Stultify

We had a short outage for our Internet connection in the later part of the afternoon today. Apparently, there were some repair/shifting works done at the University office where the server was kept and some connection(s) was either dislodged or taken out by mistake and wasn't put back in. A call had to made to the person in charged of the system to check and then rectified the matter. After all that, we just had to shake our heads and shrugged - "This is Italy..."

In another remark made during dinner today by someone living here as a student like myself, added to the litany of woes for living in Rome, which happens to be the capital of the country and true to its colours of also having capital honours for incompetency and utter decrepit service. I shall not repeat what he said but it goes to show just how incredible this city is or even how the whole country itself has managed to function for so long based on stupidity and absurdity. If 'stultify' had another name, it would be 'Italy'!

Then there was a point of discussion over dinner between the word 'anywhere' and 'everywhere'. What's the difference? An answer was offered in relation to our city of stay, even if it didn't seem quite accurate to me. So, anywhere shows a sense of limitation in reference to a place. However, for everywhere, that sense of limitation broadens or is non existence altogether. For instance, I can say,"I would rather be anywhere other than Rome" (I do really feel like that now) and that would be gramatically fine because it expresses that any place on planet Earth would be fine to be in except Rome. Now, to say that "I would rather be everywhere other than Rome" would take the cake because I could be in blooming Venus suffocating under sulphurous clouds and disintegrating under tremendous pressure but I would still be happy and smiling from ear to ear that I am not in Rome!

Oh, dinner over at the Convitto was at our usual place on the terrace where you can see some of the gorgeous sunsets over the utterly crowded and polluted city landscape...