No Time No Time No Time

My life is insane.

And it kills me that I can't blog as regularly as I'd like to.

A Few Things First

Gained a bit of weight since returning to Singapore. At least my pants don't hang halfway down my gluteals anymore, heh heh.

By the way, there's this stall in Thomson Plaza's foodcourt that sells heavenly duck horfun. OMG.

Converted a good friend into a big Peter Cincotti fan today. She's going to buy his 2 albums. You go, girl. :)

Insomnia's back. 4 hours of sleep a night, followed by a nerve-wracking 8-hour morning shift and an hour of overtime. I pray a lot these days. :P

"Closer" is quite a funny movie. Too bad the ending sucked. But there's this hilarious scene with Jude Law and Clive Owen where Law pretends to be a horny chick baiting Owen online. You've just got to see it. :D

Why bother to catch "Lost" on Channel 5 when AXN has a 5-episode marathon every Saturday afternoon? The finale airs this weekend. Cool.

A murder every week in dear old Singapore. It's always about either sex or money. How unoriginal.

A certain medical professor recently showed a petty, childish side. Should I still respect him? ...

Cute reg covering the A&E these past few months. Flirted a little too obviously today. With my luck, he's probably married. ;)

And now...


Italian Trip Post #2

Italian food.

For the record, I do like it. The stuff I eat in Singapore, that is. Tanglin Club's seafood linguini alio olio, or bacon and mushroom with the white wine sauce. And absolutely ANYTHING at Spageddies - check out their strawberry margaritas. :)
I have a thing for pasta and pizza. Was definitely looking forward to eating lots of these in good ol' Italy.

But Italian food in Italy is very, err, different. Diplomatically speaking, haha.

And I'm not the only person who feels this way, judging from the comments of a few friends who've been there.

Based on my experience, Rome has the best stuff. At least it's edible. And hot.

Everywhere else, I basically suffered.

At one Sicilian hotel ( quite a swanky place some more ), they served fusili with a cream sauce that looked ( and tasted ) like curdled milk. I gave up after 2 bites. So did many others in the tour group ( 31 Caucasians, 2 Singaporeans, 6 Indonesians ).

The rest of the restaurants went by in a blur because the cooking was so... ordinary. Like someone whipped the dishes together in a hurry then plopped it onto the plate and threw it on your table like a robot. I travelled with a company that's reputed to be the most expensive of its kind, so it was a little shocking.
Not the company's fault, I suppose. Not entirely at least.

And the breakfast spreads, ugh. Fine, I'm told "Italians don't do breakfast" because they usually just grab a cup of coffee and maybe a pastry then run out the door. But would it hurt to give us tired, hungry tourists something palatable? Right, I probably sound whiny now, but Italian scrambled eggs are GROSS. And I almost never consider anything icky, unlike my extremely fussy mother ( who suprisingly swallowed the cold, runny stuff, to my immense horror ). Chilled ham soaked in tonnes of salt, dry hard pastries and fruit compotes are the norm. I've eaten breakfasts in quite a few other ang-moh countries before. The best one I've tasted so far? Hah, actually the Grand Hyatt in Bali - the most amazing pancakes ever. :)

The icing on the cake, however, has to be the wonderful Autogrills - truck-stops we encountered almost daily while en route from one region to another. Similar establishments in New Zealand were always a pleasure, with their juicy steaks and such. Italy, sadly, doesn't even compare. Pretty miserable. Cookies and chips helped me survive.

But it wasn't ALL bad. In Sorrento, there's a quaint restaurant located at the fisherman's port, called Zi'Antonio Mare Ristorant, which serves fantastic spaghetti vongole and juicy red snappers 1 metre long. Over in Rome, our hotel The Cicerone surprised us with awesome grilled swordfish and sea bass. And in the last 2 days of our trip ( we walked around Rome on our own for 4 days ), we finally discovered authentic Chinese food along ( I hope I remembered correctly ) Via Dei Greci, just off the Via Del Babuino on the way to The Spanish Steps. Very friendly Chinese, terrific cuisine, even a taste of their personal stock of fragrant chrysanthemum tea specially imported from China. Ahh, good memories. :)

I haven't eaten any pasta since I got back. Too busy gorging on laksa and duck hor fun, heh heh. Nah, I'll be back to my old self again very soon. Maybe next week, I'll order my usual plate of seafood linguini and leave all my nightmares behind.