JYSim for jobless-yokel Sim

Below is something I’ll submit for our CLHS ‘The Waves’ Grad Mag soon. Just thought I’ll put in on to fulfill my weekly obligation of updating my blog. If you find this too long, just skip everything and (censored) off. Disclaimer: I never said this article will certainly be published at the end of 2007. The verdict lies on our very respected Seong Ling and his group of editors.

My Italian Job with AFS-Antarabudaya Malaysia

  The
great lapse of 6 months between completion of your SPM and starting of Form 6
can be hazardous if you don’t have anything planned. Forget plans if you’re
thinking of colleges for challenge-phobic freaks (not that college is
challenge-free). With nothing planned you’re prone to:

- brain rusting

- accumulation of body fats

- disintegration of hand muscles so bad you might
not be able to write your name when you’re back in school

 While
going on exchange might not have anything to do with preventing you from the
above symptoms, it is a good getaway from the 5 years of laborious studying and
unarguably the best chance to learn a new culture and language.

 I’m
the luckiest guy on Earth considering after a not-too-long argument with Mum
and Dad, they finally allow and manage to pay for my exchange to Italy.
Initially Mum and Dad think I should spend the 6 months to ‘gather information
about tertiary education’ (and trust me, you’ll need only 3 nights for that),
but ultimately I persisted and there you have it, this
maybe-not-very-interesting article about my 2-months in Italy.

A Series of Traveling

 Thinking
back, it’s a bad idea for you to work like a cow now and travel ‘when you have
the time and money’. My example for instance, on our inbound journey we took
the midnight flight onboard KLM to Amsterdam, Netherlands, arrive at dawn, and before we saw
daylight we departed for Rome.
Total traveling time was 17 hours and not a wink all the while. Seat pitch was
terrible and we were always oh-so-lucky to get adorable infants onboard.

 We
spent a night in Rome,
within the boundaries of the hotel all the time, and missed our dinner due to
sheer fatigue. Jet-lag is dripping in but sleeping in the 10 degree Centigrade
hotel is always pleasant with a comfy blanket (and feather pillows).

 The
next day I took the Turin-bound flight up north to my host town. Though
traveling time was only 1 hour 25 minutes, the whole process from check-in to
retrieving your overweight baggage in the malfunctioned air-conditioner arrival
hall took the whole day. The fact that the sun sets much earlier in winter
didn’t help for jetlag either. Worse, Cuneo,
my host town, is still 3 hours away by car. 

Living the Italian Life

 Italians
are, or rather, Europeans are, by nature, a laidback group who enjoys a simple
life and a wide assortment of cheeses and wine, especially so for rural folks.
The winter catalysed their slackness – shops closed at 3.30 in the afternoon,
post offices operates from 10 to 1 daily, and clinic consultations are by
appointment only.

 The
biggest cultural shock would be the sense of fashion for me. Even though your
classmates always say ‘anything goes’, you should never under-dress for any
occasion. In fact, overdressing is relatively common, if you have the money for
furry coats and Versace ties of course. While my German-made windbreaker is
enough to conquer the cold, the colours are as un-Italian as knives are to
Chinese cuisine. What you should wear typically consists of a main colour
(usually your windbreaker or your jacket) and some other set off colours
(jeans, cap, scarves etc). For example, a typical Italian dude will have a light
blue-yellow windbreaker, a grey (or apple-green) jacket perhaps, the typical
indigo-shade jeans and the black Torino 2006 Winter Olympic Games scarf.
Conversely, my style goes like this – the dark blue-black windbreaker, the
black-chocolate pullover, the dark-blue jeans and the dark red-grey-white
scarf. Naturally, I stand out more though what I wear didn’t.

 Don’t
despair if you feel lonely and foreign in Italy. Bump into some boutique,
pizzeria, bookstore or cafferia and you’ll be greeted warmly. Greetings come as
natural to Italians as we swear while driving. Similarly, you should at least
be armed with some basic greetings before stepping into your host family’s
house. The basic ‘bongiorno’ (good day) may act as a sincere greeting as well
as an attention-catcher in busy shops or cafferia. ‘Ciao’ sounds much more
natural a greeting compared to ‘Salam sejahtera’ while ‘grazie’ is 2 times
shorter than ‘terima kasih’ and ‘thank you’, and easily rolled out of the
tongue, too.

 Partying
is relatively common in the Italian culture, and Italians take pride in how
they magnify each celebration to make it sound as though it’s the last. There’s
always a reason to celebrate, be it your birthday, your last day at school,
last day before the school holidays, or just as usual as a family gathering.
Young Italian parties can never exclude music (very often rock) and alcohol.
You’ll know when you’re suppose to stop fuelling the ‘house wine’ when your
friends asks you how’s the ‘kitchen flu’ condition in your country and they
can’t properly insert the SIM card into their mobile phone (telefonini) slot.

 Oh,
and just before you leave the restaurant, please write something in Chinese on
the guestbook. Anything will do…so I go ‘Ai Wu Zhong Ling’. ‘Sim, what is
this?’ ‘Eerm…something in Cinese (Chinese) for ‘ciao’.

School

 Don’t
feel alienated if you’re swearing about our education system and our
very-respected teachers nowadays. Italians share the same passion in
complaining as you do. Whisperingly, they’ll tell you they understand nothing (capito
niente) from the last lesson and they’ll be dead during interrogation tomorrow.
However dead they describe themselves though, they are still able to mumble
something out while furiously flipping the textbook for elaboration. The
typical Italian teacher allows students to bring along their textbook(s) during
interrogation, but extensive use of textbook material and prolonged answer time
will eventually lead to lower grades.

 Due
to their continuous assessments, Italian teenagers find little time for hobbies
and leisure in the weekdays. Afternoons will be spent completing homework (which
exchange students are so-generously exempted), and the evenings will be spent
memorizing Latin or Philosophy (2 most hated subjects in the Italian education
system. And mind you, these subjects, further including History, is
nonnegotiable, finitely compulsory).

 Nevertheless,
school is fun when you have field studies, PE (outdoors in winter) and everyone
works on a project for an international competition (which my classmates
eventually won the first prize, an all-paid trip to Germany for everyone in class).

Food

 From
tiramisu to tortellini, pizzas to pasta, Italians had long ago clustered their
food far from the French’s Le Cordon Bleu with cheaper ingredients, commoner
cooking style, and homelier taste.

 Italian
cuisine is globally tasted and thus I won’t elaborate any longer. However,
below are several misconceptions on Italian cuisine which must be clarified on
behalf of all fellow Italians, least Uncle Sam takes pride in them soon.

Pizza – the Italian pizza has
unbelievably thin crust, thus one can usually down a whole personal pan pizza
as in Pizza Hut measurements. Don’t trust Pizza Hut even if they promise you
super-thin crusts, they can’t be anyhow thinner than the Italians. The usual
thickness for Pizza Hut would be considered ‘foccacia’ (flatbread) in Italian
standards.

Pasta – pasta are usually not
served with ‘a wide range of ingredients’ but only a few carefully selected
ones to match and complement each other’s taste. For example, tomato sauce will
usually go with ground beef or pork (not meatballs, squids, fish, crab etc).

Latte and Caffe – Latte in
Italian strictly means milk. So if you have the time you can sue Nestle for
mislabeling their product (as in the caned coffee named ‘Latte’). Caffe
strictly means coffee (kopi-o), which includes Mocha, Cappuccino etc. Caffe
latte is milk with coffee, literally ‘kopi susu’ for us.

Postscript

 Things
will eventually become boring a few weeks after your arrival. I then learnt the
hard truth that nobody ever said going on an exchange was easy. Intensive exchange programs are designed in
such a way you get the chance to experience several months or years in a
concentrated 2 months. If you’re lucky (depends on how you define it still),
you get a host family who travels a lot and you get to tour the whole Europe. For me, though my Papa and Mama are conservative
people who don’t quite approve on parties, pubs and discos (and needless to say
backpack traveling), I’m very fortunate to have a cool counselor who never
stopped lending a helping hand. My classmates too, are blissful folks who never
mind sharing and perhaps mildly shaped me into what I am today. In those idle 2
months, I read a lot of classics and re-made a lot of relationships broken in
school (via e-mail and MSN). I realized that sometimes help is just a phone
call away, and you can’t actually force people into something he’s not into. I
learnt to accept and respect homosexuality, and my friend managed to convince
his host brother to stop taking drugs (though I have nothing to do with this).

 In
fact I can’t sleep last night because I suddenly realized I missed everyone in Cuneo so much.

 Should
this article got published and you find it boastful, please forgive the humble
writer as his intention is just to share what happened to a missing Jun Yi for
2 months. Nevertheless I still cannot resist recommending exchange programs to
whoever finds it interesting, so try one someday! 

AFS-Antarabudaya Malaysia
has been organizing exchange programs for adolescents, adults, teachers, and
mothers for almost 50 years. Applications are open from March to May each year
and host countries range from icy Finland
to the exotic, mysterious Honduras.
For more information, visit www.afs.org.my.

Malaysia Airlines flies thrice weekly to Rome
Fiumicino Int’l Airport, Italy,
where there are easy connecting flights to Torino,
city of the Winter Olympics 2006. For bookings visit www.malaysiaairlines.com or call
1-300-88-3000.

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