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No more epson printers for me

Ever since I’ve started tutoring, I asked Cart if he had a printer for me to use for printing out handouts, worksheets and whatnots.

Cart owns an Epson stylus photo printer that he bought some years back. At the time, he was impressed by the print quality as because this particular model uses two types of ink cartridges : a  5-colour cartridge and black one.

Each ink cartridge uses a chip (like what you see on top there) which will indicate to the printer of how much ink that is has left. Which is quite smart (although my old printers have the same function even with no inbuilt chip)

However, after using the printer, Cart eventually found out that one undesirable thing about this printer is that if either one one of the colours run out, the printer would not function at all.

So lets say, I use a lot of blue in my printwork and eventually the colour runs out. What will happen is that the printer will lock up even though the rest of the cartridges are full! Even if I just wanted my next document to printed in black.

Yikes! Making consumers buy a new cartridge altogether when just one colour runs out? What a waste of resources. That’s strike one.

But well, we sucked it up and headed to an ink cartridge shop to get some new ink and did a few print test page on it to get the ink flowing. The colours were faint at first but slowly ink started to flow out and I was feeling hopeful. But after a few nozzle cleanings, to our horror, the printer indicated that once again, it ran out of ink!

Huh? I was befuddled. The inks were brand new so they shouldn’t be acting up like that! What a waste of money!

And once again, the printer locked up. Strike two.

Something seems very fishy about the whole deal and Cart was so furious that he did a search online and bought for himself a chip resetter which costs about 10 euro. What it does is that it will reset the chip and make the printer think that the cartridge was brand new with full ink.

And behold, we were able to continue printing. It’s not a perfect print, but it should get better as the ink flows.

But what was interesting is that we found out later that using the chip resetter with the old ink cartridges, the printer was able to whip out a fully coloured document! Which means that the cartridge was not empty in the first place. Look at what Cart printed out.

Epson. What a deceitful thing to do. Who was the smart person who approved of this concept? If they think that this is a profitable idea of forcing consumers buy more printer ink, instead this will make users boycott this brand even more.

No more Epson printer for me.

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I cannot take this anymore

Disclaimer : This is a rant and may be offensive to some

Back when I was living in Singapore, I worked as a Multimedia Educator and used to teach students on how to use software applications. Normally, I’d demonstrate to them first, and then they’ll do the practise together with me and then I’d task them with an exercise towards the end of the lesson to gauge their understanding.

Theoretically, that sounds reasonable right? But normally at this point of time, the class will be chaotic with :

MISS MARINA! IS THIS HOW YOU DO IT?

MISS MARINA! DID I DO THE EXERCISE CORRECT?

MISS MARINA! CAN YOU PLEASE SHOW ME AGAIN?

It wasn’t bad if it was just one or two students. But imagine 40 kids all screaming the same thing. Sometimes I feel like Dexter with an entire room filled with hyper Didis

If they had paid attention in the first place, they would be able to do their tasks at hand easily. Instead, these kids are distracted by surfing to websites like lovecalculator and whatnots.

But in anycase, most of the times I had to be patient and understanding because they are kids after all, and their attention span is way shorter compared to a mature adult.

And a couple of years later, I’d have messages and emails from former students and many of them would say things like “Your lessons were so useful for my school projects. I wish I paid more attention in your class!”

And secretly I’d gloat inside. Just like how every parent gloats when their kids have their own kids.

Don’t get me wrong. I do enjoy teaching. I find it very satisfying to share my knowledge to others and even more when these people appreciate and do well in it. I just find it very disappointing when people, whom I know are intelligent and have the capacity to think, don’t even try to put two and two together.

I don’t think that I am asking too much. But like I’ve mentioned, these are kids with short attention span and I’ve to be patient.

But how about adults?

Ever since I’ve been living in Rome, people, mostly random strangers mind you, keep asking me to recommend them hotels, bed and breakfast’s as well as other type of lodgings. “Oh! She lives in Rome! And she’s blogging about Rome. Therefore she must know everything there is to know about Rome. Let me email her! And since she’s *just* a housewife, I expect her to reply back to me immediately.”

Lets think of it this way. You are a Singaporean. You live in HDB flats all your life. And all of a sudden you have a friend from overseas asking for recommendation specifying for a  cheap and good hotel. And you think to yourself, “I don’t know. I’ve never stayed in one.” And then you think to yourself, “Maybe, I should help her anyway because she’s my friend” and then you do search on google and tripadvisor and wonder, “This is so easy! Why couldn’t she have done it herself in the first place?”

I get this with complete strangers every. single. day.

It’s very frustrating for me. Moreso because I’ve already blogged my piece on “Tips on visiting Rome” and if these people would have just taken the time to do a search, 99.99% of the time, their questions would already be answered.

I don’t understand! Is it so difficult to do?

Instead I’m constantly bombarderd by people who messages me thinking that I have so much free time and expects me to hold their hand all the entire time and spoon feed them the answers with a cheerful endeavour and smiles like this :))))))

NO! Not any more! I am really tired of all these people!

Listen, I may be a housewife, but contrary to what you think, I’ve a lot of wifely duties to do – grocery shopping, tidying up the house, laundry, and whatnots, Italian classes to go to and this takes up a large part of my time.

And through experience, when I do reply back to them, they don’t even have the courtesy of responding back with a thank you. I’m sorry, but whether these people know or may not know it, but they are plain RUDE and thanks to these people, I dread to reply to any messages at all!

It’s just not worth my time. What do I even gain in return? A favour? A postcard? A following on twitter? On facebook? A comment on this blog? A small thank you?

NO! These people get what they want, and then they disappear. What? How ungrateful is that?

Go away and leave me alone. I’ve already reached the threshold. Don’t email me and don’t message me if you have absolutely no intention of being polite to me.

Next time I do, I’ll just point them to this blog post.

Sidenote : Not to be completely negative, I did meet plenty of nice friends through this blog which means that there ARE nice people out there. Thank goodness for a bit of sanity or else, I will go crazy!

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Tempura artichokes are yum!

Hi everyone!

Finally after weeks and weeks of bearing with the cold, it’s finally springtime here in Rome. To me it is one of the best times to visit Rome when the temperature is not too cold and not too uncomfortably warm.

If you were here during these times, you’d probably see a lot of these for sale :

These are artichokes, or to be accurate, Carciofi Romaneschi. A speciality of Rome, these are different compared to regular artichokes because the petals are purple instead of green, they are very round and there are less thorny bits inside the buds.

One carciofo costs about an euro each and can be prepared in a variety of ways – such as, a frittata, pasta, risotto, alla romana or alla giudia like this one that I had at a Jewish restaurant.

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How pretty! It looks so much like a flower doesn’t it?

Today, I’d like to show you a quick and simple way of enjoying them. I had three carciofi at hand and the first step is to clean them.

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First you cut the stalk from the bud. The carciofi needs to be removed of a few layers of the petals outside as they are really tough and chewy. And then you cut the bud into quarters and remove the thorny bits inside. Cut also a layer from the stalk as seen in the picture above.

Oh! An important thing to note is that carciofi gets oxidized very easily. So it’s a good habit to rub some lemon on it as you clean it. You could also throw them in a bowl of lemon-water.

And when you are done, don’t be stunned to see a lot of peelings and whatnots. This is normal

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Now sprinkle some regular flour on top of the cut carciofi.

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And then dip them one by one in tempura batter and deep fry them in hot vegetable oil. I don’t remember which brand of batter I bought. It was a pre-packaged one, but you could make them from scratch.

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And then when they are golden brown, they are ready to eat. And believe me, even if it looks rather unremarkable here, it’s really yummy!

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Of course, if you’re like me, I’d always dip them with my favourite chili sauce

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Attack of the clutter monster

I’ve only been living in Italy for about two years and already I’m starting to have problems with my stuff cluttering. I don’t think that I have that much clothes and shoes and make up. But just yesterday, I was trying to find my green top but after 10 minutes and not being able to find it, in my annoyance I pulled out EVERYTHING out of the closet and rearranged everything.

When I was done, I felt as if I was Cathy, proud of my arranging skills and wanted to call a friend over to show off my neat and tidy closet.

But one thing that come to mind was that, gosh, there are so many clothes. Some of them I haven’t worn even once because I’ve forgotten about it and some are clothes which doesn’t fit my taste, of which I’m packing it up to be donated.

The thing is, unlike Singapore where all my clothes were summer clothes which I wore every day, Italy is seasonal country and thus I had to have sets for Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter and so, there will always be a conglomerate of clothes lying in the closet for 6 months.

And that’s the same for shoes too. My boots for the cold season and my wedges. flats and heels for the warmer seasons.

Do you see my sexeh red Enrico Coveri wedges on the left there? I actually forgot about it and left it in the store room for over a year! Bah! I’m going to wear it now in the house for at least an hour. After all, I should maximize everything I own, right?

This makes me realise why I didn’t buy any clothes at all while I was back in Singapore (also the fact that Italian clothes fit me better). While I would love to have more clothes and shoes and bags and make-up, its impossible for me to make full use of them.

In fact, I’m throwing away some of my babies right now.

Sigh. My pretties. Some of them aren’t even opened yet but since all of them are over a year old, its better just  to chuck them away.

Just don’t look back, Marina …

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How to install a PC game into a Linux computer … unsucessfully

Cart and I both use linux as an operating system for our laptop/netbook. He’s using Ubuntu and I’m using Jolicloud. I’ve always liked these two distros because they are pretty straightforward to use and they load up pretty fast.

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While waiting for our connecting flight in Beijing, Cart started to play Diablo. It’s a game that I used to play a lot while I was back in Jurong Institute. My favourite character was Rogue since she could attack from a distance and I remember feeling chills when the Butcher comes out of the door, sneering, “Aaah! Fresh meat!” Its so creepy that don’t remember if I managed to finish playing the game even.

I played Diablo 2 but it didn’t have the same effect and Diablo 3? Blizzard has been announcing and hyping out the release for what? 3 years now?  Is it even going to be released yet? It feels so anti climatic.

Anyway, seeing Cart playing it on his laptop makes me keen on revisiting my favourite game classics. Since my netbook probably has enough juice to run a late 90s and early 2000 game proper, I thought that I’d try installing Roller Coaster Tycoon 1. Its a game where you create your own theme park and I had fond memories playing it.


I wish I am in my own theme park!

Theoretically, installing a pc game in a linux based netbook should be straightforward.

1. First on your pc, you make a CD/DVD image of the game using MagicISO or Daemon Tools

2. And then transfer the .iso file into a thumbdrive and plug it in your linux computer.

3. Mount the ISO file. This will create a virtual CD/DVD drive in your computer and you don’t have to waste burning a CD or a DVD. I’m using Furius ISO mount while Cart is using CDemu.

4. Now open the installer with WINE and click on install.exe or setup.exe or autorun.exe

By the way, all of these installers could be installed through Synaptic Package Manager. Its kind of like Install or Uninstall a program through the control panel in Windows.

5. Once the game is installed, find the folder, click on the game.exe you’re good to go.

Or so it seems.

I cant get any of my games to start! Each time I’d get an error trying to install the blasted thing or even when I’m done installing, the game wont start at all!

Urgh. I’m so sad 🙁

Yes, yes. I know that I can continue playing on my windows pc. But I’m lazy and I’d much prefer to use my netbook and play the game lying down.

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A future room makeover!

I was in the study room a couple of weekends ago minding my own business when suddenly Cart came in the room with a swiffer and then rearranged his computer table. All the while mumbling and moaning and all dramatic like.

What on earth has gotten into you?! I looked at him incredulously. Cart hated doing housework you see, and it wasn’t usual to see him mucking around with the house’s feng shui.

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This is how the room used to look like. Now that Cart has positioned his desk at an angle, covering the fish tank, this room now looks like an office!

Breathlessly he showed me this :

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Eh? What is this?

Breathlessly but proudly he announced, “Now that I’ve shifted my desk, look … now we have a space for a sofa-bed!”

And then he showed me a Mondo Convenienza (its like an Italian version of Ikea) furniture booklet to the page with the sofa-bed that he was eyeing. It looks like a regular sofa, but when you push it accordingly, the hinge releases a mechanism and becomes a bed!

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We were at Mondo Convenienza yesterday to see how it looks like in person and it was actually large enough to fit two Asians.

Oooh! I could just picture how it will look like in the study room. It would be a huge improvement compared to the air-bed that we used while hosting our friends. I’m contemplating to throw it out even … Just read Jerrick’s comment

But if the sofa will be shifted there, where will my computer be? And then I started to get excited. Since my touchsmart could function as a television, we could put it up on the bookshelf and we could find a laptop stand or something for the wireless keyboard and mouse and I could do my computing work straight from the sofa!

Classy!

I’m liking this idea already. So much so, that I’m willing to give all my babysitting and tuition money to fund for this makeover … hehehe! Yes, I’m totally brainwashed by playing Restaurant City.

I hope we could do this in time before we host Daphne, her sister and Nick in May

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What’s in a name?

This is an interesting topic that Zoori has brought up in the last blog post.

Unlike our Western counterparts, the Malay naming system is usually First name + Bin (for males) or Binte (for females) + Father’s name. Indians have a similar naming system too. They’d have a First name + son of / daughter of + Father’s name.

Anyway, while I was working in Singapore, I was always addressed as Ms Marina. Once in a blue moon I’d be called Ms Noordin, but I’d be quick to point out that that’s my father’s name.

Once a Malay woman gets married, she has a choice of adopting her husband’s name or keep her own name but be called a Madam instead. My mum for example, she’s either a Mrs Noordin or Madam Sariah.

I know its a polite title. But the thing is, I’m not too fond the label, “Madam”. It makes a woman sound so much older and sterner and unpleasant. I keep thinking of a woman in army uniform commanding her troops to polish their boots, while they scream in unison, “Yes Madam!”

And now that I’m married, sometimes it feels odd when former students continue to call me Ms Marina. And yet, I just can’t bring myself to label myself as Madam Marina. How oppressing it sounds. How ominous it sounds. How … old …

Or I could adopt Cart’s last name. But it feels so awkward to me. Don’t get me wrong, Cart has a beautiful last name. And it does sounds quite elegant to be going around being called Signora Marina D’Andrea. And yet, at the same time, I feel kind of unpatriotic to my own Malay-ness by doing that. Maybe it is just me?

Lets put it this way. You are working and your boss lets you know that you have a new co-worker joining you and are informed that her name is Marina D’Andrea. And you think to yourself, “What a pretty name!” and start to imagine a blonde haired Caucasian woman with blue eyes who will be your future co-worker.

And then psyche yourself up so much and then finally … you find out that she’s a Malay … Eh?! What an anti climax! Wouldn’t it be wierd to you? Or is it just me thinking this way?

It sounds awkward enough with parents naming their kids with colourful names like Siti Rihanna Binte Abu. Or Muhammad Beckham bin Bakar.


Danial Alexander Shah Ahmad Mawi bin Abu. Why didn’t you reply when I called your name, sweetie? Because at home, daddy and mummy calls me boy!

I’m just not accustomed to it.

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I’m feeling bitter that I’m not considered a ‘Native English Speaker’

I’ve been so engrossed in doing some online learning that I’ve neglected to blog regularly for a while. And now, after several weeks of sleepless nights, I’m finally done with my TEFL course and now I’m certified to teach English as a foreign language 🙂

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It probably sounds strange because prior to coming to Rome, it has never crossed my mind to teach English. But after two years of living here, I was starting to get restless. I miss being able to contribute my skills and getting paid for it.

Ever since I’ve lived in Rome, I’ve been looking at online advertisements like wanted in Rome and sent in my resume, some to companies finding English speaking travel writers, some looking for someone good in social media who are English speakers. But with the influx of people coming into Rome, jobs like that are snapped up quite quickly.

And that was when I contemplated to teach English. As much as I preferred to teach computing, it seems that there is a higher demand here for English teachers. I tried sending my resume to a few private schools. And tried to a few more. And then to a few more after that.

No response.

The last straw was during the beginning of February, after I’ve sent my nth resume and nothing happened. Not even a reply to tell me that I was rejected. It was very frustrating. This gives me the impression that 99.9% of these private schools are only wants Native speakers.

What does Native speaker mean? Does it mean that only people coming from countries like USA and UK, Australia and Ireland are considered Native speakers?

I strongly disagree with that.

I do consider myself as a native speaker because Singapore is an English speaking country. Even though we have a mother tongue, we are educated since young in English and we communicate to each other in English. Many of us are able to balance our bilingual trait. I myself feel comfortable speaking in Malay to my parents and English to my friends. Perhaps we might not sound English because of our accents. But it is English.

Its a huge fallacy that just because one does not come from an “English” country that they are not able to speak English well. In fact, only 3% of Britons speak queen’s English while the rest of the population speak in a mix of cockney and all sorts of other regional dialects.

But I can understand why too many Italian private schools have that perception. If you wanted the best Tom Yum Goong, naturally you’ll think of Thailand. The Best Sushi? Japan. Best Pizza? Italy. And so on. It’s a strong mindset.

I do understand.

But it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s true the entire time. I just cannot accept that ONLY Italian people are fantastic pizza makers for example, and ONLY the Japanese are great at making sushi.

And so, I started to take up my online course more in anger than anything else. I felt so maligned and felt judged that I wasn’t even given a chance. I needed to do something to prove that I am just as qualified.

And so I took an online course with i-to-i TEFL course. I’ll probably write more about my experience in another post but all in all, it has been a positive one.

Of course learning in a class is superior compared to learning online. But despite what many might think, it’s not necessarily easy. There are pre-requisites for being certified and for me, I was required to pass all my modules. If I fail one module three times, regardless of which level, I’m out of the course.

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All in all, I think that online learning isn’t for everyone. It takes a lot of self discipline to sit down and study and write your homework without being distracted by external factors.

In the end, perhaps my certificate might not be worth it in the end because it’s an online course but with the new knowledge that I’m equipped with, I feel more ready to teach.

At the moment I’m tutoring two kids. Things look fine so far. And I’ve been trying to apply the new things that I’ve learnt and my long term goal is that they do better in school. I’m looking forward to having more students if possible. Teaching has been quite enjoyable for me and I’ve always liked sharing my skills.

As for private English schools? I’ll just give them a passover for now.

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