This a list of reasons why I don’t belong to this forgotten in time piece of land in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. The level of ignorance is overwhelming. I feel like a complete alien, not in the sense of a foreigner from another country, but like a creature from another planet. The whole place (just like a vast part of Italy as well), is ruled by male chauvinists’ rules, all centered on the idea of discrimination, mafia, unethical and immoral sources. I have been job hunting for the past two months. Never before in my life have I had such a problem finding employment. Certainly, it’s not the best time with the economic crisis that the world is suffering, yet the problem is not such in my case. Most of the adds I find they all state and require the following: “Good looking, age in between 20 and 26, attach photograph”… Are you in your 30s of 40s? Well too bad, you are obviously too old, and are not good for anything other than cooking dinner for your lazy and bold husband…. What? You are single! Even worse, divorced! You then are obviously a useless whore! Why would anyone hire you? Yes, you do also need to include in your job application if you are married, single or divorced. I was watching a show on TV, they were talking about how many brilliant scientists, inventors and researchers the fabulous country of Italy gives birth to, and how unfortunate it is that they always end up moving to other countries, they call it “la fuga dei cervelli”… “the escape of the brains”. But of course, why would anyone with a higher than average IQ level remain in this embarrassing nation? A nation that loves to label you, to drain you into a nothing if you are not connected or related to some rude politician who makes a fool out of himself on the news world-wide. Then one of the funniest thing happened to me, I heard of people who thank their doctors for being cured or visited by giving them whole dead piglets for roasting! (I’m sorry, don’t we have socialized medicine here? It’s not a favor… it’s their job as doctors!). A whole piglet? I have seen it with my eyes, people going to the hospitals with dead entire piglets in plastic bags, and doctors all happy and proud running through the parking lots and rushing home to bring the dead beast to be safely kept in their “icy-safes” (freezers). What is this place? What am I doing here? This is grotesque and archaic.
