemma, clearly.
Sighhh.
Oh, in other news (well, not really news), happy birthday to the land of air-conditioning and 24-hour pharmacies. Um, and freedom, etc., of course.
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