March 2003

School Trips: An Italian Tradition

March 30, 2003

^ downtime in Siena during a class trip to Tuscany It’s traditional in the Italian school system, at least from middle school on, for each class to take a school trip (gita scolastica) most years. Rossella started at age five, during her last year of scuola materna. Though most of them had never been away from home [...]

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Medical Privacy

March 13, 2003

…One big aspect of Italy’s national health system that I forgot to mention previously: it’s available to EVERYBODY. There’s no nonsense like asking for insurance information while you’re bleeding in the emergency room (they do ask for your national health card, but if you don’t happen to have it on you, no one cares). And [...]

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50 Ways to Flush a Toilet

March 13, 2003

In the Brussels airport, I saw a new piece of technology that I just had to try out: the Lady P Urinoir (in the ladies’ bathroom, naturally). There were written instructions in four languages: “1. Assume skiing position.” Fortunately, there were also stick-figure illustrations, otherwise I would have had to puzzle about “skiing position,” not [...]

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Out Sick: Being Ill in Italy

March 10, 2003

You haven’t heard from me in a while (and I may not be very coherent today) because I’ve been seriously ill for two weeks now, with a lung infection that came on during a nasty flu. I’m now doing a course of injected antibiotics (the oral ones didn’t make a dent); let’s hope that works. [...]

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Ivaldi: Table of Contents

March 1, 2003

Available chapters are shown as links below. Book 1: True Seaborn The City of Light – supplement: The Ivaldin Calendar The Font of Knowledge Overnight Success Bard in a Gilded Cage More Tales from the Font of Knowledge Carilla and the Long Arm of the Law Chitra Has an Engagement Book 2: Teja Red-Headed Stranger [...]

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Fiction: Ivaldi

March 1, 2003

I began Ivaldi during my undergraduate years at the University of Texas at Austin. Douglass Parker, a professor of Classics, taught a course in Parageography – the geography of fantasy worlds. The reading list ranged from The Odyssey to Tolkein, and I remember vividly the day Dr. Parker came bounding into class, waving a book [...]

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The Ivaldin Calendar

March 1, 2003

The Ivaldin year consists of eight months of 45 days, each divided into nine morens of 1, 2, 3,… 9 days: One Month Moren 1 Day 1 Moren 2 Day 1 Moren 2 Day 2 Moren 3 Day 1 3-2 Moren 3 Day 3 Moren 4 Day 1 4-2 4-3 Moren 4 Day 4 Moren [...]

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