It´s official, I´m in love with life.

It happened at dinner time. An old man in his slippers, cooked and served us dinner in his 3-table ¨restaurant¨. I´ve got too much love and life to blog about during our super expensive internet sessions, but will promise to post pictures and snippets when I get the chance.

Love love love life.

Goodbye Paris, I'm really going to miss you.

A series of unfortunate events has really foiled my plans to live and work in France, namely a worldwide economic recession.  I could blame it on the bad timing, my sub-par french, or just poor planning on my part, but whatever it is - Paris isn't showing me any employment love.  I was stubborn and clingy to the idea of being with Paris, but eventually I came to terms with the fact that maybe it's just not our time.  

So.  I'm leaving Paris - for Burgundian wine country - on bikes and with a tent.  One last hurrah in France before we return home in November.  I can't tell you much besides that.  It's a real pattern for me and my time here in France - that is, not knowing what I'll be doing or where I'll be living 2 months out.  Oh, and we're going to try and get some work during the harvest.  In exchange for an authentic french country meal and free wine I am willing to endure great hardship.  In the mean time here are some random images from Paris:

We were on Pont des Arts one night with a friend.  Isn't this couple cute?  I love his navigational earnestness, and she looks like she's being patient and helpful trying to spot landmarks. It was a fine summer night, we were right smack in the middle of a pedestrian bridge over the Seine with views of Notre Dame and the island.  Where else did they possibly want to go?

You know.

Sunset from our apartment window.

A photo of Luxembourg gardens from my Paris "tour guide" days.

A print from an exhibit we saw on the Description de l'Egypt.  This was part of a temporary exhibit at the Musee de l'armee / Les Invalides / Napoleon's Tomb...or "Gold Dome" as we like to call it.  It really was an impressive undertaking.   A complete volume of the Description de l'Egypt was on display and in its entirety takes up a whole book case.  

In this photo, I've placed a keen young man next to the book case as a size reference.  His enthusiasm comes from the fact that he's been reading about culture and imperialism...a work that is coincidentally titled as such.  Some could say he was like a kid in a culture and imperialism candy store.  

Galeries Lafayette

Paris' oldest department store - floors upon floors of the fanciest brands.  Almost like a market with people in little areas like stalls hawking Chanel and YSL.  Just looking, thank you.  

The ornate detailing reminded us of the Alhambra.

They had just opened up a brand new shoe floor in the basement.  3000 sq. m. (YES 3000 sq. m.) of shoes too beautiful to bear, after a dizzying 7 minutes I had to flee the lair before it did irreversible damage to my expectations of normal shoe shopping.

 

Looking down on to the cosmetics floor.  You'd think their domestic, french brands would be less expensive than back in North America - nope.  I think the french take "luxe" very seriously.

There's a whole other building devoted to "Gourmet" - I'm going to have to go it alone this week.  Why P wouldn't want to spend hours walking up and down food aisles is beyond me.

But we just got here!

These photos are of the studio that we're staying in right now.  We've been here for almost 2 months, and are leaving in a week and a bit...but thought I'd share some Parisian studio-living pictures with you:

It's the nicest place, besides our little place in Toulouse (*heart), that we've lived in during our time in France.  The studio comes with its own lesbian art photography, full views of the Eiffel Tower and the Beaubourg, and too many flights of stairs.   It's in the 20th arrondissement, a few blocks away from Belleville, primarily a working class immigrant neighbourhood that's beginning to gentrify.  Thanks to the immigrant population here (a mix of north and sub-saharan Africans and Chinese) we've been "eating local", making tagines from meats bought at one of the many halal butchers,  and digging into algerian almond-based pastries with hot mint tea in the evenings.   

It'd be hard to tell from our apartment, which happens to be one of the few Haussmanian buildings about halfway up a hill from larger block-like apartment complexes, that the neighbourhood itself is a little rough around the edges.  Although it might not be what one might envision as the postcard perfect Paris, in some ways it reflect a more accurate Paris - a large cosmopolitan city where people live, work and go about their daily business without having to step aside every 2-strides to accommodate a map-wielding tourist.   Walking around here, you see kids on bikes, families on errands and old men hanging out at cafés.  Hookah and moroccan cafés are tucked right up alongside french neighbourhood bistros and bars, their patrons sharing the same sidewalk and a mix of 2nd hand cigarette and hookah smoke.

 There's this café a few blocks from us that's undergoing renovations.  At its most stripped down stage the doors were still wide open  (actually, there were no doors) with nothing but unfinished surfaces, a bar with a man behind it, some stools and the beer tap still in operation.  We've walked by this place almost on a daily basis, and it's fun to see the progress take place around the cast of regulars that seem to be permanently camped there.  It was like time-lapse footage where people are the fixed elements and the constructed environment transforms around them.  Seeing this made me understand café culture in a different way - that it really is an old school, hardcore dedication to your café and the social life in your community.  Floors or no floors.  

Vegetable plants for sale at a florist in our hood.  

The apple of Mai's eye...

I'm not sure how the conversation started, but it started with M.  M & K were staying with us for the first week and a bit in July and over some fine dinners and some "crazy" wines we got to talking about apple tarts.  Specifically, M started talking about apple tarts.  The object of her wildest apple tart fantasies consisted of apples, cooked to perfection whereby the texture remains fresh-tasting, tender with a subtle chew, atop a shortcrust pastry.  And very specifically NO GLAZE.  The discussion soon turned to whether this magic combo existed.  Was it just a figment of her extremely particular food expectations?  There was one obvious way to settle this: Paris-wide apple tart search.

The object was to find something that met what M had envisioned under 4 euros. The following days were met with intense research.  M tapped into the Japanese-paris foodies network.  K stayed cool, resting on a tip-off from a local friend, while P and I scoured a growing repertoire of impressive bakeries that we'd tried.  4 patisseries hardly qualifies as "paris-wide", but it did come to a showdown between patisseries from the left bank vs the right.  

You can see that the entry on the bottom right didn't exactly match the criteria of the others.  It hailed from the famous bakery Poilâne, and rather than slices of apples on a flat flaky crust/shell, it contained chunks of apple in a yeasty, bread-like pocket.  M & K knew they might break some rules with that entry, but they couldn't resist. Besides we're a lenient panel, and would you have turned away a sweet little thing like that?  Ranking 1st was the tart pictured top right (a layer of applesauce, which at first seemed bizarre, gave it a tangy apple-y edge), and descended in order going clockwise.  There was room for debate between the 2nd & 3rd.  The funny thing was that none of them met the specific elements that M had set her heart on, but none of us were about to blow the whistle on this party of caramelized apples and buttery, flaky bases.

Note that July was not exactly the season for apple tarts.  Some of the fine bakeries that we considered carried a "seasonal" tart instead, which was almost always apricot at the time.  

This treat came from the same place as the winning apple tart, on the corner of a quiet street behind Sacre Coeur.  It was called a "tulipe aux framboise", and consisted of a waffle-cone shell, coated with chocolate on the inside and filled with a raspberry cream and topped with fresh raspberries.  Tulipe cookies are traditionally a light thin cookie that is baked flat, but then put into a brioche mold while it's still warm and pliable.  They're often served with whipped cream and fruit, kind of like the version we had. 

Left behind in Paris in August? You poor thing.

This city has become a ghost town.  Relatively speaking that is, and it still depends on what neighbourhood you're in.  The Parisians have made their mass exodus out of the city starting the long-weekend of July 14th (Bastille/National Day) and slowly continue to trickle out to seaside destinations.  What's left behind?  Throngs of tourist in the centre and disgruntled workers who have to stay and form the skeleton staff of companies.   Little shops shut down for the month, putting up signs in glib handwriting, "bonnes vacances".   This might explain the lack of postings as offices and work in general grind to a halt, making my job search here in Paris almost impossible.

 

In an attempt to provide a balm for all those left behind, the City of Paris puts on "Paris Plages" in the summertime.  Large stretches along the Seine and some canals are transformed into...a beach.  The busy roads that run the stretches of the Seine are closed off, fine sand is trucked in, beach loungers are set up, and pétanque (french lawnbowling) pitts are cordoned off.  The Seine-side beach comes equipped with a stretch of boardwalk, showers, changing stalls, news vendors on bikes and potted palm trees.  It looks really beachy, non?

     
If for whatever reason you're a Parisian and can't take a portion of your standard 5-week holiday in August, the City of Paris graciously brings the beach to you.  As kitschy as it may be, I'm pretty psyched about scoring my own lounger on the faux beach and watching the museum tourists scuttle across bridges from the Louvre, to Notre Dame and to the Musée d'Orsay.  *sigh, oh Paris, this is so like you.

DIY - Kimchi

I would have never imagined myself making kimchi, or making it in France.  A, a Korean friend from Toulouse recently moved to Paris (who is now renting a room next door to our apartment), shared his mother's coveted kimchi recipe with me.  We actually didn't go by any recipes, and all I have left are these images to guide me through my next attempt (if there ever will be one).  Here goes:

A trick: split the chinese cabbage in 2 (then again) from the stem end, just half way through the stalks, stop where the leafy parts begin and separate the quarters keeping the leaves in tact.

Sprinkle rock salt in between each layer, making sure to get right into the stalky end and soak the whole thing in salted water for about 2 hours.
Prep the other ingredients: grated garlic, ginger, chives and daikon sliced into matchsticks.

The base of the paste is made from rice flour cooked until thickened in some water.  Sugar, chili powder, the garlic, ginger chives and daikon are mixed together with fish sauce (or fermented fish).  After the cabbage has soaked for several hours, drain the water and pack the paste in between each of the leaves, coating all surfaces.  Store in a cool dark place and let it ferment and go to a happy place.

After several days in the fridge, you get this lovely fermented cabbagey mess.  His response to the end product: "pas mal" with a bit of a shrug.  I asked if it was like his mother's, and he gave a definitive "non", head shake and all.  For what it's worth, I would buy the stuff in the future...or mooch from a Korean ex-roommate whose mom would stock our fridge with Kimchi rations to last a couple of weeks.   

Paris and its firemen's balls - it's exactly like it sounds

Did you know that every year, the night before Bastille Day, the firemen of Paris throw what's called a "Bal des Pompiers"?  Probably not, because I didn't.  60 firehalls/firehall courtyards are transformed into giant neighbourhood parties, staffed by firemen and the like.  I know.  Ladies, it's true, I wouldn't lie about something like this.  To top it all off, the champagne was a-flowing, and served in adorable plastic flutes. 

Oh, and did I mention that the firemen in Paris and Marseille are of a particularly elite class?  Aside from being firemen, they're also members of the french military, which explains why they are uniformly young and uniformly clean cut.  That is to say, uniformly everything that you'd expect a fireman/soldier to be.  All were welcome at the event (families included) and we went as a group of 2 canadian couples and our friend from Paris, we all had an amazingly fun time -- but let's be honest here, it's really a party for girls.  The guys that we came with, just had to shrug and go along with the spectacle of the whole thing like the good sports that they are.  

The beauty of the whole thing was that these young firemen waited on you at every possible part of the party.   They were there: at the entrance greeting you, taking your coat at coat check,  serving you at the bar, in the women's bathrooms replacing the toilet paper, and at the end of the night thanking you for coming to their party.  And at each turn they were there with their cocksure, easy good looks, cranking up the flirt and charm because it's their party and, like all good hosts, they wanted everyone to have a good time...and also to reinforce all the positive sexual stereotypes that come along with being french, a fireman and in the military all at the same time.  

Also at the party and in their uniforms, were members of the French air patrol.   You can spot them in their baby blue jet fighter jumpsuits (think Top Gun, but 2009 and euro).  They were also one of the very few with cokes instead of alcohol in hand, as they had to be en pleine forme for formation flying at the Military Parade on the Champs Elysées the next day.  M and I figured that there were always at least 3 women clustered  around each of these pilots every time we chanced to look.  Not that we looked often.  The firemen were one thing, but these men were of a different breed.     

My favorite moment of the night was when the dance floor went nuts over a string of 80's french hits.  It was awesome, and in the way that a medley of bon jovi, acdc and def lepoard is awesome - only more because it was the night before le quatorze juillet in Paris, and we were tipsy off of champagne and dancing in the open-air of a french firehall courtyard.

photos courtesy of M's camera

Yes, I still like food...

Our closet-sized kitchens in Paris have been driving me insane.  The experience best resembles trying to cook in a 3-person elevator (these are common in France).  Instead of fun and experimental meals, I've been restricted to meals that are elevator-cooking friendly, that means minimal prep, minimal chopping and minimal cooking (only 2 burners).  But don't you worry, we're still eating well.  Observe:

  

"Ispahan" from Pierre Hermé - raspberry meringue, lychee and rose-scented cream with fresh raspberries.  *die. No, seriously.

They grow them a little cuter in France.

The market experience in Toulouse was pretty amazing, and 2 months into our stay there, I knew our way around town and the markets like the back of my hand.  Markets kind of operate on a self-serve system in Toulouse, there are small baskets that you take and fill with your choice of produce, and it makes the line move quick.  It also gave me the freedom to poke around and handle produce that I haven't seen before.  In Paris, I'm often served by someone - you tell them what you want and in the quantities and they put your order together for you.  Upside: it's nice to be served.  Downside: you can't take your time because the madames behind you are impatiently fidgeting and "accidently" bumping into you with their roll-away grocery bag things.  One time, I accidentally ordered 2 yellow "boats" (navettes) instead of 2 yellow turnips (navets).  Embarrassing.

Highs around 32 degrees celsius

My face has been rendered permanently shiney, and I'm not talking about that lovely dewy look either.  Then there's the do-it-myself-haircut which is growing out and I'm not sure what to do with it, but I bet that paints a pretty picture for all of you who are imagining me and my glamourous self in Paris.  The thing I love about this city is that it's so damn snobby.  I'm not talking about the people, but city itself, like it knows how amazing it is and never lets anyone forget it.  For the most part, I wander around wide-eyed and humble, always a little self-conscious of my hack-job haircut and pseudo-tourist status.  Despite its aloofness, there are times that Paris lives up to all its dreamy hype.  It sneaks up on you when you're out for a walk at night and you can't help but think to yourself, "I'm here.  In Paris.", and what makes it so magical is that for a moment you feel like Paris finally noticed you and thinks that you're kind of cute.

tombstones and a little tranquility from facebook...

Went to the Père Lachaise cemetery last week and wandered around just taking it all in.  It was really beautiful and still there, aside from the handful of tourists in search for Jim Morrison's grave (anticlimactic by the way).  BUT, check out this beaut - Oscar Wilde's grave.  It was recently re-done by a benefactress that was a fan of his work.  If you zoom in, you can see lipstick kisses all over it!!!  Love love love.  Shades of pink, reds and browns - lips on stone.  

There was a little bit written about him on the back, but also a lovely little epitaph:

And alien tears will fill for him

 Pity's long broken urn.

For his mourners will be outcasts

And outcasts always mourn.

More of what the rest of the cemetery looked like.

  

View from our living room. 

I joined facebook the other day.  It was a little overwhelming at first and I'm retreating to this blog as a security blanket of sorts.  It's so quiet here!  Facebook is like a highschool science fair, everyone's lives on display on a 3-panel bristol board.  Or maybe a highschool cafeteria, where there are so many people you can go and talk to in 5-minute intervals before moving on and getting in line to order your fries.  I'm more used to wordy blogs and lengthy emails of late - but that's because I've had time and lots of it.  I wonder if I am in actuality a homebody or if it is just being with P, ironically he happens to be the most socially well-received person I know.  But P loves being at home.  "Hate" is a strong word, but I'll say he was "glad to escape" Vancouver and all its (our) social obligations.    As I flip through photos on facebook and see myself and my friends I really question if I'm as homebody on the inside as I've come to be with P.  

Paris week 1 + visitors...it just doesn't stop

*sigh, what can I say, it's Paris and it's beautiful.  The food is beautiful too, and we've only been here a week.  We managed to stumble on a bakery that was voted "meillure boulanger 2008" in the 10th - had to buy a half loaf, could not resist.  More on Pierre Hermé later,  all that I will say is: they're expensive, and yes they're worth it.

Fraser struggles to mount the block, not the spry little guy he used to be, but just wait and crank some of Paris' "grime-y" electronic beats into him.  Note in the background how others are using the blocks to take pictures, using perspective to make it look like they're holding the tips of the pyramids.  Joke/gag pictures abound in Paris and the Louvre.  So many nude statues, so many opportunities and hy-larious photo-memories to be had.  Fraser never fully got up on his feet, something about his hip.

Ian waiting at our metro stop.  We're staying in the 5th for the month of May.  The apartment is a bit run-down, but the outside looks lovely...and it's super central.  

Lunch.

We went for a beautiful dinner at a restaurant in the 11th called "le Chateaubriand".  All male-wait staff in threadbare white shirts and scraggly french beards.  It was perfect.  So very casual, serving beautiful, seasonal and thoughtful food.  They do a 5 course tasting menu, starting with a cold tofu and fish foam for an amuse bouche.  Then it was seared mullet with fresh garden peas and a chicken liver mouse, cod with white asparagus and black olives, and a bavette with some sort of shallot and fish-roe sauce.  DESSERT?  Fresh mint ice-cream served with "sticks" of chocolate and vanilla meringue and a basil butter.  The basil butter was a gift that really kept on giving - basil butter burps, you get it.

Ian took this amazing picture (he's a pro and has shared some amazing photos with us).  This was off from the Pyramides from the Louvre.  This little girl was rapt with attention watching the fiddler.  Just her, and the guy, his fiddle and the music.  I died, it was so cute.

My best friend comes to visit

A and I used to always say that we were destined to be best friends based solely on our proximity to each other.  We met each other on the first day of highschool, and since then have gone through many of the best and worst times (thankfully) together.  We'd brave the treacherous walk up-hill after school (and even though it was completely unnecessary for me to walk up the hill, I'd do it just so that we could complain about it together), our dad's would take turns shuttling us to school and home from highschool dances and when we graduated they continued to do that for our little sisters.  There was also a rumored chance first-time meeting between our mothers at the mall, where they clasped hands as if they were long-lost somethings.

We'd went on to university together, partied together, moaned and groaned about boys together, moved out together, went to concerts, were jerks together, even went to thailand in matching outfits and backpacks together.  It was a trip that we'd talked about taking together ever since we saw "Brokedown Palace"...the last piece in solidifying our best-friendedness, and we were going to test it all with a Thai prison as a backdrop.

A moved away to NYC a few years ago and most of what we share fall more and more into the past.  I can't really describe how it felt to see her and J step off that bus in Toulouse.  It was bizarrely emotional.  A is like a living time capsule for me. Looking at her is like a collapsed view of so many things that made up my life...and it really underscores where I am (and where she is) and how far we've come since before we were 25.  It's difficult to stay close with the distance and the wonky time difference and I chalk it up to taking our "proximity" for granted - I never thought about what it would mean to not live 5 minutes away from her, let alone on a different continent.  So I'd have to say it's always a little bittersweet when we see each other in new environments, because she's her and I love her - but it's a strange reminder that we're not together in the same places like we used to be.   

After having said all that - here are some pictures of us in same places TOGETHER! I was ecstatic to meet J (he's wonderful and that's a relief) and to share a little bit of what my life has been like here in France with her.

We'd concluded that between our 4 entrees and mains, we had consumed an entire duck that meal.

Before we knew how much duck we were getting into.

More photos from J's camera

This is l'eglise St. Etienne, one of our favourites because of all the churches we see around here (and we see a lot) it's the most interesting in a slap-dash patched together kind of way.  The church had run out of financing part way through construction.  It was slowly (in phases) completed over time, which accounts for the strange shape and afterthought-like look of the church.  Cathedrals and churches are generally shaped like a cross - this one, as you can see, does its own strange and wonderful thing.

When you walk by these buildings everyday, you kind of forget how old and lovely they are.    

Spring is in full force here in Toulouse.  Parks and gardens that we used to walk in during the winter look and sound completely different.  We were walking by this little pond/water feature when we heard the racket.  We spotted several of these guys croaking away.

Goodbye Toulouse...

We're leaving Toulouse for Paris next week...most things are taken care of and the next week will be relatively stress free.  We've had 2 sets of visitors since last week.  First it was A & J making a pit stop in Toulouse from their trip to Barcelona and then P's cousin J & S from Canterbury.  It is always nice to have visitors, it helps us re-see Toulouse for all its pretty charm and past the dog shit and whiffs of urine from small medieval alleys.

Here are some photos that J took during her visit - some rare ones of us at the market doing our usual market thing amidst older french women in fancy sunglasses.  They love their fancy sunglasses here.

Piles and piles of different types of salad.  I'm waiting to pay for radishes and red oak leaf lettuce.  We're at the daily market of Blvd. Strasbourg.  

Hands down, the coolest carousel we've seen so far.  Rather than garish horses and carriages on the typical merry-go-rounds, this one had different versions of old flying machines, boats, a giant bucking ant, rhinos and a crocodile.  After one turn, I saw a little boy go up to the old man who ran the thing and the old man pulled out a little candy from his pocket for the boy.  Love, love, love that.  

My blog has come to haunt me

When I created this blog I had all the best intentions in the world to post often and to post things of quality, but over the last few months it's become somewhat annoying.  Annoying because it's become a bit of an obligation.  The resulting entries are, watered-down, rushed and uninspired.   I just read a couple of my recent entries and can't believe the amount of clipped sentences and sentiments.  I mean why go through the motions of posting something if it comes from nowhere intended for nowhere.

What's the point of emitting or broadcasting something if it doesn't stick, and if it doesn't provoke feeling, thought or discussion?  I don't mean to launch complex debates or forums about what I write about, but I consider an entry a "success" if I can make someone think or feel something that's outside of their immediate experience.  Maybe in particular about food, maybe an entry about chocolate made you think about first time you tasted REAL chocolate - did your world change? From that point on would you continue to classify "smarties" as chocolate?  Or that first time you tasted something that was so perfect that it made you think all the way back to where it came from, how it was tended and what creativity and mastery was required to render it to the state of perfection in the form of a bite in your mouth.  

What I love about food, aside from the obvious sensory satisfaction, is that there's a sense of place, history, love and ceremony to making and eating food.  Maybe it's the food geek in me that wants to force a lot more meaning into food than what is sitting there in front of me on a plate.  And it's the same writing geek in me that wants words to be more than just what's on the screen/page.  There's a potential in making the experience of reading or eating as immediate or as transcendent as you want it, but the most interesting part of it all is where it meets - you.  The person, forming the relationship between the immediate sensory experience and everything else that matters or doesn't matter floating in time and space.

Maybe it's presumptuous of me, but I'd like to write for that end.  

Has anyone seen "the Watchmen"?  I'm starting to make myself out to be a real Dr. Manhattan.  I mean well though.

Just when we were getting into it...

It's mid-march and I'll be leaving Toulouse in a month.  A month!!  We finally got some of that southern france weather (the weather we came for) this weekend.  It was 19 and sunny.  yeah, I know.  Our landlord's mother, told us that this has been an unusually cold winter and that this 19 degrees business usually starts in February, but instead we were slogging through an extra rainy/cold winter.  But no complaints, we're going to make up for it this next month.  P and I went to lunch at Place St. Georges...or where the rich, beautiful and sunglasses clad french families go to dine.  *sigh, here in France, small children wear nicer clothes than I do - and by nicer I mean WAAY nicer,  like burberry trenchcoats and such.  

P got steak tartare (our first time here), and the thing came out as a raw hamburger mound with chopped up cornichons, onions and capers in it...AND a raw egg right on top.  I mean, we knew what we were getting, but it was still a sight for us non-raw-hamburger/egg-eating types.  It was a lot of raw beef and raw egg in one sitting, but we liked it and ate it all.  It comes with worsteshire sauce, mustard and tobasco sauce on the side - a nice lady sitting at the table next to us gave us instructions on how to eat and manage the thing.  Put the sauce on it, mix it through with the egg (much like one would prepare fresh hamburgers, only you don't throw it on the grill), then mound it onto bread and eat. 

When we're not pigging out on raw meat amidst beautiful french families, we're eating this:

Choucroute garni - it's an Alsatian specialty of saurkraut (warmed through) garnished with sausages, smoked meats and potatoes.  We walk by this stuff at the pig butcher stalls, but never tried it until last week.  We asked the lady to explain to us what to do and how to eat it and she packed up enough for a meal for the 2 of us.  In the picture we have: 2 types of sausages, a slice of smoked pork shoulder, some boiled potatoes and the choucroute.  Who knew a steaming mound of hot sour cabbage would be so good.  There's a butcher that specializes in choucroute garni and we're going to get stuff from there next time and see how the two meals compare.

love - a belated valentine's day post

If P and I celebrated anniversaries together, we would have just rounded our 7th year.

22 year-olds P&P having lunch at the Maggie Benston Centre at SFU.  I really dug P's "Andrew-Jackson" coif back then.  He wears it differently these days.

After 7 years together I didn't really think that there would be much more to learn about each other...I kind of felt that we were now in "new-experiences-together" mode, and less the "getting-to-know-each-other" mode.  We're at the point where we anticipate each other's sentences and jokes don't need to be finished before we mind-meld into "pault" and crack up at punchlines that never drop.  We even got each other the exact same valentine's day surprise, each having secretly dropped by the same chocolate shop minutes apart from each other.  We have always spent a lot of time together...we like to.  Since coming to Europe we've taken it all to a whole new level, like we're in one of those machines that make diamonds from carbon (what do you even call those things?), it's as if we get super intense, highly-pressurized, focalized laser beams of each other.  All pault all the time.  And yet, I'm happy to report that we still manage to learn new things about each other.  Love and romance thrive on mystery, non?  Check out these new mystery nuggets that I recently discovered in my lover:

1) P CANNOT STAND middle-aged women with short, severe bobs (straight cut bangs, straight cut everything).  He can handle the two separately, he might even like either of those components in their own right, but just NEVER together.  I found this out when we sat across from a tall norwegian woman with that kryptonitic combination, paul was made irritable and uneasy that whole train ride.  

2) P HATES wind, or even breezes.  He gets fussy and unnerved by the slightest movement of air out of doors.  A perfectly beautifully, sunshiney day is, in Paul's opinion, ruined by the slightest traces of a breeze.  He gets so worked up about it.

   

Here we are on the windy west-coast of norway.  I am lovingly drawing P's hood, to minimize his exposure to wind.

3)P tolerates human cloning (this is a gross simplification of an hour-long debate) - like, really?  On a more positive note, we've come to the conclusion that we very much look forward to having traditional "mixies", rather than clones.

photos of the two of us together are rare.  This was at Ruby Lake on the Sunshine Coast.  Our friends V and S took us to a secret spot where we picnic-ed, swam and went to town on the rope-swing.

It's been 7 years, and P just doesn't want to hear it sometimes.