Category: life

Recently, Cart help me to register for fitness classes at a sports centre that was near our home. The place wasn’t anything special. It looked extremely dated but I was really excited as I was raring to start exercising again after a hiatus of about 3 months since the madness of the wedding last year.

The next day, I went there alone. I started to ask the lady at the counter in faltering Italian, “Excuse me, where is this?” while pointing to the registration paper.

And she replied, “Prima Piano, e poi sinistra“.

I understood that she said it was first floor and then to turn to the left. So I thanked her and continued walking on the ground floor where eventually, I saw a class full of little girls doing ballet.

Ah, this could be the place! It was almost time for my exercise class. Surely the ballet class will end soon. But when 10 minutes passed and no one left, I knew something was wrong. So I called Cart up on the phone and asked him what was going on?

He asked me to pass the phone to the lady at the counter and at length told me to go one staircase up where I finally found the right room.

In Singapore, first floor would be considered as ground floor and the next level would be 2 and 3 consecutively.

While in Italy, the ground floor is considered as level 0 while the next would be 1 and 2 consecutively.

No wonder I was lost! Just five minutes in the building, and I got confused. For sure, I would never make it through the Amazing race.

During my first few weeks in Italy, I was extremely homesick. It was a whole new world here – different culture, different people, different language. I felt really lonely. I really miss my family and friends back in Singapore.

My world was like a diablo map.

You know, when you start out, your map is all black and uncovers when you start exploring.

Hence, I tried to find a way to connect.

The easiest way that I could think of was by searching on the internet, looking for the different events that might spark my interest like how it was in Singapore – on sites like www.sg, ping.sg and tomorrow.sg.

Unfortunately, trying to do the same thing here wasn’t so easy. A quick search in google for ‘events in Rome’ would only lead me to mainly touristy places to see or even worse, the website has not been updated since March 2008!

I remembered my friend Clare who is living overseas herself telling me about Elaine, a lady that she knows in Italy and urged me to email to her. And from that point onwards, I started to network with a small amount of people living in Italy. This was very impressive to me at how close knitted they are – Singaporean women living overseas. And fortunately for me, a number of them had facebook accounts.

That was when I decided to start the group ‘Singaporeans in Italy’ on facebook. It is a small group but it was heartening to see them posting on the wall, interacting with each other. And that was when the Rome gang decided to meet up.

Our first meet was in this restaurant called Thai Inn which was owned by a Malaysian. There, I met Lynn, who has been staying in Rome for the past two years as well as Xiangwen who arrived in Rome about the same time as I did.

It was really lovely to hear some Singaporean accents.

We talked almost everything under the sun like, how we’ve been adapting so far, random daily misadventures, as well as talking about our lives back in Singapore.

I really felt at ease. It was fantastic to finally be able to communicate normally as opposed to being stunned trying to talk in Italian.

We met again recently in Garbatella at an Egyptian Restaurant. It was such a delightful evening.

We might not be such a large crowd, but it was more meaningful and intimate to me, having heart to heart discussions and having a laugh together. Probably a good step to ease in, in a country so far away from home.

My Diablo map isn’t complete, but its still a good start 🙂

Links :

• Singaporeans in Italy Facebook Group

P.S : Don’t you think that these spoons that Lynn made is absolutely pretty?

Or rather, happy belated woman’s day to all 🙂

8th of March is the International Woman’s day as well as the equivalence of Festa della Donna in Italy. Its been said to be conceived from an event in New York, when women garment workers held a strike over working conditions.

In all honesty, I haven’t been all that aware of women’s day since it wasn’t given such a big emphasis when I was in Singapore. But here in Italy, there is a culture here where men are supposed to give women – wives, girlfriends, daughters, female friends a yellow mimosa.

Unlike the pink mimosa flowers, with the shy leaves that I was accustomed to, the mimosa here is yellow and they grow in trees. It grows quite abundantly here even – thus I was quite surprised to see florists and street vendors selling them.

And when I retold this to Cartcart, he asked me if I was hinting to him to buy some mimosa 😛 But to buy it makes the entire intent seem a little commercialised, so I said no.

It was when Cart tells me that sometimes even women give mimosas to other women. And that made me quite excited to experience female camaraderie. Finally a chance to bond across diversities! I dressed up prettily and together we drove off to Gianicolo.

It was then when I noticed the spectacular sunset. Roman skies are really pretty, to the point of being unreal – like paintings. When we reached Gianicolo, this was what greeted us.

Unfortunately for me, there was no women around distributing mimosas and messages of strength and unity. In fact, I didn’t even see any women carrying mimosas!

Oh well, too bad. All is not lost though 🙂

So what did you do on women’s day? 🙂

Sidenote : I started jogging again. But the first time I did that, so much cold air went into my lungs and my throat felt extremely dry and painful. At the end, I felt like I was breathing through a straw. It was horrible.

Now I make sure I jog with a woolly scarf on.

Haven’t been feeling all that great due to my extreme homesickness and then all of a sudden, I had a sore throat and then fever after that and this morning I see that Rome temperature is down to 3 degrees with thick fog. Oh boy! Better bundle up with warm clothes!

In any case, I’m slowly getting used to the life here. It’s a whole lot different compared to Singapore definitely, starting from the weather, as well as the culture here.

Like registering for my stay in Italy at the Central Police for example, took us 3 days to get it right – the first two tries we were told that they did not function on that particular day.

This made me thoughtful as practically majority of government issues can be done online in Singapore.

And things here are pretty expensive in Italy, besides the currency exchange itself. Where I used to be able to enjoy government subsidized courses at community and sports centres. I find, to my horror that it was multiples of times more expensive.

Before migrating, it was part of my plan to take intensive Italian for the first month. But I guess that I would need to rethink my strategy to integrate myself. For me, one of my biggest fear in migrating is not being able to integrate into society.

Fortunately for me, thanks to Cart, his family and his friends, they have been making me feel very welcome and try to make me at ease, for that I feel very grateful.

Oh well, slowly does it. In the meanwhile, I’m enjoying my faux taitaihood, lounging about at home and playing pretend domestic goddess 😀

Sidenote : These is proof that it’s cold in Rome.

Its really cold in Italy from rinaz on Vimeo

Cart and I just arrived in Italy safely yesterday afternoon. Its winter here in Italy at the moment. Its so cold that I could see fog coming out of my mouth when I breathe. Heck, its already night time at 5pm!? Such a drastic change for me, having lived near the equator for all my life.

But I suppose one of the nice things about winter is the <shameless>winter clothes that makes me look extremely cute</shameless>

But in any case, I am missing Singapore tremendously for so many things.

One of them is the yummy food that we could get conveniently. Roti Prata, Nasi Lemak, Pisang Goreng, Satay and loads of other foods that I love, isn’t that easily attainable here.

I miss zipping through the roads on my scooter, looking at the sights in front of me, feeling a sense of freedom with the wind caressing my face.

But most of all, I miss the people here, my family and friends. These are the people that I’ve grown up with, they are part of me.

It really feels wierd for me not to see my mum, the first thing in the morning as we do our morning prayers. Or to bug my siblings, teasing the cat and gossiping with my best friends. Those little small, mundane nuances.

Sigh

Sidenote : In better news, the weblogawards have started. Do vote for Marina’s Bloggariffic 🙂

p.s : I want my computer shipped NAO! This Italian keyboard and the interface is confusing me! And Cart has no Photoshop! Nor Premiere elements! Sacrilege!

Wow, life has been crazy for the past three weeks that I’ve hardly had time to just sit down and think. Just a quick summary about the 3 weeks so far.

When Cart arrived in Singapore, 4 days before our wedding, we’ve been running around trying to complete things like the marriage guidance course, buying gifts for each other for the hantaran, the Registry of Marriage interview, the choosing of the wedding ring.

It was completely crazy! Not to mention stressful. Every few minutes there would always be issues that needed to be tended to. It was overwhelming! Things like these should have been done in a longer span. But what can we do as Cart and I are in a long distance relationship.

Then was the craziness of the wedding itself. To me I felt as if time has just sped up. The three days has passed by so quickly, that I didnt manage to enjoy the beautiful .reception set up under the void deck, there were so many faces that friends and relatives looked like a blur. It was seriously overwhelming.

This was a new level of stress for me. And I really am grateful to everyone who have helped out in the wedding preparations, from my relatives who helped out in cooking and the food, my blogger friends in helping out in the tech side of things as well as everyone who have attended.

And yet there were things that added to my stress. Such as the bridal package issue. I found their work ethics extremely unprofessional and it affected me tremendously that a week after the wedding, I was in a complete emotional wreck.

But I’ll blog about that in another post.

Even after the wedding, life was very hectic. It was a Malay custom to bersembah. Almost everyday, Cart and I had to visit my relatives to ask for blessings for our marriage.

We were finally done with visiting friday night with the Malaysian relatives. And I’m really desperate for time now to meet my own friends.

Cart and I are leaving for Italy tomorrow.