Apparently Pete Doherty pissed off his French fans by cancelling his Paris shows… twice. This very angry girl, who spent 6 hours on the train to get to Paris from Grenoble, shows us that the word ‘fuck‘, like ‘cool‘ or ‘Coca Cola‘, is universal and extremely handy in situations like this. I’d stay away from her for a couple of days. I loves it, loves it when the French rant !
(seen and swiped from darkglobe.fr)
Currently listening to:
Crystal Castles
Crystal Castles
My iLust list:
1. Boss RC-20 Loop Station
2. Winkie tin robot
3. iPod socks
4. Trimm Trabs (I have a very old pair that I still haven’t thrown out)
5. Zub 20 Zot Watch
6. Sushi keychains
7. Paper robots
Dammit. So many pretty things on the web. Must stop surfing.
Currently listening to:
Mono
One Step More And You Die
In France last year, Julien’s mum, his sister and I went to Sephora, where I grudgingly exchanged euros for make-up brushes, eyeshadow, mascara, and a whole bunch of other stuff that came in different colours and bottles.
You’d think that I would’ve already known how to put on make-up. Well, I didn’t, at that time. My sister Dr. Doom, who “knows” these things, never really partook in the art of female bonding make-up sessions with me. It wasn’t like I would have joined her anyway. My mother’s concept of make-up is simple: Less is more, meaning, who cares if you put some on? You can scratch out events like proms or weddings, because I never attended prom, and my wedding planning was so lousy it was so obvious that make-up would be the last thing on my mind.
So last year, I started learning how to apply make-up. How hard could it be? I wasn’t a stranger to painting, so it couldn’t be that difficult. It’s like painting your face, right? I spent about 30 minutes in front of the mirror, painting and erasing and repainting. Then, I went out into the hallway and ran smack into Julien.
“What do you think?” I said, twirling.
“So cool!” he marveled. “You look like the one in Pirates of the Carribean! Damn, what’s the name?”
I said “Kiera Knightly” at the same time he said “Captain John Sparrow”.
—
***Procrastination at its best. I’m supposed to be packing since we’re leaving for France in 14 hours, and I haven’t even started.
Currently listening to:
Portishead
Third
One thing I care very much about is my iPod. I love the damn icon of consumerism to bits. Music! Video! Photos! Everywhere I go! I watched episodes of Happy Tree Friends on it while I was waiting for my driver’s license to be printed out, and by the end of three episodes there were about 5 Indian men laughing over my shoulder, watching along. Only an iPod can bond people that way - with cute, pastel-coloured cartoon characters plunging to violent deaths.
A few weeks back I discovered that I could, finally, drive while listening to music. This was a breakthrough for me, as when I started driving I required absolute silence. So now I have the iPod on shuffle each time, rediscovering so many songs I’d forgotten I loved. And discovering so many badass ones, as well.
I was on my way to Doha Golf Club earlier, and above me was a beautiful sky, and before me was a long stretch of road, with hardly any cars, empty roundabouts and so many beautiful songs. I think driving is a welcome escape for people for whose hearts do somersaults to a song that knocks them off their feet.
Currently listening to:
Marissa Nadler
Songs lll: Bird on the Water
Dukhan
Beep & Bop, my Uglydoll keychain, suntanning
Beach finds
Currently listening to:
Syd Matters
Syd Matters
When our plane landed in Detroit, the Americans in the flight started clapping their hands, perhaps overjoyed at the sight of snow outside the windows.
The French woman from across the aisle nudged me, showing me the card we needed to fill for customs. “Do you think we need to declare cheese or saucisson here?” I remembered I had two packs of saucisson (one for my family, one for me, hehe) in my luggage, and I shrugged and ticked the box indicating that I had meat or meat products. The lady did the same.
Bug-eyed and pissed off at the prospect of taking yet another plane, I collected my bags and handed my form to the Customs guy. “Hold on,” he said, second-glancing my form. “What’s this product you declared?”
“Saucisson,” I told him. “Dried sausage, the kind you get in France.”
“Sausages. That’s meat, eh? Hmmm.” This guy was a real rocket scientist. “Thank you for declaring this, ma’am. I’ll have to ask you to go thru that counter on your right…”
After having to explain again what saucisson was to the woman who was wearing gloves and going thru my bag, she extracted the precious saucisson packages, which were harmless and delicious, my comfort food. “Thank you for declaring these, ma’am. We really appreciate it. If you hadn’t declared them, you could have been fined up to 300 USD.” She gave me a huge, warm smile, and emphatically dumped the packages into a huge garbage can.
It took all my efforts to not scramble over the counter and retrieve them.
After the bag check, the equally-upset French woman fell into step with me. “They’ll probably be feasting on my fromage and saucisson later,” she said bitterly. As we rounded the corner, she sighed and said, “Well, at least they will have a taste something wonderful and delicious for once, no?”
Ah, the French. You can strip them of their fromages or saucissons at customs, but they will only end up pitying American food.
Currently listening to:
Iron & Wine
The Shepherd’s Dog
Currently listening to:
Battles
Mirrored
I haven’t forgotten how beautiful this city is, but being here is different from remembering what it’s like. Like yesterday, when I was in the Metro, I found myself reverting to the old habits, like automatically boarding the second carriage, and taking the foldable seat next to the door. I realised how nice it was to people watch, wondering what people were thinking, making up stories of where this person was going and what kind of book he/she liked to read. Or like yesterday, at the bus stop, some people were smoking and stamping their feet to shrug off the cold, and the smell of the cold and the smoke reminded me of those winters when Julien and I would walk to the nearest tabac in the snow to buy cigs.
It started to rain as I walked to the metro station from Julien’s grandmother’s flat. I passed that little store that sells second-hand Japanese goods, then turned the corner and passed the Korean store, and looked over the building tops to see the Eiffel Tower against a backdrop of gray clouds.
I walked all the way to Rue du Commerce and had lunch at a Chinese traiteur. I sort of missed the taste of the Frenchified Chinese food, which is what I used to eat all the time when I was living in Paris and couldn’t be bothered to cook.
And then I went to a local Monoprix, where I made a tour of the aisles and found myself remembering our usual grocery list… the grilled chicken that come in those paper packs, the jambon cru, the saucisson, the crab sticks.
Browsing the alcohol section, I marveled at how different countries and cultures can be, and how we slowly adapt to wherever it is we find ourselves in, no matter how hard we try to resist. I guess that when you move around quite a bit like we do, you don’t really lose a home, but end up adding a new one to the list.
The other day, I bought a pair of scissors that hairdressers use. I found them at the pharmacy in the mall. “Thinning scissors?” I mused aloud, which made the Chinese pharmacist come over. “It’s used for shearing your hair.”
“Shearing?”
“You know, thinning your hair at the ends.” She touched her perfectly-thinned hair tips.
“Thinning scissors, then.” I was overcome with a sense of power. I can thin the ends of my hair!
A few hours later, Julien came home from work and gaped at me while I twirled for his benefit. “What did you do to you hair! It’s uneven!”
“I bought thinning scissors!” I snapped it several times infront of his face, hoping to impress.
That was the last time I saw my thinning scissors. He hid it somewhere, and I didn’t have the time to look for it before my flight to Paris.
For several days now I’ve had the same headache; some terrible pounding behind my eyes. I always wake up with it, and though I want to start the day right — breakfast, work, shower, Jeopardy on tv — I find myself staying much longer in bed than usual, holding my head and willing the pain to stop. This happens sometimes, during certain periods I think, but I have yet to crack the code to these mysterious immobilizing headache incidents.
Nevertheless, I forced myself to go to City Center yesterday, this mall that isn’t too far from where I live. I figured I’d need a change of environment. Boy, what a mistake that was. Some radar probably picked up that I was heading there, so all of Doha decided to join me and stink up the whole parking lot as well. I spent damn near 20 minutes circling the parking lot looking for two empty parking spaces, since I’m too chicken to park between two cars, as I’m not too confident in my parking skills at all yet.
Afterwards I walked up and down the mall feeling lonelier with each step. There is something depressing being in an enclosed space full of neon lights. If only City Center had a decent bookstore, like Villagio’s Virgin Megastore, then it would be a great place to hang out. But City Center is a huge building filled with nothing interesting at all; and it’s the only place I feel confident enough driving to. So I guess I’m stuck in Uninteresting Land.
I shot down the idea of a movie, of going to Carrefour, of looking for a bag. I have this huge yellow bag I bought last year; it’s so huge, you could fit your cat and its litter of nine in it and still have some space for car spare parts. A neighbor of mine told me last week, “Your bag is huge, I always see you with it, what do you put in it? Plus you’re so small.” So, self-consciously, I thought of downgrading to a smaller bag. You should see the contents of my bag. Julien shakes his head each time he borrows a pen or asks for a piece of paper; I can spend hours digging in that bag for the said items. One time I found around fifteen pistachio nuts in my bag. Seriously. Fifteen!
Finally I decided to sit in this ridiculous café with swings hanging from the ceiling, next to the cinema. When the waiter approached, he asked me for my order, and I told him I wanted a lemon mint iced tea. Normally, a waiter should nod his head and place the order. Instead, he stood around and asked me if and where I had ordered this alleged drink in the past. I couldn’t believe my ears, so I asked him to repeat the question. “Have you ordered this drink elsewhere, ma’am? And where?” What was this, a quiz? An inquisition? I almost expected the Gestapo to jump out from the kitchen and start going thru my bag for past restaurant receipts (and you can be sure they’d find millions, in my bag). So I told him that I’d ordered it before, in some other restaurant, waving my hand vaguely, perhaps, to indicate somewhere else. I mean, really. Ordering lemon mint iced tea is becoming a serious business in Doha. Believe me.
When I had finished my drink I made a tour of the food centre, hoping that seeing all that cholesterol-laden food would jog my appetite. But it did nothing for me, so I dejectedly took the escalators to the first floor. There was a child crying his head off in front of me, his mother looking pointedly away, trying to ignore the source of what was shattering our eardrums.
Going home wasn’t a joy either. There was a lot of traffic and this Land Cruiser kept at my tail, blinking his lights and annoying the hell out of me, willing me to go faster while in traffic. The laws of nature don’t mean a thing to certain people. Cars cannot move, or get the hell out of your way, in traffic. I wanted to tell him that.
The trip wasn’t a total waste though. Somewhere during my aimless walking around that place, I went to Carrefour and bought a can of Enchilada sauce.
Currently listening to:
chk chk chk (!!!)
Myth Takes
