Category: life

What the HECK were you guys thinking? I may not be well versed in the arts of football, but even I could tell that yesterday’s match was horrigible (horrible + terrible).

I dont understand why head coach Marcello Lippi picked the better players only towards the end of the match. Why ah? Expensive is it? Indeed, the game only picked up at the point and the players fought with more soul then. But its just too late. All you Azzuri can pout and make that sad face for 100 years also wont change the results one.

And then the head coach says he’s is sorry and feels responsible and decides to resign.

Urgh! Lousy ah you people!

Euro coins are interesting.

Because its a shared monetary currency between several countries, while the front is standard, the back of the coins are printed with special symbols of the different presenting Euro countries.

These coins below, for example, represent the Netherlands, the middle, Germany and the last one is Greece if I’m not wrong.

Cart collects the interesting ones sometimes and there are so much that it could nicely fill a jar.

But the strange thing  is how I’ve been using euro coins for a year and a half, I’ve noticed something interesting about the coins only now. If you looked at the side of the coins, you’ll see different type of marks on them

This is the two Euro coin. It has a white border. I don’t understand most of the words printed on them, but I do see words like “God” and “Und Recht”

This is the one Euro coin. Similar to the two Euro but it has a gold border and without the words.

This is the 50 cents Euro. Its the colour of brass and has many dimples.

While the 20 cents Euro has very little dimples.

This is the 10 cents Euro. It looks similar to the 50 cents, but its smaller in size.

And finally, these are the bronzed coins of the 5, 2 and 1 cents Euro. They don’t have any dimples at all and are attracted to magnets.

Interesting eh? I wonder what took me so long to notice this.

This is a very serious question.

Growing up in humid Singapore, the males in my family (like my dad, or my uncles when we come visiting) would always roam around the house sometimes topless, wearing nothing but a sarong tied around his waist.

That’s not my dad by the way :p

And they always had hairless chest. So apart from the Indian men and a few Malays, its not usual for me to see any hairy men. Hence, I used to think of them with disdain. But I sympathised with them though. It probably wouldn’t be too comfortable being in humid Singapore like that. I imagine that its like me keeping my hair super long and letting it down while I walk in the afternoon sun.

Like cousin itt

But Italians, as you know, majority of the men (some of the women too) suddenly turn hairy once they hit 30. I’m a little bit stunned the first time when I was with Cart’s male friends. Hypothetically, if I shaved all their body hair, combined it would be enough to make a nice toupee.

Interestingly, when I would ask Cart if he would consider shaving off his body hair, he’d look incredulous and ask me, “Why would I want to do that? It shows how masculine I am. I’m proud of my body hair”

After a while, I think that its not so bad, in fact, its actually rather nice to cuddle with a hairy man. Its like a huge teddy bear that you could hug and stroke.

Eventually I saw this and I thought to myself, hey! Hairy men aren’t so bad!

In fact, they look quite sexeh!

(sudden realisation)

Oh gosh, I am doomed. And my future hairy sons. And their sons. And their sons.

Last Friday was my last Italian lesson. Since I was attending classes in a public school, coincidentally, it was also the last day of school for the kids. And you could sense the festive mood in the air with the kids cheering and screaming happily while throwing water bombs and flour and whatnots at each other. That reminds me of my orientation days back in Secondary and Pre-University days.

But in any case, I’m grateful for how far I’ve been in learning the language. Here in Italy, there are subsidized Italian language lessons for foreigners with Permesso di soggiorno (permit to stay) where you attend about 40 hours of lessons, from November to June, usually in a public school. It costs very little, so far I’ve only paid 10 euro per term.

It might not be as professional as say, the Dante Alighieri language school, but lets face it, being on a single income, with the mortgage eating up most of Cart’s income, we cannot afford it for now. And I’m looking forward to getting a job here. Seems tough though, the certifications that I’ve attained are not recognized here and I’ve got a sense that jobs requiring English speakers seem to favour those from UK, USA, Canada and Australia only.

Seriously, doesn’t anyone in Rome want a hot and sexeh blogger who is teh awesum at photography and video editing?

But getting back to the point! Compared to last year, when I just started my lessons, it was so awkward! I couldn’t even ask the teacher anything. Since I didn’t know much Italian and she couldn’t speak English herself, I was stressed out because even asking required a basic level of Italian like, “I don’t understand what you are talking about”, or “Can you please explain again, slowly?”

Needless to say, I was feeling so unmotivated that I felt ill when it was time to go to Italian classes.

But in due time, its getting better. Apart from my lessons, I try to do revisions on my own, supplement with Italian podcasts, and force myself to watch shows in Italian every now and then. Its so easy to slip when watching cable tv that allows you to switch languages.

And so far, I can read simple books now and could make out newspaper headers if the words are not too bombastic. And I could chit chat with my classmates comfortably. I feel pleasantly surprised that now I could make out words of some of the photos that I took last year which used to be meaningless to me.

Of course, I still have got a long way to go to speaking confidently with an Italian. Just last week I was in my exercise class, and they started to ask about something and it frustrated me because I could have explained to them but it was hard for me to explain in Italian. And just recently I’m starting to take motorcycle lessons at the driving center. Half of the time, I don’t see the big picture even if I could make out bits and pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.

After one and a half year, I’m still not all that great in speaking Italian. But in the end, I think its just a matter of time. But still, if only I could magically snap my fingers or install italian.exe directly into my brain. That would be cool

I’ve put up a post on Engrish in Rome some time back. Today, I thought I’d share with you a few interesting and somewhat disturbing things that I noticed in the supermarkets of Rome.

First off, is the iBulli.

Maybe its made to replicate the success of the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. Or maybe it is for Steve Jobs to announces that he will serve this when suing his competitors with a patent infringement. Nevertheless, I am curious to know what the freaking heck the company was thinking when creating this snack.

This isn’t disturbing but it was amusing anyway. In Malay, Malu means embarrassed or shy.

Thus this is the shyest chocolate in Italy! And it will make you feel embarrassed to eat it! In all honesty, I was actually keen to try it out but it contained gelatin 🙁

Know someone unattractive?

For an even less tactful manner, we suggest that you serve them Hag coffee! Gingerbread house not included.

And maybe it could just me but …

There is something disconcerting when I’m all alone in the toilet, with cramps and bleeding out of my ladybits and there are eyes staring right back at me!

And last but not least, I dont understand why anyone thought that it would be a good idea to put a picture of the animals smiling on the label of a bottle of their puréed selves.

I’m not a vegetarian but I think its disturbing! That soft, gentle smile beckoning you to be their friend. And you step closer to say hello.

And then you find out that your new friend is lifeless, chopped up and puréed in a bottle.

I think a kid could easily grow up disenchanted and cynical with this.

A couple of my friends were twittering about attending the Barcamp in Kuala Lumpur and that made me curious enough to make a search if there were one being hosted in Rome.

A barcamp is a meet of a group of people where they talk about and share various types of ideas, be it about technology or even about sociology.

Having already attended similar events such as Interesthink, Nexus and Unconference while I was back in Singapore, I was quite pleased to see that we were in time to attend to the one hosted in Rome.

I tried to register for the event as best as my limited knowledge of Italian would let me, and on the day itself, Cart and I got up bright and early and headed to this place called, Antù.

When we reached, it was rather confusing as the address stated Via Giuseppe Libetta, 15 but that turned out to be a housing area.

Luckily for us, there was a student walking out of the house and she very kindly helped to bring us to the right place. Turns out, that it was at 15C not 15!

In any case, we entered a very interesting factory like building and I thought that it was quite a choice place for seminars, seeing how industrial it looked like with the choice of furnishings. I looked at the list of people who will share their information.

There was one of the organizers who approached and talked to us, and that’s when we realised that the event would actually start at 11 am. But that gave us enough time to sit down and compose ourselves. I looked around me. I was surprised to see so little people around. But no matter.

By the way, this was a form that you use to sign up for an hour of internet connection in the building. I found it interesting as compared to Singapore, internet access is easily obtained sometimes even without having to sign up for it.

In any case, after waiting for a while, the first speaker was ready to speak.

I was in a bit of a tangle. Obviously it was in Italian and though I could understand bits and pieces, it was like a jigsaw puzzle to me. Sometimes I could see the picture, and sometimes I was clearly lost. I had to stop Cart every now and then to ask him what was going on.

The first speaker was speaking about how he used technology to aid him in his passion, cycling. He created a site to meet like minded people like him and also created an application that gives advice to cyclists on which route was suitable to cycle on – if there were holes or construction works and likes.

The second speaker from Ninux and he shared about the possibilities of sharing a network. The more the people sharing, the better as it increases the probability of not having to having to pay a subscription fee in the long run. I couldn’t catch everything, so I must have missed some informational details but Cart was very fascinated by this one.

And soonafter it was a break for lunch. The next talk begins at 2pm so Cart and I explored the area to hunt for a place to eat and we found Pastarito. Cart used to bring me here when we were first dating but the branch that we used to go to was closed. So I’ve always kept my eyes opened to see if there were another one.

I was amused to see the picture of the new menu.

But as much as we wanted to spend time at Pastarito, we did not have much time as the clock was ticking and Cart didn’t want to miss listening to the next speakers. I had to gulp down my hot pizza as fast as I humanly could.

Unfortunately when we reached back to antù, the doors were closed shut! Initially thinking that the talk has already started, we banged the door, hoping that someone inside could hear us and let us in. The proprietor opened. Turns out that there was a low participants and the second part of the barcamp was cancelled. 

Nevertheless, I was glad that we managed to catch the first part and I felt a sense of pride that Cart, who has never attended a barcamp before, found it very enlightening. I really hope to attend another one in the future and I sincerely hope that the organizers didn’t feel too disheartened. There wasn’t a lot of people attending, but I’m sure in due time, there will be bigger culture of sharing.

I’d be very happy to help out too

If you liked this post, you might enjoy :

• Interesthink
• Nexus
• Unconference