Since I’m heading back to Singapore in mid December, I thought that I should take the opportunity to make use of my Singaporean subsidization and have a medical check up like dental. Besides, I’m way behind my recommended two times a year check up.

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 was 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, we didn’t have to pay at the time. 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.

Initially when Sylvia suggested that I write about this topic, I thought that it would be simple seeing how there were so many famous Italian stereotypes. I mean, we’ve all heard about it. Italians are this and they are that …

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.

Even innocent games like Super Mario plays on the Italian stereotype. And interestingly enough, it orginated 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 Romualdo from the classic movie, “Cave of the Golden rose“. He’s very good looking isn’t he? He  I’ve put his picture here as he fits the description of a typical Italian.

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

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 and they are termed as, “Mammone”.

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. That’s quite a lot of money for the regular person.

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

I was watching this interesting show 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 : You mean, its not from Venezia?

Cart : Oh no! In fact the lyrics of the song is in Napoli accent! Haha!

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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