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Yesterday was the day of Saint Rita.
As the church of St Rita is just around the corner from where I live, the area was full of traffic,flower sellers, people going to the church… every flower seller in Palermo sets up a stand in the street, from the evening before to gain a good position!
St Rita is the patron saint of ‘Impossible Causes ‘.Particularly connected to marriage/partnership.. people trying to have children for example, but having difficulties.
Lots of people with difficulties buy roses and bring them to the church on this day.
So I finally introduced myself to my billionaire tech bro sugar daddy paying all of our salaries today. He came into the office after he fucked up a peach cobbler recipe and decided the best course of action was to donate the resulting gratin to the poor and needy in the office kitchen.
Dude comes across as such a casual fortysomething normie person, almost like an overgrown teenager. It honestly wouldn’t be difficult to mistake him for one of the guys in the IT department. He was literally wearing the kind of baggy Primark hoodie and jeans outfit that I would have gone around wearing as a student.
Anyway, he started asking me about my previous work on planets and stuff – and pretty decently informed questions for someone who’s clearly not an expert on the topic. He seemed a bit shy and reserved, but not in a particularly aloof and snobby way and it didn’t seem like he was looking down on me. More of a kind of chill, Keanu Reeves meets Michael Cera meets Louis Theroux-ish kind of introvert vibe. Total antithesis of the evil self-aggrandising billionaire stereotype. He seemed genuinely interested in my work, which of course does make sense as he’s the one paying me to be here and work as one of his personal mad boffins on one of his personal mad science projects.
I never did get to ask him what he does in his spare time or what kind of rare endangered species he keeps in the back garden of his Palm Beach estate. In fact, he really just strikes me as the kind of guy who decided that kind of life of ostentatious consumption wasn’t really for him and he was just happier spending his free time playing on his gold-encrusted X-Box in his mum’s basement while quietly avoiding paying his taxes. Good for him, I guess? Well, actually not really, he should really be using that money to ensure the government can provide services to those who need them instead of on crazy personal science projects but eh, I won’t bite the hand that feeds me and besides, if I ever end up detained in some onshore gulag for whatever reason I wouldn’t mind him paying for a lawyer before that onshore gulag becomes an offshore gulag.
Then again, it’s probably the most outwardly unassuming people like him that I should be the most wary of…
At this moment I am wearing a cap from a history museum, sunglasses, a bag across my chest, a minor league baseball team t-shirt, and ugly but comfortable walking shoes, looking lost and mildly hungover in an intercity bus station. I could not possibly look more like an American tourist if I tried.
Yesterday was our first full day on Crete. We saw the Palace of Knossos in a sweltering heat that made me feel almost at home, the Venetian fortress of Heraklion, and an archaeological museum. Today is a free day so I’m braving the bus to Rethymno and see what we can find there.