[extropy-chat] Boredom in old age

[Amara Graps]

Eugen* Leitl:

>On Wed, Dec 03, 2003 at 03:06:58PM +0100, Max M wrote:
>>  Oh yeah, that is so true. I can allready feel it myself at the tender
>>  age of 38. I have allways been an "extreme" techie. But computers are
>>  getting more and more boring every day. Solving the same old problems in
>>  slightly different ways.

>Me three, at 37.

Not me, I suppose (42). I'm mostly exhausted this year from working to make
basic living expenses and dealing with the Italian bureaucracy
and getting past a painful emotional situation that occurred upon
arrival earlier this year.

Usually I have too many interests for my time, and don't suffer that
kind of burnout. I had a burnout after my PhD, but that's normal.
Interests came back in time, I think. Visiting volcanoes and bike
trips helped me with that.


>I'm quite interested to discuss personal plans (job, financial,
>relocation) with other european transhumanists, as most of EU
>is basically in the same situation.


Suggestion: Don't move to Italy. The pay sucks as you probably know
(half the salary of other scientists in Europe). I didn't move here
for the salary, I moved to Italy for my passion, but I didn't
honestly expect the money situation to to be so bad. In addition,
science is not recognized by this government in general, and foreign
scientists have a particularly tough time of it.

This week, I read that there is a new law in discussion in the
Italian parliament for giving immigrants a large number of rights
for voting and representation in their communities, among other
things. Sounded good. The only requirement is a valid
permit-of-stay, and so I choked in my coffee. Why is that? If you
walk into a Questura (police) today, you will likely find a long
queue of foreigners filing permit-of-stay papers or, more likely,
waiting for the permit-of-stay papers that they filed months ago.
You are illegal to live in Italy without a permit-of-stay. If you
have the little receipt that the Questura  gives you that indicates
that they are processing your papers (by law, they are supposed to
do it in 20 days), then, if you travel outside of Italy, you are not
legal when you return, and they could throw you out, jail you,
whatever. Last week when I stood in the queue for the renewal for my
permit-of-stay, I saw one of my scientist friends from the INFN (National
Lab for Nuclear Physics). We had a nice chat, he is Japanese, and needs
a permit-of-stay (all nonEu require one). He has been waiting for
his for 11 months.

To explain where some of my exhaustion is coming from, when dealing
with the Italian government: An example: You walk into the police
department to get an  approval for your new address for some other
official papers and you walk out with a 16 step form with basically
impossible steps to complete. Tomorrow the instructions will be
different, of course.

And if you walk into that same office with an Italian, it's a one or
two step process. Simplice. I don't have Italians to walk into
bureaucrats office with me most of the time, though, the public
administrator or police look at me muttering 'stupid foreigner' or
some such thing and give me the strictest interpretation of the law.
There are an infinite number of interpretations for each law in Italy.
The police, in particular, treat foreigners all like criminals, and
you have to deal with them, otherwise you are not legal to live
here. 99.9% of Italians don't know what it is like for foreigners
('extracommunitari' or nonEU).  When I tell Italians what I have to
do, they usually say 'you are so unlucky', but I know it is not one
unlucky event. My folder of official documents for living and
working in Italy is almost two inches thick now. Every bureaucratic
office works in similar ways towards foreigners.

In approximately two weeks, I become illegal. My permit-of-stay
expires. Oh yes, I filled out the paperwork (with about 12 pieces of
documentation of different kinds for verification), for a renewal
(one would think that a *renewal* would be a simple process, but no)
and gave it to the Questura, but they say that it won't be ready for
about 5 months. Which means probably 8 or 9 months.

I know all of this because last year I went through the same thing.
I gave them a very large stack of papers for my original
permit-of-stay, then got 'fingerprinted' (actually fingerprinted,
handprinted, palmprinted, two sets of each). They told me that it
would take a couple of months to process it. It didn't, it took
five, and so I had to cancel two important business trips in the
Spring because my boss didn't want me to be illegal working here.
It's not trivial to miss my trips: I am involved with three
spacecraft missions: one will be launched in February, another one
is in the building phase and will be launched in about one year, and
another spacecraft arrives at its destination next summer, so not being
able to travel had an impact. More importantly, I could not be with
my mother when she had her lung cancer surgery in March.  I didn't
have a phone until September, so I could not have even a good phone
conversation with her. My mobile from my town always blinks out with
the bad em field and I could only get fragments of her words and she
was crying at that time. In October, when I finally got to travel to
see her, I learned that her heart had stopped three times
immediately after the operation, and the doctors didn't understand
her situation and were making it worse. I told myself that I would
never let an idiot government put me in such a terrible situation
again, that is, not being able to be with my family in an emergency,
and, now, it looks like a potential problem all over again. Except
that I am so disgusted with the Italian government, that I honestly
don't care, anymore, and I decided that I will travel anyway. I have
a stack of other kinds of official papers that prove my residence,
my work in Italy, I pay taxes, I have an Italian identity card, blah
blah blah, and so I will just carry that stack of papers with me when
I travel, for as long as it takes. I'll begin to use my Latvian passport
instead of my US passport when Latvia becomes part of the EU in May,
so that will help me here alot.

Other than the pay and the bureaucratic garbage, the quality of life
in Italy is actually very high. Living in my neighborhood, and
building my friendships is alot like living in a very large and warm
family.

>>  On the other side, I find quality in my life increasingly important, and
>>  there are many examples of people living good lives at a high age.

>Absolutely.

Agree too. My dad is one of my best examples for that.


Amara

-- 

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Amara Graps, PhD          email: amara at amara.com
Computational Physics     vita:  ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers         URL:   http://www.amara.com/
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"The best presents don't come in boxes." --Hobbes