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Whee! Hug radiator!

We are already a couple of weeks into autumn and the trees are starting to change into beautiful shades reds and golds and browns. Temperatures are already dropping in Rome and I’m already moaning about summer being over. At this point of time in writing, its about 3 degrees celcius. Brr …

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It might not be such a big deal to people living in the temperate zones. Cart himself prefers the cooler temperatures, but having lived in sunny, equatorial Singapore for most of my life, I’m still trying to get used to this. And in temperatures colder than 25 degrees, I start to shiver, and hide underneath the comforter, the flannel blanket … anywhere warmer!

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Like this nice and thick comforter that stick rinaz is on, which she tries to run me over while I’m asleep. Its thick enough to probably make one layer for the princess and the pea

I guess, on the other hand, one of the nice perks about living in colder regions is the ability to wear nice coats and jackets and boots, which would just be unrealistic, as well as a little insane to be wearing in tropical Singapore.

Nevertheless, the house was starting to get unbearably cold. And while the comforter, my flannel pyjamas and my favourite hippo slippers were helping, it’s still quite cold!

Yeah, I look unglamorous in this bideo, but as friends you wont be judgemental

Anyway! It got to the point that it got uncomfortably cold that we called up the boiler man to have the riscaldamento start again.

I’m not sure if its the same for other parts of Italy, but here in Rome, if you own a personal boiler, you’d need to have it checked by a qualified employee before restarting it. Cart told me that one risks to have a fine or worse, have an accident if there is something defective in it after being unused for some months.

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This is what a boiler looks like. I left the bottles there so you could compare the size of the thing. Basically it works by having water flowing into a valve and the boiler heats up the water. And this heated water flows around the house through radiators which in turn warms the surrounding air.

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And this is one of the radiators that saved my life during cold winters. On the side there is this little ceramic container that you’re supposed to pour water in because air gets drier as the riscaldamento works.

In any case, like I mentioned, not all houses have their own personal boilers. My friend Lynn was mentioning that for her condominium, its a shared boiler and to save money, the majority of her neighbours only wanted it turned on in November!

Till then, poor Lynn would have to bear with the cold!

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I wanted to take a picture while the boiler-men were working but I chickened out in the end :p

In any case, I was being a busybody and was looking at the boiler-men as they checked the pressure, the heat, the flow and others to make sure that it fits to the European standards and in about 15 minutes or so, if it passes the test, the thermostat will be started and in a while, the house will be comfortable again.

And when that’s done,then another 15 minutes for doing the paperwork. What’s quite incredulous to me was how much bureaucracy that went into this, asking me about codice fiscale, needing an official libretto thingmajig that Cart had to buy himself in a separate location (how come these boiler-men don’t sell it directly?)

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Thank goodness, Cart managed to get home from work in time and rescued me from having to go all Indiana Jones and the temple of doom-like trying to find something that’s close to impossible to find

In any case, the house is nice and warm again! My feet doesn’t feel ridiculously cold now! And I feel comfy! Whee! Hug radiator!

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Toon-rinaz herself is crying tears of joy

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Why can’t I have a Jude Law robot?

This post contains Artificial Intelligence spoilers

With the seasons changing and the temperature dropping, it’s inevitable to be sick. And indeed, during the weekend, I caught the cough, flu and fever.

And all throughout the duration, I was feeling lousy, miserable, and in dire need of cuddles. With Cart at work and me being home alone and feeling dramatic, the only thing that I could think of was Jude Law to take care of me. Or specifically, Jude Law in the form of a robot in Artificial Intelligence.

rinaz.net Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is an interesting movie set in the not too distant future, in a world where increasingly, robots looks and act realistically like humans. And these robots are given various types of tasks to assist humans, such as nannies, domestic helpers and such.

To me, what’s great is that they are very commited in their tasks. And they will continue to serve their duty faithfully, till the end. While there are mainly two divides between the embracing nature of having them as opposed to ‘robots taking over the world’ mentality, personally I don’t have a problem with it. After all, having them has made life easier. Moreover, there are plentiful of aspects where robots cant completely take over a human’s role.

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That’s Jude Law on the right, playing the character, Gigolo Joe, complete with his Ken-doll hair and the shiniest outfit I’ve ever seen. He’s probably be a good companion to any sick women.

Although to be honest. I dont know how much I’d tolerate his character after 5 minutes or so, because what comes out of his mouth is SO corny and cheesy.

“I think you’re afraid of letting go and this is starting to excite me. Are you afraid of seeing the stars? I can show you how to reach them”

“You are a goddess. You wind me up inside. But you deserve much better in your life. You deserve… me.”

“I know all about women. About as much as there is to know. No two are ever alike and after they’ve met me, no two are ever the same.”

And the music … Joe likes to cock his head and 30’s music like Fred Astaire’s Cheek to cheek will start making the entire situation even more corny.

Nevertheless, I thought that Artificial Intelligence was an interesting movie. Although I thought that it was majorly one sided in its view in thinking that humans will never be able to have a bond with robots.

Everyday we bond with our piece of technology. If you take away any random person’s handphone, you’ll see how at loss they would feel. And have you seen the news about the guy who loves his game so much that he married his Nintendo DS character?

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I also have a huge problem with the character Monica who plays the mother. She does not seem to be very bright.

For someone who lives in the future, you would have thought that they would be more aware on the intricacies on how to care for a robot. The biggest being to correct or reward for each task done. After all, that’s the whole point to the term, “Artificial Intelligence” – that something will be able to learn and grow through experience and mistakes.

Thus I had a big issue when David, the boy-android opens the door while Monica was in the toilet, mistaking it for a hide and seek game. Why didnt she correct his behaviour and tell him about the human needs for privacy?

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Or during the sibling rivalry between Monica’s real son during dinner. Martin started to provoke David to start eating when we all know that robots cannot eat. And while the two parents saw what was going on, they did not do anything but continued to sit, talking docile-ly, to both of the boys “Stop it. Stop it. Dont do that”

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Cute teddy bear robot by the way

You don’t need to be a parent or live in the future to know that, that tone never works.

And they are both so irresponsible. Even though both of them knew very well that once David’s love-program was activated, there was no way of going back or restart David as how he was before. It’s not like a digital pet Tamagotchi! Monica goes ahead and activated the program without even consulting her husband.

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And in the end, without investigating why David pulled Martin into the swimming pool, both of them simply judged that he would be a threat around the family. To this, I understand because every family wants their child to be safe.

What I don’t understand is that even with the knowledge that there are anti-mecha flesh fairs, which was kind of like a monster truck demolition but with robots, and that it would be dangerous for David to be by himself, she just abandons him in the forest like that.

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I think that having him dismantled at the factory would be a much much more merciful. Like the dog euthanasia scene from the fly 2.

But of course, if David was to be dismantled at the factory, the movie would probably be over in just half the duration.

There are quite a number of movies that talks about the moralities of having an android companion. Like the Bicentennial Man, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and maybe even eXisTenz.

But one of the best ones that I watched in regards to this topic was actually from an anime called Chobits.

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I’m not so into anime, but I appreciated the storyline that embraces and addresses that there are a group of people who appreciates robots and there are a group of people that are against them.

Unlike A.I which is one sided.

But why am I rambling about A.I. anyway? Cough cough cough. Oh yeah, its because I am sick. Having a robot helper would be nice. Then he could do the housework, cook me hot meals, help me with Italian, do the marketing, give me endless cuddles … etc. etc. etc.

If you liked this post, you might enjoy

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Our trip to Palazzo Barberini

Cart and I had a lovely afternoon, roaming around Barberini yesterday. Its an interesting place in central Rome with loads to interesting architecture. The first time that I’ve been here was last year during a Singaporean meet, but little did I know that there were so much more to see around the area. A good way, now that I think about it, to see an overview of the area is to take an open bus, and then drop down to have a stroll in the area which you fancy.

Like this area here called the Presidenza Della Repubblica, where the Italian president lives.

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Insert gratuitous camwhore shot

In any case, Cart and I were in Barberini mainly to visit Palazzo Barberini. As its namesake, Palazzo Barberini is a palace that used to be owned by the Barberini family. What was was interesting to see that their insigna was the bee, and indeed, we saw a lot of the logo strewn around as we walked through the area.

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And oh gosh, it was a beautiful building. I’m not too well versed at the type of architecture this is, but its so luxurious! I can only imagine how the royalties were walking through all these opulence. Its gorgeous! In fact, when Cart and I reached there, there was a bride and groom walking in for their bridal photoshoot themselves.

I can only imagine the groom thinking to himself, “Woah! What a nice building!” Or something to that effect while looking at it

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And as we walking through the luxe marble staircase, I am just enamoured. How beautiful is that? I feel like I am princess fantaghiro! All that’s missing is my medieval outfit and my giggling maid-helpers. Hehehe.

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Does this look unreal like a painting or is it just me? I keep nudging Cartcart, this looks more like Secondlife than it is to real life, and all he said in solemn response, “No, it couldn’t be. Not enough prims”

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And as you walked past main entrance, you would reach the garden outside. As you can see from the picture, its a lot of walking to get to the garden from the main building. But to me, its worth the walk.

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As soon as you reach the top of the staircase, you’ll find an adorable looking build that looks like a hobbit‘s house. Or a gardener’s shed according to Cart.

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The area looks a bit wild, with the grass growing rather long, probably because at the time we were there, it was already autumn, I guess people generally dont want to do double work since the plants will go into dormant stage soon. Nevertheless, the garden looked so charming. And with the (albeit empty) greenhouse, it was so charmingly European.

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I spotted out something interesting, while walking around the garden.

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Cant see it? Well, here it is, magnified. Spot something interesting here? :-p

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I swear, I’m not being a nitpick, but Italy is so charmingly full of Engrish 😀

In any case, I love this place. So royale. But I’m not sure if I would be able to live through the same thing though, what with all the walking, the climbing stairs and all … Royalties probably dont need to have a gymnastic membership from all these natural workout, I imagine that they will be fit just by going from one place to another!

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But apart from the beautiful building, inside it houses the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, an art gallery. If there are anyone who are in Rome and enjoys the arts, I think that this is a good place to visit. For 5 euro, its pretty affordable compared to all the other touristy places and you could see a plentiful of Italian artists.

I cant snap pictures of the display inside, but here are some of the ones that I can remember to google-image.

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One of the painter’s that I’m starting to appreciate is Caravaggio. His style of painting was very unique during that time because of the dark background but with the light focusing the main character. Caravaggio also liked to use people from the working class as his models, hence his paintings would tend to have little details like dirt on the fingernails.

This painting below is called, Narcissus. It is about a guy who falls in love with his own image. The idea is kind of bleargh to be honest, loving yourself a little too much :p

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And this is called, Giuditta che taglia la testa a Oloferne – Judith cuts the Head of Holofernes. Woah, this is brutal man.

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This picture below is done by El Greco, to me, the colouring and the style looks very modern. Thus, its impressive that this piece was made during the 1570s! Indeed, there were several pieces that I saw yesterday that looked like it was painted in today’s style.

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And this is a piece done by Tintoretto. Cart kept saying that Tintoretto would have been one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – because he was just as important to Italian art like Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello and Raphaello. Its just that he was probably still in Martial Arts school

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There were so much to see! I don’t even remember most of them now! On hindesight, I should have scribbled the names of the artists in a notebook to learn more about them later or find more of their works online. Ah shucks! Next time hopefully 🙂

To end this blog post, I’m going to put up an unrelated picture of me.

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Hey, its my blog after all and I love lego! 

Sidenote : This coming weekend, Cart and I are planning to go to Galleria Borghese. If you are in Rome and would like to join us, do feel free to contact me! 🙂

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Would you feel comfortable with this in your classroom?

Its the start of a new term for my Italian class.

Here in Italy, there are subsidized Italian lessons organized in various regions and comunale, for residents as well as foreigners who carry a permesso di soggiorno (permit to stay). And it costs very little, ranging from 10 – 20 euro for about 40 hours of lessons, usually in a public school.

In any case, when I reached the classroom, it was an extremely chaotic encounter, with the new students of all the various levels of fluency all clumped up together. There were some who didn’t understood any Italian at all, and there were some conversing seriously with the teachers. And the teachers where looking quite stressed out, trying to get a sense of semblance of order.

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But it was nice to meet familiar faces again, those whom I’ve been with in the same class last year. And as I walked in to sit down, all the faces lighted up in recognition, “Hey! Come stai? Stai bene?” And I cant help but to think, why do you people ask me only now when you ignore all my emails and messages

And then we were given a test. Before this, I was feeling quite nervous, thinking that it would be very difficult, testing us on topics such as passato prossimo, pronomi diretti and condizionale, that I even had a dream about taking a test the night before. But when I got the actual sheet of paper.

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Freaking heck, its just a “What is your name?” “How old are you?” “Where do you come from?” Man, what an anti-climax!

But in anycase, while sitting in the class, I noticed something on the wall on every classroom that I’ve been in.

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The first time I saw it to be honest, I didn’t care. A symbol is a symbol. Although admittedly it does make me feel very aware that I am a minority. Although these days, I don’t even see the symbol. Kind of like non-seeing ads in a website.

While I think that we should respect other cultures and leave it be, Cart thinks that there should be other symbols of faith along with it. What do you think?

Sidenote : Urgh, feeling sickish with flu, fever, sorethroat

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Remembering 12seconds.tv

It’s always sad when someone, excited about an idea tries to nurture it, but doesn’t work out in the end. What’s even sadder is when you’ve built a community, and they will lose another form of communication and another way to keep their memories with them. A couple of examples that I can think at the top of my head are Geocities, yahoo galleries, There.com and ecircles just to name a few.

And in a couple of days, 12seconds.tv will be closing their doors.

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How shall I describe 12seconds? I guess it was kind of like twitter, but instead of texts, it uses short videos. And you can ramble about anything you like, and it’s fine because well, it was just 12 seconds and you don’t feel like you’ve wasted too much time

I joined 12seconds a couple of years back when Jerrick recommended me to join. This was my first video back in November 2008 :

I still remember the moment recording it. I was just back from my yoga session and sitting in my old room in Singapore. There were loads of decorated boxes around me, personally handmade by me for the upcoming wedding ceremony in about a month time. There was even a gluegun on top of my touchsmart computer that was to be shipped to Italy!

And seeing all that just made me reminisce.

One of the things that I quite like 12seconds is mainly because I could upload anything I wanted by webcam, uploading from a camera or from the mobile phone. The community in there were civil and non judgemental, so we were all feel free to be silly and we didn’t really care. Indeed, I’ve never seen any flamings at all!

At the beginning of this year, I tried to be a little more active in participating. And like foursquare, 12seconds had a ladder that when you reach it, you get a badge. These are some of the badges that I’ve unlocked. I tried to unlock the consequence video badge. I almost reached the 48 days, but I missed one day and went back to zero and then I just couldn’t be bothered to continue any-more

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But one of the easiest way to get a badge was to post videos regularly and it wasnt difficult to do, especially when they have daily challenge questions. The site will pose a question, and you give your response and if other viewers liked it, they could vote for you. It was actually quite fun to participate.

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And while you could think of and upload videos with topics you want to talk about, it was nice to have this 12erator which generated interesting questions too in case you cannot think of anything. Many of them make pretty good blog topics and here were a couple of them :

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And one of the things that I appreciated from 12seconds what that it allowed embedded videos that can be viewed directly on my site. I’ve been using that on my sidebar to replace my rss image widget update from my posterous account. It worked for a while, but since December 2009, it just stopped working.

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But what a shame that all of these won’t last because 12seconds is closing on this Friday, the 22nd November. I’m in seesmic at the moment, but its just not the same!

12seconds.tv, its been fun and thank you for all the memories. Take care and best of luck, Sol Lipman and David Beach

Sidenote : By the way, did anyone realise that today is 20102010? :p

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A wedding fair in Rome

Yesterday Cart, my friend Alessandra and I went to Roma Sposa to have a look see. Roma Sposa is a wedding fair with about 350 different booths and wedding representatives. Although Cart and I are already married, it’s nice to observe the trends here in Italy.

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Being already Autumn, it was quite a chilly day already when we reached Palazzo Dei Congressi. Temperatures are already dropping to 18 degrees Celsius here in Rome and I’ve already started to wear my boots, turtlenecks, wooly jackets and whatnots.

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The fair was was easy to spot because of the huge banner at the front of the Palazzo. There were so many promoters outside, hawking around with their sharp eyes.

The entry was free and it was very crowded the time when we reached there.

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When we entered the palazzo proper to see the exhibitions, there were so many things to see such as the brides’ dresses.  There were so many varieties! There were the traditional white ones, some lacy ones, some of a mixture of denim, some very embellished outfits.

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I prefer simple but elegant looking ones like this one

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I adore the bead-works around this dress, as well as the beautiful soft gold all around it.

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There was also a wedding fashion catwalk.

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That’s one the designer walking out after her models showed off her collection.

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I also saw a couple of booths showcasing their art of cosmetics and hair.

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I like the design of the invite cards. These ones above remind me of the traditional hand-made paper from Bevagna.

We also saw wedding favours for guests to keep home. Personally for me, I prefer gifts that are functional.

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Like this adorable salt and pepper shaker and a container to keep the toothpick in.

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And these are stationary sets you could use for writing notes.

There is also another interesting custom in Italy where you give these small round sweets to your guests.

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In Italy, this is called Confetti. Not to be confused with the white paper things that we throw during parties. Inside is a sugared almond and covered with any flavours ranging from Banana, Strawberry, Caramel to Whiskey, ricotta and pears. It can range from different colours symbolising the type of anniversary with white being the most common for weddings.

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And it will be placed into these containers called the Bomboniere for guests. Commonly, there will be 5 pieces in each to symbolise health, wealth, happiness, fertility and long life.

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I saw several displays for the table setting which was created especially for a wedding lunch or dinner. They looked very intricate with the special cutlery, and bowls and decorations. Some ranging from the classic and some modern.

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Most of them look very opulent. And apart from table decorations, there will sure to be flower decoration and food artwork.

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These fruit carvings were incredibly intricate!

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And not to mention, the wedding cake. While I prefer my cakes to be simpler, this display is a work of art in my opinion. I particularly like the Piazza Spagna cake display.

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This was the Castel Sant’Angelo.

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And this is Piazza San Pietro.

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No wedding would be complete without the photographers and the videographers.

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After going around the exhibitions, on average, the package deal is 1.7 k Euro here in Rome. Many of them were quite talented, and I looked through the different styles that they showcased. Some of them quirky, some of them quite retro looking.

And who can forget the DJ’s and music.

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And to get to your wedding lunch or dinner in style, you could rent a stylish car, modern or classic or a limousine.

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But lets not forget that no weddings would be complete without the wedding rings

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It was interesting to see that the wedding rings are probably the most simple styled of all. Just a simple band :p

So lets see, according to the prices from fair, to get a wedding celebration in Italy :

  • Wedding outfits = 1000 x 2 people x 2 events = 4000 Euro
  • Photography + Video = 1.700 Euro
  • Makeup + Hair = 300 Euro
  • Deejay + Music = 300 Euro
  • Wedding Dinner in a nice restaurant = 50 x 300 guests = 15.000 Euro
  • Table Decoration + Flowers = 200
  • Gifts for the guests = 20 x 300 guets = 6.000 Euro
  • Wedding Cake = 200 Euro
  • Wedding Rings = 200 x 2 People = 400 Euro
  • Limousine rental = 300 Euro

Grand estimate = 28400 Euro!

That’s quite expensive to get married. Nevertheless, it was an interesting and enlightening afternoon at the Roma Sposa wedding fair. I quite enjoyed myself.

The only thing is, going around from booths to booths, we were all shoved with pamphlets, books, and stuff whether we wanted it or not. And it was so heavy! Such a waste of paper.

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If you liked this post, you might be interested in our wedding ceremony :

Or the other fair’s that I’ve visited :

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Trying out Jolicloud for the first time

I’m a happy Ubuntu user for over a year now and I was really looking forward to installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix version 10.10 on my Lenovo S10 Netbook last Sunday. The latest version was said to have a very fast load up time and happily, I did my backup and whatnots before finally upgrading.

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This is the Ubuntu Netbook Remix Interface

In no time at all, the download was done and installed. So I restarted. Unfortunately, something funky happened and the top toolbar was missing, as well as the icons looked messed up.

Then I thought, okay, lets try reformatting the bugger and do a clean install. But the only thing is, that when I slot the USB with the installer, nothing happened because Ubuntu was already installed. No option to reinstall program whatsoever. Hmm!

I’m not that savvy enough to muck around with Sudo but I had an idea that I would just install another distro and after that, THEN reinstall Ubuntu. Probably not the most clear cut idea, but it might work!

So I chose from the list of distros that the Universal USB Installer had and I chose jolicloud pretty much because of the cute name it had. Joli-joli-jolicloud!

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At first I had a stumbling block with an odd and very unfriendly “No DEFAULT or UI configuration directive found!” message. But after a quick search online, I found a fix and it was smooth going from there. I was directed to a live-demo. A live demo means that you can try out the functions of how the software is like without having to install anything yet.

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I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was. Unlike gOS (Not to be confused with Google Chrome OS) which I tried earlier. That gave me a huge headache because I had issues with it not being able to detect the wifi connection thus almost every widget failed to work.

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On the other hand, jolicloud was able to detect the wifi with no issues at all. Probably the only thing to set up was to register for an account with jolicloud and in a while, you reach the main interface, everything looks so clean and elegant.

Here are a few of the things that I use on a regular basis.

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Although I’m not sure why there is a need to make so many “Apps” for the main screen because I could just go to the Chromium browser and access each page, like Facebook and Gmail from there. It makes it seem quite redundant. Kind of like the EEE PC interface.

Opening the apps are amazingly fast. I click on any of them and it opens in a split second unlike Ubuntu which takes a few seconds to start up.

Apart from the web applications, there were also installers like Cheese, Thunderbird and Pidgin as well as others you could download and install from the left top green add button

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There was also a stream function although I am not too sure what the function is for. Since I don’t see any way how I could chat or make friends with these people. I didn’t really dabble with it much.

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But apart from Web apps, I could also save files in my netbook, so I don’t feel so crippled even if there was no internet connection available on the jolicloud. I’d usually watch movies on my netbook, and listen to music and jolicloud did the job just well.

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I was so enamoured at this point of time, that within a few minutes I had a clean install, overriding everything else.

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And once that was done, I spent time playing with it for the entire day neglecting my wifely duties. But I didn’t care! It was a very charming little distro. It was speedy fast – booting up in less than 30 seconds and I could get surfing quickly. Even the screensaver was freaking cute.

And because of it, I haven’t gotten to re-installing Ubuntu 10.10. For now I’m quite happy with my jolicloud and looking forward to the 1.1 version coming soon in November 🙂

If you haven’t tried a linux distro, give it a try. It really isn’t as difficult and scary as what people think! Why not try it on an old or spare computer? I promise that it’ll give them a new breath of life and the best part is that they are all free!

Check out the ones that I’ve played with so far 🙂

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Ever seen Prawns with crab claws?

Have you seen this before? It looks like a prawn but it has claws like a crab.

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In Italy, this is called Scampi, also known as langoustine as shared by my friends on twitter.

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Looks interesting doesn’t it? All my life, I’ve been accustomed to eating the Tiger Prawn variety with its small pincers. So when I was in the supermarket and I saw this pack for sale and I was so intrigued that I got it. Moreover, it was on discount. But the problem is, how do I cook it?

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I wasn’t in the mood for pasta. As much as I like pasta, eating it everyday, is such a chore. And while Moby suggested Prawn Vadai, which I love to eat, I’ll leave it to the experts at making them.

I was feeling rice-y instead and after seeing Cart make Strawberry Risotto, I thought that I’d give it a try.

Only thing is, I’ve never made risotto before. There were a number of people that said that risotto is difficult to make, and that you needed to stir it constantly and the end product needs to have the “wave effect” when you shake the plate. I’ll give it a try anyway.

And here was my first attempt at Risotto agli Scampi :

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First I fried some chopped onion and garlic in some olive oil. After a while I added some rice to infuse the flavours. Here I used Carnaroli which I found in the cupboard. This is a type of Italian rice that is good for risotto because of the the thickness as well the quality of being able to hold its shape after cooking for a long while.

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Also, it is more starchy, so the texture will be very different compared to Nasi Goreng or Fried Rice. Below are several other commonly known types rice in Italy.

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One cup is good for two people. One if you are very hungry.

At the same time I had some stock mixed with some of the scampi already simmering in another pot

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And once the rice was infused, add in a ladle of stock and stir the rice till the water evaporates. Repeat the process till the rice tastes about cooked. This took about 20 minutes or so. Add salt for seasoning.

At this point, I added a bit of tomato sauce and lowered the fire. I forked out the scampi, pulled off the head and peeled it to get at the meat and threw it in the risotto. I added some butter to make it creamier.

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And soon my risotto was cooked!

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I gave it a try and thought that it wasn’t bad. Next time I make risotto, it’ll be even better!  🙂

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Mini baby convention with my Singaporean friends in Rome!

Last weekend, I spent time with a small group of Singaporeans living in Rome. While it was just a simple gathering, I have a very lovely and enjoyable time updating and hearing each other about our lives over lovely at my favourite trattoria in Testaccio.

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It has been a while since we last met. And I cant help but to marvel at how much we’ve all been through. From being newly married, being thrown into another country, feeling depressed and homesick. To having babies and well, pretty much adjusting and moving on with life.

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I still remember one of our first meets. Meeting new friends can sometimes quite awkward, and sometimes with some relationships, you find that you sometimes aren’t comfortable with each other. And in the end, its best to be mature and be open minded and not to be too anguished and think too much about this situation.

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But there are some people that you naturally get along well, and I’m glad that I’ve found people that I can feel comfortable with, without feeling that they are being judgemental of me. And its great that we are a pillar of support to each other.

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I think that it’s been quite a milestone. While I’ve yet to meet the other Singaporeans from the other regions apart from Rome, I feel a sense of contentment somehow. Because from just a handful of us in the beginning of 2009, the group of Singaporeans living in Italy has been growing quite strong and we just passed our 100th member not too long ago. Kind of like seeing my baby growing up

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And speaking of babies, it was like a baby convention! With Lynn having her twins and Xiangwen with her baby boy and a couple of other tables having their own babies.

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And all throughout the entire dinner session, there were dozens of people purposely coming over, cooing-and ahhing and “Che carino!” “Oh bello!” and whatnots. And those who didn’t, sat at their tables and stared and smiled. Just like in the picture above. It was so amusing.

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But I’m quite amazed that all the babies were relatively quiet. Even throughout the dinner chatter, they were able to nap and relatively keep still. This could probably be a skill that expat/european babies have I guess. Learning to filter out the noise.

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Urgh. I cannot have too many babies around me. In just a few moment, the maternal instinct will kick in and I feel like having one too …