Category: random thoughts

It’s close to 3 years now that I’ve been living here in Rome. For me, I think that’s the amount of time to really get used to living here. The first few months was probably the hardest, being all homesick, missing friends and family. It’s not so much about the language barriers, but the sense of loneliness that kills you.

I can completely relate to Carrie when she was in Paris and happened to walk past a bar with 4 friends laughing and having a moment together.

Even now, sometimes I miss spending time with my besties Jules and Hema. We went to school together, and since then, we’ve done a lot of activities together, and so there are loads of memories. It could have been the simplest type of meet, but it’s the company makes it joyful.

It might take a shorter time for others to integrate, but for me, I needed time to assimilate and really feel like, “This is my home. This is my life,” instead of it feeling like a long stay-away. Which is probably what the mentality of a number of people that I’ve met here, have. They know that they are not going to stay here long term and eventually go back to where they came from. But it’s different for someone who’s married to an Italian.

It’s hard to abandon the metaphorical tree that I’ve sowed and start on a new one. And it took quite some time, but I finally have close friends whom I can confide and hang out with. It doesn’t feel so lonely anymore.

And I feel so amazed that it was just about a week or two ago when I’ve felt like I’m stuck in a rut, missing my financial independence. But now I’m getting more work opportunities. What I’m doing right now, is not my dream job, but at least I feel wanted and that my skills are not stagnating.

I feel like I’ve a more social life now, about twice a week I hang out with the people at the centro sociale, where there are quite a number of interesting activities held there. It’s a fun, stress-less, non judgemental place just to bond with others with a mutual activity.

I’ve been taking better care of myself, exercising more and watching what I’ve been eating (more or less) and I’m increasingly happier with I look at the figure in the mirror. I’ve went past my pre-wedding weight now and just a couple of kilograms more to my ideal BMI!

All these small things makes me feel motivated and I feel blessed. Things are looking up. It seems as if my new tree is growing healthily. And if there are anyone who’s just migrated in a new country like how I did, just hang on in there. It will get better.

I was reading with interest, this blog post by NYC Ragazza.

I got the feeling that she’s the lady who asked on how to pronounce cocomero while at the Gelato event last September

In her post, she writes that it’s quite easy to be lazy and not speak Italian because there are so many expat meet ups where you could socialise in English. And if you’re travelling around in the center, there are many shops and restaurants servers who are able to speak English well enough to get by. While at home if you had cable, you could simply change the language from the dubbed to the original language which is mostly in English.

But it does get a little harder for someone who’s married to an Italian. Because they’re pretty much expected to integrate which on the one hand is great because it is immersive. It’s tough though. It’s like teaching a person to swim by throwing him in the deep end of the pool. Some might be able to pull through, but some might just trash around the water in fear.

Although I did learn a little bit of Italian back in Singapore, it was a different ballpark altogether when I moved to Rome – the speed, the dialect and the slang that the people here spoke, was vastly different compared to the contained classroom environment. It was pretty overwhelming.

And as much as I appreciate Cart trying to assimilate me, taking me out to meet with his friends, try as much as I could to concentrate, it tends to be hard to focus after a while because :

1. I don’t understand what they were talking about because of mainly because of the vocabulary that they used and I didn’t want to be of a hindrance and interrupt the flow of the conversation to constantly ask what was going on.
2. Because they’ve been friends for a long time, there are a lot of context and inside jokes that I didn’t get. Sometimes I feel like, unintentionally, being pushed out.

Hence, I’d rather just listen and watch the conversation and even when I do contribute to the conversation, there are times when I struggle to find the right words to express myself and it gets frustrating.

I took some Italian courses here in Rome, and while it was daunting in the beginning, eventually, it got easier. It did loads to my independence. It’s so much easier going to the supermarket by myself, buying a ticket at the tabbaccaio, taking the public transportation by myself, without having Cart to help me.

All the normal, every day sort of activities. But it was terrifying for me when I was new here. But I feel a lot more comfortable when I’m by myself now, and I don’t panic when I’m walking outside and some random person asks me for directions for example (although it’s a little puzzling as to why they would specifically ask me, when there are others because I look obviously foreign )

I don’t speak perfect Italian, but people seem to understand what I say more or less.

But sometimes Cart can be so hard on me. While I’m marveling at how much I’ve progressed, he pushes me to speak perfect Italian, which usually doesn’t go well with me.  Because my philosophy in learning is to be nurturing and supportive. Kind of like how a baby learns. The baby tries, and the parents motivates her with positive words to continue. Why should it be any different from an adult?

It might sound quite juvenile, but when someone pushes me like that (be it for learning Italian, or learning to drive etc) instead of being motivated, I feel like closing up instead. Which is probably the wrong approach, but I easily lose the joy of learning that way. I need someone to clap their hands or say, “You’re doing great!” every now and then. Learning should be happy.

Kind of like Carrie asking for a little milk in her coffee, so it’s not too bitter

Cart recently psycho-analyzed me and claims that I’m homesick and thinks that by my resisting in speaking Italian, I’m trying to hang on to my bit of home. While I do get pangs of homesickness, I’ve already long resigned that I’ve be living here long term. So I don’t think that, that’s it.

But nevertheless, the way that I’ve been treated, I’ve slowly grown a sort of mechanism. While I used to be flighty, now I have the mentality to be more patient, and to just not care  too much and just speak Italian as how I’m comfortable with, without (mostly) thinking about people will be judging me. Sort of an insensitivity training if you may.

Which is not bad for a rather egoistical person, such as myself

Sidenote : Somehow I’m reminded of a scene of a literature that I read about a foreign woman who’ve lived in England for many many years but still didn’t speak any English at all.

Usually around this time, when I was living with my parent’s, we would be busy preparing for Hari Raya, the end of our month long fast. And the house would be in a chaotic state – we’d be hanging the curtains, baking cakes, tidying up the house, prepping for lunch and dinner for the humongous amount of relatives that will be arriving later.

My big fat greek wedding pales in comparison to the amount of MY relatives

I’ve always hated all this fuss. All these chores are extremely tiring and to be honest, quite unecessary. Nevertheless, I enjoy being surrounded by relatives and friends, despite how eccentric many of them are … you know, there will always be an uncle who loves to blast his karaoke set, an aunt who would chatter non stop, the emo cousin and such.

For fun, I’ll put a picture of me and my non emo cousins and aunt back in 2004

And so, I was thinking of baking some cookies during the weekend, and planned to make Nasi Lemak for the guests to eat when they arrive later. After all, if they can’t take the heat of curry or even ayam masak merah, I should be fine with Nasi Lemak right? It’s the mildest (and relatively easy to make) Malay food that I can think of.

And then I found out that all of my Muslim friends aren’t in Rome, and even my family in laws won’t be able to make it since it’s not a public holiday in Rome and they had to go work.

And while trying to gather the ingredients, I started to get emo and mind started to go into a monologue :

“Why bother with the cooking? No one is coming over anyway? There is no one to cook for”

And I suddenly felt so lonely and started to feel depressed.

After skyping my family and friends, I feel better now though.

Sidenote : Just wanted to clarify why I prefer inviting Muslim friends over for the first day is because we’ve all went through the gruelling 30 day fasting together. Of course everyone else are welcome too. We’ve invited a couple of friends over already 🙂

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!

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 🙂

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.

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.

Just a couple of years ago, before getting married, I’d be webcamming with Cart regularly. Now the role has been reversed with my family.

I suppose this is a long distance relationship of another kind.

Oh the scandalo! Oh the drama (minggu ini!)

Sometimes there are some people who uses my picture in their website. While I cant really stop people from right clicking and saving it for their own uses, most of the times I don’t really mind it so much though since I’ve watermarked my pictures. Having it watermarked makes the images have a little bit of a semblance that the images belonged to me. So that I don’t get completely ripped off by some people.

What would be polite though is to use the images on their own host instead of leeching from my webhost. And a link back would be nice too.

In any case, yesterday, I received a very interesting message by someone who googled “Malacca Road trip“. The first time I skimmed through the offender’s site, I thought that she and I probably just had parallel interests. But reading carefully, I spotted a number of similarities.

So today, I’d to share with you this very interesting discovery (channel!)

This is hers

Sleep for 4.5 hours still can be groggy one ah?

This is mine

Mmm … I would love some Briyani right now.

This is hers

This is mine

Maybe I can give her my own home made chendol.

This is hers

This is mine

She’s obviously a very capable sex-change surgeon

This is hers

This is mine

And she also has a diploma in ctrl+c

This is hers

This is mine

Mr Komodo Dragon is femes!

Plagiarism or no?

I wrote my blog post in June 2007 while she in September 2009. I guess with all her travelling, she’s just too tired to write her own blogpost

I have to give credit to her though, she does take nice pictures.

Actually, I’m more amused than anything else. This means that I am FEMES! And people want to copy me! Yay!

IRAS is a declaration form for those who are working in Singapore to be filled up each annually. For those who did not fill it up are usually fined an amount of money.

As I’m living overseas, I’ve had issues trying to fill it up though.

21 Aug

One fine day my brother tells me casually over plurk that I needed to fill up my tax forms. And it should be done by the end of the month.

Strange. I thought to myself. I live in Italy now. And besides, I haven’t been working since December 2008. Nevertheless, after consulting other Singaporeans living in Singapore, I decided to just fill it up online anyway. After all, through experience, it shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes.

So I went to the Inland Revenue of Authority Singapore portal and see that I needed to log in using an IRAS pin. So I asked my brother, “Bro, can you check the mail for me? You should see a one time use PIN”

“Oh no. There isn’t one” He answered. Thus I thought to myself, “Not a problem, I can log in with Singpass. But since I’ve forgotten it, I’ll just have it reset”

It was easy to reset it back in Singapore. All I had to do was to head to a community center and ask for a reset. But since I’m overseas, the only other viable way needed 4 working days to have it snail mailed to my Singapore address.

Not a problem. I thought to myself, “Seems tight, but if all goes well, I could do this a couple of days before the end of the month“. Thus I asked my brother to please help to text once the new password has been received. I emailed IRAS and Singpass for help, just in case.

28 Aug

4 days has passed by. No text messages and no emails from anyone, I started to feel worried. And what made it worse was that for some reason, I started to have keyboard issues. And to top it off, my mob phone just died! Just like that.

It really didn’t help the situation with my electronic things making a pact to die like that. So I called back home. Mum picked up the phone and I asked if there were any mail for me.

“Oh yes! You have a mail from Singpass”

“Can you tell me what the passcode is?”

“s39bHsZE. Small s. Thirty nine. Small b. Big H. Small s. Big z. Big e”

“Oh! Ok! thanks!”

I tried to log in.

“You have entered an invalid SingPass ID or Singpass”

I tried again. And again. And again. I started to feel frustrated.

So I stopped.

29 Aug

The next day I called back home again.

“Oh sayang, what’s wrong?”

“It didnt work mum, can you tell me my password again?”

“s39bHfZE. Small s for Sariah. Thirty nine. Small b for Bakar, Big h for Haikal, small f for fish. Big Z for Zainuddin. Big E for Elephant”

“Oh! No wonder it doesn’t work! Thanks, I’ll try again!”

And thus, I tried to log in. Unfortunately, I left the log in page idle too long during the phone call, so I got a time out. I closed the browser and tried again. And to my horror, I saw this message in frighteningly red letters.

“You have one last try to login successfully. If your last attempt is unsuccessful, your Singpass account will be locked”

I started to panic. Even more so when I found out that I would be fined $300 dollars if I did not file the tax form. I hoped to have the log in count cleared the next day and crossed my fingers that it’ll work then.

30 Aug

So the next morning, I tried again. I took a deep breath and keyed in. Unfortunately my worst fears came true.

“Your Singpass has been locked”

And I went into hysterics and I called my brother, screaming and shouting.

“I ASKED YOU TO HELP ME! I TEXTED YOU! I MESSAGED YOU! WHY COULDN’T YOU REPLY BACK. I’M PANICKING RIGHT NOW! I’VE ONLY ONE DAY LEFT NOW! IF I RESET MY PASSWORD AGAIN, IT’LL TAKE ANOTHER 4 DAYS!”

Several hours later, it was already getting close to midnight in Singapore. I started to lose hope.

I started my browser and see a new email by my brother.

“Your singpass is as follows, s39bHfzE.” Not s39bHsZE.

Update : Yay! On the suggestion of ntt, I called up IRAS and now I have a 2 weeks extention!

Since the beginning of the internet, Emails are an integral part of life be it for work or for play. It makes it so easy for communicating with people. Type in your contents and click the send button and that’s it. It would be unspeakable to take away emails from daily life.

But there are days when I just cant stand looking at my email. And just to be clear, I’ve received many nice emails and has had nice conversations and went on to become friends to even meeting them in real life, which is really nice.

Sometimes there are a conglomeration of people who email me the same questions. While its not so bad once or twice in a span of time, it does get overwhelming when it gets back to back. Its like back when I was teaching computer applications to a group of kids, and the situation inevitably becomes like this :

Me : Okay kids, click on this button and you can make a circle. Try it!
Kid1 : Miss Marina! Miss Marina! Is this how you make it?
Me : That’s good
Kid2 : Miss Marina! Miss Marina! Did I do it correctly?
Me : Yes dear
Kid3 all the way to kid40 : Miss Marina! Miss Marina! Miss Marina! x 100
Me : Sigh

But in the end, that’s not so bad because although annoying, that these kids don’t mean bad and instead, genuinely interested to learn and get information. And throughout the years, I learnt to be a little more patient and understanding because its just better that way. But what are the biggest thing that really ticks me off is rude, demanding, and tactless people.

Example 1 : Dear Marina, could you please tell me how to _____ ?

I take precious time out of my busy domestic goddess life to reply back to you, and give you information. And that’s the end of it. The end. Nothing heard back from you. Not a “Oh hey, that worked!”, “Sorry Marina, I think that its too far for me”, “Thanks for helping me out, I really appreciate it!”

But no, not even a thank you. Would it kill you to have the courtesy to reply back to give feedback?

Example 2 : GIVE ME FREE!

Ok. So let me get this straight. You want to use my photo that I have taken to be used in a commercial website but you want my watermark removed, you don’t offer payment, or at the very least, not even a credit back to this site?

The answer is no.

Example 3 : I want you to do link exchange with me!

Did you even read the sites that you go to before putting your copy and paste text in their contact page? Is it so difficult to do a search on who the blog owner is? And is it so difficult to type our their name to make a little bit of a semblance that you give a crap.

No Scott, I am not interested. And if you took the time to read a few pages of this blog, you’ll see it is completely unrelated to your site.

But this guy that I’m going to show you really takes the cake.

Exhibit 4 : The creepy spammer

He starts off being a blog reader, putting his comments in blog posts. I thought that he was an eccentric, but mostly a harmless, retired man living in California. Then he started to use my contact page and eventually, I gave him my email address for easy communication.

And then he started to put comments like this :

And in the emails :

He tried to add me on facebook :

All of which I’ve ignored since he’s already has lost my trust. And not content that I’ve been ignoring him, he starts to spam me instead.

This is so creepy, its not funny! He compares me to my blog-mate Claudia constantly, he spams me even though I’ve already asked him to stop, and having known my email, he stops commenting on the blog post and instead EMAILS me his comments about my blog posts, and even my TWITTER! It is as if he has something to hide by not replying to the sites directly.

The last I’ve heard is that he’s been bothering other Singaporean female bloggers too! What is with this guy?!

Thank goodness there is a block function on gmail and facebook. I’d probably go ballistic without it.

I know I don’t usually rant in my blog, but you know, I’ve had enough!

I was walking to my in-laws house when I saw this and immediately I felt a strong emotion in me.

This was a flyer of a man offering his services in teaching computer applications. And that is something that I’m very familiar with.

It has been a while since I left my workplace while in Singapore. I used to be attached to different schools where one of my tasks was to teach students on how to use computer applications. While it can be stressful, at the end of the day, it felt very fulfilling to me when the kids say, “Hey Ms Marina! Thank you for teaching me video editing, it really helped me in my project” or “Ms Marina! Can you show me how to do animations? I think its fun to play with”

I really miss all that. That’s probably why I’ve stayed on for over 5 years being a multimedia educator.

Unfortunately, Italy doesn’t recognize my certifications (it is disconcerting to know that Singaporean certs aren’t valid in a lot of parts of the world) And while I’m a lot better than last year, I’m still not fluent in Italian. This frustrates me. Because, I know I can do everything the man advertised and even more at the back of my hand.

And of course, one of the biggest motivation is the money. Certainly the money would be very useful in contributing my to my whims. After earning my own money for many years, it just feels wierd having to depend on Cart. I like having new shoes, bags and other frivolous but pretty things. But being on a single income, I feel that I should be more responsible in how I spend it. And though Cart never complains, I don’t want to be a burden.

I’ve countless of people always telling me things like, “Oh you should open a restaurant and cook Malay food!” or “Why don’t you open a business importing Asian goods to Italy, I’m sure there is a market there”. I know these people mean well, and I love you guys, but it’s not that easy and intangible. Especially I’ve no experience in this sort of thing. If you really believe that I can do that, and have the confidence that I can sustain from this, it would be much more helpful to give me step by step directions on what to do instead of giving me such vague ideas.

I probably could try to be a part timer and teach kids and young people to learn English, or be a nanny, but I just am not feeling it. Moreover, it really stung when I read a classifieds online asking for a English teacher who speaks English but she must only be from Australia, America, Canada and UK. What? Only people from these 4 countries can speak English? It sickened me.

Asking me to do something that I have no passion in is like asking say, Michaelangelo to be a plumber. He could probably be even good at it, but everyone knows that he was meant for this greatness.

I feel I am meant for my own greatness. I have so much to share and contribute.