Oh My God... I have had my first positive Banking Experience in Italy!!! Last Monday, I went to Unicredit Banca to open a new bank account. As I posted recently, I was totally sick of bloody Banca Intesa and I really want to get rid of them. So therefore, I went to open a new bank account. Surprise #1: I was treated politely and respectfully. Suprise #2: opening a bank account here only took 1 day! In fact, it only took 1 hour! But the biggest surprise of all came when I mentioned that I already had an account with Banca Intesa that I was trying to get rid of: It turned out that this bank had the service of closing old accounts and transferring all kinds of account-related transfers et cetera. Of course, this is normal in countries with a civilised banking system, but to find such a thing in Italy was a huge shock to me! I realise that everything is bound to go wrong during this process, but for now it is making me very happy. And it saves me a lot of time of having to go to Banca Intesa and actually close the account myself (although I had psychologically prepared myself for making a scene there: that would have been fun....).
Another good thing is the fact that the account is really cheap: only 1€ per month (well, plus 9€ per 3 months, plus a charge for each transcation, but all of that is normal, right? Well, it is in this damned country).
The rest of the week was rather quiet. I worked a bit and started my teaching. In fact, I taught my first real class yesterday, a tutorial in Macroeconomics. It was exhausting I must admit, but I just ignored the fact that no-one was paying me any attention. After all, I am not getting paid for the number of people paying attention, but simply per hour! I just really hope that all the people who obviously didnt give a shit about the tutorial will not be there next time. That way, those who are interested may actually learn something (but once again: when I am getting 176€ per 45 minutes, you can put me in front of an empty wall and I will tell my story just as vividly!
Saturday we're leaving for 2 days in Paris: woooohooooooooooooooooooooo
Ciao,
OJ
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Sunday, September 23, 2007
lots of stress and gaiety
Well, it was an interesting return to Milano. All my mates were stressed out about the presentations of our first papers that were supposed to happen in that week, and as a result of that, it was obviously chaotic at University. I was not extremely stressed about it all, and it turned out that my presentation had been postponed by a week anyway, so I threw myself full-throttle into the other bureaucratic bitcheries that seem to inhabit the life of any person living in Italy... During the holidays, I had acquired 2 jobs as a Teaching Assistant for this semester. Or so I thought... Because it turned out very soon that something had gone wrong, and everyone had misunderstood each other and some emails never arrived and there was quite un casino (a chaos) going on. So, as a result of that, I only turned out to have 1 job as a TA for 16 hours this semester. Obviously, I was not happy about this (these are the extremely well-paid jobs that make life bearable as a PhD student, with its 176 euros an hour rate), so I decided to do it the Italian way. I got myself a secretary to agree with me and start fighting. Some gossiping, some acusing people of favouritsm, the standard Italian fare...
The result: I now have 16 hours as a TA, plus 56 hours as tutor (at 44 euros an hour), which gets me up to the maximum number of hours I am allowed to work this semester. In addition to that, I managed to get a new office and I am still aiming at getting a new fast computer in addition to that. Conclusion: I think I have done rather well for myself, the Italian way..... :-D Of course, it did take up a considerable amount of time that I may have been able to spend more usefully. Oh well, shit happens.
In addition to this, of course there was also the forementioned presentation to be had. While I wasnt nervous before, when the day itself finally arrived, I did get a bit freaked out after all. It actually did not go too bad, although I personally was not so satisfied. Professor Tabellini, however, did tell me that he thought it was quite good, and that is what matters! In other research-related news, I am now officially a published author!!! You can download my first real publication HERE, which is the website of the Review of Income and Wealth (September issue: pp. 422-439). If you don't have a University account and therefore cannot download the paper, but are interested in seeing a copy anyway.... Please send me an email and I can send you a copy. For copyright-related reasons, I am not allowed to post it online, but I am actually allowed to email copies to people. Also, I am (since Thursday) a MULTIPLY published author, because I also received the Summer-Autumn issue of the Baltic Journal of Economics (pp. 35-49)!!! This one will be available for download from HERE, but is not actually there yet. I don't have the file either, but I have 5 hardcopy issues of the Journal, so if you are interested, just tell me and I can give one to you...
So, that definitely made me very, very happy, and it made up a lot for the long-lasting stress caused by Banca Intesa. The bastards!!! I have posted here before about their "dear Sir, we are now closing your account"-message they sent in July, but I did not mention they did the same thing again in August. While we were on holiday, so it gave me quite a shock, I must say! Although, again it wasnt actually true and it turned out to be completely ignorable. At least, so I thought. But just now, when I tried to pay the rent, I discovered they did pull back the loan I had with them, so that sort of ruined my day. Although I have already created a way in which this is not going to be a problem in the end, it is rather inconvenient nonetheless. Tomorrow morning, I am opening a new account with another bank. That will make me feel soooooo good. FUCK BANCA INTESA!
Anyways, for the rest everything is going well. No visitors these weekends, but instead we can do many other things. Yesterday we had dinner at a colleague of Fedor's and tonite we are having some friends over for dinner. Lovely.
Next weekend: Paris!
And in answer to Gerwin's question, our trip in The East did not give us any extra wonders for the Hillman list. Which is why we are going to Paris next weekend, because we will have 1 (Fedor: Louvre) or 2 (me: Louvre and Versailles) new Wonders there!!! (both of us having done the Eiffel Tower already). I cannot wait...
Ciao,
OJ
The result: I now have 16 hours as a TA, plus 56 hours as tutor (at 44 euros an hour), which gets me up to the maximum number of hours I am allowed to work this semester. In addition to that, I managed to get a new office and I am still aiming at getting a new fast computer in addition to that. Conclusion: I think I have done rather well for myself, the Italian way..... :-D Of course, it did take up a considerable amount of time that I may have been able to spend more usefully. Oh well, shit happens.
In addition to this, of course there was also the forementioned presentation to be had. While I wasnt nervous before, when the day itself finally arrived, I did get a bit freaked out after all. It actually did not go too bad, although I personally was not so satisfied. Professor Tabellini, however, did tell me that he thought it was quite good, and that is what matters! In other research-related news, I am now officially a published author!!! You can download my first real publication HERE, which is the website of the Review of Income and Wealth (September issue: pp. 422-439). If you don't have a University account and therefore cannot download the paper, but are interested in seeing a copy anyway.... Please send me an email and I can send you a copy. For copyright-related reasons, I am not allowed to post it online, but I am actually allowed to email copies to people. Also, I am (since Thursday) a MULTIPLY published author, because I also received the Summer-Autumn issue of the Baltic Journal of Economics (pp. 35-49)!!! This one will be available for download from HERE, but is not actually there yet. I don't have the file either, but I have 5 hardcopy issues of the Journal, so if you are interested, just tell me and I can give one to you...
So, that definitely made me very, very happy, and it made up a lot for the long-lasting stress caused by Banca Intesa. The bastards!!! I have posted here before about their "dear Sir, we are now closing your account"-message they sent in July, but I did not mention they did the same thing again in August. While we were on holiday, so it gave me quite a shock, I must say! Although, again it wasnt actually true and it turned out to be completely ignorable. At least, so I thought. But just now, when I tried to pay the rent, I discovered they did pull back the loan I had with them, so that sort of ruined my day. Although I have already created a way in which this is not going to be a problem in the end, it is rather inconvenient nonetheless. Tomorrow morning, I am opening a new account with another bank. That will make me feel soooooo good. FUCK BANCA INTESA!
Anyways, for the rest everything is going well. No visitors these weekends, but instead we can do many other things. Yesterday we had dinner at a colleague of Fedor's and tonite we are having some friends over for dinner. Lovely.
Next weekend: Paris!
And in answer to Gerwin's question, our trip in The East did not give us any extra wonders for the Hillman list. Which is why we are going to Paris next weekend, because we will have 1 (Fedor: Louvre) or 2 (me: Louvre and Versailles) new Wonders there!!! (both of us having done the Eiffel Tower already). I cannot wait...
Ciao,
OJ
Sunday, September 16, 2007
looooooooong post
Guess what? This is going to be a loooooooong post. We have been back from our holiday for nearly a week already, but the past week has been so crazily busy that I did not manage to actually post anything about our vacation!
So, I will do this right now. We flew into Bucharest, which was actually surprisingly lovely. A lot of it is under construction, but you can clearly see that the level of welfare is increasing signficantly there. We wandered through the city, enjoyed the sights and visited some churches (trust me, you'll be reading more about churches....). The main attraction, however, of Bucharest is the Palace of Ceauşescu. An enormous structure (the 2nd biggest in the world, after the Pentagon), for which a significant part of the city was bulldozed. A 1-hour tour is not even nearly enough to see its magnificence, but we did see a dozen or so ornately decorated meeting rooms, as well as the grand ballroom: impressive, for sure!
Another interesting building is this building, which is the shell of the old Securitate building (the Romanian KGB), in which a new building has been constructed:
After 2 days in Bucharest, we took a night train to Chisinau, which was a very relaxing experience. You just sleep your way through the Romanian night and the Moldovan morning, without being bothered at all. And the views are gorgeous occassionally (most of it is flat as a pancake, so there are no cliffs or panoramas or anything, but it's still enjoyable)
Chisinau is an extremely pleasant town. It's city centre is very laid-back and there is very little stress. It's green, it's pleasant and important for us: it's dirt cheap. The National Museum was very interesting, despite the fact that we were being shadowed by a gang of museum ladies. Again, it's dirtcheap (20 cents for normal people, 5 cents for students), and absolutely worth spending an afternoon or so. Another major sight was the Armenian cemetery. As always, our trip consisted of visiting lots and lots of cemeteries, but the Armenian cemetery was definitely one of the most interesting ones. We also saw a bunch of churches and monasteries:
After Chisinau, we went to Odessa, read the previous post for that journey. I don't want to think about it anymore. Odessa wasn't actually very pleasant, but that probably had more to do with our state-of-mind than with the city itself. We limited ourselves to doing some of the compulsory sights, such as the Potemkin Stairs and quickly took the train to Kiev afterwards
Arriving in Kiev in the morning again, after another night in the train, we started wandering around. Sunday morning, 9 am, the city was quiet and stunning. But even when it got busier later, Kiev remained an absolutely lovely city. Very green, lots of big beautiful buildings and lots to do. We had 3 days, but that was actually not enough time to see everything. For our stay there, we negotiated with a lady at the central station for quite some time in order to rent an appartment. A huge appartment, that is, which was way too big for the two of us. But it was a nice way to relax for some time, do our laundry in the bathtub (seriously, what's a country without laundrettes???) and spend our evening watching television.
Kiev being the capital of the country and the standplace of the Ukrainian Orthodox church, there were also lots of churches to visit:
And monasteries, including the famous Caves Monastery, where for centuries the monks lived below the ground in a huge number of caves:
We also met with my friend Elena, who is a Bocconi colleague of mine. She showed us some other sights that we hadn't seen yet and showed us a great place to have dinner.
And finally, we started our gifts-shopping, because Kiev is a great place for shopping:
After all of that, we were quite exhausted when we took another night train to Kamyanets-Podilski. In addition to our exhaustion, the weather also took a turn for the worse so we did not do much there. We visited the fort of course, went to the village museum and saw a few churches, but that was all.
The next morning, we took a bus to Chernivtsi: a lovely student town with some very friendly people. In fact, we met a guy there who voluntarily gave us a big tour through the city, showing all his favourite churches (and as a Russian Orthodox guy, obviously the Russian Orthodox churches were the best ones....)
He was quite right though and showed us one of the most quaint churches I have ever seen:
After saying goodbye to Igor, we relaxed for some more time in Chernivtsi and had dinner before taking another night train to Lviv. Lviv was stunning, as expected. very kind people (far more people able to speak other languages than Russian and Ukrainian) and lots of beautiful buildings. It did have the same problem that many Eastern European cities seem to have nowadays: it's all under construction. Like Cracow, Vilnius and Bucharest, the city is being cleaned and reconstructed and everything is repainted in pinks and blues, but I guess that's part of the charm... The main attraction, however, from our point of view, is the cemetery. Also known as the Père Lachaise of the east, this is a huge piece of hilly land with over 400,000 graves. And it is stunning: quiet, overgrown but with lots of flowers. Definitely worth a visit!
After 3 days in Lviv (including lots of relaxing and some excellent food... And including lemon-coffee: don't ever try that!!!), we took a night bus into Cracow. A long bus ride, particularly because of the 5 hour wait at the border. But the price difference with the train was so much that we decided to do it this way anyway. So we arrived in Cracow at about 9 AM and spent the rest of the day walking through its lovely, but touristy, streets.
While it is definitely a beautiful city, it was also considerably more expensive than we were getting used to and very very touristy. So we quite enjoyed it, but it definitely was not my favourite. Also, the Jewish cemetery was distinctly unimpressive...
That night, we spent waiting at the bus terminal in the rain until 2.30 AM, when our bus arrived to bring us to Katowice Airport, from where we took a 6AM flight to the Netherlands.
In Holland, we saw many people, family, friends, etc, etc, and had a very good time at the wedding of Maartje and Edin (from which I hope to receive some photos at a later stage), but I really can't be bothered to write any more about it. We had a good time, in summary. At a later stage I'll share more about the stress at Uni this week, but now, I have to go and clean...
If you're interested in seeing more photos, you can do so at my Facebook account: CLICK HERE
Ciao,
OJ
So, I will do this right now. We flew into Bucharest, which was actually surprisingly lovely. A lot of it is under construction, but you can clearly see that the level of welfare is increasing signficantly there. We wandered through the city, enjoyed the sights and visited some churches (trust me, you'll be reading more about churches....). The main attraction, however, of Bucharest is the Palace of Ceauşescu. An enormous structure (the 2nd biggest in the world, after the Pentagon), for which a significant part of the city was bulldozed. A 1-hour tour is not even nearly enough to see its magnificence, but we did see a dozen or so ornately decorated meeting rooms, as well as the grand ballroom: impressive, for sure!
Another interesting building is this building, which is the shell of the old Securitate building (the Romanian KGB), in which a new building has been constructed:
After 2 days in Bucharest, we took a night train to Chisinau, which was a very relaxing experience. You just sleep your way through the Romanian night and the Moldovan morning, without being bothered at all. And the views are gorgeous occassionally (most of it is flat as a pancake, so there are no cliffs or panoramas or anything, but it's still enjoyable)
Chisinau is an extremely pleasant town. It's city centre is very laid-back and there is very little stress. It's green, it's pleasant and important for us: it's dirt cheap. The National Museum was very interesting, despite the fact that we were being shadowed by a gang of museum ladies. Again, it's dirtcheap (20 cents for normal people, 5 cents for students), and absolutely worth spending an afternoon or so. Another major sight was the Armenian cemetery. As always, our trip consisted of visiting lots and lots of cemeteries, but the Armenian cemetery was definitely one of the most interesting ones. We also saw a bunch of churches and monasteries:
After Chisinau, we went to Odessa, read the previous post for that journey. I don't want to think about it anymore. Odessa wasn't actually very pleasant, but that probably had more to do with our state-of-mind than with the city itself. We limited ourselves to doing some of the compulsory sights, such as the Potemkin Stairs and quickly took the train to Kiev afterwards
Arriving in Kiev in the morning again, after another night in the train, we started wandering around. Sunday morning, 9 am, the city was quiet and stunning. But even when it got busier later, Kiev remained an absolutely lovely city. Very green, lots of big beautiful buildings and lots to do. We had 3 days, but that was actually not enough time to see everything. For our stay there, we negotiated with a lady at the central station for quite some time in order to rent an appartment. A huge appartment, that is, which was way too big for the two of us. But it was a nice way to relax for some time, do our laundry in the bathtub (seriously, what's a country without laundrettes???) and spend our evening watching television.
Kiev being the capital of the country and the standplace of the Ukrainian Orthodox church, there were also lots of churches to visit:
And monasteries, including the famous Caves Monastery, where for centuries the monks lived below the ground in a huge number of caves:
We also met with my friend Elena, who is a Bocconi colleague of mine. She showed us some other sights that we hadn't seen yet and showed us a great place to have dinner.
And finally, we started our gifts-shopping, because Kiev is a great place for shopping:
After all of that, we were quite exhausted when we took another night train to Kamyanets-Podilski. In addition to our exhaustion, the weather also took a turn for the worse so we did not do much there. We visited the fort of course, went to the village museum and saw a few churches, but that was all.
The next morning, we took a bus to Chernivtsi: a lovely student town with some very friendly people. In fact, we met a guy there who voluntarily gave us a big tour through the city, showing all his favourite churches (and as a Russian Orthodox guy, obviously the Russian Orthodox churches were the best ones....)
He was quite right though and showed us one of the most quaint churches I have ever seen:
After saying goodbye to Igor, we relaxed for some more time in Chernivtsi and had dinner before taking another night train to Lviv. Lviv was stunning, as expected. very kind people (far more people able to speak other languages than Russian and Ukrainian) and lots of beautiful buildings. It did have the same problem that many Eastern European cities seem to have nowadays: it's all under construction. Like Cracow, Vilnius and Bucharest, the city is being cleaned and reconstructed and everything is repainted in pinks and blues, but I guess that's part of the charm... The main attraction, however, from our point of view, is the cemetery. Also known as the Père Lachaise of the east, this is a huge piece of hilly land with over 400,000 graves. And it is stunning: quiet, overgrown but with lots of flowers. Definitely worth a visit!
After 3 days in Lviv (including lots of relaxing and some excellent food... And including lemon-coffee: don't ever try that!!!), we took a night bus into Cracow. A long bus ride, particularly because of the 5 hour wait at the border. But the price difference with the train was so much that we decided to do it this way anyway. So we arrived in Cracow at about 9 AM and spent the rest of the day walking through its lovely, but touristy, streets.
While it is definitely a beautiful city, it was also considerably more expensive than we were getting used to and very very touristy. So we quite enjoyed it, but it definitely was not my favourite. Also, the Jewish cemetery was distinctly unimpressive...
That night, we spent waiting at the bus terminal in the rain until 2.30 AM, when our bus arrived to bring us to Katowice Airport, from where we took a 6AM flight to the Netherlands.
In Holland, we saw many people, family, friends, etc, etc, and had a very good time at the wedding of Maartje and Edin (from which I hope to receive some photos at a later stage), but I really can't be bothered to write any more about it. We had a good time, in summary. At a later stage I'll share more about the stress at Uni this week, but now, I have to go and clean...
If you're interested in seeing more photos, you can do so at my Facebook account: CLICK HERE
Ciao,
OJ
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