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A shoe cobbler in Rome!

Many years back, I was walking in Orchard Road, Singapore with Jules where we discovered a closed bag sale. There were loads of beautiful bags there – the classic, the elegant, the modern.

I got my mum a beaded one, something like this except it was in red.

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And then I looked around for something that would catch my eye. And at length, across the corner, there it was … it had all the elements that I loved, it was green, it had a cat and a frog, it was unique. But most importantly, it was so adorable.

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I held my breath as there was a woman who started to pick it up and examined it for the longest time, and then after an eternity, finally placed it down. I went over, and realised that there was a slight imperfection – a screw from the handles were missing. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to just let this lovely thing go, so I went over to the cashier and pleaded with her, almost hysterically to ask her if there was anything she could do.

Fortunately for me, eventually she came back with a screw she found and I tucked my new purchase under my arms triumphantly. I really did love my cat bag.

</grandfather stories>

In any case, with the years of wear and tear, one of the black fabric attached to the handles broke and I didn’t know where to go to. I really didn’t want to throw my little cat bag away. But I didn’t know of any places to fix it, so it stayed in the cupboard for the longest time.

It was only recently when walking around San Paolo that I found out that there was a cobbler in the area. My goodness, shoe repairing is a dying trade. It was such a rare thing to see, even in Singapore. It was as if I hit the lottery.

So I rushed back home and on the day itself, I brought my beloved cat bag in. They took about two weeks to have it fixed. And then it was as good as new!

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I paid 4 euro, which was quite affordable. So much so that Cart’s scrambling to find old shoes that he could have fixed.

So if you’re in Rome and would like to have your favourite shoes and (maybe bags) fixed, you might want to stop by San Paolo. It’s a nice area to explore anyway.

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The cobbler is somewhere along Via Corinto, either number 4 or 6. Google maps is a little outdated here, as it shows shops which are not there anymore. Regardless, you could spot it out easily as it’s right next to a vegetable shop.

Do you know of any other cobblers in your area? When was the last time that you went to an old-school cobbler? Do share below 🙂

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Breathtaking view at Gianicolo

On a whim last weekend, Cart and I went to Gianicolo where we saw such a beautiful view, we were in awe. It was that breathtaking.

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The sky was amazingly clear. You could see from such a distance away up to the snow on the mountains. It was as if a giant took a huge sponge and wiped everything clean and shone a sort of torchlight to make it brighter.

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It’s funny how I’ve lived here for some years now, and yet have never seen Gianicolo this clear before. Cart hypothesised that it was because of the colder weather, it decreases humidity which causes mists and clouds.

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But comparing it to the picture below of the same spot in February, the cold isn’t the only reason for the clarity.

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Nevertheless, it was such a beautiful and peaceful scene to see and just melt into and think of nothing.

Sidenote : It’s 12/12/12! Six years since I posted an entry about 06/06/06. Sometimes it’s odd looking back at past entries, it’s like another person altogether.

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Scooter on strike

And so … Sam the scooter decided to go on strike over the weekend.

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He started to have ignition issues a couple of days before, but as he tends to do that during colder days, I just ignored it. Normally after a few revs, he’d be back to normal.

In any case, I normally bring him to a monthly tune-up at my regular mechanic which is roughly a 20 mins journey away from home. Unfortunately he but didn’t make it on the day that I wanted to take him there. Which is quite an irony. And now I’m scratching my head trying to figure out what to do with Sam.

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Poor stickrinaz can’t go scootering anymore

I guess I could get him fixed at a mechanic which is closer to me, but ones in my neighborhood seem to only fix cars, so I guess I’d have to find a towing number and pray that they don’t charge too much (personally, if they charge more than 40 euro, I think that’s a cut-throat)

Days like these makes me wish that I knew some basic mechanics like changing the spark plug and changing the engine oil so I don’t have to deal with all the fuss. I’d like someone to show me (with simple, non-threatening words)

At the same time, I’m quite thankful that I have my own car to travel with. True, my car isn’t the newest model with all the latest gadgetry. But it gets me around. And now that the weather is getting colder, it’s a lot more comfortable going around in a covered vehicle.

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Last year, before having the car, many times I’d reach home with my hands completely numb from the coldness, even after wearing leather gloves when travelling on the road. Despite all this, I still had to travel to work, which is why I think this was probably the reason why I kept getting strong sickness. At the point, I thought to myself, “Never again!”

Nevertheless, I still much prefer two-wheelers for getting around. After all, it’s a lot easier to find parking this way (which for me, is a huge stress) and consume less fuel and is cheaper to upkeep. Which is great for quick trips. Personally for me, it doesn’t really make sense to take the car just for the sake for grocery shopping.

I hope that Sam can be fixed by the time spring comes. If not, or if the costs doesn’t justify, I guess I’d have to think of other alternatives. A Kymco Like200i perhaps, or maybe I’ll just get a bicycle with a pannier and save myself from all this heartache.

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Why I don’t like answering the phone

I don’t like picking up the phone. Or more specifically, I don’t like picking up the home phone.

For some reasons, I keep calls from strange old women insisting for her granddaughter be put on the phone. Or silent people, not talking at all but there’s someone though as I can hear them breathing! But mostly, I avoid the phone because of extremely determined telemarketers.

So much so, that my MIL chided that it was so hard to contact me. With wide eyes, she’d go, “Ti ho chiamato tantissime volte. Ma non rispondi mai!” And then, I’d feel bad but what I don’t understand is why she couldn’t just call me on my mobile.

Anyway, It’s not so bad when I’m in Singapore, because I’m very comfortable at saying, “Oh. Really? Not interested. Bye!”

But here in Rome, I need a bit of time to catch what they are saying and then find the correct words to respond. Telemarketers tend to speak really fast, and if you pause, they pounce on it and not let you have a chance to think and reply back. So, when it progresses this far, I’d usually be dumb-struck and paralysed and confused at what to do.

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One managed to get me to change my phone plan, and I said yes to whatever he said, mainly because I wanted him to get off my back. Luckily for me, I could go online and change my plan back to how it was originally.

Sure. I could always use the,”Non parlo Italiano” excuse. But while that might work for some, the rest doesn’t care! As long as they have you on the phone, they’ll continue talking and insisting on explaining about their promotions. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a more determined telemarketer while in Singapore.

On the one hand, I do feel empathy for telemarketers. Because I used to work in a similar line during my school vacations and we only get paid based on commission. Thus I know it’s not an easy job. But on the other hand, being overly aggressive really doesn’t do it for me.

So nowadays when the phone rings and it’s a telemarketer, I try hard to say, “Non mi interessa” and just put down the phone. Part of me feels guilty for being so rude, but you got to do, what you got to do.

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Make your own DIY shampoo and conditioner

Have you ever used things out of the kitchen to make your own DIY toiletries? In a lot of instances, it works just as well as the products you buy over the counter. Moreover, since you know what is going in the mix, you risk having less adverse effects on your skin.

When I was about 12 years old, I experimented with making an egg mask and not too long ago, I found out about the benefits of bicarbonate of soda, which I love.

I’ve also been using the mix below as a dry shampoo. You add about a spoonful of corn flour and a spoonful of cocoa powder. Mix together with a few drops of essential oil. You can use a soft fluffy brush to dab it on your dry scalp and then brush it off.

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The corn flour is supposed to soak away excess oil, which makes the hair looks greasy. But leaves just enough to keep hair shiny and healthy with it’s natural oils. Which is why there are some people who are all for dry shampoos.

I guess it works. But you have to get over seeing yourself with powder and get used to the smell of cocoa in your hair. Plus it’s quite messy and I tend to see a lot of chocolate powder on the sink as I brush the powder away.

Anyway, to continue with the wonderful no package shop that I visited, I thought that I’d share also some DIY shampoo and conditioner that I learnt how to make at La Citta.

To make your own shampoo, you need :

  • A tablespoon of chickpea powder
  • A tablespoon of white wine vinegar
  • 100 ml of water

Mix the ingredients in a bottle and shake it well. This shampoo lasts for about 2 washes and should be used within the week.

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You use it as a regular shampoo – rub it on your scalp and in your hair. It probably feels odd to use as it doesn’t sud and have bubbles like a regular shampoo. And the smell from the vinegar is something that you have to overcome. I have to admit that I was really sceptical that it would work but after two days of washing my hair this way, I have to say that my tresses look really good.

Chickpea powder is supposed to have a good cleansing properties for the scalp and the acidic properties from the vinegar makes the hair shiny.

Next time, I think I’d add some essential oil to make the smell more bearable.

To make your own conditioner/hair masque, you soak some linseed for several hours. Possibly even overnight. After that, you heat it up and then set the timer to 5 minutes once it starts simmering. There should be white bubbles as what you see below.

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By then, the consistency of the liquid should be a little bit viscous, slightly gel-like but still watery. At this point, let it cool down and then separate the liquid from the seeds. The part we use is the liquid.

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And to use the conditioner, you simply spread it on your scalp and hair, leave it on for a while and wash it off. Or for a deeper conditioning effect, leave it on for several hours while you do your housework, chores or grocery shopping. It’s transparent so no one could really tell if you tied up your hair.

Men could use this too for their beard.

Anyway, this conditioner, I love it a lot! The smell is pleasant hit of sweetcorn and somewhat floral. It’s a little messy to use it from the recycled glass bottle I used, so I reckon it’ll be much easier to get a squeeze bottle to store the conditioner the next time.

Check out how my hair is loving it. Shiny and bouncy! And believe me, I’m not using any other additional products at all the past week. I’m really surprised at how well it works on me.

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All in all, I’d still use my regular shampoo once in a while, but after this little experiment, I really don’t mind continuing with the DIY shampoo and conditioner 🙂

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Sigh

As I was putting away my summer clothes and arranging my winter ones, I found this :

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I’m still on the fence about this. On the one hand, we really cannot afford one. But the talk with A about her getting a menopause sort of haunts me.

I wouldn’t say that I’m terrified, but I’m feeling a bit pensive.

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When foreigners try to speak Italian …

I was reading Nancy’s post and it amused me as I’d have to agree with her observance. Through my experience in my early years of living here, when I speak to an Italian, there is a big probability that two things will happen.

  • They would try to reply back to English even when I am speaking in Italian. I find it sort of charming that while I’m expressing myself in one language, and they respond in another.
  • They would pretend not to hear / understand me even when I know that I’m speaking well enough. Sometimes I think that they are flabbergasted that a non Italian looking person could speak Italian. To which I try to keep cool, smile, and repeat my request a little louder 🙂

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Sometimes when I go jogging, there would be people who stop me to ask for directions. Since I’m familiar with the area, I’d usually be able to answer them. Turn at the corner! Then go straight! And then when you see the market, turn right!

But there was one time when an elderly couple who slowed down their car as I went jogging. I sensed they wanted to ask for directions, so I slowed down too and took out my earphone and anticipated the question when I heard the old lady whispering to her partner, “Don’t ask her! She’s a straniera! She wouldn’t know!”

Feeling a little stung, I speeded up and ran away. Yeah I can be such a meanie. When I think back about it, I could have helped them anyway and impress them at how much a straniera could know.

Interestingly ehough though, nowadays (as in the beginning of this year) the more I speak Italian, the lesser that I get the two reactions that I mentioned above. Either my Italian has improved (not to say that it is perfect) and I’ve gone more assertive or I just don’t care anymore. Yes. Yes. I look different. Deal with it.

I used to be all, “Oh, I haven’t mastered this language yet, I’m not ready and I’m too shy to speak it” The thing is, I think that we will never ever be 100% ready so might as well start now and grow a thick skin.

Not only have I picked up the language, I picked up the mannerisms too. I strut, I overtake, I gesticulate, sometimes I curse. Either way, I think I’m slowly turning into a Roman.

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A very cool no package shop in Rome

Last weekend, I was at La Citta Dell’Utopia for a very interesting guided tour about excessive packaging (By the way, La Citta is sort of like a community centre, and I knew about this place because of their annual soup festival and I also used to do yoga here)

Anyway, as it was a Saturday Cart didn’t want to get up as he wanted to savour his non working day (by sleeping), but I really wanted to go, so I went alone. Which was too bad for him, because it was and I had a very nice day.

We went to 3 different places – a non packaged shop, a regular supermarket, back to La Citta to make shampoo and conditioner/Masque using things you could find in the kitchen and finally to a freecycle shop which is like a 2nd hand shop but is non profit (It is an AMAZING shop by the way. SO many things there. Thrifters will LOVE it)

(I might blog about the freecycle shop in the future, just that I didn’t take any pictures as I left early … ehm … X Factor Italia was on and I didn’t want to miss it)

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Anyway, I wanted to share with you one of the shops that we went to, which I liked immensely. This shop is called “Negozio Leggero“.

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This is one of the 4 owners of the Rome branch by the way, explaining to us, how the shop works – they obtain their stock in bulk, without individual packaging. And customers bring their own containers, jars, cans and bags. This way, you don’t have unnecessary packaging to throw away.

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Like if you bought a pack of tea, you throw away the plastic wrapping, and then throw away the individual sachets cover, and then throw away the box when you are done with it. And that’s just for one item. Just imagine how much trash you’d have to take out at the end of the week for a regular family.

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Anyway, I really like the shop you reduce wastage here. But mostly because of the lack of packaging, the items are cheaper (even if most of them are organic which is known to be costly) The housewife side of me is always looking for good deals.

There are a lot of interesting things to be found here. Ranging from food :

You could bring your own bottles and choose your own wine.

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And you could pick your own flour, rice or tea or biscuits … (This really reminds me of my childhood days when I could go to a mom and pop shop and ask for 50 cents of grated coconut or 1 dollars worth of biscuits)

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Apart from food items, there are also other items, such as toiletries :

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(I smelled the white tea shower by the way and it smells so heavenly!)

Something that caught my eye was these toothbrushes with exchangeable heads. I like that you could just buy one handle and then change the heads when it’s exhausted. Makes more sense no? And probably more cost effective.

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And there were some cosmetics that I might be interested to try out once I’ve used up all of my current mekap (Which will take a bit of time)

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I also saw this :

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If you don’t know what it is, err … never mind. But for those who do, I’ve been interested in this for a long while now. It’s just that it looks very daunting to put on, and I worry about accidentally dirtying myself. But one day … when I’m braver …

Moving on! There are also detergents for the house – for the floor, the windows, clothes, softener … While I was looking at this, happened to be a lady who brought her own jug to buy a detergent (As a sidenote, there are some supermarkets in Italy which does the same thing)

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And this was interesting too! I was staring at it for a few seconds, wondering why a date would be under the toiletries segment when one of the girl in our group explained excitedly how fantastic these are at cleaning her laundry.

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They are actually “Soap Nuts” which has a natural chemical which is good for washing and cleaning purposes. Because it is completely plant based, it’s organic, hypoallergenic and biodegradable. I was reading online how it can be used for other purposes too, not only for laundry.

My eyes got caught by these. And in the end, I got for myself some burger mix, some chocolate and some bar of soap.

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100g yields 2 fat patties by the way, just add 100ml of water. For about 1.20 euro, I think that’s quite a good deal. I still like Kio Ene veggie burger by the way, but this could be an alternative.

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All in all, I had a very nice time here, and looking forward to going there again the next time we need to do grocery shopping 🙂

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Negozio Leggero – La Spesa Della Spina

Sidenote : Just out of curiosity, is there a shop like this in the country where you are at? If so, please let me know in the comment box below 🙂

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This is married life #2

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Moral of the story. Always appreciate your wife. Lavish her with compliments once in a while, like, “You did a fantastic job!” or “You are so beautiful!” or “You made my life so much better” … It doesn’t matter if you said it before. SAY IT MANY TIMES! And trust me, your life will be so much more easier.

If you liked this post, you might enjoy :

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Fun way to learn a new language

Hi everyone!

I stumbled upon this page yesterday and thought that this was too good not to share if you’re interested in learning a new language.

The website is called memrise.com. Intruiged, I signed up an account with them for the fun of it (it’s free at the moment) and tried out a Mandarin course, and I’m quite surprised at how fun the whole experience was!

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Here, you could try out different courses like the Arts, Maths and Geography. Although I think the language segment is the most popular. Once you’ve decided to participate in it, you’re given unlimited time to learn and complete each segment (although the quizzes are timed!)

I like the idea of how we plant the seed when we start a segment and harvest flowers when we’re done with the segment! I’ve never played farmville before, but I think this is better than farmville. At least you get something tangible out of it :p

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Here is how the lesson starts. I love how you are given mnemonics to help you to remember the words (or figures) With Mandarin it’s interesting as a lot of the characters can be re-imagined as pictures.

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After that the game starts and you’re quizzed on the words that you just learned. It gets progressively harder as you go along. First 4 multiple choices, then 6 and then you have to type out the answer.

(As a sidenote, the Italian course is kinda simple for me. Nevertheless, there are still several words that I’ve never seen before, so it’s still nice to play with)

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The plus factor for me is definitely the quiz section. I may not be a competitive person, but I like the challenge of seeing 100% accuracy.

AND seeing my name rise in the leaderboard is very very motivating! Woohoo! I want to try to get to top 10!

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I love this website! The only small thing that I can think of in improving it, is perhaps allowing some of the courses to be edited by a non author. I was at the Malay language segment, and as a native speaker, some of the choice of words didn’t seem flow well to me.

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We’d normally use Malu instead of Segan. And Lambat instead of Lewat and Lihat instead of Tengok. To me it sounds more colloquial, but hmm … I may need a second opinion. Also, there are no audio for this particular lesson, and I’m pretty sure that there are others who would be happy to contribute 🙂

All in all, I may not be fluent at the end of my Mandarin challenge. But I’m having fun playing with memrise and maybe one day, it may come useful if I ever read a Chinese menu in China :p

(Hey wait! I could go to the numerous Chinese restaurants here in Rome. THAT would be so cool if I can make out the words there!)