JYSim for jobless-yokel Sim

So, let’s hypothetically say, you’re having your last meal in Italy, and hypothetically, you do not have any budget constrains for your this meal. Hypothetically also, you have, let’s say, 5 hours for this meal, and hypothetically, your chef for the evening knows how to cook everything. Next, hypothetically again, the kitchen is equipped with every appliance for every kind of food and all ingredients. So, what should you have?

La primo piato
Pizza ai quattro formaggi - pizza with four cheeses - mozzarella, gorgonzola (blue cheese), latteria and grana.
Peperonata - peppers cooked in olive oil with onion, tomato and garlic.
For cheese freaks like us, please be reminded not to over-stuff yourself with cheeses on your first course. While 4-cheese pizza is extremely delicious (high calories too), peperonata is something you won’t get back home, even though we do have all the ingredients there.

La secondo piato
Polenta - yellow cornmeal porridge, left to set and cut in slices. Usually polenta will come with stewed rabbit and parmesan. Eaten in various ways - with stewed rabbit mentioned earlier, with parmesan and a dash of butter, or fried, with parmesan also.
Assorted pickels and cured meat - choose from a wide variety of prosciutto (hams), salami and formaggi (cheeses), eaten either just like that, or with panne (bread). Suggested bread: baguette (it’s French anyway).

Il dessert
Gelato - Italian ice-cream! Estacy estacy! Spectacular spectacular!Suggested flavours: ferrero (French chocolate not so chocolate in colour but more chocolate in taste), mela (ever tried apple ice-cream before? well, you should!), la fragola (once you tried strawberry Italian ice-cream, you’ll never want to eat those from Walls or Nestle).
Coffee - Ini bukan kopi sembarangan tahu! From Mocha, Cappucino and Espresso, you can have Mocha con Ciocolato, Mocha con panne, Mocha amoro, Mocha dolce, Cappucino con Ciocolato, Cappucino con panne, Cappucino amoro, Cappucino dolce, Espresso con Ciocolato, Espresso con panne, Espresso amoro and Espresso dolce. All you pay is a few Euro cents, and what you get are cups bigger than Starbucks (in Starbucks I paid RM11.55 for a regular chocolate).

As tipping is regular in Italy, you should leave the small changes to your Latin waitress or waiter. After all, serving so many piato-s isn’t easy, and understanding what you order is not as easy as you thought. He/She might say ’si, si, capishi’, but in his/her mind, he/she will be guessing what the heck is wrong with this Asian who can’t speak Italian (hey, they think everyone in the world can speak Italian). 

If you’re thinking of overtaking Jun Yi in the next coming exam (may it be STPM, IELTS or whatever), he can assure you have a huge chance. They say an idle mind breeds the devil, and this applies to Jun Yi as well.
Morning / mattina
2.00 am - Finish up Lat’s comicand drop dead to sleep.
9.00 am - Wake up, walk around the house wrapped in his comforter, steal a bar of chocolate or two from the fridge (those chocolates were actually supposed to be given to his friends) and breakfast.
11.00 am - Do some light reading, may it be the copy of Bible in the abandoned corner of the shelves, ‘Ooh, Penang!’ from his cousin, or dechiper Italian from his autograph.

Afternoon / pomeriggio
12.00 am - Lunch, nothing spectacular.
2.00 pm - Nap.
3.30 pm - Watch DVDs bought when he was in Italy. ‘Evita’ was totaly amazing, while ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ che brutissimo. Allora, ‘Moulin Rouge’ is the best succeeding musical after ‘Phantom of the Opera’.

Evening / sera
6.00 pm - Local TV3 Drama, usual storyline, usual casts, usual soundtracks, usual commercials, usual endings.
8.00 pm - Dinner.
8.45 pm - Online, or read boring stuffs again, check out how much is 1 Euro to Ringgit and wonder when my photoes will arrive.
9.30 pm - Do nothing.
10.00 pm - Due to having nothing to do, he will usually be forced to watch the movies on local television. Luckily they show quite ‘watch-able’ stuffs these days, and nothing is in a foreign language without subtitles.
12.00 pm - Online again to see if any Italians are on, wonder again when my photoes will arrive.
1.00 pm - Lat’s comics again, because the language used by the cartoon characters will sooner or later cure me of my Italian accented-English.

So, he frankly hopes you’re inspired by this post and work hard towards beating him in future. As far as I know, lots of people have the ambition if defeating Jun Yi whenever they can. They hope to see Jun Yi grovel in the streets 20 years later with nothing more than cents in his bank accounts while they drive BMWs and Benz and have lots of zero-s in their fixed deposit slips.

So, you’re back.
Yes I am.
How was it? The whole experiance?
Well, it’s cold, first things first. I felt so hot and humid since Tuesday after I entered KLIA. Generally the whole thing was fun and memorable, but I think it can be better if my host family have had more experiance and I was more proactive.
How’s so?
Well, I’m the first exchange student to be hosted by my host family. Appearantly they don’t know much about how exchange students felt. I spent more time sitting at home watching television than visiting places of interest i.e. Pisa, Venice, Milano etc. There might be a possibility that they don’t tour very much (for as far as I know the furthest place they’ve been to is Sardegna).
Where’s your town?
This is difficult…You know Torino? City hositng the Winter Olympics this year? It’s 1.5 hours drive southwards from Torino. The name is Cuneo (pronounced Ku-neo).
Can you speak Italian?
A little, yeah. The girls speak better, cos they’re more willing to try and they are more thick-skinned. For us shy guys we don’t catch very much.
Try speaking some, please please please.
Ciao, mi chiamo Sim. Sono di Malesia. Io ospitalitado in Italia per 2 mesi, e mi molto piace Italia e mia compagni di classe.

Hi, my name is Sim. I’m from Malaysia. I was hosted in Italy for 2 months, and I like Italy and my classmates a lot.

How’s school?
Well, my class is small, 19 students only, and they’re what we call as ‘cool’. They won’t be like 5SA1 dahulu when some people are having fun and some others don’t feel good about it, and they go complaint to the discipline teacher. Anyway, my class is a bilingual class, so I learn French as well.
Anyway, been to anywhere during your 2 months?
Not very much actually. If I can grade my host family, I’ll grade them C+. Basically they do pretty well for feeding me, tucking me in etc, but they don’t take the extra labour to bring me to visit places, shopping, or yadda-yadda. I only went to Ventigmilia, Menton (France), Torino and Aosta during my exchange. Some of my friends went to as far as Roma, Venice, Napoli and Sicilia. Their host family is those A+-grade ones. And there are some worse ones too, but you won’t want to listen to any of them, I believe.
Any complaints about Italians?
1. They talk way too loud.
2. They smoke a lot. Almost everyone in my class smokes, but not in the class-lah of course. they smoke during intervals at fire-escapes, football fields and the walkways.
(clears throat) Ok, Mr. Sim, has this exchange made you a better person in one way or another?
(clears throat) Eerm…well…I find that now I can talk to my natural family in a more interactive way. I think I’ve learnt that finding a person who can speak the same language as you is so good you want to tell them everything you know. I’m more tolerant with my sister, and I learnt to appreciate beauty in another prospect. You see, Italians are just beautiful (blunders), i mean…their features are more striking than Asians, and they are more fashionable. In Italy whichever way I looked there’s something beautiful to behold. When I’m back, everything looked plain and simple to me. Even the buildings cannot be compared back to what I had in my host town. However, later I learnt to catch the ’spirit’ inside everything. The person may not look as nice or as attractive, but he/she is still a beautiful soul to look at. A building may not have elaborate decor and architecture candies, but…like the painting Mona Lisa, she isn’t beautiful, but her soul, what she engrossed in doing, what it gives off, is divine.
…
You catch what I mean?
Yeah, I think so.
In another way, it’s like Penang, or like Chung Ling High School. Penang isn’t more beautiful than Sardegna or Miami, but tourists come back every year because the whole island gives off a magical feeling. You have to be there to feel it and to love it. In short, I’ve learn to appreciate things in a way I never did, that’s all.
Ok, anything else?
I’m sorry I can’t show you the 312 photoes I took when I’m there, it’s a sad story, and sad stories never appear in Jun Yi’s blogs, so I’ll explain when I meet my friends. However, I did have something to say about KLM and Alitalia. I think that they’re a disgrace to Europe for their so-called politeness and reliability. Well, the air hostress and air steward did look much attractive than those of MAS, but they don’t even bother to say ‘excuse me’ when handing out food, no ‘chicken or pasta’ for my dinner, and when it’s time to collect the meal packs, they just grab everything and leave, not asking whether I would like to keep my bar of ‘Kit-Kat’ with me. Another thing, they misunderstood ’sweets’ as ‘candies’.
That’s not relevant to the interview.
Last thing, if you’re travelling with kids or infants, spare the tired and cramped passengers in economy class, take first or business class instead.
Enough rubbish. Thank you, I didn’t ask for that.
You’re welcome.