AC

Hey all

Was so excited by the fan and the window here yesterday when I arrived that I didn't notice the air-con until I found the REMOTE CONTROL for it in my bedside table. So I am lying here in blissful cool for the first time since I left Australia – on top of which my German house-mate now thinks I am, and I quote, “a god,” because he had been here for a week without figuring out how to use the AC in his room – he had the remote control upside down in its little bracket in his bedroom. Because it was upside down in its bracket he could not see the buttons, had become convinced that the remote did not have any buttons at all (I am not making this up) and that therefore the AC could not be turned on, could not be turned off, indeed could not be interacted with in any way at all: it just hung there on the wall, inscrutable. Such a thing would not happen in the Fatherland, but the Italians? Who knows? After all: they are very excitable.

I think I mentioned already that he is an opera singer.

The new place is also only a short walk from a COOP, which is kind of like the Italian version of Safeway. I wandered down, bought some essentials and, just because they were there, a container of quail eggs – most of which I turned into an omelette, the rest I hard boiled. Class today was even more difficult than usual – yesterday I thought, for a moment at least, not so much that I had a clue, but that the possibility of having a clue at some point was not completely out of the question. Also, I forgot to take my cigars with me, so had to go at lunch to find the shop that sells them here, then got caught in this huge downpour, complete with lightning, hail, the whole works – at a quarter to six it is now sunny again. Am about to do a couple of hours revision before maybe going back into the centre for some walking tour of the place at night with the school – I will see how much energy I have.

BTW – the photos I post here – they have all been taken with this little Samsung PL50 – which means nothing to me, but my brother bought it for me for Christmas – it has a heap of functions, but I just leave it on auto or whatever, because basically I am an idiot with cameras. The reason I mention it is that I left Melbourne two weeks ago now, and have been using it since before I left – and I have still not charged the thing! The battery meter is still showing a full three bars: I spend a lot of time looking at it, full of pride. I obviously take a lot more photos than I post, many with the flash and I zoom in and out a lot – and I have not plugged it in yet. Impressive. Maybe this is normal for digitals now – I don't know – it is the first decent digital I have owned – the other one I owned was something I bought in a supermarket in Egypt (known for their quality) – clearly made of parts that some factory in China (going in to receivership) could not give away to the bottom end of the mobile phone market – I have never seen the brand before or even heard of it by rumour apart from this one camera. There is a distinct delay between when it tells you it has taken the photo and when it actually does, which means that initially I had a lot of photos of my feet, the dirt and people's legs in front of ancient monuments in Egypt, as opposed to the monuments themselves. Then there is the ten seconds or so after you take the photo where it says DATA CALCULATING on the little screen before you can actually look at the photo. K has it now – she seems to like things that are broken or out of date or inherently dysfunctional, or better still, all three. I will make no comment as to how this applies to me.

Photos – some legs somewhere in Egypt at some famous ancient something, all at a some stupid angle, courtesy of Egyptian/Chinese industrial design - was not trying to be artistic here, just thought I took a photo of the monument (whatever it was) itself. Quail eggs (how cool is that?), a fairly typical mid-afternoon Florence storm and finally a smudgy shot taken with my phone showing a full battery meter on my camera – upper right corner of the camera screen.

Cheers, B.