Cool Comic

Was reading Estee dude’s blog and found that there is this series of cute pictures related to her blog topics. Initially, I thought she had drawn them herself to complement her blog topics! Anyhow, someone commented that the series of cute pictures are called “Pon and Zi Comics” which can be found at Azuzephre’s Pon and Zi Comics Website or Azuzephre’s Gallery.

So here is one picture FROM ME TO EM…See you real soon Em…

Home in Milano

As requested by Em and Sis, here are some pictures…

Fake Internet

Screw myself for not knowing Italian.

The ISP (fastweb italia) that I subscribed is totally peculiar and screwed up. All their customers are behind this mega NAT in which each of us gets a PRIVATE ip. Its like they have this MEGA ROUTER that supply “internet” to each of us. To all other net users out there, we cannot be fully connected or something cos we don’t have any public ip.

Anyhow, take away point is, I CANNOT do p2p, tvants, and bittorent (almost 90% of what I do on internet). This really pretty much defeats the purpose of me subscribing to hi speed internet. Totally geesed up, 55 euros a month for nothing, and best part is I don’t even know how long a contract I have signed up for (screw myself again for not knowing italian)!!!

Half a vegetarian now

I really can’t get used to Italian food. Let me explain…

1. The pasta I have in school doesn’t have much gravy – its like those baked pasta type at NYDC. I prefer things with more “chup” one. Also, the pasta don’t have any meat toppings. Then their rice (called risotto) is very hard and best part is, it is served cold (at least the one I had in school)!

2. The meat that are offered here are all those “ham-like” meat (got chicken, pork, beef) sliced thinly. Also the meat are cold and taste very raw to me. I really can’t take such meat daily – its like taking “Subway Italian Cold Cut Trio” everyday! I only take the meat TWICE since my 1 week here in school.

3. In place of a meat dish, you have a piece of cheese instead (yes, cheese and meat are equivalent here, dunnoe why also). Unfortunately, the one that I took (randomly) is very hard, tangy (in chinese terms QQ one), and abit tasteless to me. So cheese with bread as an alternative is out.

4. I then thought I could eat salad and at the same time can help me lose some weight. Another surprise came, Italian’s dressing for salads are olive oil, salt, lemon, and vinegar!!! They pour quite a lot of olive oil and salt into their salad to eat. Being pre-hypertensive, I can’t afford to do that and I am now eating salad RAW without anything or sometimes I add some lemon to “open up the gastric” (kai wei).

This is really bad for me, I really need CHINESE FOOD… geesed…

No matter which country you go…

Ikea is always your “best friend”…

Ikea is really amazing, you can find anything and everything you need to fill up an empty home.

I also notice they seem sell the exact same thing for the exact same price (in different currency though). I bought this black chair at Ikea Philly for 10 USD, saw it at Ikea Alexandra Sg for 10 SGD, and now almost bought it (cos too heavy to carry home without car) at Ikea Milano for 10 EUROS. The other consistent thing is the same cheap hotdog bun!

Anyhow, the take away point is, I miss the times when E611, E411, and W311 went shopping together at Ikea Philly. It is defintely much much much better than me walking around ALONE.

Hardworking

Italians are actually very hardworking (and efficient).

Example 1

Most coffee places open their shop around 6.30am (if not earlier) for coffee/breakfast goers. Even the fruit stall (yes, the organic one) just below my block opens at like 7am in the morning.

Example 2

During peak hours like morning and evening, the buses come very frequently (really really frequent). From my block to the bus stop its about 150 meters and during the time for me to slowly walk through the distance I can see at least 2 buses (same number) pass by. And the best thing is, I never have to run, because when I reach the bus stop, the 3rd bus is just there for me. In Sg, during the days where I was taking buses, I always have to run for buses because it seems that if you miss just that bus, you have to wait very long.

Example 3

I was trying to apply for internet service and based on Sg experience I thought I will have to wait at least a week for paperwork and activation. Surprisingly, just only 2 hours after I went online in the afternoon (around 1pm) to fill up the application form, a CSO called me to arrange for a time to activate the service. And whats impressive is that the activation is schedule the next day morning.

Example 4

My labmates (PhD students, post doc, staff scientist, technician) all come in at around 9am latest. They don’t leave until about 7pm or later. There was this guy that started running his gel/western blot (a minimum 3hr experiment) at 6pm!!! I asked around (through small talks) and found that most of the time they leave at about 9pm!!! And on my 1st day in lab (a Friday), I hear them saying to each other “so what time are you coming tomorrow?” Right now, since I have nothing much to do except reading papers, I try to leave right after the 1st one have left. But I guess I have to work my ass off soon once I start experiments, geesed!

You miss home so much…

… that you actually feel at home and have some kind of warmth when you see someone listening to a “CREATIVE ZEN MP3 PLAYER” on a tram. How amazing…

Chinatown

Chinatown here doesn’t seem to be as happening as the one in Philly.

I went at about 7pm and its like a dead place. Can’t find any “asian supermarket”, can’t buy any teriyaki sauce, can’t buy any maggie mee, can’t buy any tofu, can’t buy any bean sprouts or other asian veges, and can’t find much restaurant open also.

Geesed, I am really going to be very hard up on chinese food.

Transport here

When I first arrive in milan centre city, there are a few things about the transport which interest me…

1. The conductor here (not the bus driver like in Sg) checks so infrequently that no one pays for bus or tram rides – you just hop on and hop off.  People only pay for metro since there is a gate which only opens up with ticket.

2. There are alot of bikes (motorcycles I mean) here, much much more than in Sg. This interest me because all along I thought bikes are not popular in the western/european countries.

3. The parking officers here do their rounds so infrequently that people just park anywhere they like. There are 2 rows along each side of the road – one on the normal roadside and one on the walking pavement. In comparasion, our United Premas officers in Sg worked really really hard (too hard maybe?) – small wonder why sometimes people still harp on the theory that these officers gets bonuses/pay rise/commissions based on their ticketing volume, despite the fact that our gahmen have already reassured and reassured us that nothing of this sort is happening.

Cappuccino

Remember the movie I not stupid (or perhaps the other Jack Neo’s movies), there is this line in hokkien literally translated to english as “be smart but don’t be a smart alec”. I truly understand this through a screw up incident.

So it was lunch time and after eating my labmates jio for coffee break (like how ray always jio to go CC at biopolis). Anyhow, they were all ordering and I then thought it will be “right” to try a cup of real italian cappuccino (when in milan do what the milanese do?). And so I ordered. My labmates look at me startled and said “in Italy you don’t drink cappuccino after lunch, it is only reserved for morning/breakfast!”

You can imagine how geesed up I was, haha…

Life is tough…