WINTRY TALES FROM THE APENNINES

Out There & In Here

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  • Not doing courses at the local university

    by JM

    photo, Aaron Siskind

    At the end of a lecture yesterday here at my local university, I was stuffing my exercise book with its hand-written notes into my little backpack, and a friendly young blade of a classmate started chatting :

    ” Good lecture, wasn’t it ? What degree course are you doing ? “

    I’m much older than my classmates, and am rediscovering that some of the young can be just as closed as any other age group, so I was happy that someone was asking.

    ” Well no course in particular. I just go to the subjects I like then find out which professors and timetable suit me and work from there. “

    ” Ah, so you’re not doing any exams or anything, just sitting in on classes ? That must be nice! “

    It certainly is.

    Yesterday I had three hours of the History of Photography as part of a Masters programme (not quite sure in what, but who cares, it was great) and then two hours watching the film Brick Lane in a media and communication class. A perfect morning with good professors, lovely views out of the classroom windows, and interested classmates.

    From the film Brick Lane (2007)

    It’s not only the note-taking (I rarely read the notes unless I’m stuck in traffic or something, and my bag is on the passenger seat ) or the non-exam-sitting that I enjoy, it’s being among people in the flesh and blood and focusing on the achievements of writers, artists and thinkers that liven me up…rather than rotting away mindlessly online.

    ( And now I’ve been often enough to the faculty café for them to serve up an espresso just as I like it as I walk in the door ).

    the rarely-read notes in the backpack

  • ‘Gorgeous chick’ at an Istanbul sushi party

    by JM

    Her opening line definitely had charm, also because it was just a little bit slurred, and she was dark and pretty and young.

    ” You look fun. I’ll sit beside you ! ”

    She squeezed her way past a rotund Ukrainian teacher sitting next to me, a Turkish plastic surgeon next to him, and a Canadian lawyer at the top of the table. This was in an upscale sushi restaurant in Istanbul 2 weeks ago, celebrating Caterina’s birthday. The lighting was low, the seating was rather cramped, and the noise level was high.

    ” Here we go ! “

    She lurched down beside me, not spilling her huge tumbler of cherry red alcohol and clacking ice cubes, and started chatting in rootless international English.

    ” I’m Ailiyah. Do you live here in Istanbul ? I just adore this city, don’t you ? I’m from Qatar, well, I was brought up in Qatar, but I’m not from there. My husband’s from California, he’s so sweet. And he’s cute and rich. People keep asking me, ‘what do you do, Aliyah? ‘ “

    She stirred her drink with its black plastic straw, laughed impishly, and sat closer, conspiratorial.

    ” When they keep asking me what my job is, I just tell them, ‘Well I’m totally in favour of independence and all, for women, but I’m smart. Look at me! I’m a gorgeous chick from the Middle East and we don’t do work. We get our men to do all that stuff . “

  • An AI-generated job interview (2)

    by JM

    As the interview progressed, the smooth sycophancy of the AI voice and its continual crooning became irksome. In response to my comments, it generated sentences like ” That’s a great answer, Jo “, ” Jo, that’s awesome ! I’d never thought of that” , ” An experienced educator like you, Jo, would be perfect for this special rôle.”

    Also, it was slow to catch onto things, so I started to lose interest in the experience within the first few minutes.

    But I was slow too, to understand that it was trying to direct me towards a specific task (critiquing the tone and register of a piece of written English, which must have been what it was recruiting candidates for). Once I obeyed its obsequious but insistent instructions and carried out the task, relations improved, and I found the whole thing quite intriguing.

    Meanwhile, here’s something for the patriarchy again – the image that I was presented with when I asked ChatGPT to create an illustration for the first part of this story. Try it out for yourself with your own writings, and you’ll get a masculine image, default mode even in 2025.

    It’s a man’s world in AI ..

  • AN AI-Generated job interview (1)

    by JM

    A few days ago I subjected myself to an AI-generated job interview. I still don’t really understand what the job was or is, but it was the experience of the interview itself that I wanted to try out.

    This type of interview has apparently been in use for at least 2 years now and it’s essentially just like a Zoom/video call, except instead of a person looking at you and speaking to you, the interview questions are generated in writing across the screen, and read out by an AI-generated voice, in my case, a cheesy male North American version. (more later )

  • An Exemplary Career

    by JM

    I had lunch a few weeks ago in Istanbul in a little place off Taksim Square with an 82-year-old friend of mine, who’s American. She used to run a book exchange/ ‘salon’ near Galata Tower and has been living in Istanbul for decades.

    In these times of whipped-up terror, she’s increasingly worried about whether her residency will be renewed or not. We were talking about work permits and being foreign and that kind of thing.

    She told me with the gleeful pride of an errant teenager:

    ” I’m the only person I know who has been sacked from 5 different volunteer jobs at various times in my working life. “

    How we laughed, as we finished off our köfte and rice !