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The Mobile Blogging Experiment

After doing a bit of research on the different providers, Cart and I went to Tre to get for me a sim card with mobile internet in it for my Innov8.

Rinaz new italian sim card

I might be one of the last few people to get on the bandwagon, but mobile internet is quite fun. It was rather liberating to be able to check on emails and websites on the go.

Prior to this, I had to be content with wireless@SG when I was in public places as there were no internet bundle in for the mobile for prepaid cards.

Rinaz Samsung Innov8
My Samsung Innov8 is sexeh

As a sidenote, I found interesting that in both the tre shops that we visited, none of them carried the Samsung Innov8. And they keep insisting that internet would not able to work on my phone with their plan – till Cart had to use his sim card on my phone to show them. I’m rather flummoxed.

Regardless, I was finally able to do something that I’ve always wanted to do for a very long time – mobile blogging.

What is mobile blogging?

Mobile blogging is where users can publish posts directly from their camera. I was raring to post pictures of the interesting things that I see and immediately putting them up.

A gelato at Monte Verde
Like this gelato that Cart and I had at Monteverde

I think that its pretty cool to be able to share things with friends on a real time basis.

Applications for Mobile Blogging

Installed in the Innov8 (but also supported for many phones) is an application called Shozu. This application will allow you to send images, video and other media on your phone to various sites like wordpress, seesmic and flickr.

Shozu

I like shozu because of the numerous websites that it supports as well is its ease of use – once you’ve opened the application, you choose the file you want to send and upload it.

Shozu also automatically resizes images to a web friendly size, as well as allows you to tag and rotate your images prior to sending.

Shozu when uploaded

My only qualm with Shozu is that it is a little intrusive. Pictures would have a very prominent logo accompanied to it which, unfortunately draws away from the uploaded picture.

Apart from Shozu, you could also upload via email on the phone. It took a bit of fiddling to set up (so 1996!) but it was smooth going after that.

Setting Gmail on Samsung Innov8

There are so many websites that supports mobile uploads, thats its mind boggling.

After experimenting with different services and wrestling with the pros and cons, for simplicity, I finally decided on uploading my media to posterous – a website that is recommended by Claudia.

Like Shozu, posterous supports many external websites, but by itself, it is already very powerful. It can host practically any type of media from a phone and still manage to have a simple and clean look which I like.

Rinaz Posterous
I like this look

The lifecasting experience

The first few hours was a little awkward. I was experimenting and I took pictures and uploaded them, happily. Little did I know that I was spamming my twitter feed, which was linked together to some websites. (Self spamming is so 1996!)

Regardless, with a little more education, the next day, I decided to do a lifestream of my day. I snapped some pictures that depicted to where I was at – in the wet market, my favourite pizza place as well as the gelateria.

It was a little awkward as I could see people looking suspiciously at me – its hard to be a spy as a mobile camera is never as fast as a regular camera.

Rinaz the photobug

But I had fun, nevertheless. It was an interesting experience for me to share my experience on the go.

On the other hand, its rather cumbersome. It takes a good 10 seconds to start the camera, at least another 10 seconds to take a good picture, and depending on the speed, at least 40 seconds to write an email, attach an image and send it online for ONE post.

It got a little fastidious. How some people are able to do moblogging on a regular basis, without losing their patience is something quite impressive to me.

And as much as I like mobile blogging, I dont think that it’ll take over my miniblog nor this regular blog. Mobile blogging is a form of complement rather than a substitution. But gosh, I’ve left so many digital footprints already!

What do you think of mobile blogging? Do you prefer bits of information compared to a complete post?

Related links :

Sidenote : My package from Singapore arrived yesterday and Cart and I are rediscovering our wedding gifts. Thank you so much everyone! I feel so loved 🙂

On the other hand, Italian Customs are holding my HP Touchsmart ransom. They want money before releasing it to me.

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Singaporeans in Italy

During my first few weeks in Italy, I was extremely homesick. It was a whole new world here – different culture, different people, different language. I felt really lonely. I really miss my family and friends back in Singapore.

Omnious Clouds

My world was like a diablo map.

Diablo

You know, when you start out, your map is all black and uncovers when you start exploring.

Hence, I tried to find a way to connect.

The easiest way that I could think of was by searching on the internet, looking for the different events that might spark my interest like how it was in Singapore – on sites like www.sg, ping.sg and tomorrow.sg.

Help! Rinaz asks, where is ping.sg?

Unfortunately, trying to do the same thing here wasn’t so easy. A quick search in google for ‘events in Rome’ would only lead me to mainly touristy places to see or even worse, the website has not been updated since March 2008!

I remembered my friend Clare who is living overseas herself telling me about Elaine, a lady that she knows in Italy and urged me to email to her. And from that point onwards, I started to network with a small amount of people living in Italy. This was very impressive to me at how close knitted they are – Singaporean women living overseas. And fortunately for me, a number of them had facebook accounts.

Singaporeans in Italy Facebook

That was when I decided to start the group ‘Singaporeans in Italy’ on facebook. It is a small group but it was heartening to see them posting on the wall, interacting with each other. And that was when the Rome gang decided to meet up.

Our first meet was in this restaurant called Thai Inn which was owned by a Malaysian. There, I met Lynn, who has been staying in Rome for the past two years as well as Xiangwen who arrived in Rome about the same time as I did.

Singaporeans in Italy - Rome

It was really lovely to hear some Singaporean accents.

We talked almost everything under the sun like, how we’ve been adapting so far, random daily misadventures, as well as talking about our lives back in Singapore.

Xiangwen and Lynn talking

I really felt at ease. It was fantastic to finally be able to communicate normally as opposed to being stunned trying to talk in Italian.

We met again recently in Garbatella at an Egyptian Restaurant. It was such a delightful evening.

My kebab

We might not be such a large crowd, but it was more meaningful and intimate to me, having heart to heart discussions and having a laugh together. Probably a good step to ease in, in a country so far away from home.

Singaporeans in Italy - Rome

My Diablo map isn’t complete, but its still a good start 🙂

Links :

P.S : Don’t you think that these spoons that Lynn made is absolutely pretty?

Polymer Spoons made by Lynn

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Happy Women’s Day!

Or rather, happy belated woman’s day to all 🙂

Festa Della Donna

8th of March is the International Woman’s day as well as the equivalence of Festa della Donna in Italy. Its been said to be conceived from an event in New York, when women garment workers held a strike over working conditions.

In all honesty, I haven’t been all that aware of women’s day since it wasn’t given such a big emphasis when I was in Singapore. But here in Italy, there is a culture here where men are supposed to give women – wives, girlfriends, daughters, female friends a yellow mimosa.

Unlike the pink mimosa flowers, with the shy leaves that I was accustomed to, the mimosa here is yellow and they grow in trees. It grows quite abundantly here even – thus I was quite surprised to see florists and street vendors selling them.

Yellow Mimosa Flower

And when I retold this to Cartcart, he asked me if I was hinting to him to buy some mimosa 😛 But to buy it makes the entire intent seem a little commercialised, so I said no.

It was when Cart tells me that sometimes even women give mimosas to other women. And that made me quite excited to experience female camaraderie. Finally a chance to bond across diversities! I dressed up prettily and together we drove off to Gianicolo.

It was then when I noticed the spectacular sunset. Roman skies are really pretty, to the point of being unreal – like paintings. When we reached Gianicolo, this was what greeted us.

Sunset at Gianicolo

Unfortunately for me, there was no women around distributing mimosas and messages of strength and unity. In fact, I didn’t even see any women carrying mimosas!

Oh well, too bad. All is not lost though 🙂

Cart and Rinaz who desperately need a haircut at Gianicolo

So what did you do on women’s day? 🙂

Sidenote : I started jogging again. But the first time I did that, so much cold air went into my lungs and my throat felt extremely dry and painful. At the end, I felt like I was breathing through a straw. It was horrible.

Now I make sure I jog with a woolly scarf on.

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Rinaz can cook!

Stuff in Italy isn’t exactly cheap.

This was what I saw in a window some while ago. 146 euro? Thats almost 300 singapore dollars.

Italian Shoes are expensive

And this is what a Big Mac costs in Italy.

Big Mac Meal in Italy

Thats about $12 SGD. Yikes!

Now that I’m unemployed a domestic goddess at the moment, I dont really have the liberty of spending money like I did before. Its beneficial to be a little more frugal.

And one of the best way to save money is to buy and cook our own food.

Over in Italy, there is a wet market where you can get your fresh produce from. My mum in law took me to one near her home during my first few weeks here. Just like in Singapore, there is a bustling of activities here from the customers to the sellers.

You could buy all sort of things at the wet market – vegetables, meat, cheese, bread, even flowers, shoes and carpets! I was very excited to see such vibrancy here.

Wet market

Cart and I went the wet market at Piazza San Giovanni di Dio a while ago. I loved seeing all the colours there. I just wished that I wasnt so self concious to take more pictures of the sellers.

Wet market

Regardless, in the end, we could get two whole bagfuls of vegetables for about 10 euro. And with that, it completely stuffed the refrigerator and lasted us for a good two weeks.

And oh boy, have I been having fun!

Prior to this, I haven’t really been too interested in cooking since I’ve been happy to eat anything that my mum cooked. But now that I’ve been given the liberty to a kitchen for my own, I’ve actually been enjoying preparing food.

Rinaz made Vegetable Curry

This is Vegetable Curry. I made this! I was worried that Cart wouldn’t like it as I’ve never made curry before. But in the end, he enjoyed it so much that he took seconds. I was surprised!


Geri loves Cream Pasta. Now I can make it for her when she comes to Rome 🙂

Nowadays I feel a little more confident of my cooking skills which is interesting as I wasn’t that inclined to be in the kitchen. Whoever knew that the girl who didn’t like to cook is actually cooking 😛

Moreover, I realise that cooking is actually very sexeh. Thanks to my new boyfriend, Gordon Ramsey.

But I suppose good things comes with its own problems.

I’m 64kg now. Ah crap.

Sidenote : Just for fun, take a peek at my old video on how to make arrabbiata. Looking back, I realise how very unfluent I am in Italian.