There’s a strange kind of clarity that comes from having two homes. Not two houses, but two countries. Two sets of holidays, two very different senses of humour, a lot of unspoken rules which often don’t translate. You learn early that what’s considered polite in one place can be borderline rude in another. And somewhere …
Continue reading “The distance between how nations see each other”
I’ll be upfront: whenever someone can’t stop yammering about leadership, a little voice in my head mutters, “Yeah, all right, prove it.” Maybe you feel the same. We’ve all been bombarded with LinkedIn manifestos and TED Talks declaring the secrets of “visionary leadership,” usually in the context of business, and maybe sports. Boardrooms and locker …
There’s a certain shrug Italians do. A half-defeated, half-practical motion that says, “What do you want me to do about it?” Ask anyone in Italy why the average salary seems nailed to the floor, and you’ll probably get a variation of that shrug, maybe paired with a sigh, maybe a joke, maybe a deeply uncomfortable …
Continue reading “Why are Italian salaries so low? It’s not just the economy”
[…] the British do not have a term for a “colpo d’aria”. It literally translates as a “hit of air” and seems to be incredibly dangerous for Italians. They can get one in their eye, their ear, their head or any part of their abdomen. — BBC Magazine, 2011 If you’ve ever spent some time …
Continue reading ““Hit by air”: the Italian fear of breeze, explained”
Ever notice how talking to certain people feels like breathing? You say something, they challenge it. Not aggressively, but with curiosity. And then somehow, the thing you end up agreeing on wasn’t quite what either of you started with. It’s better. Sharper. That’s not magic. It’s Hegel. Sort of. Now, I’m not saying you need …
Education tends to reveal more than it intends. Behind every subject and syllabus, behind every reform or ministerial decree, there’s a confession: this is what we think the future looks like. Or—more poignantly—what we hope it resembles. In Italy, that confession once had a distinctly glossy look. At the turn of the millennium, Silvio Berlusconi …
It’s no secret that parenting is hard—objectively, relentlessly hard. The job description includes shaping human beings, nurturing souls, and ensuring they don’t grow up to be villains. At the same time, the stakes are high—failing big as a parent feels unthinkable, adding pressure to every single decision from bedtime routines to school choices. Consider, for …
You know that awkward hesitation—the moment your gut says “maybe I should ask”, but your brain presses the brake pedal. What if it’s weird? What if they say no? What if… nothing happens? Exactly. Nothing happens. That’s the beauty of it. Some of the simplest wins in life come from asking for things that cost …
There’s a certain pleasure in recognising patterns—the quiet satisfaction of seeing how one thing connects to another, how causes ripple into effects. But patterns only make sense when the context is intact. Without it, everything becomes a pile of disconnected facts—numbers without significance, arguments without weight, objects without purpose. And yet, for something so essential, …
Continue reading “Context and nuance in a world that isn’t simple”
In recent years, Italians have unwittingly embraced a curious linguistic phenomenon: the adoption of “fake English” words. These are words that sound like English but either don’t exist in the English-speaking world or take on a meaning in Italian that’s quite different from their English counterpart. A recent Financial Times article explored this quirky trend, …
Continue reading “The Italians and the “Smart Working” trap”
