Back to work!

I am finally back in Singapore and the blog, the illustration, and everything else should go back to be active as it used to be... since the life of the hermit is the life for me. :D

This vacation cost me a lot of troubles and a wacom tablet (yes, I brought it with me thinking I would use but I was never given a chance to - I should have known better since I was going back to selfish altruism XDDD)... it was left behind in Turin, in my sister's house, due to the usual factor: but I wanted to do you a favor!

How ironic I had just posted about that.

So aside the fact my luggage was lost and found in 3 days, a bunch of good and bad things happened.

Amongst the good things it was my birthday and I got presents from my friends! (although I did not manage to meet them all).

Amongst the bad things, we kept getting stopped by security and the police for the weirdest reasons (the main one was probably that my friends are Chinese - it's true that Italians are biased but I guess they also have to thank them buddies from Motherland China for always trying to smuggle in some fake or dangerous stuff... let's not forget why Italian palm trees have all died in the first place and the poisonous milk and toothpaste from few years back).

But anyways not knowing where Singapore is... was a big problem for us. All the people I talked to said it was either Japan or China (and it's neither) which makes me think: I studied this stuff when I was in elementary school, don't they teach geography anymore?

So we go stopped in Amsterdam because Clyda had too many wires and cables in her bag and me... I was wearing a bandana.

In Sicily I prevented two policemen from taking away Adrian (he does look like a criminal XDD) right before boarding - managing not to miss our flight.

And everywhere we went we had to deal with so much crap!

At the same time when you find cool people... they are cool beyond imagination, like I've never seen in any other Country. Like the cobbler who fixed Clyda's shoes for free and was learning Chinese and Hebrew all by himself using the dictionary.

Or my parents who are 72 and 61 and are more tech savvy than any of my students. (yes, they are, don't pout!) and left my friend speechless.

Of course the best experience was with food.

I love Singapore but being an island with very little farmland it's a Country that is forced to import a lot... therefore the ingredients are not as fresh as they could be and being a vegetarian if you don't eat fresh veggies then you get sick... tomatoes are barely orange and lucky me I don't really like them, but then again when it comes to green veggies they don't taste like much and I guess this is the reason why they have to add gravy which, unfortunately, I don't like.

So I made my fill of vegetables with fresh olive oil and salt and nothing else when I was there! Ah, broccoletti, my only weakness.

Of course somebody discovered Gianduja chocolate. Din din face on all the time!

Gianduja is oursssssss!

Chocolate with hazelnut... imagine a square of nutella that melts in your mouth (but not as sweet and not as... industrial)....

Okay so they made these sets that came in 3 colors, since Turin seems to be still celebrating the 150th anniversary of Italy! (God bless them)

So the red one was bitter gianduja and the green one was coffee gianduja and the white one was a classic gianduja... and they were all super delicious - I am not a chocolate person either (I am a coffee and licorice lover instead).

As you may have imagined my sketchbook has become more of a scrapbook while I was there, increasing his weight to almost 2 kg... with tickets, napkins from coffee shops, chocolate wraps and museum tickets and such.

So Castalia... would you like some chocolate?

Yes, please, can I have some?

What what?

Chocolate is ourssssss!

Ourssssssssssssssss!

Yeah, mh, I didn't bring any back. Actually I did not manage to bring almost any of the stuff I wanted to back because it was very hard to pack on the last day and things were misplaced to help me out, and the sudden realization that my wacom wasn't there with me did not make an impression on anybody else except me and my friends who were positive I had packed it since, before we left Turin, we checked the room and it was empty!

Once again irony striking at the wrong moment should teach me a lesson about nagging in my comic against this and that... especially if I am going back to visit the source of my nagging ha ha ha ha.

Next time I will lock the door while I pack so nobody will help me... forget to pack things properly!

Btw if you are interested in seeing what my trip was like and all the stuff I saw... here's the link to my travel blog.