The Familiar

A friend posted this on Facebook recently; and while I hardly look at things people post anymore, the still image made my eyes go wide. TOLBIAC. That's my Metro stop. That's where I live. Lovely video. The travel bug bites again.



Splitscreen: A Love Story from JW Griffiths on Vimeo.

Happiness in a bar

Ohhhh joy.

Seeing this candy bar in the supermarket made me giddy on two levels. First, the obvious: it's white chocolate and it has SPECULOOS - my breakfast, lunch and dinner of choice! And second, the not so obvious: in Tagalog, "galak" means "extreme happiness." Nestlé, you went out of your way to speak my two tongues, I thank you. But, that's not the only thing that gave me galak this week.

I also got my French recipe/spellbook from Amazon earlier than expected; and even with the little wrinkle on the cover it was not as battered as I thought. (I placed an order for a "comme neuf" or "like new" book so it was half price and I prepared myself for the worst.) Isn't it lovely? I was shocked to realize I could understand most of it, save for the occasional word even H hasn't heard of. C'est drôle, quoi.

Last Tuesday we walked up and down Paris to catch the Fête de la Musique performances, and we crawled back to bed at two in the morning. We were treated to a myriad of melodic styles - jazz, club, medieval, punk. A friend was with a group of Pinoys who gave Parisians a dose of Manila sound in the most unlikely of places: the archaic thoroughfare in front of a gothic church in the Marais district. Around sunset (about ten p.m.) we wound up at the canal Saint Martin, hungry and waiting for some friends who were coming from Republique. While waiting for our crepe sarrasins, H and I danced to the samba music coming from a steel drum orchestra along the banks. A few minutes later we made our way through four drunken street rave parties and I had to wear my helmet to avoid the flinging fists at Point Ephemere. (To great comedic effect.)

The following day, we saw Paris through the eyes of the impressionists at a free exhibit at Hotel de Ville, or City Hall. Paintings from Musee D'Orsay were on loan for the occasion and we saw the evolution of the city in dreamlike pastels. My favorite were the Henri-Toulouse Lautrec drawings dripping with sex, drawn as they were by a man who had moved into a maison close - a prostitution house.

From Ibiblio.org

Moviegoing is an expensive pastime here, so I was full of galak when I found out that one of the perks of summer was Fête du Cinema. We've been to eight movies so far (and two more this coming Thursday), the first at full price and then the rest at three euros a ticket. For some divine reason, the three movies we saw on the first day were about writers, the power of the written word and writing in beautiful, romantic Paris.

Relax, see a movie... or eight.

Limitless, about a novelist turning to drugs to get over debilitating writer's block; Midnight in Paris, about an insecure writer thinking of moving to Paris, but Paris in the rain in the 1920s; and Omar m'a Tuer, about a non-French speaking foreigner wrongfully convicted of murder and saved by the publication of a writer's independent investigation; and then there was The Hangover 2, which was about nothing, really, but I could totally relate about Bangkok. It's crazy and it could be scary, but they also have galak in bars.

Get Your Fête Wet!

It's the first day of summer! And the longest day of the year! (But talking figuratively, it was April 5th, my prefecture meeting, mheh.) In these parts that means Fête de la Musique!

I used to go to the "Fête" gigs in Manila, and now I can really get into the spirit of things.

One of the best things about Paris are the buskers, the street musicians and graffiti artists. When my family was here they were treated to a brass band concert at the Pompidou. Got my brother to shell out 10 euros for the CD. They heard musicians in the Metro and in the tree lined avenues. Music and art are everywhere,  you only have to step outside.

Belgian singer Selah Sue on the steps of the Sacre Coeur.

If you did that in the Philippines, a security guard would shoo you away. In Manila, that's called mendicancy.

The bad news is that it's been raining for 2 weeks and the meteo took back its earlier forecast of sunny weather because it's obviously not happening - in Paris, at least. But we're still taking the scooter, weather and RER strikes be damned, for the love of musique and a lack of better things to do.

Summer Lovin'

A friend asked last Friday what we were planning to do on Saturday. "Farniente?" she suggested, which means to relax or do nothing. I said "Yep, farniente tous les jours," relax every day!

We woke up around noon today, as usual. It's Sunday so the street market was downstairs and H volunteered to get fresh baguette, croissants, fruits, and whatever my heart desired. My heart yearned for a Paris-Brest, which is basically sugar posing as pastry.

But H came back home with much more: Plump cherries, succulent strawberries, a fragrant melon plus a tall bouquet of flowers.

Happy hormones shooting up.

To reward the man, I made shrimp scampi for lunch with what we had at home. This required some help from my friend in the terrace, Elvis Parsley.

Yeah, I name the plants. You should meet Toni Basil. She's been flowering lately, so I'm happy for her.

Anyway, we had this while watching Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay, and it made my cooking look soooo much better. Not that it needed any help...

It tasted a helluva lot better than it looks here. For once I didn't overcook the shrimps (maybe because they were gigantic, too). You can't see them so well because I finished the giant onion leftover from yesterday's siopao sauce experiment.

I wanted to go see the Impressionist exhibit at the Hotel de Ville since it's gratuit (free), but the weather was acting up so we might swing by on Tuesday before we catch the acts performing for Fête de la Musique.

Speaking of Fête de la Musique, the building had it's own yesterday night and some friends sang and played guitar. H was pulled in to play percussion and it brought out the stage wife in me a teeny bit, especially when I heard the first notes to "Paint It Black." I was facing east but I could spy the sunset from where I sat, and caught the first twinkle of light from the Tour Eiffel reflected in one of the windows. I got a bit drunk from glass after glass of champagne so I stepped out for some fresh air in the balcony and dove into the chilly night, while fireworks exploded across the dark firmament as Paris welcomed summer.

But to be honest, it feels like autumn again.

Grès Anatomy

I had been meaning to go to the Bourdelle Museum to see the Madame Grès exhibit for a while, but when I stopped seeing the posters around Paris I figured the exhibit must have ended. WRONG. I saw the posters again this week at St. Germain after hanging out with a friend at Les Deux Magots (je sais, so tourist-y). Now I know for sure the exhibit will be around for a few more weeks, until August 28 exactly - our wedding anniversary.

So, now, this is the part where I explain why I want to go. Everyone knows I'm in no way a fashionista, but while I was researching the gown I wanted to wear to my wedding I came across Madame Grès.

From Paris.fr.

 
I love her signature Graecian silhouette. She makes women look like goddesses taking some time off from their altars; flowing and graceful, like living sculptures. It came as no surprise then, to learn that she was also a sculptress.

I mean, how lovely is this? From Trendland.net.

It may seem like a stretch to combine the hellenistic spirit of her aesthetic into the Filipiñana gown we all know, but I found a designer who was willing to work with my unorthodox idea. Hence, my dual- function detachable dress.

With my mom, minutes before the wedding.

J'adore the draping around the waist :) If only it wasn't so long!

Too bad I couldn't fit into it anymore, heheh.

Fudams*

While cleaning my bedside table, I found a dot matrix printout of a recipe my mom gave me before I left. I made a few adjustments according to my memory of how we used to do it at home.

Roasted chicken a la Stripeysocks.

The condiments were something I picked up from my brother. One thing I learned by doing this in Paris is that lemons are no substitute for good ol' calamansi.

I've also risen up to the challenge of my beaux-frères to make a 6-layered gateau Petit Lu, a cake that has as any versions as there are families in France. They usually ask for it on their birthdays, but my belle-mère has a hard time putting the soft stacks of cookies on top of each other so she either flat out refuses them or makes a 4-layer cake instead of a 6-layer one. So belle-mère gave me the family recipe on our last visit and wished me "bonne chance." Sadly, I think I rushed the process because my butter cream was too "liquide" but it wasn't sooo bad.

Candy, chocolate, coffee and butter all in one bite!

 Speaking of food -

I've been starved for books these past months. H bought me the unofficial guide to France, "Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong" by Nadeau and Barlow back in September saying I have to study what it's like to be French now. It was a little outdated, but informative: it was fodder for a number of conversations with the "natives" months after.

The Diana Wynne Jones book I ordered in December through FNAC (along with a Monty Python box set) encountered some delays because it was shipped from the UK, but it got here eventually...  in January. Winning a bet against H bagged me an H.P. Lovecraft compilation and Susanna Clarke's "Ladies of Grace Adieu" (minus 2 euros for a little scratch on the cover) from Galignani - all three I finished by February.

Being a book slut, I'm not happy unless I'm reading two or three books at the same time. My friend, Agay, sent me "Almost French" by Sarah Turnbull; which I'm in the middle of at the moment. I'm finishing Kerouac's "On The Road" and Michael Chabon's "Gentlemen of the Road" but I'm starting to get anxious about my next fix... Although, the books I should be opening are my French study books (of which I got plenty).

So, I hit upon this genius solution to study French while reading something more entertaining than my drill books: I decided to get "Les recettes amoureuses d'un sorciere" through Amazon. It's a lovely vintage style recipe book adorned by various ephemera. I'm supposed to get it in a week or two, fingers crossed, and while I'm waiting, I also thought I could practice with H's romans (novels) lying around the house.

Great excuse to start reading Murakami. But it's bound to be a hard read so I expect to quit after an hour... maybe less. When I told H, he shoved a copy of Daniel Pennac's "Au bonheur des ogres" in my hands. The cover is cute, reminds me of Quentin Blake. Imma give myself one year to finish it.

*Fudam - Pinoy gay lingo for food.

The Wedding Video

This is just a repost, just thought I should add it in here now that I know how to embed :)

To our loved ones - especially those unable to go to the wedding, here's what went down:

Our Modern Luuuurve from Dumonster on Vimeo.

This video was supposed to be screened for the first time at our wedding last year but I didn't have the chance to finish it; were so busy creating new memories that eventually made it to the final edit.

This is a private video, meant for close friends only. No copyright infringement was intended in the use of Bloc Party's "This Modern Love" - it's just that the song fits our story so perfectly.

And to my editor friends - I have primitive editing software (which required guesswork pa!), so please go easy on me! I used to edit better than this :D

I "Velib" I can Fly

I've mentioned a few times before that I've been trying to learn to bike since April by borrowing bikes from friends. My problem with those bikes were the seats, which were too far from the ground so I had to tiptoe before I could pedal off; but no, I couldn't pedal off. Yesterday, we tried the public bike system Velib' (finally!) which are bulky and a little heavy but the seats could be adjusted low enough for my groin.

Velib' is a combination of vélo (bike) and liberté (freedom). It gives cyclists the liberty to take a bike from one station in Paris and deposit it in another part of the city at the super low price of 1 euro per hour, 5 euros for a week or free for 30 minutes (conditions apply).

I took the bike for a spin on the frenetic streets outside our apartment - the street poles, trees and pedestrians providing an organic obstacle course. I wobbled about for the first 30 minutes, all the while with H behind me shouting like the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket -- hand to god! -- I shushed him a couple of times until, ultimately, I could ride the bike without him holding me up. There are no words to describe the giddy feeling of freedom from those first few seconds after cracking the skill that had eluded me for years. It was like discovering the atom, cosmic radiation, fire, King Tut's tomb! I hardly breathed.

My biggest enemy were the parking poles which seemed to magnetically attract the Velib, but I was occasionally able to break just in time thanks to my life-saving and completely rational fear of falling and cracking my skull. I hit a wall, a parked car, some poles and a pile of garbage harmlessly after. However, I got a little ahead of myself one time, proverbial Icarus on a bike, thinking I was competent enough to make a turn around a tree.

From flickr

Now, if you've seen pictures of the streets here, you might have noticed the metal framework that surrounds the trees. It was one of these grills that ensnared the front wheel of the Velib, making me fly off the bike in a move that ended with a powerslide minus the air guitar. I checked my bruised and bloodied knees then dusted myself off and got on the bike again, with drill master sergeant H all up in my bizness for not using the breaks - as if I did it on purpose. Hmpf! A few minutes later, my leg got trapped between the bike and a pole, H chewed me out for not being careful, and some pedestrians ran away when they saw me coming - except for one elderly gentleman who helped me avoid a busking accordionist.

from kweeper

I was hoping I could learn how to bike accident free, but maybe it was coming to me. There are experiences you try to put off for fear that you will get hurt, but delaying sometimes only makes you fear it more without necessarily helping you master what's to happen... and most of the time you end up being hurt just the same.

I'm looking at you, Mr. Band-Aid Procrastinator.

May, you bloom and grow

Painting the outside.

Wow. Where did the time go?

I just realized it's June and I only wrote one entry for May. Team H&M has been way too busy the last few weeks. We've been repairing the flat bit by bit, putting stuff in moving boxes, pool-cleaning, gardening, preparing for visa appointments, and for the most part meandering about now that we are both work-free until the unforeseeable future.

Finishing the tiles... after ten years.

We hitched a ride with my brother in law, L, to Gigouzac in mid-May and filled the car with H's old law books, ski clothes and cassette tapes so we could start clearing the flat and storing things in my in-laws' attic. But we took a little detour at the Gendarmerie following a high-speed chase at the A10, when a grey-haired man banged into our car and swerved for a getaway... except the toll gates were just a few meters away and as soon as he stopped to pay the fee, H and L jumped out of the car and accosted the mofo who refused to get out of his car. It was scary but so outré that it was also funny, in the bizarro way that I find things funny.

We went to the gendarme to report the life-threatening incident.
Sadly, there wasn't much they could do except log it in
and suggest that the insurance cover the damage.
An hour of our lives lost.

Unfortunately, the dynamic duo were unable to detain the culprit long enough for the highway patrol to arrive, guns blazing, calling for an end to the violence. The grey-haired man was able to drive away when L went back to the car for his license and H was left there shouting and slapping the old guy in the face (if he had glove-slapped the guy it would have made my year). I wish I had brought the video camera, just so I could splice it into some home movies of when these two were kids and then - boom! And grandma would proudly sigh: My, how they've grown.

That night we had a special treat. My father-in-law popped open a bottle of 1971 cognac previously guarded by H's granddaddy. It was sweet and showed signs of being better with age (just like me). It was just a taste of what was to come the next day, as we volunteered to pick up some boxes of rosé (the beverage of choice in the summer) from their favored chateau in Le Lot.

Lunch is served.

After lunch, H and I went on a ride with his father to Chateau Ponzac, which sits on a hill supposedly 30 minutes away from our little hamlet in the midi-Pyrenees. But we got a little lost in the small provincial roads and arrived an hour after we left the house.

We were greeted by the owner, Matthieu, whose grape-stained hands betrayed that he'd been working in the vignoble (vineyard) recently. He asked us to follow him to the cave (wine cellar), which literally was a finely-lit cave underground, with a mouth that opens onto a view of the valley and his vineyard below. He opened three bottles from his latest triptych of wines, all fathered by a single variety of grape, planted in three different kinds of soil to extract varying characteristics from the vine. He explained the science and the art of growing wine as a scientist and as an artist. You punish the grapes in the sun, starve it in the rocks, and force it to struggle to survive - and out of its suffering you harvest this liquid gold. But if you cut them down too early or too late you get cat's piss.

When Matthieu went back to his house for a cold bottle of rosé we would later finish in the sunshine, his trop mignonne (super cute) daughter came up to me and handed me wild flowers she had picked from the entrance of the cave.

The following day we chauffeured H's four year old niece to the Haut Pyrennees, back to her mom. Having a kid in the back seat meant he wasn't able to curse out other drivers, but we did almost hit a low-flying bird so that was exciting. It was a three hour drive and by 12 noon we were 30 minutes away from the house - but we were just so hungry, all the little girl had to do was mention McDonald's and we were out of the highway and driving through Lourdes, looking for the golden arches. I know it's not the thing you feed children, but we'd been Big Mac-free for 3 months!

Back in the car, she wasted no time to play with her Happy Meal toy, which by no stretch was a child's plaything. It was a little box with a card that played Jason Derulo's Whatcha Say when you stick it in the slot. After a few minutes little J had learned to mimic the English lyrics, and I must admit it was cute ("wawawawawa shi ri saaaah") - but that song sure was not.

After dropping her off, we went back to Lourdes to carry out a four year old errand my mother had sent me on.

I went to Europe the first time in 2007, and since then my mom has been pushing me to go to Lourdes for miracle water. I've been to France three times since and I finally made it to the pilgrimage site.

The basilica on top of the grotto.

The second tier.  Inside the basilica are a number of mini-chapels
where masses in different languages are held at the same time.

In high school I wrote a book report on The Song of Bernadette,
little knowing I would one day visit the same foothills in the Pyrenees. 

The sick are carried to the grotto in carriages.

A candle for a miracle.

Gave de Pau River.

It flows from the Pyrenees and through Lourdes. 

An evening parade.

No visit is complete without a trip to the gift shop.

That same day we rushed over to Toulouse for aperitifs with a friend of his and we hardly had time to walk around the "pink city." I did have a second chance a week later, when my mother in-law had a yearly Restos du Coeur regional meeting.

There are little map tiles like this around the city, if you are ever lost.
And I got some espadrilles too, by the way.

We woke up at 7.30 in the morning for the 2-hour drive, and H got an earful from his mom about his daredevil driving. (At last! Backup!) The main office was right smack in the center of the red light district so I got to see hookers, waiting to bait some last minute business. The one we talked to wasn't very helpful when we asked her why the door to the parking lot wasn't working. She just looked at us, all bored. After dropping off H's mom, I finally got to see Toulouse on foot.

The Capitole, where rugby fans celebrated the city's win just last saturday.

It was also where a man gave us unsolicited travel tips
in a language H hardly understood.

The locals used to speak Occitan, and we met an old-timer who talked to us in a language that was a mix of French and Catalan that we later realized was the forbidden tongue, outlawed in the 1880s because "la langue de la République est le français." Now, hardly anyone speaks it anymore, which is a darned pity. Spanish sounds so sexy.

Street signs in both French and Occitan. They've done the same in French Basque.

Toulouse is also known as the ville rose or pink city, owing to the signature "pink" color of the bricks used for the city's architecture. It looks magical at sunset (which was how I first saw it a week earlier), almost too pretty to be true. However, it looks more orange than pink to me.

Toulouse, giving new meaning to La Vie en Rose.

17th and 18th century frescoes in the Carmelite chapel.

The Saint Sernin, home of the most beautiful pipe organ in France.

The most beautiful pipe organ in France. There was a funeral and we sat through the homily about impermanence.

In lieu of street signs, people used to find out where they were by looking up and seeing these carved on the walls.

Not before long we were hungry and cranky so we looked for a restaurant that served local specialties (the Toulouse sausage mainly). After walking for what seemed like decades, H was finally seduced by the menu at Monsieur Georges, whose tables spilled out into the street and through the Place Saint-Georges that breezy afternoon.

The food seemed a bit pretentious but was good, except for the little grains of sand I found in my salad (quality control, people!). But it dawned on H that the traditional restaurant we were looking for was just a few steps away... right after we gave the waitress at M. Georges our orders.

DANG!

By 2pm we went back to pick up H's mom and it was back to Gigouzac for us.

During our stay at the in-laws' I had personal projects (studying français and finishing the wedding video) and a couple of assignments: making adobo and menudo, setting the table when I'm not cooking, picking out flowers for the garden, and helping clean the pool. We were there for two weeks and we managed to finish the pool job in 4 days. I got to play with the water compressor thingamabob and zapped the pool-side mildew to kingdom come.

One afternoon I had run out of things to do and I put it in my head that I could take a swim. It's been 20 years since I last tread water, paranoia has kept me away from beaches and pools for two decades so this was a big deal for me. H was trying to finish The Saboteur with his younger brother in the garage so I didn't have a lifeguard. Anyway, I didn't care. It was an exceptionally hot day (32 deg?) and I wanted to get wet. I think I stood in the water for an hour before I worked up the courage to wade around. The good news is, I could finally get from one end of the pool to another without walking - the bad news is, I can't float. If I were Virginia Woolf, I wouldn't need stones.

So that was pretty much my month of May. On our last day in Gigou, we took the quad and rode around the tiny town. There were painters in front of the church we got married in, but they wouldn't return my wave. The farmers were a little more friendly, though they were maybe 15 meters away. The weather was not the best for riding around, pregnant clouds hung about, but it made the forest look all the more enchanting. The last time I explored it was on foot in the fall, but the bright green colors of spring in the grey atmosphere lent a strange luminescence to the verdure. It's one more thing I'm going to miss about this country: how it changes so much while it manages to stay the same.