------ 2 yrs 5 mths 3 days, 4 handph upgrades since the snatch-thief in Paris (Nokia6235, Motorola Razor, K700i, G900), 1 Job Change, a whole lot Adventure, Mishap and playing Ultimate in btw... the salty mushroom resurrects! -------

stumbling across the ol' blog agai-n i realised that it has been awhile. i never did publish the above article which i wrote on 26 june 06 in closing memory of the fantastic grad trip in Europe before embarking on a working-adult life.... plus purchasing a new laptop got me going through all the photos and amazing times.....

now that i have begun work at the Y, life has begun again... :D
i'm now doing something i love!
i've traded in office skirts, high heels, the corporate-look
(not that i had many cos i think i sort of knew that i was not going too long...1.5years to be exact)
how many people can honestly say they like their jobs?
so i think it time to start writing again to make recordings of this new & exciting journey....
something for my grandkids to find out abt... the possible acheivement of cool-grandma status

Adventures of the Salty Mushroom II......

now that i'm finally back home with unlimited access to the internet i guess i should update the blog. since the last entry, we've been tennis-stars chasing at roland garros, night-cycling and walking around paris, catcing live-music action in damp n dark Irish pubs, paragliding, camping and trekking in Chamonix, France (where Mont Blanc is!!), hopping over to Sweden; Stockholm, the surrounding Swedish Archipelagos and Nyoping.
of course this all includes eating our way around, you cant hunt, fly, camp, trek or canoe without good food can you? and from recent experience, even the smallest of islands ( 2km by 5km approx) hold fantabulous restaurants.....

finally meeting nadal in the flesh was electrifying, it was a total coincidence that we walked into his training slot. (The Spaniards never looked better than in the form of Nadal). Janice obviously managed to get her way once again, not just with one cap signed, but TWO! but of course it was also because he was very nice n obliging as well....sigh..sighhh....

then there was the night that only evania and I were home. decided to discover Paris by night, taking the Saint Michel route down by the river to Notre Dame. T'was a gorgeous evening, watching various groups of people taking up their spots by the river, dancing to the music of a live-fiddler on one end and a boombox on the other. also the groups of friends drinking wine and eating cheeses, laughung together in their tight circles.

ev and i, 2 chinese girls whizzing by on road bikes illicited quite a few looks as well. i guess it was a visual inter-cultural exchange of sorts.

next along teh river was a pleasant suprise, a gang of acrobatic rollerbladers who were perfrming the most amazing tricks with speed n grace, sure wish i could be as agile.
emerging fr the tunnel we caught sight of a very beautifully lited up back view of Notre Dame, Paris sure spends a tons on her electricity bills!

whoah...i have been lazy. its been 2 weeks since my last entry. i think keeping a blog is way too tough for computer-illiterate me, the result of too many things to do and too many people sharing one internet enabled computer.

So, D&G (daph and Gloria) and it took a total of 5hrs to bring them home ( me leaving hse catching bus, finally meeting them n then bus again.) crikey...should;ve just taken the RER...an 8EURO, 50minute train ride...paris has 3 terminals, each located like 50 miles away fr each other!! therefore the miscomm of the terminal they were in, resulted in an extra hr of travelling to and fro T1 & T2.

anyhow it's always agreat seeing family and old buddies you havent met for awhile.

after a day of bringing them around in paris and resting up the jet lag, we left for SPAIN!!! barcelona... and she had.....

the best seafood paella ever! unfortunately or fortunately....they only make paella for a minimum of 2 orders....it was enough for 4 though!!! a 24 EURO expenditure worth every penny!

ORIGINAL SPANISH TAPAS!!!!!!....smoked octopus with paprika drizzled with olive oil...i could live on it forever.

look! sangria the size of my face....almost.... i made sure i had plenty of that on your account Dea!

camp nou..a giant F.C.B souvenir store...the football musuem entrance fee was too high...at least there was this shop, with plenty of young ronaldhino videos...adverts for nike.

Camp Nou sports grounds...incredible...a ticketing booth and competition arena for every sport FBC sponsors; basketball, handball, hockey... managed to sneak a peek at a youth handball competition...and it was...messy..heh...

to be continued...

Had the most fantastic week/weekend in france.sigh...a crazy week but every second was beautiful.

monday was a holiday!so we decided to get our asses down to chateau des versailles, a 40 min train ride.we ended up having our picnic at jardin du luxembourg instead cos it was to late by the time jan finished her frenc placement test.bought crackers, smked salmon, cherry tomatoes, apples, pepper goat's cheese..it was a lovely day 'cept for the part we had to look for chairs...as the whole of paris was there too..

had perfect attendance at french class, for once, finally as well.

tuesday was a day of recuperation after last week; going out everyday (ive come to realise im quite a homebody) and the crazy trip to milan.

(the kitchen fits one person at a time. that's a 33 sq metre home for you.)


wednesday was green curry day, had jan's thai schoolmate over.unfortunately she cant do thai food..so i wasn;t able to squeeze any thai recipes off her..i must say tt, 'asian gourmet' green curry paste is very more than decent.throwing in some aubergines, fishballs, potatoes and chicken made it all SO good, ahhhh...for the love of spice!!

spent thursday at the chateau des versailles.made smoked salmon sandwiches a delicious salad accompanied by Jan's now infamous Tiramisu.spent the entire afternoon lazing on the grass and taking in the atmosphere of the chateau;did a little boating, admired the sculling training the locals were doing, staying on til the no one else was leftin on the compunds. The grandeur of the gardens and chateau was even greater with us being the only 2 souls left and the security guard who appeared suddenly to chase us out. heh....

friday was a mad rush.after procrastinating for the longest time, and saturday's Fontainebleu trip..i was finally motivated enough to hunt for a BIKE SHOP!

yes. i THOUGHT, there would be plentiful; alas due to big Sport corporations like Decathlon and GO SPORTS, many smller bike places have closed. i went hunting for 3 different internet advertised addresses only to find a resataurant or cafe in their places. starting to panic i tikamed one of the addresses in my 'cycling France' guide book and finally hit the jackpot; although it was 3 differnt train changes away, decided to trust the tikam-method anyway, an old-school choice, predecessor of eenie-meenie-mineey-moe. BINGO. (divine intervention mostly too, prayed over it!)
Rando Cycles proved her worth, fixng up all the dented, creaky bits, oiling and pumping in the air, bring new life into the old Trek 1oo0.

made friends with Fleurian the bike-mechanic and had good fun conversing in broken english and French.Nice boy. one of the more decent youngsters i've seen in paris.

my first ride on parisian roads!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
porte de vincinnes (bike shop) to porte d'orleans (home)WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE...it was quite a lung-busting ride, (pollution) not because it was hilly or anything, but the number of cars! plus the narrowness of the lanes.

still... i felt really safe, like queen of the road actually, its really lovely when bikes and buses are entitled to their own special lanes.ha! wonder if singapre wil ever do that,another way to reduce the number of cars on the rd perhaps..com'on PAP..listen up!


(beginning fr our hse to the train station!)


so comes the weekend....twas the best time!!whizzing around in Fontainebleu, like Versailles, its part of the ile-de-France. the periphery towns of paris, linked together by the seine river.a real adventure with our bikes on hand we cycled to gare d'lyon to catch the hourly train.40 minutes separates lush forest roads filled with pines and birches, gorges, quaint cottages and chateaus with enormous gardens from congested,tired paris. (still the lifestyle beats those of us singaporeans; cos the parisains have such gorgeous weekend havens to run too!)


getting there was easy-peasy. with the assistance of a very kind gentleman we met on the train, he inroduced us to some pretty chep hotels.immediately after settling in and dumping our bags we rushed out to grab at the crisp air and sunshine.met a bit of rain nearer the end of the evening, but at least we saw the whole town.our dinner encounter was the cherry on top of te whipped cream.

made friend's with jimmy the chef of pizza pazza. had the most incredible vege pizza. jimmy tosses ut 250 pizza a night! you should have seen his pizza-making hands, forearms and biceps!!!!!
more inspiringly he gave us some of his personal (pizza) history, totally captivating jan and i with the love in his eyes as he spoke bout the beauty of italian food and his adopted-province; (french dude, bred and trained in Parma, Italy). Grana parmigiana and jambon(ham) parma.......as he spoke and introduced ingredients to us, our pizza kinda grew in variety and portion of ingredients!you will understand with the following picture when i say i had the best pizza of my life thus far!

sunday was spent cycling to the renaissance painters' village of barbizon.ok. i adore serendipity, but i guess when it comes to cycling you just have to plan, know which rd to take and exits to follow.

(the map was upside down! according to the toursit office! imagine if we followed!)

aye, thankfully Barbizon was pretty straightforward, after some initial confusion.. we made it in the end!NFORTUNATELY, Jan's rear tyre was punctured right as we were reaching Barbizon!thank God it wasnt in the middle of he highway...had no choice but to cab back to fontainebleu, aye...still it was great fun :)

just behind our hostel is the forest and so before leaving Fontainebleu we went for a short hike.
my great-outdoors urges, placated in a weekend!


(a last pizza before leaving)

aye!Daph and Gloria!! hurry over!! we will go again together!!!

this bit of reflection on the rest of italy is a week overdue actually. was busy bringing Jan's mom around, playing tour guide and all.
i should make it my real job maybe?!
quite enjoyed it...perhaps open my own agency, specially catering to taitai crowds; do a shopping 'tour d Paris' and then throw in a day trip to Milan. did exactly that with her mom. 12 hours overnight to Milan on the 8:20pm thursday train and back to Paris, another 12hours on the 11:35pm friday train.
it was a saver on hotel, to release more money into shopping... at the 5 storey Ferrari merchandise store for example....
REALLY; luxury ferrari, ferrari for children, ferrari for the (rabid) fan, ferrari sports-range, ferrari bookstore!!!! talk about propaganda.... the ferrari-colnalgo bike...ferrari-surfboard, ferrari-puma.....if Ferrari had a heaven, it would have resembled just that.

as for the delayed italy update, i think jan's blog has a good gallery for that and is pretty much fantastic already... http://lost-vagabond.livejournal.com
have a looksey if you want more rome, venice, bologna, florence and milan....also for a glimpse of the sort of sinful indulgences i have to come hme to whenever her practical is over...
when i return to Singapore, you will be allowed to bear witness with a pinch session of my spare tyres, developed from rich, french pattiserie...

all in all, italy was... phenomenal... every city was different, had its own character, flavour and style of pasta..hehe...(jan bought a tea towel that had the map of italy divided into pasta regions instead of city names...)

reading Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayer now... it certainly does not help to stop the pining for more of Italy.


i hope you get there one day too...to tread carefully through Roman ruins, run through the windy and cobbled streets of Florence, crack your head trying to get to the Basilica/museum just on the other side of the river when the gondola operators are on strike, watch Italian hunks scoot around in their Vespas and most memorably... gulp in the smell of baking pizza while shovelling into your mouth the richest, creamiest, best pistachio and hazelnut gelato.

festina tarde!!! (make haste slowly!!)

bongiorno!

Days of Italy....Rome is gorgeous. Sans the other million tourists, hotel-hunting difficulties, crappy waiters, sleazy men, angry cabbies, streets fillled with touters selling fake gucci prada handbags and sunglasses; say 1 to every 5 tourists!

The Colosseum was truly amazing. Will catch Gladiator soon just to check out how they reproduced it. And the ruins were being ruins, I guess I still prefer Asian ruins, kill me, i know im biased, being a Southeast Asian student and all. Professor Miksic, I know you will be proud. Like Borobodur and Angkor Wat...they drive me gaga any day. Of course Jan shares the oppososite sentiments. Nonetheless, Rome still worked its own magic, casting her spell deeper as we roamed through the archaeological sites.

I've never seen a more toursit oriented city. the metro stopped at just about every attraction; like a Rome-shaped, Sentosa monorail system. Also, i believe i've never felt, smelt, observed and been together with a greater crowd of toursits gathered in one city, not to mention the concentration of souvenir shops, out to squeeze every toursity penny out there.

me and my new pal, Michaelangelo.

anyways after participating in all the activities which should be done as a proper tourist in Italy/Rome (as seen above), the next thing would be to hunt for good Gelato; which we did to the tune of a grand total of 30 scoops in our 7days there. In addition to the search for the prettiest/tastiest pizzas!!! you can't blame me for the greedy face...



















taking a midday break on ancient, Roman grass in the middle of ruinous compunds.


the third great and missing but now found intellectual of Rome :)

forgive me. i know i have been really slow with the updates of the blog. its hard when you have hooves for hands when it comes to typing.

The easter weekend was amazing...
Bunked in at prrofessor Bil's holiday home in Normandy, veules des roses.

it was a realy crazy, multi-cutural experience with 2 Russian Scientists, Anastasia the Biologist and Dimitri the Bactriologist/Economist.
2 French, French-language profssors,
(Bil, of Jewish-Polish descent and Roger, who came from Congo to study in a seminary and then Sorbonne
University.) And of course the 2 of us and Roger's kid, darling Sarah.

Veules des Roses is a tiny sea-side town in Normandy with pretty cottages which have been preserved and is under some
conservation plan whereby they are nt allowed to change the look of the town in anyway;
ie. buried electricity wires, tradtional thatched roof covering modern-day tile roofs,
chimneys, which are still very used at least. Also the screenng through of potential residents, no new housing is
allowed to be built either, so as you can uderstand, the village has been seriously restored and is still in as original
a form as it can be.

Complete with ONE boucherie, ONE boulangerie, ONE pharmacy, ONE church, ONE petrol station,
ONE vege farmer/seller, ONE dairy farmer/seller and TWO epiceries.
NO hypermarts in sight or fastfood joints, wich is refreshing, then one knows she is up country,
away from the frazzle ad hazzle of city life.

EVen the cars drive slower with pretty bike routes on narrow lanes.
In this small vilage eEveryone knowing everyone.

i will post up the photos soon...pictures will say more than i can.

will be out of france for the first time this week.
leaving for Italy; Rome Venice and Florence on ryanair.

I still cannot believe its 9.99EURs to fly. and i cant wait to sit on the 79cents flights just to say that i sat on a 79cent flight.

how do they cover their costs chargig us peanuts?! perhass their engines are truly castoffs of fighter jets from WWII.

hmmm..

well, ti all those still at the exams.. YOUR BIG SUMMER BREAK IS ALMOST HERE. i will be job hunting when you enjoy, trying to rebuild savings, then you can laugh at me.

ah well, pray we be kept safe, guess being robbed in the first week was good training. all our french friends keep remindng us to be careful of cheats n pickpockets!! eeeks...

to roam the streets of rome now.. back on sunday..