Enoteca Nanut

Last night was a quick aperitivi session for Daniele's birthday. I wasn't intending to go originally as there is such a lot of studying to do right now, but having had the finance resit (easier this time I think - we will see) I decided to have a night off. Like all good aperitivi it metamorphasised into a much longer session than we intended. In a radical break with tradition, we moved away from our normal La Portizza / Bar Marino routine to a small enoteca named Nanut, just around the corner from the market where I buy my fruit in the mornings.

Nanut, curiously enough, is also the name of the Dean of our school with whom we had a meeting over drinks and doughnuts today. Italy tends to be pretty formal so this kind of informal chat was a new thing for the school and for a lot of the students too, but it went well and I think we will do it again.

But Enoteca Nanut was lovely - a really wide selection of wines and a gorgeous setting with stone walls and a big wooden bar. Massimo - in the front of the picture above - is our resident wine expert and picked a fabulous red from Sardegna for us to enjoy. In usual Trieste style we got lots of free nibbles, including hams and cheeses to mop up the vino - this is a necessity as we rarely have time to eat dinner these days as we are at school til late.

An All Time TV Low

Wednesday night was an all-time TV low. Il Megliore Miss Italia was a quiz show that pitted the 'brains' of the different Miss Italias throughout the last 20 years against each other. Truly appalling TV, yet strangely addictive the night before a finance exam!

Group shot

Its really very busy here this week. I have been doing a presentation on Red Bull, one on Fabtek (seaarch online for the Harvard Business School case if you are interested, its very dry) and working on my insurance presentation for strategy. All in all there is a lot going on, and not a lot of time. I did get a good result in the strategy exam last week - when I managed to get an A. But whilst on the subject of exams the Time Value of Money resit is tomorrow, following 4 hours of lectures on Finance and a presentation from L'Oreal who are running an MBA competition called the e-strat challenge.
So with all that, there is not a lot of time to write on this blog!
Instead, I am attaching a group shot of me with some of my colleagues at the wine tasting trip on Saturday.

Tocai No More

An interesting trip to the vineyards near Cividale on Saturday. It transpires that the famous local Tocai wine is now Tocai no more (or at least from April 1st 2007). There are 2 types of Tocai on the market at the moment – the Hungarian version - a sweet wine and the version from Friuli – AKA Tocai Fruilano. The European Union has ruled that this latter version is to lose the name Tocai from April, at which point it will become simply Friulano – from the Friuli region. Obviously this presents a marketing challenge for the producers, who historically are fiercely competitive with each other and have not been working as a region – this is now changing. In the name of research, I have been trying the Tocai before it becomes obsolete to see if it is worth drinking. So far so good – give it a try before it disappears!
The case of Tocai also highlighted another interesting point. My Italian friends struggle with their use of the letter ‘h’. A little like Cockney people, the Italians add ‘h’s where there are none, and don’t use them when they should. Which made our Tocai discussions an interesting linguistic challenge as they were angry at Hungary…
The picture was taken at the end of the day, after a lot of wine tasting, just after a rousing rendition of a Beatles medley!

Call me Doctor....

It turns out that in Italy you can take the title Doctor as soon as you have a university degree. I have always harboured a secret desire to have the title Doctor. Now I can do it without the inconvenience of having to do a PhD!

Clementini

I am absolutely addicted to clementines. I have been buying them on the market near the Canale Grande in the morning, and bringing them to school, where I eat them like sweets!
It is different from HK here, as in HK you can get the same fruit more or less all year around. Here the seasons are much more noticeable - when things are in season, they are glorious and omnipresent - when it is getting to the end of the season, they look pretty sad. But right now, the clementines are fabulous, and the whole class is munching through kilos of them every week. A bag of about 30 of them is about Euro 1.60 so they are suitable for a student budget too!

Hard at work

Its been a busy few days, and getting busier. I am writing this at 1915 Trieste time, and many of us are still at school and anticipating being here for a while. We are drowning under the weight of group assignments, reading, revision and so on - and that is before we try and figure out the mundane bits - washing, ironing, shopping and so on!
The weekend did provide a little chance to let off some steam though as there was a party for 5 of the guys from my class who combined their Euros to organise a joint birthday party.

We had a great time, and it was much needed after the building pressure at school. The picture is of us at Luca, Alessandro and Massimiliano's house before we went out.
It was not all play this weekend though, I spent 5 hours yesterday studying finance with Luca from my class. He understands the subject well, and in the end, I think I did too. I am planning to get some more practice in before tomorrow if I can.
Our major project at the moment is a strategic analysis of an industry and a company. Hakan from my working group selected the industries for us, and I am relatively happy to be working on the insurance sector - having worked for Eagle Star (now Zurich); New York Life Insurance and Ace Insurance, I know quite a bit about the industry and its challenges and opportunities - at least in Asia Pacific. My individual company to analyse is Generali, based here in Trieste, so it is a good chance to practice my Italian too as I read through the presentations of the company to find out what they are doing. We are supposed to make recommendations about future direction and business opportunities - it is a bit like Free Of Charge consultancy I guess, but if the recommendations are good enough we might be able to do something with it to earn some cash! I am trying to cultivate links at Generali, just in case....

Studiamo Insieme

We have formed a study group for strategy. It has a limited but varied number of participants, but has been great as we ploughed through 200 odd slides and about 400 pages of a book. It's interesting stuff, but pretty dry and easier if you can add examples, Or just some fun chat in between matrixes.
Tonight will be the third night in a row that we have met. The exam is tomorrow. Let's hope it makes a difference to the result.

Excuse me, but I can't get through

At least this is how I imagine the dialogue went this morning when my busdriver left the bus (motor running) in the middle of a junction to grab the attention of the policeman who was controlling the traffic near the turning in Piazza Goldoni.
Whatever he said it worked.
The policeman in question left his post.
And came to clear a path for the bus.
I hope to get the same driver tomorrow morning! or the same policeman...

Social Sarnano

One of my friends on the course asked what I did in Sarnano – didn’t I get bored in a place as sleepy as Le Marche?

The answer this week is certainly no! It’s been a whirlwind few days and I have barely managed to fit in everything that I had planned – let alone time to be bored. I have eaten 2 delicious meals, one at Simonetta and Fabiano’s house where I tested out my newly improved Italian on them and their friends, and the other at Chris and Irene’s where we sampled Irene’s rendering of the local bacala.

On the menu at Simonetta’s house was carbonara pasta. Its one of those dishes that sounds easy, and I suspect is horribly difficult! For secondo we had cold meats and bread – thin slices of proscuitto crudo, 2 types of salami and

The two highlights of the trip home were a trip to the shoe mecca of Cassetta D’Ete – home of the Tods factory – where I treated myself to my annual to-me-from-me present of some boots for the winter. Not at the Tods factory – now that I am no longer working Euros 200 for a pair of boots – even if this is heavily discounted from the normal retail price – seems exorbitant! But I got a good bargain and like all addicted shoppers, am wearing my new purchase whilst typing this on the train!

The other highlight was the Diamanti a Tavola (Diamonds on the Table) festival in Amandola. All the small towns in the region have these autumn tastes festivals and the Amadola one didn’t disappoint with truffles – both white and black – local wine and cheese and mountains of salami and local ham. The festivals are always done well – and it is jolly to see all the locals strolling around and shopping.

The rude awakening this week was the onset of winter. It was 19 degrees when I left Trieste – no complaints – but I noticed on arrival in Marche that it was appreciably colder. That night there was a hard frost and by Thursday the temperature had fallen to zero in the day too. Then the snow started on the mountains and today as I left the wind was so strong I was worried about the olive tree in my garden. Especially as one of Augustino’s flower pots took off from the roof above me and smashed on the ground – I was delighted that I was not in the garden at the time!

Its also been a bit of a mad scramble as it appears as if the internal staircase that I have been waiting years for is going to be started this week. I am not entirely sure that I know how the finished article will look, and I am working on suspending my disbelief that the stairs will actually ever happen – it has been so long coming that I am not entirely convinced! But nevertheless, I have once again cleared out the downstairs room in the flat, and covered the furniture. So we’ll see.

Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me if this time there was progress on the stairs. And there is a litany of reasons:-
1. Its winter and the builders want inside work
2. Now that all my things have arrived from Hong Kong this is the time of maximum inconvenience for me
3. I have friends coming for Christmas – so predict unfinished work and HUGE amounts of mess
4. The price has gone up so much on this work that its now worth their while getting out of bed to do it!

I have attached a picture of the lounge before the whole in the roof, so I can remember what it used to be like in case anything goes wrong.

Ciao Bellisima!

“Come va? Tutto bene? Un cappuccino?”
Thursday morning – market day in Sarnano and this is the greeting I get when I go for a cappuccino to my favourite coffee shop. Its not just the warmth of the greeting that makes the difference. The cappuccinos in this shop are the best in Sarnano – and I have done a lot of market research.
The proprietor of the bar spent some time as a barista in Rome, where the discerning coffee drinkers vote with their feet. If the cappuccino isn’t good the business closes.
So Sarnano has profited from this master in his field returning to his routes. And I have profited from my market research.
The owner of the bar once made a small gesture that will ensure that his bar is my preferred coffee locale in town for all time. I was with Mum who can only drink freshly squeezed orange juice. We ordered, but the bar was out of oranges, so we cancelled the order and stuck with coffee. The next thing we saw was the proprietor leaving the bar unmanned as he dashed across the road to buy oranges from the greengrocers, so that he could meet our request.
And every time I come back to Sarnano, and I go for a coffee, he greets me in the same way “Ciao Bellisima!...” then makes me my regular drink.
All in all it makes for a heck of a homecoming! It takes a long time to get to Sarnano from Trieste – about 6 ½ hours on the train then a drive from Ancona – and last night when I arrived I was exhausted. But being at home, with my things around me, has a remedial effect – I soon forget my tiredness.
And coming the night before the market is a great idea. I have had a stroll around today and seen many people who have all welcomed me back.
And other than the social side, I have also managed to do some shopping – buying a roast chicken at the porchetta van, fagiolini (small beans) and fennel at one greengrocers van, and clementini at another, and some fresh pasta from the best pasta place in town, in the square. I bought some pastries at the bakers, for Chris and Irene who popped round for a coffee and a chat helped me consume them.
It is really starting to feel homely here, and the greetings from the folk of Sarnano make all the difference.
And the Ciao Bellisima is an added bonus!

Liquidity

I am pretty solvent as students go, mainly long-term liabilities, and not too much short-term debt. (Spot the A/B accounting student!)
So I was a little alarmed when my Bancomat card – our cashpoint in Italy – stopped paying out.
LA CARTA E PRIVA DISPONIBILITA the machine helpfully pointed out. (The card is not available). No clue as to why.
This morning however, I have found the answer.
Doing some long overdue filing at home I came across that bit of paper that comes with bankcards that no-one ever reads. (Or at least, I never read).
It helpfully tells me in miniscule print that I am limited to taking out Euros 1000 a month, regardless of the amount of money actually in the account.
Which I suppose is a good thing, a sort of forced fiscal responsibility.
But it wasn’t that helpful when I needed to eat on October 29th.
Like so many things here, now that I have found out, I know and I can deal with it accordingly. But up until then, ignorance can be far from bliss.