Author: rinaz

As mentioned in the previous post, there was an Italian Cultural Fair organized by the People’s Association and the Italian Cultural Institute at Sengkang Community Club.

I attended the event with my Italian Language Classmates – Chinguan, Lucy and Veron. I also asked Attilio along even though with him being a native Italian, as I thought that he might enjoy seeing how the event was organized. NTT, an Italiophile, was supposed to be part of my entourage too, but unfortunately, he had urgent matters to attend to at the last minute.

There I met Daphne Loo, one of the organizers from the People’s Association as well as Andre, an understudy to the director for the Italian Cultural Institute. They, along the other beautiful Italian ladies from the booths were very friendly. They answered our questions in an expressive and amiable manner.

While waiting for the video to start, we had a buffet dinner of Italian food and we mingled with each other. I was glad that Attilio came and met my classmates as it was such a riot listening to them trying to talk to him in Italian while Attilio patiently taught us slowly some Italian. We definitely need more practise!

At length, we were ushered in the theaterette where we were pleasanly surprised to see free goodie bags with some authentic Italian food. There was a short speech by Mrs Clorinda Lidia Canzio, the director of the Italian Cultural Institute. Shortly after, a film showcasing Italy started.

To be honest, I was quite underwhelmed by the video as it was not what I would expected it to be. Because firstly, the footage was quite dated. From the quality and the clothing of the people in the footage, it was obvious that the footage was in the 80’s. Secondly, it was full of cliqued and corny terms like “Calabria is like a young child holding a flower, greeting you mischeviously“.

I think that if they have chosen some like the Lonely Planet Six degree video clip, it would have been much superior.

Comparing the event with the Spanish Cultural Workshop, I would have enjoyed the fair more if it was more engaging and better organized. I was lucky that I was with company. I would imagine that I’d be quite bored were I to attend the event alone.

Nevertheless, being the first collaboration of this kind, naturally, there are a few kinks to smoothen out. Hopefully, the next collaboration would be improved.

Here is a short clip of the workshop :

You may also be interested :

• Learning Italian for dummies
• How to cook Penne Arrabbiata

Oh gosh, take a look what cartcart sent me! Its a snapshot of the pics he took of me while webcamming! *secretly happy* And because I’m completely narcisistic, I’m putting it up as an entry 😀

Click the image for a bigger version

Ahem. Dont I have an expressive face? 😀

Related link :

• A demo on what my logitech webcam can do

A scene from our trip to Capri, Italy

The lifestyle and lifeskills association, in conjunction with the Italian Cultural Institute are organizing a cultural fair this Saturday.

I quite enjoy the activities conducted from the People Association Website. So far, I’ve attended the Vocal Coach workshop, the Italian language course , Yoga at the sports complex and most recently attended the Spanish Cultural workshop.

I’m sure this event will be great too 🙂

Do join me if you are free this saturday and let me know if you’re going. The more the merrier! There will be Italian food to sample, loads of things to see, and hopefully some good looking Italians to talk to too :D~

Related link :

• Italian Cultural Institute

Travels :

• My trip to Italy in 2007, 2006 and 2005
• Vanessa’s recent trip to Tuscany

Yahoo photos was closing and just recently transferred all the pictures to flickr. I was looking at some of the pictures that I have forgotten and remembered some of the memories that I had.

Like the time when my girlfriends and I went to Thailand. It was 2003 then. I had just settled down in my new job when we decided to head to thailand.

It was such an exciting time for me. We spent time walking to and comparing different agencies, scouring for a free and easy package. We spent about $350 per person for both the return flight tickets and the accomodations which seemed to be a reasonable price.

It was my first time taking an airplane. Hema let me have her window seat so that I could look outside and admire the scene. My heart felt like it was going to drop as the plane left the runway and tipped to the sky. I peered excitedly outside the window. Everything looked so small!

We arrived at the Krabi airport about 3 hours later. After clearing the customs, we headed to our bus and plonked our luggage in our beautiful villa and immediately explored the area.

We were walking about the sleepy town and chanced upon a beauty parlour. After hearing numerous accounts of how wonderful thai massage was, we couldnt wait to experience it for ourselves. We entered the small parlour and were greeted by three friendly thai girls. They were about our age and they started to chat with us friendlily and they led us to a covered room to change into a thin covering and proceeded to slather us with oil and gave us a good rub. It was a pretty good massage. It was so good that even Juli fell asleep through the massage.

There was no public transportation around the area. By pure chance, we noticed a scooter rental kiosk. Juli and I were game enough to try to ride one for travelling around. Prior to this, we had absolutely no experience in riding one. After about 10 minutes of demonstration, we were riding along merrily (albeit unsteadily)

It was awesome! We rode everwhere and I admired the rural scenery. On the first night we were there, we rode to a larger market and had our first taste of true thai food – it was significantly different from what we had back home. The ingredients seem to have a fuller and fresher taste to it and it was much much spicer. So much so that we were grateful for the sweet juice drink that accompanied our dinner.

The rest of the days were spent on doing fun things. We went kayaking and explored the beautiful sea and the mangrove swamps – it felt like we were in national geographic! Its such a tranquil and serene feeling going smoothly down the waters. There were some small monkeys who begged for the pineapple slices we had.

We visited temples and we explored monuments. I noticed a tiny woman who was sitting down outside and writing on some pieces of paper. As I approached her, she started to talk to me in Thai and handed me the piece of paper. I couldnt read it though. My knowledge of Thai was only limited to kap khun ka (thank you) and hong nam (toilet)

We rode elephants to traverse the jungle and observed the facinating landscape and vegetation in front of us. It wasnt all that comfortable riding an elephant as it swayed slowly back and forth. I felt like I was almost falling off.

We played around with jetskis. That was such an exhilarating experience, going at high speeds in the sea. Fun fun fun! The three of us took to it like ducks to water. It was awesome 😀

On the third day we headed to phuket which was more urbanised compared to krabi. The traffic was much heavier, thus we did not dare to rent a scooter this time. Our activities were less sporty here. Instead we spent time with spectator activities instead.

Like watching lady-boy shows where I was ashamed to see lady-boys who were much prettier than me. And watching a muay thai match as well as the ‘Phuket Fantasea‘ where the German lady whom we made friends with while riding the elephants recommended as a show that rivalled cirque du soleil.

On the last day, after spending all the pocket money that we had, we sat down contentely by the beach while waiting for the van to take us to the phuket international airport. It was a spectacular sunset view, one of my most memorable shot till today.

Pretty impressive for a decrepit 2.1mp camera 😀

O I’m missing beautiful Thailand already.

Sidenote :

Speaking of cameras, I’m completely obsessed about the Canon Ixus 860. Beautiful!

Wow, its already the 30th day of ramadan and we are already at the end of the fasting month! I can almost taste the ayam masak merah and ketupat already!

On this raya eve, I would like like to wish everyone Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri, maaf zahir batin! Forgiveness for our wrongdoings and words which are uttered accidentally 🙂

Related links

• What Hari Raya Aidilfitri is about
• Watch the petronas raya ad 2007
• How to make a ketupat (Like the one cartcart is holding)

Not in the raya mood yet? Come listen to this ultra classic raya song 🙂

[audio:http://rinaz.net/audio/raya.mp3]

Back in 2001, when doing a self examination, I discovered a rather large lump in my breast. Alarmed, I made the decision for a medical opinion to be sure of what it was rather than risking it to become something big. Nevertheless, I remember that the process was rather scary.

I was referred by the family clinic to visit the hospital, where I was given a biopsy. This procedure involved a huge syringe-like apparatus which is injected into my breast for a tissue sample to be pulled out. Boy did that hurt!

Some weeks later, I went for a radiology where the doctor smeared some sort of jelly on my breasts and used a scanning device to observe the lumps and take an ultrasound picture of it.

After a month later, the results arrived and I was relieved to hear from the doctor that the lumps were benign and was caused by fibrocystic changes.

I guess should not have worried too much as fibrocystic changes are a common trait among women. Many of my girlfriends has confided that they have similar issues too. Interestingly now, I don’t even feel these lumps that I felt back in 2001 which would mean that the lumps has shrunk on its own accord.

Still, with breast cancer being the most common cancer among women, with about 1,100 women diagnosed in Singapore a year. It’s good to practise prevention before something big happens.

October is breast cancer awareness month and I’m putting on my pink ribbon in rememberance of my little encounter.

Related Links

• Pink for October
• Breast Cancer Foundation – Singapore
• How to do breast Self Exam