Saving Face

While having lunch today, Richard received a phone call from Angela, Ghiotto's wife. This was a bit strange, as we never have contact with her. She was extremely concerned that the painters were making a mess, specifically getting the tiles in the bathrooms covered in paint! Clearly upset (it took her quite a while to get her point across to Richard), she told him that they (someone or the other of the Ghiotto's) told them (the young guys painting) to clean it up. The painters claimed that the place was a mess when they arrived and refused to do any cleaning. (You've seen the pictures -- the tile was clearly clean. We noticed that there was a bit of a mess when we visited this morning, but figured that it was part of the process.) At any rate, Angela was very angry, probably because they ignored her. She told Richard that he had to call the painter and take care of it. Imagine!

We made an afternoon visit while the painters were still there. We immediately noticed that there were more drop cloths. Richard just acted naive and told the lead guy that Senora Ghiotto called with a concern about the paint, but he didn't quite understand. The painter didn't even flinch as he assured Richard that all was okay and he couldn't image what her conflict might be. We surveyed the tile, and, you guessed it -- it was all clean, not a trace of paint.

About a month ago I read an article in an Italian paper that stated that a court recently ruled that it is legal, okay, no problem, expected -- for a woman to lie while under oath if it is for the purpose of protecting her reputation. It is always a challenge to live in a culture other than your own. We've seen so much of this SAVING FACE mentality -- I'm finally, finally starting to get it -- to expect it.



A bit of the mess we encountered Wednesday morning; it didn't look quite like this Wednesday afternoon. The paint is water based and cleans up easily.