Who invented the TIP SYSTEM?

This is something I really care about, so let me make my point clear: I've been living here for a while, but I still hate the idea of leaving 15% minimum tips at the restaurant. I don't get it!.. Well, I actually get it but I hate it.

But waitresses and waiters are paid less than the minimum, something like 5 bucks an hour. That's why you should leave 15% tips.

What kind of reasoning is that? How about the guy who sewed the t-shirt I'm wearing. Was it paid enough? Wasn't he? In any case I don't leave tips. Do you know what I do? I go some place else to buy the same t-shirt, where I spend more because they are paying him enough.

Why HAVE I NOT POSTED on SUNDAY?

That's right! As some of you may have noticed, so far I've been posting regularly once a day. At least that's what happened up until last Saturday. Actually, I consider a success keeping it going for 13 days straight - to my remembering I've not really ever committed to anything for longer than half an hour.

I am sorry to have skipped Sunday, though, but fortunately enough that gives me a good introduction to today's topic: quality of life. Exactly, I had thousand of things to do - yesterday - but as soon as they asked me to go out to dinner I did not refuse, and therefore I found myself going on working up until 3AM. Then I went to bed, not being even able to spell my name.

So what is this quality of life, then? And what makes you think to be qualified to talk about that?

Will THERE COME WINTER, eventually?

I've just got back from the park.
Not the Park.
Riverside Park.

How's it possible to have such a great day even in January? The sun was low on the Hudson, the three mile long park was crowded with kids, sports team, and dogs... Beautiful.

Weird, though. I spent last winter in LA. After some obvious enthusiasm about the 60 degrees in January, I got a little pissed. That's right, how come there was fake snow in the window shops, and outside snow would have melted in 10 seconds?

What's wrong with this PEOPLE?

That's right, even though you're might be thinking this post is about either Americans or Italians, or French, or an obsession of an Italian in New York, this is actually a post about stereotypical American expressions.

One of them, my favorite maybe, is this "What is wrong with this people?!".. It is even funnier if you think of the Italian translation of it.. which makes little sense to be honest, but sounds really crazy: "Che cos'hanno di sbagliato questi qua?".

Anyways, if for whatever reason you want to look American, I think you should rely a lot on the following expressions:

Who's probably the BEST KNOWN ITALIAN JAZZ MUSICIAN?

If you're Italian, and you care about Jazz you probably have asked yourself this question.. I did for sure and I could at least select a couple of them. By Italian - only in this post - I mean folks born and raised in Italy. So I got to a quite nice list:

• Enrico Rava;
• Stefano Bollani;
• Roberto Gatto;
• Sandro Gibellini;
• etc..

In particular, in this post, I will concentrate on Enrico Rava not really because I think he's the best (the competition in the top is quite fierce), but because he'll soon be playing in New York, at the Birdland...

Is it TRUE that NEW YORKERS LIVE BETTER?

Let me be a little technical, from now and then..

There's been this rumor in the last few weeks, following to the publication of new data by the New York City Department of Health. Several reliable blogs have reported the news, and started commented such data.

Let us start by some of the data explained in some of those blogs: the whole discussion starts from the following statement:

the average life expectancy in 2004 is 78.6 years, a bigger value then the US average, which is 77.9

Then in most website I saw they try to find the reason why such average life expectancy is high, and apparently a reasonable answer seems to be that NEW YORKERS WALK MORE (and FASTER). That's right: there are studies supporting the idea that fast walking and long living go hand in hand.

Yes, but: HOW MANY ITALIANS are there in NYC?

This is kind of an important question, because it defines properly the target of this blog. And good news is that there are quite many.

In order to approach this question you can do plenty of things, the deepest of which I think should be go to the US Census data and download this infinite spreadsheet with time series of immigration in New York. Alternatively you can go to wikipedia, and start reading pages related. That's actually what I did, but I'm planning to go straight to the source one day.

Anyways there are quite a lot of nice infos also in wikipedia, starting from this map:

that shows the Italians presence in New York State, with respect to ancestry (i.e. folks whose grandfather was Italian - I assume - and thus holding Italian passport - and thus Italian by all means).