Rainy season is here again!
A typical occurrence in Autumn, it has been raining a lot in Rome these past two weeks. I haven’t even been going out much due to the bad weather.
Last week, the weather was considered so bad and risked to pose a danger that all public schools were closed. You’ll see the gates shut with an official letter like the one below. Even the mayor declared it to be a “code red”.
When we woke up in the morning, the sky was so dark that looked as if it was night time – 8 pm instead of 8 am.
It rained a lot, but in the end, it wasn’t that bad in my opinion, considering the tropical rains I’ve experienced before. And there was no flooding in my neighbourhood like how it was some years back, although there are some parts in Rome which looked quite awful.
With the Piramide in the background, this does look like the Nile river, doesn’t it? Yikes!
How to make pasta cacio e pepe
Pasta Cacio e Pepe is a simple Roman pasta dish which is basically condimented with Romano cheese and pepper.
Despite it’s simplicity, I actually like this pasta but it can get cloying after several bites. Two places that I know of that serves good Pasta Cacio e Pepe is I Clementini as well as Fraschetta.
But it’s easy enough to try to make it on your own. Do take care though, and make the creamy cheese mixture first because if you put the hot pasta directly on the cheese, it’ll coagulate and look really horrible. #truestory
An observant person
Autumn
Maritozzo!
Maritozzo is a decadent pastry that is typically found in almost every bar and pasticceria in Rome.
The name maritozzo is an amalgam of marito (husband) and ozzo (dear little). Essentially made of a sweet roll made with yeast and eggs, which is split and then stuffed with fresh whipped cream, it’s deceptive simple looks belie its deliciousness.
It’s a hearty pastry, costing about 2.50 euro on average. And two of my favourite places for maritozzo is at il Cornettone or at Cecere. But be careful though, with all that cream, they can be rather fattening. Indeed, I did gain a lot of kilos eating this!
Pechino express in Singapore!
There is a reality TV game show in Italy called Pechino Express. This show is kind of like The Amazing Race but with the route focusing on Asia and the contestants have to hitch-hike and look for lodgings without paying money all throughout the competition. 
Being Singaporean, I enjoy watching this show because of the familiar elements and also of the cultural shock that the contestants face with challenges in communication as well as navigating in places which are strange to them. It was interesting for me to see the techniques that the contestants use, some begged, some bartered, some flirted … suffice to say, you’d have to have very thick skin to survive in this competition. 
Last week, the contestants were in Malaysia – Penang, Cameron Highlands, Kuala Lumpur and Larkin. I had a lot of fun with Cart, with us excitedly trying to spot out the places that we’ve already been to like the Tea Plantation where we stopped for some scones. 
(Eva is one of the funniest contestant there, openly gawking at how good looking the men were) Something interesting to note while the contestants were on the Kuala Lumpur monorail is the prohibition signs. ‘No eating’, ‘No Smoking’, ‘No Littering’ was the standard but there was also a ‘No Kissing’ sign. Asians are quite reserved naturally, so I was quite surprised to see the sign so outright. 
I thought the challenge that they did while in Larkin was a little off – according to the host, the contestants has to eat and finish the different ‘Typical Malaysian food’ before heading off to the next stop. 
Chicken feet was something common I guess, and cow lung, even boiled frogs but as far as I know, Bull Testicle isn’t commonly found in food chains in Malaysia. 
(And according to the host, is very hard) What I admire about the contestants is their tenacity in pushing on to the next challenge and it was always gratifying to see so many kind hearted people willing to host them in their houses for the night. 
So when they reached Singapore, I thought for sure that they would have a hard time. Singapore, being a metropolitan city with a fast paced life, I didn’t think that there would be many who were kind. And their first challenge there was to find a place to shower and change into their fancy outfits. 
To my surprise, while most hesitated for a while, practically everyone was willing to share their homes to the contestants when asked. There wasn’t that much airtime in Singapore though, as they basically went to Raffles Hotels and drink the Singapore Sling as a challenge and then had to rush off to to Indonesia after that. Some might think that Singapore is too small to have many challenges, but I think there are a lot more ideas that we can come out with. 
Nevertheless, if you’re interested you could watch the show in full from the Rai 2 website. It’s in Italian, but even if you didn’t understand the language, it’s still interesting to see the different sceneries 🙂
The Singapore leg starts at about the 88.00 point. Another 2 more episodes to go till the finale! 🙂
This is married life #18
I really do like eating egg pasta better than the regular kind. By the way, here’s a video blog I did time back on how to make fresh egg pasta! 🙂
Romics Comicon at Fiera di Roma 2014
Cart and I were at Romics last weekend. In a nutshell, Romics is a convention dedicating to comics, animations and videogames. Originally I didn’t plan to go there as we’ve already been there some years back and at 9 euro, I thought that the entrance fee was a bit steep.
But Cart had a lot of past editions of comics that he wanted to get to complete his collection. We had a friend who was managing a stand plus we had friends who were doing cosplay themselves so we went there in the end to give them support.
As cosplayers pay only 5 euro to enter, I wanted to cosplay as Pharell Williams with his giant hat but I didn’t have much time to make one. But I put on a mini top hat in the hopes that I could get the discount. I didn’t get one in the end.
(Do you like the Tardis I found?)
When we reached Fiera di Roma, it was really tough to find parking. We were lucky that we managed to find one. When we finally entered the exhibition hall, there were so many people, that it was hard to walk around.
Cart went straight to the comics section.
See how serious he is about comics? He even has a list of the editions that he missed. In the end, he got so many that he was given a huge shopping bag to fit them all in.
Speaking of comics, I got for myself a comic-book because it looked hilarious and good for light reading. I only realised later that I’ve already watched a couple of the videos that the author made on youtube.
I’m not sure if everyone would appreciate it, because Sio is a specific type of humour, here is one of his strips :
- I am a thief and I’m going to steal your money!
- Oh no! I beg of you, don’t do it!
- Bah! Ok.
- Thanks for not stealing my money.
- You’re welcome.
- Shall we go eat a margherita pizza?
- Ok.
As we went around the hall, there were a lot of interesting things to see like figurines :
Cardcaptor Sakura is an anime I used to watch together with my family in Singapore.
I love the Breaking Bad one. Speaking of which, I’d love a Los Pollos t-shirt.
There were also various displays such as the ones that does Zombie make-up on you.
You could choose where to have it done, on your hand or on your face.
There was a Kit car from Knight rider which speaks in Italian.
There was also the author who made a comic book about the life of Elio – a very popular musical group in Italy.
A display of some of some noted Italian illustrators, and there was a corner where you could play games.
I used to spend ages at the arcade as a kid.
Nowadays I guess people prefer to play games at home (unless it’s ingress)
This game looks interesting.
Of course, a comicon wouldn’t be complete without the cosplayers. For some reason, being there made me feel as if I was in the airport scene from Fifth Element with all those incredible costumes.
This guy’s devices were incredible with the flashing led lights and the scanner actually opens and closes!
30 years already?
I don’t play minecraft, but this costume was so cheerful 🙂
Doesn’t he look so much like Petyr Baelish?
This particular cosplayer here was amazing as his ENTIRE family was in this RPG inspired costume – his wife, even their two small children.
Despite the human crunch, I had a pleasant day in the end seeing all the fantastic and incredible costumes. 🙂
This is married life #17
As you know, Sam got damaged during the summer. We had it sent to be seen by the mechanic the other day and he’s charging us 220 euro to have the parts changed. I don’t think it’s worth fixing personally…