I only want the smell of rain

Days like these
when things don't matter
when you don't matter
when
I only want the smell of rain

of cities & streets
& eyes dreary with sleep
indelible & sublime
swallowed dappled light &
leapt in air, soared

& curled up in love & silk scarves
This is where I belong
in liquid sound
I am going heady with grey
douse me in flowers & sweet tea


______________________________________________________

'So, we have now spent three & a half days in Paris. It's been such a long time since I've sat down & written in this journal, which is strange because I have gone to a great many places & many things have happened since the last entry but somehow nothing has warranted the action of picking up a pen to write. But Paris is something else altogether. 

Even as I write about it, I feel a smile forming & a strange tingling sensation under my skin - I can't help it. For many years I wondered if I loved Paris truly or simply the idea of it, the conglomeration of blurry images & romantic associations pieced together from books & films but when I finally arrived here two years earlier, I knew that I wasn't wrong at all about my intuitions. I remember being bleary-eyed & restless from the flight, but as we rode into the city late in the night, everything felt new because the landscape unfurled willingly at my feet, glowing & resplendent. The city in the day is magical, but at night & in light rain is when I love Paris the best. 

There have been moments before in my life where scenes & moments have stolen my breath & formed images in my mind that stay for a very long time, but Paris two years ago & Paris now are rare instances where the singular scene lengthens into long & beautiful films & last for days. It is a city that resonates deep, within & into my soul. All those beautiful scenes - walking along the love-lock bridge, browsing the tiny bric-a-brac shops by the river Seine, the curly French consonants, smooth like meringue & light as air rising like coffee swirls around us, & yes, all the ugly parts of it too - the dingy backstreets & dusty flea markets, the crummy cafes at St Michel. It is in those places where I can imagine Henry Miller carousing the streets with his ragtag bunch of newspaper men, the Lost Generation writers' bent heads in Sylvia Beach's antiquarian bookstore in the Latin Quarter, & Ezra Pound & Picasso discussing art in Gertrude Stein's house. Paris is all at once a culinary feast, a lovers' destination, an embodiment of art & culture, a sanctuary, a bastion of the finest literature ever written & I love it, I love it all. 

Tomorrow, we leave for Stockholm. After days of French pastries & glasses of wine & bookshops, the Swedish capital feels somewhat drab. But I'll be back soon, it's only a matter of time.'

14/11/2013

Fika

It's a quiet weekend here, for once. The last was spent in Copenhagen, but for now there is no rush to get somewhere, no rush to pack a bag. It's nice to come home, if only for a little while. Ever since the last exam ended & we returned on Tuesday, I've been spending a couple afternoons at my favourite fika place in town: Cafe Berget.

For the past two months, people have been trying to explain the concept of the Swedish tradition of fika to me (& subsequently, I've been trying to explain it to people back home) & basically it's distilled down to the act of having a coffee or tea with pastries in the middle of the afternoon, often with someone else. This is of course a Swedish lifestyle that I welcomed gladly with open arms, throwing myself willingly & over-eagerly into a regular habit of 'fika-ing', so much so that even the most severe sweet-tooth might find himself mortified. But you know what they say: When in Sweden, do as the Swedes do...

There's also something about a Swedish cafe that makes the age-old tradition of tea drinking even more alluring. Its magic is not created by a single defining thing, but a combination of many: the mismatched furniture & haphazard rooms & the melding of tea aromas at the pastry counter. The atmosphere is pleasantly still & one can sit in an armchair for hours reading a book, while the quiet but elegant murmur of Swedish voices swirl around in the surrounding air. I've been to many lovely cafes in Singapore & have had pleasant experiences, but honestly, none has come close to the ones they have here. The Swedish cafes are really something else, altogether :)

Dinner Parties

Now that work has finally come to an end, I've still been busy, albeit in a different way. Like always, my days in a week fill up with plans before Monday even begins, with errands to run for Sweden, ministry-related responsibilities, family dinners & coffee runs with friends (hence the picture of the terrible latte art above from Pies & Coffee). If it's not something, it's another. One thing I've found time to do though, is to host a bunch of dinner parties...!

The amount of work that goes into hosting dinner parties is tremendous, no doubt, but I enjoy every part of it. I love recipe-brainstorming the night before & grocery shopping in the morning, walking through empty aisles & fussing over the right cooking wine or freaking out over the fact that white plums aren't in season any more. I love the hours of preparation in the afternoon, & the kitchen becoming more & more of a frenzy as 7 o'clock draws near, when people start to stream in with drinks & dessert offerings & their beautiful cacophony of voices. I love it all. But why?

A big part of it definitely has to do with the fact that I simply love food & enjoy cooking, & it's undeniable that the feeling one gets from seeing other people enjoy the food you've cooked is great. & there's always that talk about the base human instinct to constantly feed people etc. At the end of the day though, it always boils down to the company. Great food & all its trimmings are well & good, but it always comes down to the people that embody the heart & soul of all dinner parties. It doesn't matter who comes: a close friend, an aunt, a whole horde of youths, or even a ragtag assortment of the above, & it really also doesn't matter if the food is fancy or not. I like the fact that lives can be shared over simple or elaborate fare, over a bowl of homemade pesto or over tender filet mignon with red wine dressing. It's the spirited debate at the antipasti course & the deep conversation over coffee & cake that all of us really enjoy. It's why I truly love dinner parties ;)



Now if only the dishes could magically wash themselves.






P.S. For helpful tips & recipes on how to host lovely dinner parties for any occasion, any of these books are brilliant:

1. How to Feed Your Friends with Relish by Joanna Weinberg - Incredibly practical & no nonsense.
2. Cucina of Le Marche by Fabio Trabocchi - Reinventing Italian cooking while keeping it simple.
3. The Vintage Tea Party Book by Angel Adoree - I love this book. Besides recipes, of course, it contains instructions on how to host the perfect tea/dinner party, from DIY decorations to sporting the right hairstyles. The recipes are slightly fancy & sometimes take a ridiculous amount of work, but if you've got all day, why not?

& just for good measure,

4. Where Shall We Go For Dinner? by Tamasin Day-Lewis - Currently reading & enjoying tremendously.

Un café

THE FACTORY 

22 Lim Tua Tow Road 

Singapore 547772

Spartan & quaint & best of all, hidden. Perfect for ice-cream in summer, or coffee on rainy days. 

Salt-water Taffy, & Jack Kerouac

Some pictures from our visit to Sausalito: the small town across the bay from San Francisco. I love places like these. There's a common atmosphere of, well, home, found in the knick-knack shops, quaint booksellers, & Greek diners with their friendly Greek waitresses.


Also, candy. Nothing says charming seaside town like barrels of candy! Root beer, Key Lime, Sour Raspberry, Caramel, Chocolate Chip Mint... It's a sweet-tooth's paradise. As I said, I could spend all day in a place like this :)