Another reason why I've not been too active on my blog is a lack of motivation. Not because I wouldn't want to keep you informed anymore about our Italian adventure. It's just that Christine and I have too many worries on our heads.
I already told you about Danilo, our architect, and how we're seriously displeased with his work. But at the moment we're really heading on a collision course with him and our prospect of beginning a quiet new life in Italy may receive a very nasty blow. For all of his "excellent work", he's sent us an initial bill of 7.500,-. This is absolutely proposterous because, as I already explained, he hasn't done hardly anything. Even if it's because he's so to speak "responsible" for the works, this amount is highly exaggerated. Furthermore we can only guess what his final bill will be like.
First of all, we've never signed any contract with him. We've asked him numerous times how much his services would cost and he always laughed or said that we didn't have to worry about such "triviality". I don't know about you, but considering that his final bill will be equally high, I would not call 15.000,- a "triviality".
Moreover, Danilo knew from the start that we needed a small mortgage in order to finish the house. We can probably make the house "habitable" with our own money, given that there are no more unpleasant surprises, but we can't receive guests with merely concrete floors and a camping bed, can we? Danilo said that a mortgage would not be any problem at all. In fact, he advised us to go to a certain bank of which he knew the manager very well. He said he had already spoken to the manager and that the mortgage would only be a "formality". But loyal readers of my blog will already know that this mortgage turned out to be anything but a "formality" and just like all other banks so far Danilo's "close friend" bluntly refused our request four bl#[dy times! With the biggest smirk on his face, I might add. First, of course, he asked us to open up an account with them. Which we did. Then he wanted Christine to already change her residence to Italy. Which she did. Then he wanted her to transfer her social security pension directly to this account. Which she did. Then he demanded that also I would change my residence and transfer my pension... Christine nearly exploded! Danilo, who was sitting next to Christine when she was negotiating with that manager for the last time, told her that it was all her fault because she hadn't been cooperating very well. He suddenly also denied that he knew from the start that we needed this mortgage.
Currently he's playing a very nasty game with us. First he tried to set Nezio, our contractor, against us. Nezio's a wonderful man who's always turned a blind eye when we e.g. weren't able to pay his bills in time. Fortunately, Christine and Nezio both prefer to talk things through before getting into a conflict so Danilo's faul play was quickly exposed. Danilo even had the nerve to call our Italian "mama" Cosetta, urging her to talk some sense into us. Which she of course kindly refused.
Christine and I've decided not to pay his initial bill for the time being. No matter how hard Danilo may be threatening us. Christine's found another architect who is willing to take over the work from Danilo if so required. He will provide us with a proper estimation about how much the work of an architect in our case would cost. Then we'll use this against Danilo in order to arrange a settlement. And we'll continue the work with the other guy. The problem is that before we can start living in our new house, an architect has to declare it "habitable". So Danilo believes he has us by the b... But then he doesn't know us yet.
We're now hearing stories that Danilo has in fact been establishing a very lucrative business in trying to rip off "ignorant" foreigners. We simply fell onto the wrong guy. He was so charming and down to earth. We really had a lot of confidence in him. But he'll be sorry that he betrayed our confidence!
I know, I've been neglecting my blog a bit over the past couple of weeks. One reason is that I'm terribly busy transforming my book on autism into an audio-book. I'm carefully reading my book and recording it on my PC. Then I'm creating background music, special effects and atmosphere sounds so that it's not just a boring read out of the book but that the listener will also have a (hopefully) enjoyable listening experience. I hope that I can let him or her "feel" what it's like being autistic. I'll still have about a week's work or so and then I'll add it to my website on autism. I'll also add a sample on the webpage so you'll get a taste of what I've been up to these last couple of weeks. I hope you like it! Again, it will be in Flemish/Dutch so if you don't speak this language I wouldn't recommend buying the audio-book.
My original e-book is selling quite well for the time being and hopefully this audio-book will also help earning us a bit of pocket money. We could surely use it, but I'll elaborate on that in a next message.
My apologies that it has taken me a while to add another post on my blog. This is largely because there isn't much to tell, really. At the moment there still is about 40cm of snow at our house and temperatures hardly rise above freezing level. This means that the restoration has come to a halt for the time being. Christine is waiting for the electrician and plumber to draw the trenches on the walls which she will cut out for the electric cables and plumbing.
In the mean time she was getting quite aggravated. Since she's still on social security, she has to pass a medical exam every once and a while. Long before she returned to Belgium for the Christmas holidays she informed her health insurance company that she's residing in Italy and that she would come to Belgium for these two and a half weeks. So if they were planning to call her for a medical check, she kindly asked to do it then. I suppose you can already guess what happened. The day before she was going to leave to Italy again, she got a letter inviting her for a check two weeks later. She was furious and called the company, but to no avail. Missing the appointment would mean that her insurance pension would be cancelled with immediate effect. So all in all it would be much cheaper to book a return Ryanair ticket than losing the pension. In the end we were both quite happy to see eachother again, even if it was for such a brief period. When I'm writing this, Christine has just arrived back at her temporary Italian residence and we're separated again. Well, we're in the final stretch towards the realisation of our dream now. Only a couple of month's patience and we can finally start our new life. That's the only thing that matters, isn't it?
I have high-functioning autism. This means that I've always been able to compensate this wretched handicap with my intelligence. Alas, as I already explained it eventually got the better of me and I don't think that I will ever fully recover from the final blow it gave me last July.
That being said, one should always look on the bright side of things, how unlikely this sometimes may seem. So I decided that finally I'd use my handicap to my advantage. Since I am capable of compensating for my autism, I have the ability to describe more or less how it feels like being autistic. Therefore I believe that I am best placed to explain to the "outsiders" what autism does to a person and how the world appears to us. So I've written a book on the subject. It's written in Flemish so all of you who don't understand this language will have to wait a while until I've translated it and created the English part of my new website. I'm afraid that this will not be for tomorrow because writing this book really wore me out completely. I'm also afraid that I won't be offering this book for free. Christine and I both have to survive on social security pensions and I already informed you about the soaring cost of the restoration of our new house. So if this e-book will generate a bit of petty cash I'd be more than happy. The link to the website is at the bottom of this post.
My apologies if it looks a bit too commercial but apparently if you want to sell, this is what you'll have to do. The trash publicity you receive every day in your mailbox clearly demonstrates that this is the best selling approach, how strange this may seem. If you know anyone who'd like to know more about autism or the Asperger syndrome, please pass on the link. I hope that my book can be quite useful to them.
Since we're having a couple of difficulties at the moment, why not round it off with yet another one? We were already aware that the electricity system in Italy is slightly different from ours and that it is also more expensive as Italy doesn't produce enough electricity on its own. But what we weren't prepared for is that the standard electricity connection in Italy is... 3,5kW! This is barely enough for a washing machine! Since we already consume a constant amount of Watts through appliances like a fridge, a seperate freezer and the odd lightbulb or two we'd already blow the entire fusebox just by washing our clothes. Without mentioning our electrical oven which has a maximum power of 4,5kW. 4,5kW is by coincidence also the maximum "domestic" connection that the few providers we've checked out on the internet offer. It's perfectly clear to us now why electrical ovens aren't a real success in Italy and why most people use gas ovens in stead. If we can believe our Italian friends, you can always get a more powerful connection but this would cost us a fortune. Allright, we've already settled for the fact that we'll have to buy a new cooker with integrated gas oven and that Christine will have to wait with her hairdryer until the dishwasher's finished.
To look at it from the bright side, this "problem" demonstrates how addicted we've become to the luxury of unlimited electrical power. We should all become a bit more modest if we'd still want to save this planet. A limited electrical connection is in this regard a very good lesson which will teach us to become more resourceful with less.
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