Limau Sunkist, Marmalade dan Merah

>
"Bloody" orange from Palermo, Sicily


I am a fruit person. I must eat fruit everyday. I probably eat more oranges than other fruits and can eat at least 2 oranges a day. Closer to my trip I was eating 4 oranges a day (..trying to make up for the possibility of no fruits and oranges for days onward!). Finally, heeding everyone advice, I forced myself to peek at the local pharmacy for some vitamin supplements ..just in case (I hate supplements! it's more fun to bite real fruits than popping pills!). So I end up with vitamins C and E.

I hate taking those tablets during my travel days. I must have given up a week into the journey, so whenever I have a chance I will buy fruits. In Spain there were many many many heavily-laden orange trees (such a beautiful sights for an orange-crazy person like me) and while our Spanish guides were explaining us the sights (Toledo, Sevilla, Cordoba) I was busy wondering why the heck no one is picking those ripened fruits! :)

When I finally got a chance to ask, we were already in Al-Hambra, Granada (well it's kind of difficult to slip in a question on why no one is picking the oranges - when the guides were explaining to everyone on the history and architecture of the ruins). I was told by our guide Mr. Paco, those are bitter oranges - the kind we made marmalade and that they are more precious than your regular oranges. There goes my eating orange-straight-from-the-tree dream in Spain (he gave me a bitter orange leaf for my scrap book though). I did bought one huge lovely orange in Madrid, but only to accidently leave it behind in the hotel fridge ): Shucks!

Guess how much it cost me for your run-of-the-mill oranges in Rome.. 1 euro for 1 lousy fruit! (However, in Palermo, Sicily-at its busy morning market it cost only euro 30 cents for 2 lovely blood-red orange..a special variety of Sicily - fragrant and juicy too.. (Yes, I took the overnite train all the way to Palermo to visit the morning market to buy just 2 oranges, and as a bonus was given 3 lovely sweet and juicy red lovely tomatoes for FREE :) Well, "free" is a rare term indeed in Europe! But for their generous hearts, albeit "humbler" living conditions, on top of the "godfather" stigma (yes, everybody warned me NOT to go to Sicily - AND I was excited to go there exactly to see that :), I have great respect and good memories of the Sicilians :).

Yesterday, a week upon returning to Malaysia, I forced my lazyself to drive to Bangsar Pasar Malam to get my regular dosage of 20 fresh oranges for the week. Welcome back to consumer-heaven! coz in consumer-frenly Malaysia, it cost me less than 2 euros for 20 fresh oranges!!

I ate 2 oranges for Jinny, the crazy Korean girl I first met in Munchen who told me that when she visited Malaysia, all she did was ate a lot of oranges to make up for the bloody expensive oranges she was deprived off in Korea. Well she even smuggled home some for her mom - as souvenirs :). We shared a nice orange in Paris while having our tuna-salad lunch in front of the Lourve(yes, she stalked me all the way back to Paris! :) - cost us 2 euros for that 1 fruit!

So here's to you Jinny! (I know, I know.. Ireland is so BLOODY expensive :)

I love Malaysia!

(PS: Someone in Bonn is crazy over the color ORANGE, so I'll saved him all the rinds :)