(Question)
There's a story in my Tuscan family of nobility and forbidden love. It's set in Taranto, Puglia, on Italy's southern heel and involves my daughter's great-great-grandmother. The best known version is told by my husband Marco's uncle, Riccardo, who remembers it being told to him by his elderly Nonna Anna herself. Anna Michela Comasia Maria Calianno. Her long name was a sign of her family's noble status. She was born in Taranto, Puglia, in 1889, into a wealthy, well-educated Tarantine family of physicians, surgeons and landowners. One day, by chance, young Anna answered the door instead of the butler. There was Nicola Cardellicchio, the postman. He came from a poor family of bricklayers and wool spinners, raised by a single mother. "He was no adonis," noted Nonna Anna. Nicola was rather short and stocky, but she liked him immediately. She continued answering the door whenever the postman passed. When Anna's mother, Girolama, noticed her daughter's growing interest in the postman, she forbid her to see him again, threatening to disown her. So Anna did what any lovesick girl would do: she ran away, eloping with Nicola. The couple had nine children in Taranto Mario, Marco's grandfather was born in the middle of the First World War but times were very hard, and they moved north to Torino to look for work. Nonna Anna was perhaps not an instinctive cook. I wondered whether she ever had the possibility to learn how to cook. Her grandchildren, Angela (my mother in law) and Riccardo, remember her only ever making lesso (boiled meat) and these polpette, which became variously known in the family as "sugo di nonna Anna" and, oddly, "amatriciana" (which is actually a different recipe, a chilli-spiked sauce of fried guanciale and tomato to coat pasta). But these polpette plump meat balls, cooked slowly in tomato sauce, a very traditional dish from Puglia were passed down to Anna's daughter in law, Angela's Tuscan mother, Lina, who made them so often for her own family that she in turn taught her daughter in law,... When did Anna run away? Pick the correct answer from the following options: - Before her mother threatened her - Before seeing Nicola - After seeing Nicola - not enough information
(Answer)
After seeing Nicola

(Question)
Years back, following a transition inside a large company where many people got fired and moved around, the decision was made to give the remaining people more work. Now, let me pause here, when I say, "more work" did not mean more of the existing work they already did. "More work" did not mean work of what they already knew, or signed up for when they were hired. More work meant incorporating a completely different role. For me, I'm a programmer. And "management" decided they wanted programmers to also do BA work. Now, mind you, nowhere on my employment contract does it state I'd have to take a BA role. And nowhere on my employment contract did it state taking a BA role would also require me doing all of my programming work. So, after being pushed a few times to attend BA meetings, I got fed up. So I pulled my manager into a meeting and explained this to him. I said, you have two choices: I do two roles, BA and programmer, and I get a new salary to account for the role. When he asked how much, I said, take my salary and multiply by 1.6. Option 2, I go back to programming, and you never pull me into a meeting again on BA work. It's not what you hired me for, and it's not what you pay me for. When my boss replied, "Our company is not in the position to pay for two roles", I told him, then it sounds like Option 2. And by the way, I don't ever want to have this discussion again. If you want Superman performance, you cannot pay Clark Kent wages. 1 year passed and I was never bothered again about BA roles. Takeaways: Middle managers are one step above one-celled organisms. They can, and will try to get you to do non-role work, with no intention of ever paying you more. They key is to cut it off at the pass. Who wanted be compencated for an extra load of work? Pick the correct answer from the following options: - The narrator - The manager - The CEO - not enough information
(Answer)
The narrator

(Question)
When asked to define ourselves we often use broad brushstrokes. Without thinking we consult our internal list of "things that make me, ME" and find ourselves recalling words like "creative, outgoing, photography, guitar" before we've even had a chance to fully process the question. But how much does this internal list define us? I believed that my internal list was the best representation of myself until I read a quote by Annie Dillard that states: "How we spend our days, is of course, how we spend our lives". This quote hit me like a punch in the gut, it's blatant truth so indisputable; how I spent my days, regardless of what I told myself about myself, was ultimately who I was. Or at the very least would be how I had spent my life. This is why, when completing my self portrait, I decided to focus on the everyday. Within my self portrait I wanted to present the viewer with a familiar yet abstract sense of reality through which we get to see amalgamated glimpses of the everyday acts that define me, rather than a linear narrative or a simple re-telling of 'a day in the life'. Thus combining to create a picture of: my daily life, through an abstracted version of 'the everyday'. To create a sense of 'the day' or linear progression of time I segmented my video with four still images of the sky in various stages of daylight (morning, midday, afternoon, evening) that match the lighting seen in each concurrent video segment. The everyday acts that define me were presented in a series of short video segments that include scenes of me catching the tram, recording music and riding my bike. To disrupt the sense of linear narrative the visual segments are bluntly edited together, with nothing linking the sequential shots and a quite abrupt ending. I also attempted to create an overall sense of confounded time and space by overlaying audio from certain video segments onto others. Long, singular focus, handheld shots were also used to enhance the sense of voyeuristic glimpses. Who made a self-portrait? Pick the correct answer from the following options: - Anne Dillard - The narrator - Me - not enough information
(Answer)
The narrator