J'aime la France: la vie insulaire
J'aime la France: la véritable âme de la ville
J'aime la France
Today’s expenses:
1270 F for macarons
680 F for cappucino
chips and water ? F
250 F (2) cannelle
First we went to the beach. In the distance, we could see an ever shifting curtain of rain. It could come or it won’t, but we did bring our umbrellas. There was a long narrow wharf and midway, Sam got anxious. It wasn’t rickety but it was gappy. The water below was really clear and blue.
I couldn’t tell when the buildings were made. The Hilton looked like the buildings in Muriel’s Wedding and a quick Google search showed that the movie was made in the 90s, so there you go. But the streets all over the city were in a state of repair and we had to walk our way through a maze of orange cones. Doing pedestrian crossings felt like Russian roulette and finally, we found a supermarket.
We were stumped. We wanted cheese, butter, ice-cream and sorbet. but it was at least 45 minutes walking back to the hotel, so…..
Everyone literally had a baguette under their arm. The bread section held different sorts and we wanted to just stand there and smell it. We figured, we needed a car and then we’d go crazy shopping. So we’ll be back.
Darkness fell fast just like as it was back home. The restaurants were half-empty and we were all Frenched out asking questions so we just went back to the hotel.
We opened the courtesy bottle of brut champagne (an Armand de Brignac) and had it with bags of Lay’s potato chips. That was dinner done.
The morning commute
When I started at my current job, we lived out west which was more or less under 40 kilometers away- but it might have well been 400 for someone who took public transport. I would wake up at 4am, make breakfast (for everyone) when I still ate breakfast, took the train to the city, and from there, took another one south.
The trains then were slow, and not the faster, quieter electric ones we have today. But none of these things- the waiting times, the (small) crowds- mattered to me. They didn’t because I had no other choice. I made the choice to NOT drive.
Those long commutes were actually relaxing; I read books, listened to this then little known singer named Adele.
I’ve been using Uber heavily for the last couple of years because I have this notion, that, ‘it’s saving me time’. But for what exactly I’m not sure. Can I ‘spend’ it? Can I ‘save enough of that time’ and use it for something fantastically miraculous?
So far, I really have nothing to show for (again, choices?) so I thought, the weather has turned cold and dark. The buses are nearly empty. The walk would be good. So here we are…(and listening to Adele still).
The Weekend (in photos)
What did you get for your birthday?? (probably diabetes)
I’ve never had a sweet tooth and still ended up with a whole bunch of sweet treats, some of which I’m offloading to the people at work, and some which I’m having all to myself (the Silvanas).
Small victories
A perfect hollandaise sauce from a first attempt
Finishing a book amidst all the distraction
Taking a nice nap after a go-see of all your current streaming subscriptions and finding nothing worth your while to watch
A clean kitchen for five straight days
30 squats
A couple of Hail Mary’s before you fall asleep
Getting onto Twitter and ‘walking away’ when coming across a MAGA supporter, a Republican, an anti-vaxxer, an LGBTQ+ agitator, a dumb politician, a misogynist, an anonymous, self-righteous white, male boomer, a whinging farmer, a conservative…
‘Walking away’ from purchasing another pair of shoes, jeans and hoodie
Being distracted by other people’s shit
Waking up the next day to a world still somewhat intact
A list
I worked for two consecutive weekends, and it wasn’t like night shifts or repetitious things like on a conveyor belt or something, or that for meals, I had nothing but a pie and a glass of water. It was conducting seminars, smiling a lot, taking nice photos, dinners at this nice restaurant and generally just socialising. A bit of it was physical- but it was no different from, say, cleaning your house. But I was EXHAUSTED. DEAD TIRED. I wonder how I’d survive if I actually needed to work two jobs.
But you learn to pace yourself- two important things; 1) find time to exercise even if it’s no more than 15 min; 2) SLEEP WELL.
Twitter is vicious. Stepping into it without anonymity is both empowering and frustrating.
But who cares right? My gut feel is that the world is ending, and all these things that have trapped everyone into a never-ending combat of words is pointless.
I keep telling myself, step out of it- do you. Care for yourself alone and the people you love.
I asked a couple of questions over at ChatGPT…
7. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.
8. Found a new fried chicken place called Peach’s Hot Chicken
Wednesday's List
My siblings posted photos of the kids’ Valentine's Day dates on our family chat account- time flies. But I still feel the same though I doubt if I still look the same.
Have yet to find an available booking for a root canal; might use the money instead for some facial treatments.
People sometimes act strange. The good thing about it is that I don’t really consider them good/close friends, so I’m never really obliged to ask why. It’s good sometimes to go about your day just doing you.
It’s certainly hard to make (real) friends after a certain age, but I don’t mind. After all, I only made some well into my mid to late 20s and I can definitively say that friendship can be over-rated.
Back into semi-serious body-training again. Ugh.
It came and we waited...
I had to Google it- ‘how different is a typhoon from a cyclone’?.
Turns out they’re the same, with the name difference based on location.
But they don’t feel the same- and I should know, having been the veteran of a hundred or so typhoons since I was a baby. The year I was born (and I’m not telling you the year), a succession of strong typhoons inundated most parts of the island of Luzon. The deluge was such that BongBong M’s daddy intoned while surveying the damage from a helicopter, ‘“For the first time, the waters of Manila Bay linked up with those of Lingayen Gulf...”
Years later, older and not necessarily wiser, I had spent the night drinking in a friend’s house as a typhoon raged, not realizing that the worst was yet to come after I had passed out in their living room. When I woke up, nearly all the trees and power lines in Naguilayan were down. Our narra tree, planted the year Binky was born (I think) had fallen and I managed to crawl through it and get inside our house and pretend that I was home during the night.
When I came to New Zealand, it was a pleasant surprise to realise that there was virtually nothing in nature that could kill you. If you were harmed, it was basically because you made the decision to swim through the rip-tides, walk through the bush without telling anyone, or climb up a mountain unequipped with the right gear.
Nothing in this country was actually hostile until the weather started to change. And change it did, and now we have tornados (killed a Filipino worker a few years back) and cyclones that could be coming more frequently.
The topography of Auckland is strange because just over 40kms away from where we live- and that’s not a great distance- there were massive flooding and landslips, while we actually had none. But we didn’t take any chances even if what we did wasn’t much- I filled the bathtub with water in case the water supply was cut off, filled empty soda bottles with drinking water, kept my more expensive shoes away from windows, cooked an extra pot of rice…
And we waited as the slow-ass cyclone (moving at a glacial pace of 11kms per hour) made its way down. I set the alarm at 4am which would have been the time where it was nearest to Auckland. I slept through it and was woken up by the cat at 5am who wanted so badly to pee (we closed the laundry door to prevent the rain from going through the cat flap).
Everything was quiet. The house was intact. And I was in the middle of a dream where I was cooking Peking Duck, so I went back to sleep.
$21.20 per hour
How much of your daily life is really yours?
It’s beginning to dawn on me, that Saturday is the only day that I get full possession of my life.
I wake up anytime I want and have ditched setting alarms. If I wake up at noon, then so be it (I never do). I do a quick check of the phone charging overnight on my bedside table. If it’s nothing urgent, I just leave it there. I avoid reacting to the news. If a comet had crashed into the earth in the middle of the night, there’s nothing we could have done. We’ll get painlessly pulverised in our sleep hopefully, and be mercifully eternally bound in whatever dreams we’re in.
Coffee. Then another coffee. A great bowel movement. Shower. I put on my face- serum, moisturiser, sunscreen if we needed to go out somewhere. Unlike weekdays where I don’t eat any breakfast, we either eat out or have some old favourites like Spam and rice, pancakes, a well-buttered toast.
Then it’s chores. The week’s laundry in batches; coloreds, whites and delicates. There is some sort of weird comfort in the washing cycle- wash, soak, rinse, spin. I love doing laundry because it echoes life. I’m perpetually organising my clothes, my shoes. I think of the week ahead and mentally put together outfits. I feel that I have too much. I also feel that I never seem to have enough.
I think about dinner because more than likely, there is something that I’d like to eat, something I’d like to cook that I’ve been planning for the whole week.
For this Saturday, it’s a simple roast chicken but done the way this restaurant in Paris does it. They only use a small portion of the breast and serve it with a hefty shaving of black truffles and bearnaise sauce.
I won’t be putting shaved truffles on it, but I was thinking of making bearnaise sauce (you can check out a YouTube video of how Le Clarence makes its roast chicken here).
But by midday, I’d changed my mind about the bearnaise sauce; we had gone to the Asian store, but I had completely forgotten to get white wine vinegar and shallots. Maybe some other time then.
The only thing unusual with the way the restaurant roasts its chicken is that it’s placed inside a dutch casserole and then placed in the oven; it’s then taken out at regular intervals where it’s basted with its own juices. Towards the end when it has browned, you put in butter, garlic cloves and fresh rosemary, basting it again over and over until it’s done.
This forces me to always check the clock.
The done part was about 45 minutes more than the usual way I roast chicken. I make a salad out of leftover romaine lettuce. I’ve taken out buns from the freezer and defrosted them. I make a normal gravy with chicken cubes and buttered roux. We start to eat at 6:15 pm, later than usual, but in the middle of summer, it feels more like noon.
The chicken is much more noticeable moist than usual though. It’s delicious actually though I detect a hint of bitterness from the rosemary; perhaps I put too much.
What next? I feel like doing something and automatically, I try to look for the time. It’s always, do I have enough time??
I stop myself and make a drink (gin and tonic, which I don’t normally do) instead.
New Year's Resolutions list (1)
Schedule that goddamned root canal
Clean and re-season the iron skillet
Look at getting a new food processor
Look at either signing up at a gym or updating your fitness equipment
Sort your clothes for real (give them away to the Salvation Army)
More cardio
Go see a dermatologist
Increase your vegetable intake
Aim to read more (start on the books you already have)
Less of the bad fat
Start writing again please, even if it’s in small batches
What do you have planned for 2023?
Hope springs eternal as they say, so even if I enter 2023 with not enough money (it’s never enough isn’t it?) or personal accomplishment (where’s that novel huh?) or abs (my thighs have grown muscular though), I have an (over) abundance of hope- and the will to try, and try again.
As I’ve always said, if you’ve stopped trying or fallen behind a certain threshold of trying, you might as well check out (not literally).
T'was NOT the night before Christmas
I don't wanna...
Cook dinner and then sit on the couch feeling bloated while doing the daily Quordle
Read, tweet, react to politics of any kind. I want to take a vacation from all that
Read, tweet, react on anything Elon Musk
Think about anyone at work and what they do or feel or think. I want to take a vacation from all that
Believe that time is slipping away. It’s NOT.
Tuesday
Got my Twitter account restored. I’ve been contacting Twitter support for months with ZERO response until Elon Musk came in and in less than 30 seconds, was able to login with a new confirmed email address. The guy’s a TWAT, but he must be doing something right, like firing incompetent, sanctimonious Twitter staff who can’t even solve simple technical issues.
The Daily List
My friend L, speaks of having of having isolated herself ‘from almost everyone I care about and I'm not a part of any organization or circle that I can call my tribe’. The funny thing is that I’ve done that willingly. I found in New Zealand, a life where you can opt to opt out and you’re not judged by it. Filipino culture just makes that impossible I think.
I don’t object to having friends, but they’re really rare to come by. I’ve worked with some people for over a decade and I still consciously would not consider them friends. I’m always friendly and open with my opinions, and apparently generous, but when I get home, it’s a life I don’t really share in its entirety- I never have, and I probably never will. I’m always present sure, but when I’ve exited the building, I’m gone.
How do you find a friend? I’ve found the very precious few that I have by accident or circumstance.
Struggling to write the last couple of years (the last two decades actually), I’ve thought of enrolling in some creative writing classes which I thought would be getting two birds in one stone; you get inspiration to write, and you might get to meet like-minded people who can possibly, become friends. Get to belong to a community of writers. The fees however are a bit expensive.
I meant to do NaNoWriMo this month..and failed again. Mmmm. I have this story idea about domestic cats empowered by a strange force to help humans fight against an invading alien species.
The week that was (in images + a video)
Love/Hate
HATE
Gaurav Sharma, a quack, hack, and a major TWAT
The US Federal Reserve and the fucking, goddamned American dollar
Having to wait years for the next seasons of streaming shows
People who are easily brain-washed
Costco New Zealand; waste of money
LOVE
Taylor Swift’s new album (finally, bitch GROWS UP).
My new Apple devices :-)
Conceding that spending so much money at Christmas is, well, a waste of money
American Costco (if you want garish consumerism, then do it right. Do it the American way).
Climate change; WE’RE ALL GOING DOWN, no one is exempt