So this morning I was awoken by some loud talking outside my window. It was about 6am when three men and two police officers were having a very loud discussion.

From what I can gather, the two policemen pulled over a car on my street in which a large black man was driving. (side note to this story, it is believed that itlians are very racist as well as police officers being very corrupt) As the officers came to the window of the car the driver said good morning to them, which they then replied to wait a minute. Well this sent the man OFF! He started to go nuts, yelling at the cops and swearing. He got out of the car, hes about 300pounds of big (ex-military he claims) man. He starts to call the police racist and that they hate americans. This is how I figured out he is america. Surprise an american went nuts when officers pull him over and ask him to wait. So as this man is loosing it on the cops, the other two men that were in the car started to try to calm him down, and speak to the police. I believe they knew itlian. The weird thing was that the other two men would touch and put their arm around the shoulders of the cops and just kinda lead them back to their cars.

As far as I can tell in italy the police are just for show. Nobody respects them, they dont leave the station. They rarely patrol, they only leave the station if someone calls. Nobody cares if their siren is on. When they get to an intersection they have a small red sign the passenger holds out the window, and this is meant to stop traffic so they can go through the intersection. Its pretty funny.

So after a few minutes of this loud talking, the big man just walks away and goes inside. The cops dont do anything about the swearing and the threatening. They just get back into their car and leave. Almost like they dont care about what happens.

If you speak to some itlian people here, they have no respect and they dont trust the cops.

This really just led me to think that I would like a burger for supper. I think I will go for a walk to find a pub that sells burgers. I think I have passed it before. This is going to be good.

so last night I went out with some friends for supper. I have tons of friends by the way, I am very popular.

We went to this restaurant that specializes in rice. It was so good. I only ate a plate of rice but it was curry rice with some shrimp and asparagus. I dont know to make it but if I learn I would eat it everyday.

Then after that I had a crepe. They make crepes into everything. You can have either sweet crepes like we have for breakfast or you can have salad crepes, that consist of salads in the crepe. I think it might be more like a wrap, but I am not sure.

It was amazing. They dont have peanut butter here, so instead they use nutella for everything. Mine was nutella with white chocolate and gelato. As I ate it I went into diabetic shock and coulndt finish it. Seriously I was buzzing with all the sugar this thing had.

Thats the end of this post. I really didnt do anything but it was good.

Banned Drugs

So this morning I woke up with a pulled achilles. I have no idea how I did it. Last night when I went to bed I was fine and this morning it was no good.

So I ask someone at work today if they have some ibuprofen or acetaminophen. They just looked at me like I was crazy. They didnt know what I was talking about. So we discuss this for a short period and came to the conclusion that I would benefit from some antinflamatory.

They gave me this package called nimesuliae. I didnt know what it was. The package they gave me was a powder that I mixed with some water and drank. It taked like lemons. Obviously I wanted to know what this drug was.

A quick little google search led me to the wikipedia for this drug. As it turns out this drug has been banned from EVERYWHERE besides Italy because of its toxicity to the liver. As you continue to read it points out that it is not banned from Italy because Italy is corrupt. Remember those movies about the Mafia? They are true. The prime minister of Italy is in the Mafia and has been for his entire life. Everyone knows it and nobody cares. The entire south of Italy is run by the Mafia. If you feel like some amusing reading do a search for the prime minister of Italy. The most amusing report on him is his love for 18 year old girls. Hes about 70.

Anyway, if I die from liver failure let it go, we dont want to make the Mafia angry.


Oh yeah, on a side note, you can buy cellulite dissolver with a bottle and syringe on the street here.

puked

so I almost puked today. I was walking home and about a block after I passed the 3rd person I have seen peeing on the street in the past 4 weeks there was this girl. She was wearing the shortest, tightest white shorts ever. They werent even shorts, they were just material. The worst part is that they were see through, mostly because they were stretched over her big ass. She was not attractive at all. I almost puked.

So I have noticed that I have become more itlian since arriving. I have started to speak to the vendors with shitty itlian as well as walk on the street before the lights change for no good reason at all. There will be cars coming in both directions and I will be a few steps on the street, waiting for the lights to change, then waiting for 8 cars to run the red light, then waiting for the cars turning that dont care about pedestrians, then I will go. But I will still be out on the street waiting. I am not as bad as some of them. There is this one street that is under construction because they are putting in a subway, that doesnt go anywhere. Seriously, I can walk form the north of the city to the south in 45min. This subway doesnt go anywhere.

so yeah this intersection where there is construction. You have to walk around a blockade, which puts you in a lane of traffic. So you walk up the intersection on the street and wait for the lights to change, then quickly get out of the way of the on coming traffic and cross more towards the cars that are stopped. So I usually stand behind the blockade so that the cars dont hit me, while others stand directly on the tram tracks, until a tram comes, then quickly run back behind me, then as the tram passes they walk back into traffic to wait for the lights, and the running of the red lights, and then the turning cars. I have seen two different people do this the same day. The second person watched the first person do it, then they both did it again when a second tram came by. I thought about pushing them slightly so they would get nicked, but the trams move pretty fast and they cant stop.

These were seriously sick shorts. Also where they are peeing is not a corner of a parking garage or anything, its a meridian divider as cars pass on either side of them.

Heres a first. Drinking on the steps of a church. We were only out done by the group that brought their own budweiser to the church to drink there. We atleast bought some from the bar.

Things that make me laugh at the market

As I said before there is the largest market in europe outside my door on saturdays. If you count the food, shoe and meat parts then its about 20ish square blocks of market. So obviously I love crowded places for shopping so I like to go to this market on saturday.

I acutlly tried to get some fruit today, I left without any.

So walking around the "antique" part of the market is pretty fun though. Everyone sells ANYTHING. Its like a big garage sale of used crap. I am pretty sure the majority is stolen. How does someone obtain 50 pairs of new shoes in their boxes. And not the same shoe in different sizes. Random shoes. Also cell phone chargers, 1000's of them. Giant piles. DVD's and video games, piles.

There are however some things that old and should be bought by me very soon. These include but are not limited to;

remote controls. random piles of remote controls for someones old tv or vcr. Not programmable ones. I guess if you lost yours and someone had the same tv as you, you would be luck.

Old video cameras. Remember those big ones that would take a full vcr tape. I found them. They are all here.

Nintendo systems. If I knew it worked I would totally buy it and sell it on ebay for 200 dollars. I really dont think the homeless guy that is selling it knows what he has. He also has a sega. Not the "newer" sega genisis when it became 16bit, but the old 8bit one.

I think there was a bottle of open cough syrup.

The las thing I can remember is probably worth 500 dollars. It was a barbie typewritter. I am still thinking about going back to buy it from the guy. I dont know how much it costs but I bet if I sold it on ebay its easily worth 500.

that about that, I am hungry, should I eat shitty pasta that I make myself or go get a pizza for 4 dollars. Hmmmm

earthquakes and such

so this last week has been pretty uneventful. Pretty much just me sitting and reading waiting for others to have some free time to show me what they are doing with their projects.

This weekend however was slightly different.

As most of you know italy was hit with a substantial earthquake about 3 weeks ago, which was not felt in my area of italy. Resulting from this has been a very large number of aftershocks. Aftershocks can be considered little earthquakes that really dont do damage unless they hit the same spot as the earthquake, which has already been weakened.

Yesterday around 2:57pm local time I felt one of these aftershocks. For any of you who have not been in a earthquake (nor have I, only this aftershock) it is weird. I was laying on the couch reading when all of a sudden the couch moves, and moves, and moves. This went on for what seemed like 30sec, I am sure it was about 4 seconds. I then sat there and stared out the window thinking that perhaps someone was just doing construction or maybe someone was doing laundry downstairs.

Today at the lab I asked someone if they felt anything odd yesterday and of course they had. The entire earth moved. How could someone not feel it.

HOLY CRAP where am I. The earth in saskatoon never moves. Why is the earth moving here. It reminds me of the episode of fresh prince of bel air when will and that "fake" girl gets trapped in the basement and will gets all scared because hes from philly where there are no earthquakes.

My aftershock was only between 3-4 rickterscale but still. It was weird.