i know whereof i speak. for 20 days i was either eating pizza, looking at one, or browsing a pizza menu. at both ends of italy and a couple of stops in the middle. i have reached the conclusion that pizza hut pizza calls itself pizza because it's stuff on some dough base. this makes it as related to italian pizza as lumpia is to shawarma (stuff wrapped in some flour thing).

first is the obsession with toppings. to my knowledge, italian pizza has at most 5 things on it: cheese, a meat (ham or bacon or sausage), a couple of vegetables (peppers or eggplant or mushrooms or onions or tomatoes etc etc. and i had one with potatoes), herbs (basil or oregano or garlic, etc etc). that's the loaded version. usually it's just one or two things on top.

not all italian pizzas have cheese. although i did try a four-cheese one (mozarella, parmegiano, gorgonzola and one more that starts with the letter v - i forget right now). and none are greasy. the only time i saw one leave oil marks at the bottom of a plate or wax paper (a most common wrapping) or box was when some of the olive oil on it leaked out.

i think it's the simplicity of flavor and lack of lard that makes it really good. that and the fact that all the ingredients are really fresh. so good that halfway through the trip i could consume a 10-inch pizza (and once a 12-inch one) all by myself.

and to think at the start of the trip i couldn't believe how much pizza they could eat. ah well, as they say, when in rome...

adobo flakes. for the first day of work.

having chicken adobo for dinner and so i figured the most efficient thing would be to take the left over chicken, shred it into flakes and fry in a dry pan with a little garlic., put the garlicky adobo flakes in a nice big piece of pandesal and ta-da! lunch.

i still need a good lunch box though. 

it just occured to me that there's one thing i never saw in italy: humps. as in road humps. as in those things that make cars slow down. and they don't exist, i think, simply because italian drivers have no concept of slowing down.

you think filipino drivers are mad? when we were in palermo we would spend lots of time looking out the window watching people triple park. they'd pull up into any available space - whether is actually looks like a parking place or not - and leave their cars to go buy food or something. they turn corners without slowing down or even looking for that matter. it's like their cars were made without brakes. and they drive those little european cars - as big as the kia picanto. boy, can those things accelerate.

by far the most reckless driver was a lady named palma who was, of all things, the housekeeper at our bed and breakfast in rome. she had to bring us to the train station one day and from the time she pulled out of the dirt driveway to the the time she stopped at the station, she never slowed down. ok fine, i exaggerate. she might have slowed down once - while she waited to overtake a horse.

coming back home i think i picked up a bit of this. i learned that the other guy will stop. and if he doesn't, i've got an old car. i have less to lose.

it's 3pm and i'm ready to go home. actually, i've been ready to go home for close to an hour now. but i've got to wait for the HR lady because i need to sign my bank forms to make sure i get my paycheck. and she needs to teach me how to fill up some other sheet or another.

the main difference between old job and new job is with old job, i could go home whenever the heck i was ready to. well, theoretically now i can still do that but, well, i need to know i'll get a paycheck next week so hang around i will.

but i'm leaving at 4 whatever happens. my ipod awaits me in megamall and i've been wanting to get my paws on it for a loooong time now.

c'mon HR lady, you can do it... it's just 8 floors up and there's an elevator. c'mon...

my ipod arrived in the nick of time. now the long, cross-country-like drives to and from work are bearable.

was having quite a time of creating and filling the playlists though. so i decided to go with the general feel of the era (as in my 70s playlist) or genre (like broadway). and so i put the music from the soundtrack of hair into 70s and that sort of thing.

what i can't decide yet is where to put fleetwod mac. do i keep em in the 70s, where they currently are, or move them to the rock list?

as that tentacled lady said, life is full of tough choices.

this was our favorite restaurant while we were staying in rome. the restaurant isn't actually in rome - it's in palestrina, a town around 40 kilometers south of rome (we were staying in palestrina). and it's also actually not called papa's although i can't remember it's real name right now. it's referred to as papa's because it's a family run place first opened by the patriarch who is called, well, papa.

their menu is pretty standard for an italian restaurant, but the prices were really reasonable. almost half those in rome. they had around 5 antipasti, including the usual mozarella and tomatoes, prosciutto and melon... for the primi, first dish, they had a choice of around 20 pasta dishes including the best arrabiata. i also tried their spinach ravioli with butter and sage and it was excellent.

they had around 10 secondi, second dishes, but those were usually pricey - in the 8-15 euro range - so i only had one on our last night there. a grilled cornish game hen. the pizza menu had around 15 choices. these were roman-style pizza with the thinner, crisper crusts. a vegetable section rounded off their menu and from here i tried their assorted grilled vegetables. we also tried their baked cheese once. mmmmmm.

the house wine was really that. they grew their own grapes and made their own wine. and it was very good! at a price for 4 euro a liter, it's hard to imagine anything with better value.

it is a great place where families would go to have dinner. they were really having a ball with my broken, kindergarten italian (but hey, i knew how to order right? haha). once we caught a football game on and were cheering for the home team right along with the rest of the patrons. it is a warm and cozy place to be and we miss it dreadfully.