For some reason I keep watching the CBS show Jericho, even though it has an implausible plot, a Love Boat-like cast and continuity problems. As I’ve read on others’ blog, it’s the idea of Jericho that’s interesting (what happens to a remote American town when the rest of the country is destroyed by nuclear bombs?); I simply keep hoping for the execution to catch up.

There are a couple of saving graces: the Jericho Wiki is an interesting experiment by CBS in “user-contributed content.” They’ve got a nice wiki engine and what seems to be an engaged fan-based. And, mercifully, there’s no trace of product placement on the show (I suppose nuclear bomb affiliation isn’t an attractive candidate for advertisers?).

Produce placement, which used to be limited to a can of Pepsi on the counter, or an Apple logo on the Sex in the City laptop, has reached new lows this season: we now have “witty and ironic” product placement. Both Studio 60 and 30 Rock have had plot threads that have revolved around the “evil network” wanting to introduce product placement into their “shows with shows.” The brash iconoclasts running the shows resist this, of course. But along the way lots of product mentions get dropped in, and in our ironic rebel “stick it to the man” haze, we slurp them all in while thinking that we’re watching edgy rebellious TV.

Or, in English, “collective effort in order to complete a work of common interest.” Which is what’s happening here in [[Colletta]] starting tomorrow morning with the annual Festival dell’Olio. Here’s how it was described in 2005.

Although the weather here in [[Colletta]] has been fine since I arrived (especially compared to [[PEI]], where it’s been snow flurrying), there’s been a mist in the mountains that has cast a shadow on everything below. As a result most of my photos look more “gloomy London” than “sunny Italy.” All that changed today:

I shot a whole bunch more photos this morning; it’s remarkable how much different Colletta and the mountains that surround it look in the sunshine:

I really wanted to be a customer of GloboTech, a New Brunswick-based VOIP company. When I switched my VOIP services (DID numbers in Boston and Montreal and outbound long distance) to them from VoicePulse back in April I was impressed with GloboTech’s back-end system, and their quick turnaround to technical support questions. And their services were well-priced and the voice quality reasonable.

Until last month.

First the Boston DID number stopped working. After a delay, their technical support folks got back to me to tell me that there was no solution to the Boston DID problem other than to get another number; I gave them the go-ahead on October 25th and still haven’t heard back, despite numerous emails and trouble ticket follow-ups. They appear to not respond to customer service inquires at all.

Next the Montreal DID number stopped working. No reply to a technical support request. Finally — and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back — last month’s bill arrived by email, and I was charged for both non-working DID numbers. As you might expect, I received no reply to my inquiry about that either.

So I went shopping. And ended up at Vitelity, another Canadian VOIP provider.

Their rates are attractive, especially for DIDs. And they were even able (with a 10-day delay, which they were up front about) to source me a DID in the local Dublin, NH exchange where [[Yankee]] is based. So far I haven’t had any technical support issues, so I can’t compare that end of the business to GloboTech — but if their service just works I’ll be a step ahead.

Here are some things I noticed when shopping for food at the COOP in Albenga, Italy; they may or may not be representative of food shopping in Albenga (or in Italy) in general. And I’m comparing to the usual state of affairs back home in Prince Edward Island.

• The fresh blueberries come from Argentina, just like they do (off-season) at home. And the cost is exactly the same here as in PEI.
• Yoghurt is much more like water here than like gloop.
• There’s a stunning lack of bread variety: basically it was baguette or crusty white.
• They have green cauliflower.
• The eggplants are much, much bigger. And less tubular.
• There are two full aisles of dried pasta. Many brands. Many shapes. Many grades. Many I’ve never seen before.
• There’s a very small area devoted to “pop and chips.” About 1/8th the space you would find at the Superstore in Charlottetown.
• Lots and lots of wine. And liquor.
• No canned chick peas (although I did find dried ones).
• Many more varieties of olives.
• Very little fresh milk; most of it is UHT.
• Ethernet and USB extension cables available, along with 10 times as many magazine titles as you’d find at home.
• COOP members get outfitted with some special paperback-book-sized e-gizmo that lets them add up their bill as they’re walking around the store and get priority check-out privileges as a result.
• You pay for every plastic bag you use. As a result, most people seem to bring their own recycled ones. This is a very good idea.
• Organic options are available, on the same shelves in the same section, for almost everything, from pasta to juice.
• No pie.

The simplest recipe I know is for Aglio E Olio — pasta with garlic and oil. I base mine on the recipe I found in The Best Recipe, an excellent cookbook.

It really is just pasta with garlic and oil. If I’m cooking for myself, I take three cloves of garlic and shop them finely. I slowly cook the garlic in 4 or 5 tablespoons of olive oil over a very low heat. The very low heat is important: there’s nothing worse than burnt garlic. You want to give the garlic a chance to mellow out and infuse itself into the olive oil. This takes about 25 minutes, and you will be impatient and turn up the heat the first time: don’t. Give it time.

Halfway through the garlic simmering, put some pasta on to boil (following appropriate water-salting guidelines; if you’re not salting your water you haven’t lived yet). You may also want to place a large bowl in the oven on low heat to warm up: nothing like a warm pasta bowl.

Once the garlic has turned a lovely shade of yellow-brown — the specific colour you’re looking for is tawny (which makes cub scouts extra especially qualified to judge) — remove it from the heat, drizzle all the oil and garlic over your drained pasta in a (perhaps heated) bowl.

Eat quickly, as it’s best very, very hot.

If you’ve done it right, it will be the best thing on earth. If something’s gone wrong, you will regret you ever tried. Don’t. Try again next time, making subtle adjustments (you probably overcooked or undercooked the garlic).

Works very well with crusty bread and hearty red wine.

And you thought [[Plazes]] was fun before. Now it comes with the possibility of valuable prizes! Speaking of Plazes: I didn’t notice until just now that the “blog badge” map has a “show recent” link that cycles back through recently visited Plazes and swooshes the map around to match:

Oh, and there’s a neat Google Earth + Plazes mashup, that let’s you see Plazes users on the globe:

I’m obviously holding up the fort here on the Riviera (that’s me with a red circle pasted around my head). Indeed for most of Italy and France too. Time to start selling Plazes door to door.

I decided to take a little drive this morning, and at the bottom of the driveway from [[Colletta]], I turned right — away from Albegna and the ocean from whence I’d originally come — and drove further up the Pennavaire Valley. As I drove on the road went higher and higher, got twistier and twistier and thus generally more thrilling to drive. About 5km in I realized that I’d just driven off the end of the map I had with me, and so from then on there was an ever-present feeling that I may be accidentally driving to Switzerland.

Several times during the higher twistierness I stopped with thoughts of turning back, but I felt oddly compelled to journey on, curious as to what exactly could be up so high.

A lot, it turns out. People in this valley have built villages in the least likely places, hugging to the side of mountains in very heavenly ways. And just when you think you’re in as high a place as could reasonably house a village you look up the mountain and there’s another one further on up the road.

I finally stopped driving in Caprauna, a small village at elevation 1,000m with less than 200 inhabitants located just up the road from an intriguing tunnel that looks like it was poked through the mountain with a giant fork:

Caprauna, despite being a kilometre in the sky, looks just like a normal little village, albeit a very old one made of stone and wood:

I would have kept going up and up and up but for the fact that I encountered a “you must have chains on your tires” sign, with no “in December and January only” proviso like other’s I’d encountered. So I headed back the way I came, stopping near the village of Alto — about halfway down — to take a picture down into the valley:

Realizing I needed more groceries, I decided to keep going all the way down to sea-level in Albegna (the notion of driving 1km downhill also appealed to me). After filling up at the COOP, I took a detour into downtown Albegna and down to the waterfront:

Despite the 19 degree temperature and balmy ocean breezes the beach was locked up tight — it is very obviously the “off season” here. On the way back to [[Colletta]] I managed to get trapped down a one-way street and had to drive into Ceriale, east along the water, before I could turn back. By 3:00 p.m. I was back here eating cheese and zucchini sandwiches and getting ready to start the workday.

Today’s Big Plan was to get out of the apartment before nightfall and take a hike around [[Colletta]]. There are walking trails all through the hills, with helpful maps and directional signs, so it seemed like a doable activity for a hikeophobe like me.

Man, is it ever beautiful around here! I headed down the hill from the village proper and crossed over the river on a stone bridge:

The trail looped around and back up the other side of the valley, across the river from the village. Once I got to the highest point of the trail, the views got really amazing:

From there I continued up the valley, gradually heading back down towards the road, where I encountered another stone bridge:

…and some views of Colletta from the bottom up:

The trail varied from well-groomed and almost flat to grass-covered and steep, and the degree of hill-climbing involved saw me just grazing up against my “fitness level” (such as it is). But it was good to get out and see some of the countryside and get a sense of the “neighbourhood.” If I can keep this up every day I will return home with much stronger knees if nothing else.

I forgot to mention that the Ethiopian Library Night was amazing: the food was absolutely fantastic, there was lots of it to go around, and some of it was hot enough to peel paint. The music was great, and the items in the silent auction were worth bidding on (Catherine snagged a coveted Don Moses kinetic sculpture and I a CD of Ethiopian music).

There was a healthy crowd out — perhaps a couple of hundred? Don has photos. Like Dave said: “If they had one of those every month I’d be all over it.” Kudos to Don and Brenda and their library brethren for a job well done.