I know that with this update I’m breaking the promise I made in the last one, but it was planned to be posted as an end of the year thought since a long time. After all this might be a nice example of the good and bad of being an independent software developer following the motto “it’s ready when it’s ready”.
The 2004 has been a very particular year for me with some changes in my private life and pretty different from what I planned at the beginning, so it couldn’t end without some thoughts about my intensive work as a waiter during the last months. I benefited from this experience in many ways, well beyond what people could think, especially the ones who don’t read my blog.
This was an article published on the local daily newspaper La Provincia about a charity dinner held at Villa d’Este the last November. I worked voluntarily for that dinner but I didn’t like at all some of the things I saw there and the tone of the article, so I wrote a first letter to the director of the newspaper published in the feature with the same name. The letter was ironical and meant to propose a thought to the readers, but it wasn’t appreciated, to say the least, by some of my colleagues, who felt involved in some way, so I had to write a second letter to clarify out my point of view. Fortunately someone caught the point and the discussion went on with an interesting letter by Luciano Forni, a former senator, and with others from some readers here, and here.
I got compliments for the courage of writing something like that, but I’ve been also surprised by the venom tongues of some colleagues, people who are used to accept moral compromises to be able to work, think always about money (or the lack of it) or haven’t enough neurons to distinguish irony from charge. My letter was a general thought about the hypocrisy of our modern world, which is even more actual if you consider what’s happened with the Incredible Tide in South East Asia, the so called third world…
I’d like to conclude this update with a sentence inspired by the director of a restaurant I worked for during this summer, a long time friend, brilliant and always busy in keeping his old habits and his life style high. He spoke about the fact the Italians have to return to make humble works like in the past, in particular the young ones with a degree and the “stench under their nose”…
How true I can say and I did appreciate his words even more since he was referring to me as an example of a good worker.
So let’s close with the sentence I remember from the movie Life is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni, said to the waiter-Guido (Benigni) by his Uncle: “You’re serving, but you’re not a servant. Serving is a supreme art, God is the first servant. God serves men, but he’s not a servant to men!”
Back to work now, “le grand cirque” of the world must go on!

Update: irony inside irony, if you’ll have the patience to read my two letters, just take a look at what the horoscope at the bottom of the page says, I’m a Leo.