frutti.gummi

At the underground malls beneath Kyoto JR Station,  we went pass one restaurant after another looking for something to eat for dinner. We kept looking at all the food displays and they all look so good and they made us even hungrier. And we couldn't decide! Finally, we narrowed down the choice to noodles because I wanted to have ramen.

Fake plastic food display. They look so edible!

Mouth watering desserts. And they're not even real!


In front of Okakita. No plastic food display and the 'signboard' is the lamp at the entrance.


Back of the restaurants with outdoor seating along the Kamo river

The front of the restaurants at the narrow street in Pontocho

Reading how to eat the soba!



The Hourai soba

The temples are Buddhist temples while the religion practiced in shrines are called Shinto. It's quite interesting to see how these two religion blend seamlessly into the life of the Japanese people.

Oh and the food....amazing! The plastic ones look so real that I sometimes double check to see if  they are indeed plastic. Hahaha.

I had a great time and it is even better than what I had thought it would be. :D I'm already adding Japan to my list of possible trips for next year. Hehe.

1. Passport
2. Air/train/ship tickets
3. Cash in local currencies
4. Credit card
5. Insurance card
6. Camera + Charger
7. iPod + Charger
8. Phone with local sim card (if I have) + Charger
9. Book
10. Umbrella/Water-proof shoes if weather forecast says it might rain
11. Cap/Hat/Sunnies when I'm going to sunny places
12. Travel card e.g. Oyster in London (if I have)
13. Maps/Guidebook
14. Clothes
15. Toiletries

Hope I don't miss anything.

It's been almost two weeks since my last post. I didn't feel like writing. I was too distracted reading conversations on Twitter. And I did find some interesting links and blogs. Following one link to another and another is really never ending!

Anyway, I was thinking that perhaps the real reason why I didn't feel like writing is I couldn't decide what to write. I need to find a topic or theme that I enjoy writing about. Maybe travel stories? I know it kinda sounds like I'm forcing myself to write but I really need to practice writing. Why? Because I realized that it has become something that I don't like to do. I don't know when it started but I want to be able to enjoy writing again. I want it to be something that I can do effortlessly again. And I'm currently in the stage where I'm trying to do things out of my comfort zone.

I do know what I'm NOT going to write about. Work. And I do find it quite hard to resist. 

I've signed up for a twitter account just today and it took quite a while to configure the profile page because the internet is too slow. Managed to upload my photo though :) Still haven't gone around in exploring the data space.

Anyway, I found something interesting when I was Googling for twitter related info; the @Anywhere API. It provides a simple way for the blog/website readers to connect with other twitter users.


You can also easily create a "Follow me on twitter" badge like this:



Twitter @Anywhere Follow Buttons are smart in that they reflect whether the current user already follows the member. If the user is already following the user for a given Follow Button, the button's label will be updated with the text "You're following @username".

Another feature is a customizable tweetbox like this:


The examples are taken from the API

Perhaps I shall sign up and explore the Twitter world. Find new adventures. Hehehe.

Interesting Twitter apps: Twitoaster, Twitterfall

I hate this feeling.

Want someone to hold me.
Want someone to hug me.
Want someone to pamper me.

But you just couldn't be here.

One way to waste time productively. Haha. What an oxymoron! :p

Throw tarts at the Queen of Hearts – they realistically bounce off her

Shake your iPad, the Mad Hatter gets even madder!

Play with the Rabbit's pocket watch.

Source: http://www.atomicantelope.com/alice/

This is the coolest book ever! And I want it.

Ooohh...I wished I've pre-ordered the iPad. Now I have to WAITTTT. :(

As I have guessed, most of my carbon footprint is from transportation. I was hoping that my recycling and water and energy saving activities would be able to offset a substantial amount of it. Apparently not. Sigh!

I drive to work 5 days a week, doing about 25km per day. That will be about 3.75 kg of CO₂ a day, for a car with CO₂ emissions of 150g per km. (You can find your car emission rate here.) If I drive 10,000 km a year (a very modest figure), there'll be 1500kg of CO₂ a year! Besides driving, I also take flights when I go on vacation. Just one intercontinental flight would emit about the same amount of CO₂ as driving ten thousand kilometers in my car!

So, I started thinking if it would be better if I work from home instead of driving to work. I have to turn on the a/c for about 8 hours and that would be about 8kWh. With the cost of electricity at about 420g of CO₂ per kWh, that will be 3.36kg of CO₂ a day. (Source: Power sources & Carbon Emissions)

So, 3.75kg of CO₂ from driving and 3.36kg from a/c. The difference is less than half a kg. I guess working from home is not a very feasible option. Well, I'm already doing my best here. I don't want to be a vegetarian and live like a hermit.

When I met up with friends whom I haven't seen for a long time, the usual questions I get from most one of them are:

• Why did you come back and work here/Why don't you stay there?
• Am I getting used to living in Malaysia?
• Am I'm back for good?

And my short answers are; This is home, it's ok/not bad, and for now, yes. Even the long answers could be summarized as such. But I haven't considered how I feel. Am I happy? Excited? Disappointed? Frustrated?

It's been a hundred days since I started my "new" life. I'm back to being a responsible adult, going back into the workforce, and contribute to the country's economy. I also started to participate strongly in family matters. On the surface, everything seems like how it used to be. The going to work, going home, going out routine has made the transition easier, due to familiarity.

When I 'look' closely, I noticed all the little details that are different. I work for the same company, but about half of my colleagues are new to me, and I have different job responsibilities. Well, even the office is located at a different place now. I actually quite like this mix of something familiar with something new. I guess I'm pretty much exhausted from all the completely new experiences that I got in the past few years.

I'm also glad that I now play a larger role in my family. I feel less helpless now that I can physically be around for them. I spend a lot more time with them and there's more communication going on. So far so good but still a long way to become one of reasons for me to stay put.

I'm not exactly used to living back in Malaysia yet. I hate the hot weather but I can tolerate it better now. I have to consciously remember not to fill my cup with water from the tap. I feel displeased when I see people who carry lots of plastic bags and when I come across trash that's filled with recyclable stuff in it. Anyway, all these do not annoy me enough for me to consider moving away.

I'm currently open to the possibility that I would stay in Malaysia for the long term and I've finally discovered one thing that I would stick around for. However, I still have no idea whether I would be able to obtain it.

These first hundred days have mostly been about adapting to living with family, living in Malaysia, and holding down a job. I think I have fared pretty well so far. Next, it's time to think about what I want to do with my life.

"Hello when u free? We meet up. R u Dating lately? :)"

When I received the message, my first thought was to reply and ask who sent it. Then a second later, I realized that the person could be a total stranger since I don't think I left out anyone's number on the contact list. Then I thought if it could be a new way of picking up girls. Just send a message to a random number and hope for a positive reply. I think it can get quite costly though.

Well, if the person really do know me, they'll contact me again so I didn't do anything about it. This was about a week ago and I have completely forgotten about it until tonight.

Tonight I know who the person is. She sent me another text stating her name first and that she ran out of credit on her phone. Hahahha.

I love gelato!!! When I was living in Italy, my place is about 15-20 minutes away from the center of town. And I would surely go and buy gelato almost every time I'm there, except when they're closed during the winter. I even developed a very nice routine. Every Tuesday and Thursday after my Italian classes in the evening, I would go and treat myself a scoop of gelato at the gelateria closest to the bus stop. This shop is in between two bus stops so I usually walk towards the next bus stop while eating gelato. At times, I managed to finish when the bus arrives and I got on the bus. Other times, I just continued to walk home.

When my Italian classes for the semester ended, I only eat it when I'm in town for a pizza or shopping. I also had a pizza-gelato routine. At first, I would get a drink together with my pizza. And when I walk past the gelateria, I'm already too full and feel sad that I couldn't have any of the nice-looking gelato. One day, I realized that I could just skip the drink and have a gelato after the pizza! Yay!!! So after pizza, I would head directly to a gelateria and ask for "una palina di [flavor]" (a scoop, although literally palina means ball. I have heard Italian friends saying "balls of ice-cream". Weird isn't it? Hahahhha).  


There are so many flavors to choose from and they are usually in two categories: fruit-based and non-fruit based. I prefer the fruit-based ones. Some of the flavors that I like are stracciatella, pistachio, strawberry, mango, kiwi, almond, chocolate, honey, raspberry, and mixed berries. I don't usually like strawberry ice-cream because they taste more like cream with a hint of strawberries. However, the strawberry gelato is without cream! So it tastes like fresh strawberries in your mouth. The best one I've had is in Sorrento, a town near the Amalfi coast. Except for mango, kiwi and honey, I think the rest of the flavors can be found in every gelateria.

The mango gelato is similar to the Haagen Dazs's mango sorbet, which was a permanent resident of my freezer in Chicago. The honey gelato is very special. I've only seen it in a shop in Rome. It was just so good! My sister and I kept returning to the gelateria every day that we were in Rome. The kiwi gelato is my favorite of all. Very few shops sell it (could be seasonal too) and from my experience, the quality varies quite a bit so it's not easy to find good ones. The one in my town is just so-so. The best kiwi gelato I've had is at Malcesine, one of the small towns along Lake Garda.


There are other common flavors like yogurt, fior di latte, coffee, and melon. I've also tasted special ones like champagne and other alcoholic flavors, and weird ones like Zuppa Inglese (literally translated as English Soup). All the flavors I mentioned earlier are available in single scoops or mixed in multiple scoops. You usually buy them and eat standing outside the shop. If they do have seats, it's usually very limited. If you want to sit down and enjoy your gelato, you can either to go restaurants that serve gelato as dessert (limited choices)  or a big gelateria. At the big gelateria, they have a colorful menu, its pages filled with a variety of different combination of gelati. These big "cups" with multiple scoops usually costs around, if not more than, the price of a pizza/pasta main course. I've tried one with amarena (dark cherry) and it came with pieces of cherries inside. I absolutely loved it! :D


I've seen a few places selling delicious looking gelato inside the shopping malls in KL. I shall try them when I'm ready. :P

I have been going to bed late almost every night, for the past two weeks. To me, after 1am is late, especially on weekdays. I ended up waking up late and feeling tired. I know I could have gone to bed earlier as I wasn't busy with work and I wasn't even out most of the time. Somehow, I just spent the time at home and by the time I looked at the clock, it was past midnight. Still had to take a shower before going to bed. Tonight, I shall break this routine and go to bed before midnight. I just hope I could fall asleep soon.

After three years of being away from work, my savings is gone. When I decided to go back to school, it never occurred to me that this could happen. I thought that since everything is paid for, I didn't need to use any money. Well, that held true when I was abroad. However, I forgot that I still had ongoing expenses in Malaysia. I've spent the bulk of my savings paying off my car loan, giving money to my parents and buying Europe-Malaysia round trip air tickets. Just the air tickets alone had cost me about 15k!

When I moved back to Malaysia, I was aware that I didn't have much money left. In spite of this knowledge, I still chose to start work in January instead of December. I thought it was enough to sustain me for another month but I forgot to take into account that I need to use money when I go to work (lunch money, toll and gas) and I'd only be paid at the end of the month. Lol, it's amazing how quickly I forgot about these things just after a few years of using almost free public transportation and cooking my own lunch. Anyway, I managed to survive the first month without incurring any debt and was overjoyed when I received my "first" paycheck! :D

Now, after two paychecks, I have a bit more savings and feel more secure. Also feel more comfortable going out and spending a bit more on food. For the past two months, I wasn't very keen on spending more than 10 bucks for lunch and I went home for dinner most of the time. I'm also not in a shopping mode and I think it's mostly because I'm still a bit averse to crowds. So instead of having much social life, I've finished reading 3-4 books and still catching up on quite a few episodes of some tv series that I was watching.

The plan is to stay debt-free, keep expenses low and grow savings as much as possible this year. Hopefully will be able to amass at least 50% of what I had.

My black clothes are covered with an unusual amount of lint. When I want to wear a black top or pants, I have to spend a few minutes getting rid of the lint. Under room lighting, they are not so obvious but under sunlight, they really stand out! Since there's no window in my room, I have to go to the next room and stand next to the window to do that. Even then, I only managed to get rid of some because my house don't get much sunlight in the morning. It'd the totally weird to stand outside the house to do this. Hahahha. Now, I keep a lint remover in my car and I do it in the car. The problem is, if I'm already wearing it, then I can't reach the back. Lol

Anyway, I don't remember having this problem before. I wonder if my place has more dust now and they start sticking on my clothes. They seemed alright after I washed them. I hang them to dry outside under the sun but I don't know if they are covered with lint after they dry coz I'm not the person who collected the clothes. Then,
they usually sit inside a basket for at least a week before I iron and hang them inside my closet. By the time I take them out for ironing, they are already covered with lint/dust. I have the impression that even if I remove them before/after ironing, they will have lint by the time I want to wear them. So now I just remove them when I want to wear them.

I'm going to find out the root cause of this problem and fix it so that I don't have to do lint removal every time I wear black.

My 7-year-old wireless router have started to show signs of aging. The connection dropped suddenly just now. I can still see it on the network list but could no longer connect. I tried with my phone and it also didn't work. So, I restarted the router a couple of times but the phone still wasn't able to connect. I thought that I needed to buy a new router and wondered if the new routers are backward compatible with wireless-B. I know that's ancient technology but I still have a very old Mac iBook running. Anyway, I got an idea to change the SSID and the router is working again! Hehehe. No need to buy new router for the time being.

Now that I think about it, lately,  I had to restart the router as well as the modem about once a week on average when the internet connection dropped. The indicator lights on both the router and modem are blinking fine and no warning message in Windows. However, I just cannot load any website or connect to any IM. Am not too sure that it's the router and modem problem because I know my laptop has problems with wireless connections sometimes.

Having spent the last few years living in non English-speaking countries, I've pretty much got used to seeing words and hearing conversations that I don't understand. Although I don't understand the words, I still could read them because they consist of Roman alphabets. So when I was deciding whether to go to Shanghai, I was a little apprehensive because it's more challenging. More challenging in the sense that I can't read Chinese script, in addition to not speaking much Mandarin. Then I  thought it shouldn't be that bad since it's Shanghai where lots of expats live so people there should understand some English.

Having convinced myself that I'll somehow survive, I decided to volunteer in Shanghai for a month at the end of last year. Overall, it was a rather unique experience and I shall expound on that in another post. Coming back to the language challenge, there is another element which I did not take into account. Because I look Chinese, people expects me to speak the language and it takes them a while to realize that I actually don't speak their language and they get confused and don't know where to place me. And this in turn makes me feel like I don't fit here nor there, and sometimes like an outcast. I could sense that they are uncomfortable talking to me but I don't blame them because it is out of their normal experiences. 

I did manage to go about town on my own because the street signs and subway have English words that I can match with my map. However, the English words are not useful for asking the locals where a certain street or place is located because the words have no pinyin intonation. Chinese words can have totally different meaning in different tones and some streets have similar sounding names. So it's possible they point you to a different place! Furthermore, some of the name of the landmarks are in English and not a translation from Chinese, e.g. The Bund, People's Square, and Oriental Pearl Tower. It took me a while to know the respective Chinese names because when my co-workers asked me if I've visited any place, they said the name in Chinese and they don't know the English name. Eventually I managed to match the two together. Hahaha. Besides street signs, the ticket machines for the subway and train stations have English version. So if you can read a map well, you shouldn't have any problem getting around Shanghai.


Besides fast-food and upscale restaurants, most of the restaurants and food stalls do not have English menu and the staff don't speak much English, if at all.  As a result, I had limited choices when I'm on my own. There is a small restaurant around the corner from my aunt's apartment and we order food from there once in a while. I memorized the name of the few dishes I like from the menu so that I could order them when my aunt is not around.  Otherwise, I could still cook instant noodles. Hahahaha.

After spending a month in China, I'm now more comfortable speaking Mandarin, not that my Mandarin improved much though.

I've accumulated a lot of photos during the years which i lived in europe.
Some are photos of social events but the bulk of them are vacation photos.
Some of these photos are my only souvenier of the places I visited.
I have to limit the amount of physical objects I have because it's a hassle to move from one country to another with too much stuff and it gets very expensive.

I wanted to show my family and friends my photo collection and I prefer showing the photos on paper instead of on the screen. I just feel that it's more intimate that way. However, I don't like the standard 4x3 prints because I cannot annotate them. Then i remembered about photobook printing services.

I really like Blurb's BookSmart but they're based in the UK. Their software is very intuitive and you can just drag and drop your photos onto the pages and move around to arrange them. I did a few pages during my last week in Europe but didn't have the time to finish it.

In Malaysia, I found Photobook and saw that they're offering 40% discount.
So, I decided to try their software. It pretty much does the things that BookSmart does, just the interface is not as smooth and sometimes it gets very slow.

I like the idea of the photobook as it allows me to have a combination of photos of different sizes and text on a page. I chose the large square book (11"x11") and managed to fit up to 16 photos in a page. I only have one page with that many photos though. I've managed put together a nice collection of photos into the 40 pages and have them printed into a hardcover book. I received my book in just a few days time. It was delivered via courier and bubble-wrapped in a box. Opening the box gave me the feeling of opening a Christmas present! Hehehe. Well, I was also afraid that I might have made some mistakes and was so happy to see that the book turned out beautifully :D

I got the opportunity to have the whole house to myself this weekend when my family went out of town. After living back home for about 8 weeks, I'm starting to miss living on my own. So I actually stayed home during the weekend and managed to do the things that I enjoy; cooking, sleeping, watching videos. Hehehhe. I cooked chicken porridge for lunch using leftover chicken drumstick from CNY dinner and some mushrooms from the sea cucumber with oyster dish. For dinner, I finally get to eat a big slab of meat; Steak with baked potatoes and some cherry tomatoes and green peas on the side. The steak took a bit more time to cook than I thought but it's sooooo juicy! :D When I set the table, I found out that my house don't have steak knife so I had to use the smaller meat knife to cut the steak into strips first.

On Sunday, I made bacon and egg for brunch. Although the bacons are over 100g, about 50% of them are purely fat! I don't mind if the fat is between some meat but the ones I bought, 99% of the fat is on one side. Should've looked properly before buying. Anyway, I ended up discarding half of the fat away since I cannot stomach just the fat alone.


I'm on a meat eating mode lately. Lol. Gonna buy more meat.

Although I had not celebrated CNY at home for the past several years, I can remember the super hot weather and the amount of food that we eat. For those reasons, I don't look forward to CNY and avoided being home if I could.

Well, this year I am home and it has not been a very pleasant experience, mostly because it is extremely hot at home. When my uncle's family came to visit on Sunday, I had to play host since my mom went out. Otherwise, I would have hid inside an aircon room upstairs. I offered them food and drinks and sat in the living room to chat with them. Although I could feel the air blowing from both the ceiling fan and the stand fan, I was sweating. My butt and thigh were especially wet and sticky! Was lucky I didn't have to cook but I did help with the dishes after dinner.

My family don't go out visiting relatives so we've been staying home most of the time. Hence, it's also super boring. At first I tried not switching on the aircon, but I eventually gave in and switched it on. I've been watching tv, videos, and reading books in the room.

After several meals of the same CNY food (chicken, Chinese sausages, roast duck, steamed fish, prawns, mushrooms, abalone, sea cucumber, etc), my dad suggested we go for Subway yesterday. I was so relieved that we can take a break from eating all those food coz I don't really like them. Hehehe. The fridges are still full with all those meat and vegetables and I think it'll take us a week or two to finish everything. There is hope when my mom suggested we make Thai chicken salad last night; instead of just re-heating the plain old steam white chicken. :D As for tonight's dinner, I'll be making spaghetti ai gamberi (prawns). Mom was being super generous yesterday and we bought very expensive tomatoes at cold storage, over RM32 per kilo! For four medium sized ones, they cost about RM15. Those are the kind of tomatoes that I buy in Italy. Hehehe. Hopefully they'll be as good.

So, CNY is not so bad after all. As long as I get to stay inside aircon room and not have to eat the same kind of food every meal. And I get to cook what I like! :D

During the course of my thesis, I was quite sure that I would be moving back to Malaysia after I've completed my studies. Unlike many of my friends, I didn't look for jobs or Phd positions. Instead, an opportunity came knocking on my door. My thesis co-advisor asked me if I am interested in joining his research group. The work that I do could be counted for my PhD when I officially enroll.
Since I've never thought about pursuing a PhD before, this will give me the opportunity to see if it's something I would like to do. After giving it much thought, I decided to give it a try. And so I moved back to Trento in Jan 2009 to start my "PhD".

I worked together with a bunch of other students in an European project and during this time, I found the area that interest me most: Recommendations. Since I had zero knowledge in that area, I had read lots and lots of papers to get to the state-of-the-art. Because it's a multi-disciplinary field, there's so much that can be done. Most of the time, I enjoyed reading the interesting articles and everytime I found a good article I get excited, it's kinda like treasure hunt. Hahaha. I read so much that at one point I neglected writing my research proposal and my advisor told me that it's best I don't read too much so that my brain won't get polluted. It made me realize that I already had sufficient knowledge of what's out there and I should resume my attention in my work, that is recommendations of scientific publications.

This experience has given me an insight into the world of academia. After about 5 months, I knew what I wanted if I were to do a Phd (it's a possibility now) and I realized that the current group I'm with is just not a good fit for me. I know that if I wanted to, I'll manage to stick it out for 3 years to complete the Phd but I'll definately be miserable. After much discussion with friends and family, I decided to put it off for now and just get a job like an average joe. I wrapped up my work in Oct and moved back to Malaysia the following month.

I know I like the research but I also know that I don't have enough passion for it. I guess it's one of the things that can be parked under the "nice to have" category. Hehehe.

It's been over a year since my last post. Occasionally, I did thought about updating the blog but had kept putting it off. Over the last couple of weeks, I get this feeling as though I have not wrap up the work that I have started. I mean, thesis submission is not the end yet!

I started writing this blog when I first moved to Europe for graduate studies. So I felt it should have a post about graduation; the end of graduate studies. Well, unless I didn't graduate. Hahahha.

The fact is, I did graduate. I received my diploma from Germany in February 2009 with pretty good grades (1.3 for thesis, woohoo!) and another diploma from Italy at the end of April. However, I did not attend the graduation ceremonies. I received my German diploma through the mail as I was living in Italy at the time. As for the Italian diploma, I picked it up from the secretary's office after I got back from my London trip. So yeah, I finally graduated in spring 2009 with two diplomas. :D

Update: The reason why I didn't make any effort to attend the graduation ceremonies is there's no elaborate setting and no graduation gown involved :p