Every road leads to Rome..

*yawn*

Bueno Sera..

i just got back from Rome abt an hour ago..

damn.. i spent the entire few days being deaf in one ear.. seriously.. i think i lost abt 90% of my hearing in my left ear.. and coz i strained my right ear trying to listen, it hurts..

now i understand how the deaf suffers..

but if u had never had experienced something, would u realise the loss of it?

those who were born deaf, would think that life without sound is normal mah.. and same goes for those who were born blind i guess.. but if u lost it halfway thru ur life, i guess itz gonna hard to let go..

the main things that went thru my mind.. firstly.. i'd lose my job..

where got such thing as a deaf flight attendant..

and the fact that i would never be able to play drums anymore.. i dont think itz possible to do so if i lose my hearing in one ear.. coz no matter how good u are.. u'd never be able to hear the small details in the music.. and a lost of balance if u lose ur hearing...

in fact.. i was more paranoid abt it then i allowed it to show..

i still went thru the rituals of the flight and the daily affairs.. and pretended as if nothing had happened.. just that when i arrived in Rome, i couldnt hide it anymore coz i really couldnt hear anything on my left.. so anyone who wanted to talk to me had better be on my right side..

i called in a doctor to the hotel coz the pain was getting unbearable.. and he reassured me that i wont lose my sense of hearing..

yey!

heh.. in fact.. he told me that i was getting flu and i had inflammation in my throat which affected the lymph nodes and therefore blocking the passage that connects to the ear..

and i got a jab in the butt and a painkiller tablet and he told me that i should be better in the morning.

he lied.

in fact.. i suffered thru the flight too.. and the pain was really really bad when we were landing into Singapore this morning..

and this time.. my right ear got affected..

so i pinched my nose and blew as hard as i can to relieve the pressure on the ear drums..

and POP!

my left ear is OKAY!!

yey..

but now my right ear cant hear that well.. lol.. dammit.. one ear after another.. but since i can hear clearly on my left ear.. i'm relieved that itz not a permanent damage..

okay.. anyway.. i think it should be ok by tonite.. i hope so lah.. this Sat i have a jamming session with the band so it BETTER be ok.. the only jamming session before the Skafest..

anyway.. i'm gawddamed tired now..

when i got home, Nafisa was asleep still.. and i gave her abt 15 mins before i woke her up coz i missed her like crazy..

Sis is in KL now.. so my mom is sending Nafisa to my cousin's place to take care of her in the day..

u cant trust guys with babies.. we just play with them till they cry and look for a woman to take the burden of doing whatever they know to pacify the kid..

and what happens when the baby soil her diapers?

oh god.. i think i'ld call SOS..



ah.. here's my little Stewardess.. with her birthday present that i got for her just a few hours before i left for Rome..

ok.. backtrackking time..

lemme mention for the first time ever abt my flight..

i had a Knight travelling on board.. and as i had told him.. he was the first real life knight that i've met..

of course i see Sir Alex Ferguson's face in the papers every day..

and the gay knight, Sir Elton John.. can u imagine what happens if Elton John was born abt 500 years ago?

he'd be wearing lipstick under that face plate..

and he's be clutching a Prada instead of a sword..

ok.. anyway.. Sir Ward, an Irishman, and his wife, Lady Pucci, an Italian lady were one of the most pleasant ppl i had ever met.. and they had even lived in Singapore in the 70s.. in Bukit Timah..

ok.. thatz it abt them..

arrived in Rome, at Aeroporte Leonardo da Vinci, on Friday morning, and slept thru the day till abt 6pm..

woke up feeling hungry.. called the rest of the crew but none of them seemed to have the energy to get up.. so i had dinner alone in the hotel restaurant..

after reading John Grisham's The Broker recently.. i wanted to see whether what he said were true abt the Italians..

the Italians are fashion-concious ppl.. image means everything to them.. and to be able to dress up properly in Italy is a MUST..

those scrappy looking ppl are the tourists..

and when u are in Rome, do what the Romans do.. so u'd better look nice..

itz true in a way.. even those Italians whoz not in their Armanis and would be wearing jeans and t-shirts look presentable..

and btw.. before i forget.. Italian women are BEAAAAAUUTTTTTTIIIIIFFFFFUUUULLLLLL..

after dinner, i went back to the room and slacked till i fell asleep at abt 4am..

in the morning.. had a buffet breakfast with the crew in the same restaurant.. and left the hotel at 10am to start our sightseeing trip..

i went out with Wei Ling, Paulin and a pilot, Chye..

same thing.. i had been to Rome numerous times.. but each time itz different.. and normally i spend my time at the vicinity around Piazza di Spagna.. or better known among the non-Italians, the Spanish Steps.. where u get a lot of branded stuffs.. like Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton.. but on this trip.. i dont feel a need to get anything..

so we started off by going down to the Sistine Chapel, or Cappella Sistina.. which is located next to the Vatican City.. and the chapel is now called the Museum Vatica as well..

itz really a beautiful place.. and u get paintings by Michelangelo and Raphael and a lot of other reknowned artists.. just that i dunno any of their names except for those named in Teenage Mutants Ninja Turtle..



along the entrance to the Sistine Chapel.. most of the beautiful paintings are on the ceiling..



the famous painting by Michelangelo.. also on the ceiling..

i wonder whether are their necks insured or not.. how to paint like that without neck cramps and migraines?



painting of the Prophets.. therez several of them.. and this is Zacharia.. or Nabi Zakaria..

but of course they are just paintings from the minds of the artists.. not depicting the real looks of the prophets..

after going around the chapel, which took abt 2 hours.. we went to the Vatican City.. which is next door..

Vatican City, or also known as The Holy See, is the smallest state in the world.. and the unique fact abt it is that itz a State within a City in a State..



Wei Ling, Me and Paulin in front of the St Peters Basilica



Entrance to the Vatican City

Vatican is a State inside the city of Rome, which is inside Italy.

u dont need a passport to get in.. just a ticket price of 7 bucks.. in Euro, that is..

Vatican is the centre of the Roman Catholic faith.. just like Mecca for the Muslims, the Golden Temple for the Sikhs, and Planet Uranus for Tom Cruise and the Scientologists smartasses..

first stop was the Dome of Michelangelo.. we took a lift halfway.. and the remaining journey to the top was by a small stairway..

small in width BUT GAWDDAMNED HIGH LIKE DUNNO WHAT..

goodness..



see?

i almost died of asthma.. just that i didnt have any asthma..

i think itz equivalent to abt 15 to 20 floors high.. and since we went up halfway.. itz abt 10 floors.. and u cant see the next level as u climb up.. so u just go up and up and up and pant and up and up and pant.. and very close to falling down dead..

by the time we reached the top of the dome, we dont wanna get down coz itz really exhausting getting up.. nothing is worth the pain man..



at the top of the Dome, with the city of Rome in the background..

after going around Vatican, we left and headed down to the other parts of the city..



this is how a typical Roman alley looks like.. i dunno why u would be interested to look at an alley.. but i took the pic already.. so u see..



most of the roads in Rome are tiled rather than paved.. thatz what i noticed..



another pic with no good reason.. a phonebooth.. but looks nice rite..



Chye, Paulin and Me..



at Piazza Navona..



the hustle and bustle of artists at Navona..



we came across a demonstration for Gay Rights and Abortion Rights.. being a Roman Catholic state, abortion is highly illegal.. yeah rite.. heh.. they sell condoms in machines on the roadside..

u can tell ur son to get u a pack of flavoured condom from the machine on his way back from school if u want to..

had dinner at a nice, small restaurant before we headed down to the Colloseum..



the Colloseum..



Chye, Wei Lin, Paulin and Me in front of the Colloseum..

it was already dark.. and the Colloseum was closed.. so we just took pics outside it before we made our way to the pick up point for the hotel shuttle bus..

the Colloseum is like a big stadium.. where they used to have sick battle fights with men and lion like in Gladiator..

it should be more than 2000 yrz old..



at Corso Vittiorio Emmanuel. this is like in the middle of the City..



i dunno what this is.. but it looked ancient anyway.. so i took the pic..

had to wait for abt half an hour and we met some crew from Emirates, a Singaporean guy named Rashid, and two Malaysian girls, a Malay girl named Yang, and a Chinese girl named Carol..

Rashid was the one who approached us coz he recognised the Singlish slang.. so we chatted for a while before their bus came..

basically.. that's it for the trip.. got back to the hotel, and chilled out with the rest of the crew till midnight and went to sleep afterwards..

now to concentrate on popping my right ear..

Grazie...

Arrivederci!