Vive la France

You probably already know that I'm a bit of a francophile. There is just something about the culture, food, fashion, and mood in France that I absolutely love. Well here's a couple more things to add to the list. I arrived at the airport in Toulouse a bit lost trying to figure out where my bags would turn up. I stopped to ask a nice looking young woman where the carousel with my bags was and she stopped me to say how much she liked the top I was wearing. She touched part of the attached scarf and repeated again how nice my top was. In all of my travels, I have never been able to master the art of looking half decent getting off of a place, be it a one hour or twelve hour flight. So you have no idea how elated I was to hear that I was not looking too worse for the wear.

After taking a conference call and dropping my bags off at the hotel, I went directly into the main town center. The taxi driver said that he would drop me off in the main area where there was an outdoor market and I could eventually walk along some alleys with nice shops on my way to dinner. As soon as I peaked into the open market I caught sight of a kind-looking ederly woman frying fresh churros at a stand nearby. Considering they're of Spanish origin I was a bit surprised to see churros in France. But if Catherine de Medici can steal the secrets of fine Italian cooking and bring them to France, then why not churros as well. Since my dinner reservations were a couple hours away I decided that a small bag of fresh churros as a snack wouldn't hurt.

I did manage to get lost down a few alleys with cute French shops that took me in circles for quite some time eventually landing me on the street where I would find dinner. I had done some research before heading to Toulouse and had decided that my one "nice" meal would be at the Brasserie de Beaux-Arts which sits above the bank of La Garonne River. Although the typical dish of this region is cassoulet, I decided that on a warm summer's day it would be too heavy to have a cassorole consisting of beans, sausage, goose fat, duck fat, pork, lamb and so on. Instead I pondered all of the fresh seafood on the menu. If you've ever been to a restaurant with me then you know it's impossible for me to order off of a normal menu (if you've seen When Harry met Sally, I'm definitely Sally). I usually want one of everything or I want something from one dish and something from another dish, but never what is being offered strictly on the menu. True to form when the waiter came over and asked what I'd like to have, I gave him a blank stare. We at least narrowed my choices down to seafood and he suggested a starter of 6 prawns or 6 raw oysters. I kept going back and forth and then asked if I could get 3 of each. He paused for a moment and said sure, for you, we'll do it! See why I love the French? After some more debate on the mains we decided on one of the specials which was a lobster salad with blanched almonds, haricot verts, mango slices, lettuces, and a tart dressing. Sad to say though that I was so full after all of this that I ended my meal without dessert but had an amazing cafe instead. They did manage to scrounge up a madeleine to go with it so I did have something sweet to end with after all.

After dinner I walked along La Garonne River where my taxi driver had said there would be dancing and music on the other side of the bank. After awhile though my torn ACL started to bother me so I had to call it an early night. At least I have one more happy memory of France stored away.

Warwick Avenue

"Warwick Avenue" by Duffy has got to be my new favorite song!



I'm not sure how popular Duffy is in the US but she's pretty big here in the UK. When she first arrived on the music scene she was mainly billed as an Amy Winehouse imitator with her soulful voice reminiscent of Etta James. At first her single "Mercy" was overplayed on the radio and even included in the Sex and the City Movie so I got sick of hearing her pretty quickly. Then her single "Warwick Avenue" came out and now I'm hooked.

My coworker first brought this song to my attention because Warwick Avenue is the tube stop near where I live. Then I heard a radio interview of Duffy this morning where she was asked why she chose to name her song after this particular tube stop on the Bakerloo line (the brown line for the Americans confused by the TFL map) since there are about 100 she could have chose from. It's a very sad song that she said she wrote when she first moved to London (she's Welsh) and she had to leave all of her family and friends behind. Duffy also said that she was getting over her breakup with her hometown love Tom.

I don't like all of the songs on her latest album but give "Warwick Avenue" a try. I wish her the best of luck since she seems like a nice down-to-earth gal (she's Welsh afterall) who doesn't need to get drugged up and hit the headlines all the time like Amy Winehouse.

Twilight Zone

When you were growing up, did you ever feel as though there was another family out there just like yours but living in another dimension? And if you ever met, the space-time continuum would unravel? That's how I've always felt about my uncle's family in Germany who I visited last weekend.

Whenever I say that I have close family in Germany everyone is always confused as to how and why so let me give you some background first. In 1979 my maternal grandfather paid for my mother's entire family to flee Vietnam. Our first stop was to a refugee camp in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia where we waited for our final passage to a western country. My father's brother was able to sponsor my immediate family to America while the rest of my mother's family was only able to get to Germany where they've settled ever since.

Now back to the twilight zone. The similarities between my immediate family and my uncle's family have always been very strange to me. Both families have four children with two girls and two boys. The oldest in both families are girls who were born in Vietnam the same year. The youngest are both boys who are 10+ years younger than the other siblings. We only see each other once every 5 years or so but it's amazing to me that although we grew up in different countries on different continents, we are so much the same. We instinctively do the same duties in our parents' homes, we were forced to do the same embarassing dances as kids, we enjoy the same strange smelly food, and we are rooted in the same traditions. I am really surprised that both sets of kids managed to grow up more Vietnamese than German or American.

The only issue with being so similar is that when we do meet up, instead of unraveling the space-time continuum, we break the Geneva peace agreements. Being this much alike makes it very easy for our parents to spar against each other using us as weapons. It's a bit sad to watch them go at it so I try to stay as far away from the battlegrounds as I possibly can. Therefore, going to my uncle's house alone for the weekend completely unarmed was a little naive. I met my uncle's barage of how is my career going, how many homes have I purchased, why did I spend so little time in school compared to his kids. It is nice to see though that my cousins and I haven't gotten as caught up in the mess at the adults have. We still find excuses to sneak out of the house to go downtown for a drink and some fun.

In the end I made it back to London fairly unscathed and this visit meant that I don't have to go back for another 5 years.