Category: life

It’s starting to finally look like Autumn where I am. As sad as I am, with the thought that Summer is finally gone, it’s still lovely to see the Autumn scenery. The leaves on the trees are changing it’s colour to reds and oranges and yellows. It’s kind of romantic.

As I walk around the neighbourhood, people are starting to go around wearing heavier coats. Some are even wearing furry little hats although I think that it’s still not that cold yet (Which is strange, coming from me, a girl who grew up in the tropics)

If you are here in Rome during these times, in the markets, you’d see loads of Autumn fruits and vegetables around – like chestnuts, pumpkins, cabbages, pears … all wonderful things to eat.

Which reminds me, we should start roasting chestnuts soon! And it’s time to make pumpkin pie again!

Right now I’m wearing my brown pile sweater underneath my trusty blue thermal jacket – my summer clothes already tucked away deep in the cupboard long ago, in the cambio stagione routine.

With the drop in temperature, we finally had our heaters turned on a few days ago. As you know, we had to have it checked first before it gets the green light. It was the same boiler man that came over from the previous year. I don’t think he remembers me, as he asks me again if I were Filipina.

As he did his job, we started chatting (or rather, I let him talk) and offered him a slice of banana bread. Somehow along the way, somehow we talked about jobs, about how his wife is a lawyer and then he asked me what I did. “Insegno inglese al domicilio” I replied and he did something that was quite unexpected, he scribbled Cart’s number (which was on the libretto) on a piece of paper and said, “Well, just in case my kids need an English teacher“.

That was kind of nice, even if I don’t think that anything will come out of it.

With the drop in temperature, I find myself using the car more frequently. As convenient and economical it is using the scooter, during the colder temperatures, it can be extremely uncomfortable and frostbites are a real risk.  I got really sick having to commute to work and back using the scooter throughout the winter and would rather spend a bit more on fuel and whatnots than having to go through that again.

Speaking of which, it’s been over a year and a half since getting my car. By now, I should have long taken off the P plate. The irony is though, instead of being more confident, I still get mini panic attacks when I’m on the road sometimes – like imagining that someone would run across the street as I’m driving by, which is probably a non issue as that’s something only an insane person would do.

In any case, I’m not sure what else I can update you with, so I’ll just end abruptly here.

Toon rinaz is so excited at the thought of eating fresh food again, she’s crying tears of joy!

Personally I think the fridge is kinda big for being just the two of us. But Cartcart likes it, and he was very choosy about what he wanted. It’s an Ariston Hotpoint by the way, an Italian made one.

Prior to this, the past weekends, he dragged me to all the different electric shops in Rome and we spent hours and hours looking at the different models.

I just don’t understand why we had to go to so many stores to see essentially the same thing.  I don’t take that much time myself when I have to go shopping! And normally I’d do a mental check-list as follows :

• Do I need this? (If yes, continue to next step)
• Do I like this? (If yes, continue to next step)
• Can I afford this? (If yes, continue to next step)
• Go ahead and buy it!

But Cart needed to examine all the fridges carefully one by one. Even when we went to another shop with the exact same model, he’d look at it tenaciously and hounded the salesclerk with 1001 questions. It drove me crazy!

And when I commented about it, he’d reply, “But we should always aim for improvement in our lives and we deserve to have good things in the house”

Whatever you say, sayang!

In any case, the past week without a fridge didn’t go too bad in the end. In a way, it made us much more careful and creative with how we do our groceries. We had to be very mindful of what and how much food we bought.

(I got these fresh veggies from the market for 10 euro by the way)

I think the amount that we spent was noticeably less and most importantly, there was less wastage too as we had to be creative in trying to finish and cooking them as soon as possible.

I also managed to find an mini fridge that Jacelyn gave a while back (Thank you so much!) So we could manage to store some of the more perishable stuff like milk, butter and cheeses.

Technically, it  is big enough to fit about 4 canned drinks. So we had a lot of fun trying to play tetris with this fridge.

Kind of sad that our ritual is now coming to an end :p