Rugby - Hands Off, Wattle!

[finbar]

A-ha. But we might stay longer than two years. Our visas are such that we can renew them every year for as long as we want to stay here.

[ravagon]

Ok, now I'm impressed.
How on Earth did you manage to wrangle that one?
More to the point what's the point of issuing a visa if they can be renewed at will? Is this an Italian thing?

[Havak]

Yes AB second XV is a good way to view the maori. They played the Lions ‘whose knows’ XV – Clive has named a completely different XXII yet again for Otago. I hope he knows what he is doing – it looks very second string to me and otago have a great record against the Lions.

I watched the game in detail last night – blimey Hoeniss is still a bizarre ref. There was no consistency at all in his reffing of either side and you could see both teams getting frustrated with it. Pick of the game was him letting the Wellington scrummie pick the ball from off the front of Corry’s boot in a scrum and waving play on. What a chump. NZ could do nothing better than pension of Hoeniss and Walsh and get in two lads who actually know the game.

Forget the reports you may have read about Wellington giving it a good go as well – they were damn awful. I saw them make only two forays into the Lions 22 all game and to say the scrum was on the back foot is like saying the English like beer . Only appalling Lions execution and inept reffing of the set pieces stopped it being a thumping (the Lions however could learn a lot about crisp passing from their various opposition – basics were badly lacking in a way they never are with kiwi sides). Pick of the Kiwis was of course Ma’a Nonu but he was surprisingly error prone all game – there were glimpses of real talent though as he once took Thomas on the outside in virtually no space at all (a shame he then immediately lost the ball in contact).

Oh yes and Australia lost to Somerset in the cricket – I don’t think they have got off the plane mentally as of yet?

[finbar]

Originally posted by ravagon
Ok, now I'm impressed.
How on Earth did you manage to wrangle that one?
More to the point what's the point of issuing a visa if they can be renewed at will? Is this an Italian thing?

Okay. I used shorthand. Sorry. It's a bit tricky and technical - it is Italy after all - but I'll try to summarise the situation. For non-EU residents, and as Australians or Kiwis or a number of other nationalities, you can visit Italy without a visa for up to three months. It's the tourist visa scenario, except a visa isn't needed. You just arrive. And have to depart again within three months.

If you want to stay more than three months, you have to apply for a visa. Either a work visa, student visa, or what we have - Elective Residency visas. It's the first step towards residency, which is what you need in order to stay more than three months. But the ER visa, by itself, isn't enough.

Within eight days of arriving in the country, you have to front the Police HQ in the capital of your province - in our case, the town of Arezzo, about 15km away - and apply for a Permesso di Soggiorno, literally a permission to stay. It involves having your fingerprints recorded, etc, effectively putting you into the Italian system. Without a P di S, you can't stay stay more than three months regardless of your Elective Residency visa. We applied early last week and have an appointment to go back in September to have our fingerprints recorded. Things move slowly in this country. In the meantime, we have interim P di Ss. In September, we will have our official P di Ss.

But there's still another step to go. Once we have our official P di Ss, we have to front at the town hall in our town with our passports and P di Ss. They record all the details, including our address. About a month after that, the local municipal police pay a visit to make sure we're living at the address. At that point, we have official residency. Probably five months after we arrived.

A Permesso di Soggiorno is valid for a year. We will apply to renew ours next year. (We don't actually apply to renew our Elective Residency visas. That was the shorthand I used) The fundamental requirement when applying to renew the P di S is to prove that you can support yourself financially without having to work in Italy. Which was the fundamental requirement when applying, originally, for our Elective Residency visas. As long as we can do that every year, which we will be able to, we can keep rewnewing our P di Ss for as long as we want to stay.

You with me now?

Oh, and one other essential document in Italy is the Codice Fiscale. It's sort of the equivalent of the Australian tax file number. Without it you can't open a bank account or buy a car or enter into any sort of major transactions. I got one when the lease on our house was registered.

Anecdote time. We've bought a car. We opened an account at the local bank last week and transferred money from Australia. The car cost around 5000 Euros. We have to pay cash for the car because a cheque drawn on a foreigner's bank account incurs extra costs for the recipient. So we went to the bank this morning to withdraw 5000 Euros. This is a very small town. They didn't have 5000 Euros in the safe. We have to go back this afternoon to get the balance after they've brought it in from another branch!

[finbar]

Originally posted by Havak
Pick of the Kiwis was of course Ma’a Nonu but he was surprisingly error prone all game – there were glimpses of real talent though as he once took Thomas on the outside in virtually no space at all (a shame he then immediately lost the ball in contact).

He can be devastating. His problem has always been suspect defence.

Oh yes and Australia lost to Somerset in the cricket – I don’t think they have got off the plane mentally as of yet?

Very crap bowling and fielding from the little I've read of it. Not being able to defend the score they made was ridiculous. I think you're right.

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by Havak
Yes AB second XV is a good way to view the maori. They played the Lions ‘whose knows’ XV – Clive has named a completely different XXII yet again for Otago. I hope he knows what he is doing – it looks very second string to me and otago have a great record against the Lions.

I won't get to see that one till Tuesday, so I'll be avoiding the thread from this weekend till then.

How second string is it looking? I don't get to see any NH rugby any more, so I'm not familiar with players. I presume they will be about the same strength as the team that was fielded against Bay of Plenty?

I watched the game in detail last night – blimey Hoeniss is still a bizarre ref. There was no consistency at all in his reffing of either side and you could see both teams getting frustrated with it. Pick of the game was him letting the Wellington scrummie pick the ball from off the front of Corry’s boot in a scrum and waving play on. What a chump. NZ could do nothing better than pension of Hoeniss and Walsh and get in two lads who actually know the game.

Forget the reports you may have read about Wellington giving it a good go as well – they were damn awful. I saw them make only two forays into the Lions 22 all game and to say the scrum was on the back foot is like saying the English like beer . Only appalling Lions execution and inept reffing of the set pieces stopped it being a thumping (the Lions however could learn a lot about crisp passing from their various opposition – basics were badly lacking in a way they never are with kiwi sides). Pick of the Kiwis was of course Ma’a Nonu but he was surprisingly error prone all game – there were glimpses of real talent though as he once took Thomas on the outside in virtually no space at all (a shame he then immediately lost the ball in contact).

They didn't show the Wellington game over here.

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by finbar
Anecdote time. We've bought a car. We opened an account at the local bank last week and transferred money from Australia. The car cost around 5000 Euros. We have to pay cash for the car because a cheque drawn on a foreigner's bank account incurs extra costs for the recipient. So we went to the bank this morning to withdraw 5000 Euros. This is a very small town. They didn't have 5000 Euros in the safe. We have to go back this afternoon to get the balance after they've brought it in from another branch!

Sounds like you're enjoying life in Italy. I imagine you've been making up for the lack of prosciutto you experienced back in Aussie?

[finbar]

Prosciutto, pancetta, everything. We're blissing out. I told the lady who manages our house for its owner - who speaks very good English and has been no end of help to us dealing with the bureaucracy, even going with us to buy the car and doing all the translating - that Australia doesn't allow the import of prosciutto, pancetta, and all the other "uncooked" smallgoods from Italy. She couldn't believe it. Why not?, she asked. I said, because the Australian authorities say that, if it's uncooked, it could be a health hazard. But, she said, it is cooked, it's cured meat, we Italians have been eating it safely for thousands of years. You don't know Australia, I said.

[Caligastia]

Over here you can practically buy that stuff by the truckload. Australia needs more Italians. I wonder if we have the same restrictions in NZ?

[Frozzy]

Ha! You'd have those restrictions and more!

[finbar]

Originally posted by Caligastia
Over here you can practically buy that stuff by the truckload. Australia needs more Italians. I wonder if we have the same restrictions in NZ?

Don't know. Probably not. NZ is vastly more enlightened than Australia in many, many ways.

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by finbar


Don't know. Probably not. NZ is vastly more enlightened than Australia in many, many ways.

Not just in the ways of rugby eh?

[finbar]

In most ways except rugby, obviously!

[Havak]

What worries me about a 5000 Euro car is what it might be. That’s what, about £3500. Doesn’t buy you much – I suspect it’s a Fiat shoebox?

I presume they will be about the same strength as the team that was fielded against Bay of Plenty?

Actually Caligastia that team was stronger. The side to face Otago is:

Lions team to face Otago: G Murphy; D Hickie, W Greenwood, G D'Arcy, S Williams; C Hodgson, C Cusiter; G Rowntree, G Bulloch (capt), M Stevens, S Shaw, D O'Callaghan, S Easterby, M Williams, R Jones.
Replacements: S Thompson, A Sheridan, D Grewcock, M Owen, M Dawson, O Smith, R O'Gara.
Of these the following have a good chance of forcing into contention for the test 22 – Murphy, Hodgson (yes really – I’m amazed too!), Cusiter, Stevens (not had a good tour but can cover both sides of the scrum and Clive likes him), Thompson and possibly Sheridan
These have an outside chance if they play a blinder – D’Arcy, S Williams, M Williams, Rowntree and one from Grewcock, Shaw or O’Callaghan.
Everyone else is out the running completely IMO making it a pretty weak side. I’d love to see Smith come on and show the NZ public why Tigers fans rate him so highly though – he still has no chance of the test 22 playing in BODs position.

They didn't show the Wellington game over here.

Awful conditions – one sided and error prone to boot. It was a good miss!

NZ is vastly more enlightened than Australia in many, many ways.

Really? They appear to be behaving very similarly to Aus in 2001 and I expected better of them. The hot topic in their media – Clive has cancelled a school visit by the players a few days before the first test because he doesn’t want the squad distracted in wake of the Maori loss (seems fair enough to me?) and the media are ripping him to bits for it. The same Kiwi media who saw no wrong in ‘fortress AB’ during RWC 2003 where no one got anywhere near their squad. The same kiwi media ignoring the fact the ABs are making no such social commitments themselves in the week before the first test. Can we spell Hypocrites?

[finbar]

Originally posted by Havak
What worries me about a 5000 Euro car is what it might be. That’s what, about £3500. Doesn’t buy you much – I suspect it’s a Fiat shoebox?

No, it's (of all things, being in Italy) a second-hand Mitsubishi. We only need it to cart the dogs around. Five years old, 50,000kms on the clock. Very good value by Oz used-car price standards. Actually, used car prices here are a lot lower than Oz. Don't know how they would compare with the UK.

Really? They appear to be behaving very similarly to Aus in 2001 and I expected better of them.

My original comment was meant in, um, the political context.