Now that I’m done with my driving theory test, I’ll be starting my motorcycle practicals soon and I’ve been searching around for a while for a motorcycle helmet. Unfortunately, the prices here in Italy are pretty expensive. We were in a motorcycle shop and I was enamoured with one that looked like a soccer ball. But at 200 Euro, its a tad bit over the budget for me.

Anyway, Fabrizio, a friend of ours adviced us to try to look in Via Portuense. So yesterday, Cart and I were in Via Portuense. According to Cart, it was a rough area. I didn’t snap a picture, but here’s one screenshot from google maps to give you an idea.

But in anycase, it was a good place to buy stuff like bicycles and motorcycle acessories. And while the area didn’t look classy, it reminded me of Lim Ah Boy Shop – a place where me and my brother sometimes head to, to get motorcycles acessories. Even the insides of the shop was exactly like a typical motorcycle shop in Jalan Besar – all crammed full with motorcycle goods.

And some minutes later, I chose this simple matt black helmet from Vemar.

It costs 60 Euro (discounted from 75). While in Singapore, I would never pay anything more than 40 Singapore dollars (about 20 Euro) for a helmet, this was still relatively the most affordable brand new helmet that I’ve seen so far.

Now I’m looking forward to making it more special by sticking a rinaz decal over it to add to my rinaz stuff collection. I’m sure it’ll look spiffy!

Cart on the other hand wants an afro-hair helmet. I cant find one so far, but this is the closest one resembling one. Would take a while to glue all the hair pieces together though.

And now that I’ve seen this, as well as the sunflower motorcyclist I’ve spotted out on the Singapore roads. I think I’ve pretty much seen everything

Anyway, one step closer to getting a moto!

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 doesn’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.

I call back home. Mum picks 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 it is?”

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

“Oh! Ok! thanks!”

I try 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! Hahaha! 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.”

Sakitnya hatiku. I love my brother. But sometimes, I just want to kill him.

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

Hence, yesterday, I made an online appointment for a dental checkup and today, I got a reply that I was scheduled for the 1st December.

I wasn’t too surprised though, since my experience with the Singaporean public health services has always had a long waiting time. A month at the very least.

How it works is like this, you do a walk in to any polyclinic nearest to you. After registration, you go to a consultation room and ask the doctor for a referral if you wanted to visit a specialist. And they’ll make the arrangements and give you a letter and about a month later, you’ll see the specialist.

Its quite a lengthy process. But its not too bad in the end as the fees including the medicine are subsidized, hence it was more affordable as compared to going to a private clinic.

But in anycase, speaking of medical services, I thought that I’d share with you my experience with the medical services here in Rome. Well, granted that it was just a one time experience, so I’m definitely not an expert at this. But despite the horror stories that I’ve heard online, my experience wasn’t all that bad.

Middle of last year, I had an irritant in my left eye. Initially I thought that it was a small grain of dust in my eye. So I beared the irritating feeling. But when the discomfort persisted for days and didn’t go away during the weekend, I got alarmed. Peering in the mirror, I found a white dot near the edge of the iris. Cart started to feel anxious and dragged me to visit a hospital.

I was surprised. Was there a working clinic during the weekend? Practically nothing is open during the weekend in Italy, especially towards the evening onwards. But Cart told me that there are hospitals that are open till late for emergency issues.

it was evening time when we reached the Ospedale Regionale Oftalmico. You take a number queue and sit in the waiting room for about 15 – 30 minutes. After which, you have a person check you and see how severe your ailment is. He also fills in the personal particulars and then gives you a new queue number.

What’s interesting is that the queue number is colour coded. Red for the highly serious cases, followed by yellow, then green and then white, which is the least serious and a longer waiting time.

And back to the waiting room we go.

Eventually, about an hour and several cups of coffee and hot chocolate later, we were finally examined by a doctor. He did a diagnostic, examining the eye under a light. And then a swab on my eye for a sample, dropped in an ointment and finally put a bandage and said that I had Corneal Abscess. Finally he gave us a list of medical prescription and asked me to come back for follow up checkup.

By the time we left the hospital, it was already night time, but luckily there were still a few pharmacies which was open. (Pharmacies and clinics are strangely, not in the same building here) Cart went in and bought the prescribed medicines.

About a week later, I was back at the eye hospital, during the day this time, bringing with me the contact lenses that I was using the week that I had the eye irritant. After about an hour of waiting, we saw the doctor and he diagnosed from the swab that it was a germ in my eye, but because it was close to the cornea, it was harder for it to fade away as opposed to dirt going in the white part of the eye.

In any case, I continued with the medication to which, in no time, I found out that I had an eerily fascinating large pupil, just like a cat’s eye at night. The bad side is that I was very photosensitive. Too much light made me feel extremely uncomfortable. But eventually the spot went away.

And some time later, we had the lab results from the doctor. My contact lenses were germ free hence it was still a mystery as to how I had the white dot.

But what is interesting that I’ve noticed is that apart from the medication, practically everything else, like the consultation is free. And I’m not even an Italian. Cart tells me that, this is how it was practised in Europe – every person, regardless of their nationality gets a chance to be treated. It would be bad to turn away a non European sick person, who will in turn infect others.

I thought that, that was cool.

But the more I thought about it, the harder it was to write because most of the stereotypes are based off the Italian-American community. And shows like Rocky, The Godfather, Saturday Night Fever, The Sopranos as well as Jersey Shore are definitely not helping.

Heck, even innocent games like Super Mario plays on the Italian stereotype. And interestingly enough, it orginates from Japan

It’s-a me! Mario!

But in any case, at the top of my head, I’ll try to recount a few popular misconceptions about Italians.

Myth 1 : All Italians have dark hair and olive skin

This is my boifren Romualdo. I’ve put his picture here cos he looks the typical Italian. Moreover, he is very hensem.

For a long time, I’ve the impression Italians typically have dark hair and tanned, olive skin. Hence, when I see natural red heads, sometimes I’d quip to Cartcart, “Is he Italian? He doesn’t seem Italian to me” and Cart would explain to me that since Italy is an amalgam of population, areas up north are closer to countries such as Switzerland and Austria and hence would have paler skin and lighter eyes and hair. While areas down south are closer to the Mediterranean, hence the darker skin and dark hair.

In fact, there is a whole melting pot going on in Italy since the 1930′s. Thanks to globalization there are many migrants settling down in Italy and starting their own family and children. Increasingly I’ve witnessed Black-Italians, Chinese-Italians, Arab-Italians, Filipina-Italians … the list goes on.

If blessed be that Cart and I would have kids of our own, we’d have a Matalian perhaps. Malay+Italian.

Our baby according to Morphthing

Wah. My babeh has grey eyes!

Myth 2 : Spaghetti and meatballs

Looks good doesn’t it?

But after living in Italy for the past one and a half year, I’ve yet to see it being served in any restaurants, trattoria or osteria. And Cart would passionately tell me that pasta and meatballs are two separate foods. The closest thing is probably the Pasta al ragú which uses grounded beef in tomato sauce, but never shaped as a meatball.

Speaking of which, I’ve yet to see any chicken being cooked in pasta. Nor Fetttucine Alfredo. And also peperoni means bell peppers in Italy not spicy cured sausage slices

Myth 3 : Italian men are womanizers

Well, mostly this man who thinks that he is a stallion.

Its true that Italians are very open in showing their affections. All the kissing and the hugging. There are times when I cant even get through a journey without at least seeing one public display of affection where the guy pulls the girl’s hand and kissing it, smooching the girl, hugging the girl and others …

And many a times if you are a woman and walking alone, a big chance you’ll have an Italian man flirting with you. They’ll back off respectfully though if you are not interested.

Myth 4 : Italian men has an unhealthy obsession with their mothers

There are a number of Mama’s boys in Italy

There are a huge 80% of Italian men above 30 years old who still live with their parents. And while there are some people who might scoff and find the entire idea as unfathomable, to still have their mothers to wash and clean for them as well as the lack of privacy and independence, the biggest reasoning as to why Italians stick with their parents for so long is mainly because of how expensive housing are. Thus they’d need some time to save up.

This house alone which is not too far from where we live, costs at least 500k euro. Woah! With that amount of money, you could buy a property in the rich district anywhere in Asia!

Myth 5 : All Italians ride gondola and sing O Sole Mio

I was watching this interesting show (although my ears bleed whenever I hear the host speak) about how Napolitana pizza is made. And towards the end of the show, I innocently asked Cartcart, “Why are they playing O Sole Mio? Isn’t it a Venezia song?”

Cart started to burst into peals of laughter. Several moments later when he’s calmed down, he explained to me.

Cart : You’ve fallen into the biggest Italian fallacy that when you sit in a gondola, the boatman will sing this song to you

Me : Oh lidat

—

Alright, so those were my top 5 Italian stereotypes. I’ll update this page if I can think of more. Do you know of any others? Do share

While the main vegs that I use for my lasagna are zucchini and spinach, there are many other combinations that you could use according to your favourite vegetables. Its not difficult to make, in fact you could prep this in about 30 minutes. Interestingly, I like it better than the original one, made with ragù, a beef-based sauce.

Today, I’m going to present to you a rinaz cooking show! On how to make a veggie lasagna

Would you like more cooking shows? Let me know what you think!

Credits : Music by Walter Mazzaccaro

Having a telley in the kitchen, I enjoy tuning to the channel and listening to the music while doing banal chores like washing the dishes and preparing food. And since the start of the fasting month, Cart and I have been tuning in to break the 4am stillness and make it more lively.

We discovered a program called “The Club” where there will be a video profile of someone introducing themselves, answering provocative questions and are able to be contacted via SMS. I found myself morbidly fascinated.

This one here says that she did it in a carabinieri barrack.

This one here says that he really really really wants to find a girlfriend.

This guy here is currently working as a stripper.

And this one here says that she’s lost trust in all men. And she’s only 19!

What? Why are you telling all these private stuff to everyone? Do you people realise that you are scaring away potential friends by your desperate-ness? I’m horrified. And yet I cant seem to take my eyes off. Its like a car crash where everyone wants to see the action.

Vuoi conoscermi? Do you want to know me?

NO! Get a shower first!

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!