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 It was a little outdated, but informative: it was fodder for a number of conversations with the "natives" months after.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.