I instinctively dislike chain restaurants: when someone says “Let’s eat at a [name of chain restaurant],” I wince. And it’s getting harder and harder to find a restaurant in the US that isn’t part of a chain. However, my instincts may be out of date: chain restaurant food seems to be improving. During this recent trip I ate at TeKei’s (Chinese/Thai), Razzoo’s (Cajun), Sarovar (north and south Indian), and something else with a southern (American) theme. I think they’re all chain franchises, but they were also all good. I still prefer to support local and personal cooking creativity where possible, but… sometimes you gotta make do.
What puzzles me is the concept of waiting to get a seat at a restaurant. In 15 years in Italy, I have almost never waited for a restaurant. I’m sure it must have happened once or twice, but I can’t actually remember a single instance. The handful of times I can remember arriving somewhere and finding it full, there was always someplace just as good nearby to go to instead.
But, in the US, no matter how saturated with restaurants an area may be, it’s not uncommon to arrive at a restaurant and find you have to wait half an hour for a table – even though American restaurants are usually HUGE compared with Italian ones, and manage several seatings per table per night, as Americans rarely linger over their meals. I can’t figure it out. Maybe Americans simply eat out more often than Italians (with today’s prices at Italian restaurants, that wouldn’t be surprising).
Restaurant congestion is so bad that, throughout my recent trip, everyone I had lunch with wanted to eat at 11:30 am to avoid the rush. If I hadn’t had jet lag, I would never have got used to this, but it was good preparation for CES, where, if you don’t eat early, you don’t eat at all.
America seems to be obsessed with eating. You can’t go anywhere without being bombarded by advertising for food. It’s effective, too: hearing or reading adjective-stuffed descriptions and seeing perfectly-staged food photographs (there’s an art to it), I always get hungry.
I can’t remember ever hearing food advertised on Italian radio (not that I listen to it regularly). Nor are restaurants advertised on TV in Italy, except McDonald’s. I guess that’s because there aren’t any non-fast-food restaurant chains in Italy (well, there is one, Pastarito – I don’t recommend it), and it doesn’t make economic sense for a single restaurant to advertise nationally.
In America, the marketing doesn’t stop once they’ve got you in the restaurant. The typical American menu is larded with sensual adjectives: “creamy this, delicately folded into tangy that, with a hint of zesty the other…” Some menus include photos, though the food on your plate rarely comes out quite as beautifully. All of this – words, pictures, page layout, fonts – is designed to encourage you to buy the items on which the restaurant makes the biggest profit margin. The waiter may also, asked or unasked, recommend those high-margin items.
There’s no art of selling in Italian menus: they generally only give the name of the dish and a price. In most Italian restaurants, this is all that’s necessary, because most stick to well-known classics with maybe one “house specialty” dish. In the rare cases that you don’t know what a dish’s name means, you ask the waiter, who gives you a bare description: “pasta with sauteed eggplant and salted ricotta.”
The fancier restaurants do tend to be more creative and therefore need to explain their dishes, but the explanations are usually simple statements of fact: “sauteed local trout with diced vegetables” – which hardly does justice to one of Lanterna Verde‘s amazing dishes. But then, the food at Lanterna Verde is so good that you need not be seduced into eating it, and you will certainly not be disappointed, whatever you choose.
I left home early on the morning of Dec 26th (with Enrico driving, bless him) to go to Milan’s Malpensa airport – unfortunately, Milan’s only hub for trans-Atlantic flights is the airport furthest away from Lecco, it takes us nearly two hours to get there.
I was flying Alitalia, an airline of dubious quality – the standard joke is that “Alitalia” stands for “Always Late in Takeoff and Late in Arriving.” At least check-in was efficient. Other US-bound flights I’ve taken from Malpensa have checked in with extra security at a cordoned-off area at the end of the airport, but Alitalia doesn’t do this, even though the flight was direct to Chicago. Which puzzles me. Do we assume that United, Delta, and British Airways are more likely to be targeted for nastiness, even when flying to the same destinations?
Enrico and I had a second coffee together and said goodbye, and I proceeded to security. It was fortunate that I was ahead of schedule, because it took about 20 minutes to get through – everybody in Italy seemed to be anxious to leave, now that the obligatory “Natale con i tuoi” (Christmas with your family) was over.
We boarded on time, then sat on the runway for about an hour, for no reason that was made clear to us passengers. I heard one finally ask a stewardess about it, who said: “Oh, the pilot announced that, when he said we were third for takeoff. Each takeoff slot is half an hour.” (I may be misquoting her numbers, but that was the gist.)
Since all flight schedules include at least half an hour of padding, we were pretty much on time arriving in Chicago, so I had a comfortable margin to get through immigration, retrieve my luggage, and recheck it to my final destination. At immigration, as usual, I was asked what I had been doing in Italy, and got the usual blank look when I replied that I live there. I don’t know why this is always a shock to immigration agents. Some even say rather aggressively: “Well, welcomehome.” As if I should repent of ever having left. I guess they are so accustomed to dealing with people desperate to get into the United States that they can’t conceive of anyone voluntarily leaving.
I was directed to the red channel for customs, for no reason that I could determine. The reason was even less clear when they did not open my luggage at all. The guy typed on his computer for a while, then said I was free to go. ???
I checked my bag with American Airlines and took the train to their terminal, where I had about two hours to kill before my connection to Little Rock. First, of course, I had to go through security again. This meant taking my laptop and videocamera out of my backpack, and putting them in separate bins along with my jacket and my boots. Then having to put it all back together again at the other end. <groan>
I had a neck and back massage – a truly useful airport service after hauling heavy luggage around and then sitting for ten hours. I ate half a bagel (we don’t get bagels in Italy), and got on the little bitty plane to Little Rock.
My college roommate Stephanie and her mom were there to meet me. We ate, then drove to Russellville where Steph’s parents live. I met their very exuberant pair of Scotty dogs, had a shower, and collapsed.
The next afternoon we hit the road for Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Stephanie lives. I didn’t mind the ride, because Steph is good company, and the scenery was different from what I’m used to, though not intrinsically fascinating. The sunset was so vivid that we suspected something had been burning. We later learned that brush fires were raging in northern Texas and Oklahoma. The area is suffering a drought and “burn bans” are in effect in both states, meaning, I suppose, that you can’t burn your trash or light a campfire. New year’s fireworks were still on sale, although reportedly at least one of the brush fires was started by kids playing with fireworks. Apparently the states cannot interfere with trade by banning the sale of fireworks, no matter how sensible it would be to do so in conditions of severe dryness and high winds.
We spent a couple of days in Tulsa, I did some errands, including buying a cellphone. The nice man from Tracfone with whom I exchanged emails hadn’t been able to help with a fast enough alternative payment method for me to buy a phone from their website, but I found a cheap one ($20) at Wal-Mart, and bought a 150-minute/one-year card (for $90) so that the number will not expire, and this phone will work immediately on any of my family’s future visits to the US.
I should mention that Tracfone’s online activation process was smooth and easy – a pleasing contrast to so many websites which are just too damned hard to use!
Thursday we left for Texas, staying overnight in Dallas with a Woodstock alumnus and his family. I hadn’t actually met Steve (class of ’68) before, but I know several of his classmates (e.g., Tom Alter), and Woodstockers always find plenty to talk about – sometimes to the sheer boredom of those around them! (Steph bore up heroically, and Steve’s family was clearly used to it.)
Friday we made our leisurely way to Austin, stopping to shop at an “outlet mall” along the way to buy clothing, mostly for Ross. I tried to get a picture of the highway sign for “Italy, Texas”, but somehow, throughout the trip, almost everything I wanted to film was backlit.
That evening we met my brother Ian for dinner at the Iron Works barbecuerestaurant downtown – a classic Texas BBQ joint where you order at a window and carry your own food and drink to your table. I had a combo plate of beef brisket, sausage, and beef ribs, with the standard sides (potato salad, pinto beans, white bread). Heaven on a sectioned paper plate.
Saturday we had to do still more shopping, as I realized that I had left behind somewhere one of the two pairs of jeans I’d packed. I found that a regular Gap store can have better sales than a Gap outlet store. Hmm. Post-Christmas sales are a wonderful thing – practically everything I’ve bought this trip has been half price, sometimes when I wasn’t even expecting it and was already happy with the marked price.
We also went to the downtown branch of Whole Foods Market, Austin’s celebrated home of health-conscious food (and other eco-friendly products), recently moved to a huge new building with underground parking. It was very busy, and we were sardonically amused to note that at least half the cars in the crowded garage were enormous SUVs. Not what I would have expected from the Whole Foods crowd…
New Year’s Eve saw the event I had come to Austin for: a party at Spankyville, the place made famous (as far as my readers are concerned) by my video last February. Julia and Dani celebrated the completion of their new kitchen by roasting an entire pig and inviting all of Julia’s family, and dozens of other friends from all over the world. Their goddaughter brought along her boyfriend and his band, The Four, so we had good live music, tons of excellent food, and very fine company. Someday I will have to do video interviews with Julia’s amazing extended family.
On New Year’s day Steph had to return to Tulsa. My brother Ian and I drove to Aunt Rosie’s farm outside of Coupland,Texas, and had a New Year’s meal of black-eyed peas, along with ham, corn bread, and sweet potatoes. I had not known that, in the American south, you eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s for the same reason that Italians eat lentils: to ensure prosperity in the coming year. My aunt refused to let me do a load of laundry at her house, and made me promise not to do it elsewhere: doing laundry on New Year’s day means washing a member of the family out of your life. I hadn’t known that, either.
Monday I spent quietly, mostly in the hotel, resting up in anticipation of the extreme busy-ness to start the next day.
Tuesday I had to check out of my hotel by noon, but my flight wasn’t til 10 pm. I dropped my luggage at Julia and Dani’s, then went to an Indian restaurant in north Austin to lunch with two Woodstock alumni: one member of the class of ’45, one of the class of ’95. Both were great company, and agreed that it was time to restart Woodstock “curry club” lunches in the Austin area. Ruth (’45) then very kindly drove me back to Spankyville, where I wrote, read, and relaxed until Julia and her family came home from an outing, and we all pitched in to help with dinner (video of which will be forthcoming).
Ian drove me to the airport, and I was off to my next adventure. More to come…
Lynn Truss, author of Eats Shoots and Leaves has a new rant out about how the world’s manners are going to pot, and her personal crusade to reverse this phenomenon. I totally sympathize.
I ride the schoolbus in the mornings. That is to say, I take the normal bus line that goes down the hill to Lecco’s railway station, but I happen to take the run that’s scheduled for the benefit of kids going to school. It’s a small bus, and fills up quickly.
Six to eight kids get on at the same stop I do. Even when the bus pulls up with its door right in front of me, they crowd in to get on before me and get seats. A couple of unfortunate older women who get on at later stops have no hope of getting seats, nor does it ever occur to the kids to offer them. A 10-year-old boy who gets on at a stop before mine routinely uses his backpack to hold a seat for a friend. One day an older woman got on, and I suggested to the boy that he give this seat to the lady. He just looked at me as if I was from Mars, and did not even answer. Perhaps his mommy told him not to speak to strangers. (I could have offered the lady my own seat, but she was quickly so hemmed in with backpacks that she probably preferred not to struggle through to it).
Another day he went so far as to reserve two seats. I gently suggested that it would be polite of him to offer one seat to the lady. He stared at me as if “good manners” was a novel concept. I asked him what his mother would think of him not offering a seat. He’s still young enough to respond to this sort of guilt trip so, reluctantly, he complied. He was too shy to tell the lady (she was standing by the door facing the other way), so I called her over and said: “This young gentleman would like to offer you a seat.” She and I smiled at each other complicitly. Later, after he got off, we shook our heads sadly together over the shocking behavior of today’s youth.
Older kids are harder to embarrass. One day, when I had had more than enough of the kids trying to climb in front of me, I spread my arms, blocked the door, and said jokingly (but firmly): “Let the old lady [meaning myself] get a seat.” An adolescent boy took exception to this, and afterwards Ross, when travelling alone, often heard him muttering imprecations about me when he thought she had her iPod on and couldn’t hear him (“That’s the daughter of that bitch…”). Ross told me about this; she was touchingly angry about it (I didn’t care), and considered whether to confront him, or maybe have her older friends beat him up.
No need for violence: Ross is quite scary enough all by herself. One day as we got on the bus together, she leaped on and grabbed a seat, right next to this boy. That was the last seat, so she offered it to me, and stood herself. I hadn’t even noticed the boy when Ross said to him, in a loud and dangerous voice: “Well, you’re sitting right next to my mother now. What are you going to do about it?” He just about sank into the floor. Perhaps that will have cured him of making rude remarks about people’s mothers. <smile>
Riding the Bus
Oct 4, 2006
I wrote last year about the irritations of riding the bus with the schoolkids in the morning. They haven’t learned any more manners this year. As always, they gather where they think the bus doors will be when it stops, then elbow each other to get in first. When I see the bus coming I move in that direction, but consider it beneath my dignity to blatantly step in front of them all – someone’s got to set an example of civilized manners. Once the door is open, I let those ahead of me in “line” board, politely but firmly block anyone else from cutting in front of me (provoking some mutters, which I pretend to ignore), and, when finally on the bus, I give the driver an eye-roll about the kids’ lack of manners.
Evidently he agrees with me. The other morning, the bus pulled up very carefully and stopped a meter short of its usual position – right in front of me. I assumed that this was just coincidence, but as I stepped onto the bus, rightfully before everybody, the driver gave me a complicit grin. I smiled sweetly back. We’d pulled one over on the kids for once.
International Manners
Jan 17, 2006
In response to the above, Rick Freeman wrote:
“We were in Bermuda some while ago, and perhaps the most memorable thing about the trip is the way people acted on the bus … it was beyond manners, more of a whole etiquette dance. Every time there was a stop, the people who sat checked to see who came in and how they ranked. Virtually everyone got up at some point and gave their seat to someone else (older, pregnant, etc.).
Not exactly the most interesting place I’ve visited, but certainly lots of people with good manners.”
If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you’ll know that customer service is one of my pet peeves – and praises, when somebody actually gets it right.
For my upcoming US trip, I need a cellphone. Actually, three, for the three of us going to Las Vegas for CES, so we can keep track of each other during the show. Though we all have tri-band phones that will work in the US, roaming charges from Italy are ridiculous.
I was astonished to find that there seems to be no way to simply buy a SIM card for whatever service and pop it into the phone I already have, as I did in India. Every US carrier wants me to buy an entirely new phone. This is annoying, since I am used to my own phone and have all my numbers on it. But there appears to be no way around it. US consumers sure put up with a lot of rubbish from their cellphone providers.
I consulted with my group of online experts, who concurred in recommending TracFone, and one even sent me a special free minutes offer. So I went straight to the TracFone site and ordered three cheap cellphones. Or tried to.
As I had been expecting – because it happens so often on US sites – it wouldn’t take my foreign-billed credit card. I could buy the phones from Amazon with any credit card, but that would cost a bit more, as would buying them in a shop.
Stubborn creature that I am, I decided to write to TracFone’s customer service about this. What do I have to lose?
But I knew pretty much what to expect from a low-level customer service rep. So I used an old trick (previously mentioned on my site – see below – and sometimes used on me in my Adaptec/Roxio days). I did a search for “Tracfone CEO” and found out his name. (I also saw, from the press releases mentioning him, that TracFone does a lot of socially-conscious stuff. That made a good impression.)
Now I had to figure out his email address. The address I had, customerservice@tracfone-ild.com, did not look like a corporate HQ adress – some sort of service center. CEO not likely to have email there. I sniffed around some more, found a press release with the email address of a company spokeswoman. Her address was formatted first initial-middle initial-lastname@tracfone.com From that, I could guess the format of the CEO’s email. So I copied my email to customer service to a couple of likely addresses for him. I was polite, and pointed out that they were missing potential business from travellers like myself, coming to the US with a need for a phone.
That was about 11:30 yesterday morning. At 1:20, I received an email from the CEO to someone named Steve, cc’d to me, instructing him to assist me in my purchase. I immediately thanked the CEO and said I was sure I would enjoy doing business with his company.
At 4:30 the same afternoon, I received the expected reply from customer service: “It was managements decision to only accept US based Credit Cards for security and business reasons.”
I’ll give them credit for swiftness of response, though a zero on punctuation (and, of course, helpfulness).
I’m now waiting to see whether Steve manages to pull this off for me. Even if he doesn’t, at least the attitude at the top is the correct one. Who knows, maybe they’ll change their credit card policy and find themselves with a whole new income stream.
later – Steve couldn’t come up with a payment method fast enough to solve the problem, so I’ll just have to buy from a store. He did tell me which were likely to have the largest selection of phones, and that the refill cards I want are also available there. That’s enough of a good-faith effort for TracFone to get my business.
An Internet meme I’ve been meaning to get to for a bit:
“Below is a Science Fiction Book Club list most significant SF novels between 1953-2006. The meme part of this works like so: Bold the ones you have read, strike through the ones you read and hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put a star next to the ones you love.”
1. The Lord of the Rings*, J.R.R. Tolkien (Read many times, though I always said the girls weren’t having enough fun. Now I like the movies better.)
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov 3. Dune, Frank Herbert (Read the first one, wasn’t impressed, though the discomfort of stillsuits is still vivid in my mind.) 4. Stranger in a Strange Land*, Robert A. Heinlein (I was crazy about Heinlein in high school – I think it’s a phase a lot of kids go through. But I preferred “I Will Fear No Evil”) 5. A Wizard of Earthsea*, Ursula K. Le Guin 6. Neuromancer, William Gibson (One Gibson was enough for me – too pessimistic, no sense of humor.) 7. Childhood’s End*, Arthur C. Clarke (I read this over and over again in Bangladesh, partly because I didn’t have many books. The ending creeped me out every time.) 8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?*, Philip K. Dick (Read it in high school, need to read it again. Very different from the movie.) 9. The Mists of Avalon*, Marion Zimmer Bradley (Though in the Arthurian vein I prefer Mary Stewart.) 10. Fahrenheit 451*, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe 12. A Canticle for Leibowitz*, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett 17. Dangerous Visions*, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany 21. Dragonflight*, Anne McCaffrey (One of my all-time favorites from age 12.) 22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card 23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson (Didn’t care for these; “The Mirror of Her Dreams” is much better.)
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl 26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone*, J.K. Rowling 27. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams* 28. I Am Legend*, Richard Matheson 29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice (Well, of course.) 30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin* 31. Little, Big*, John Crowley 32. Lord of Light*, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon 36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith*
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute 38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke 39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien 42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut 43. Snow Crash*, Neal Stephenson 44. Stand on Zanzibar*, John Brunner (Preferred his “The Shockwave Rider” – has some lessons for today, I think.)
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester 46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein 47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock 48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer
Wait on – what the hell happened to Brin and Spinrad? How could they not be on this list? And Ted Chiang?
“And a similar meme surrounding female sf/f writers:”
Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale)* Diana Wynne Jones (Everything she’s ever written – and I haven’t read nearly all of it. Original, funny.) Vonda McIntyre (One great book that I know of – Dreamsnake. After that?) Robin McKinley (Nowadays my favorite fantasy author.) Connie Willis (Excellent.)
