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| South Pole Diaries 2000/01 |
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Saturday
16th December 2000
From
Paolo Calisse.....
Today life at Dome C is smooth and
slow. So, I'll take some time to share with you another quite
common aspect of life at 75° South latitude (and 06').
When you get used to life in a scientific
station, you begin to realize that the most technical and
cool communication system - the old-fashioned walky-talky
- can easily become, if in the right hands, a way to transport
the most common and familiar life habits, unwished humour,
"topical" debates, despite the Hollywood permanent
tendency to tell us that, if you want serious and really committed
stuff, you just have to communicate something with a harsh
voice on the ether.
For an hour now, while working on data
analysis, I have been listening to the radio (that anybody
working at Dome C can switch on).....there is a closed debate
about some stuff that just arrived with the last Twin Otter
flight.
While the pilots are recovering in
the infirmary for a lack of oxygen intake (probably because
they flew at a high altitude due to a lack of kerosene), people
are arguing on the ether about the following, puzzling question:
where the hell has the "pasta maker" gone?
I learned there are several different
theories about the disappearance of the "pastamatic".
But at least it will allow the Chef to arrange some actual,
traditional, handmade tortellini for Christmas lunch, and
I am touched to see how the attention to really important
details can make life here easy and pleasant.
Just a few days ago, an argument started
against our respectful Chef, just because he "dared"
to cut the spaghetti in half before he cooked it. This is
something that could easily cause the Italian workers of the
station to strike.
Sergio Gamberini, the nurse of the
station, called "Gambero", (that is "prawn",
to confirm our endless fixation about food), said the pastamatic
should have arrived, packed in a carton box, on board the
last aircraft. Rita, from the radio room, insists that there
was only a pen and a notebook in that box . How a pastamatic
can be transmuted into a notebook and a pen, is something
really difficult to understand. A pastamatic needs quite a
large box, while a notebook and a pen can easily fit in the
pocket. I can't imagine that an almost empty box was loaded
on a Twin Otter to be sent to a really remote site like this.
And, wait, who asked Terra Nova Bay to send "one" notebook
and "one" pen to the whole station? The discussion
quickly becomes surreal, but nobody on the radio seems aware
of that, neither the head of logistics, Carlo, nor the other
people working on the mystery of the disappearing "pastamatic".
Meanwhile, Luigi, one of the most talented
electrical engineers available within a 1000 km distance,
is trying to repair some key equipment of the station: the
washing machine. To do it he unloaded a certain number of
unidentified "underpants" from a washer, just left
there by somebody. Luigi complains on the radio about that:
the rule of the station is to remove clothes as soon as possible
from the washing room, to leave it free for the next user.
Immediately after, everybody on the
station is informed by the shrill voice of Rita, the only
woman present in the station, that the slips were her own.
There is an embarrassed exchange of messages and apology from
Luigi, promising to put the "hot" load back. But somebody
immediately starts questioning Luigi's capability to distinguish
between female and male pants. Maybe its time for him to go
back home?
The two or three main threads available
this afternoon on Dome C channel 6 (the common channel of
the station) continues incessantly.
The pilots are recovering, but decided
to spend the night here for safety reasons. Somebody must
arrange two beds for them as the station is fully booked.
 Meanwhile
Terra Nova Bay station (the other Italian station, on the
Antarctic coast), is asking on HF for some strategic stuff:
2 shovels, 60 litres of gasoline, 1 litre of motor oil, for
a team left a bit far from the station to accomplish I don't
know which duty. There is a continuous exchange of messages
and suggestions on the radio, transferred to Terra Nova Bay
and back by radio waves, not every understandable, and people
are trying, grunting just a little bit against the requests,
to find all the stuff needed to leave at 5 am tomorrow morning.
It is an attitude of the Italians to
immediately start saying "no", then quickly pass to
"vediamo cosa si puo' fare" (a circumlocution to mean
"maybe", literally "let me see what can be done")
that, in Italian, actually means "si" (yes).
cheers
Paolo
 
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