Home sweet home

After doing a full top-to-bottom house clean on Friday morning (I'm becoming my mother and googling how best to clean floors) I thought I would take a few quick photos to test the windows-as-lightboxes here.  

As you can see, I was also stuffing my face with cookies that my friend, Jenna, got me as a housewarming present.  Naturally.  

I've been saving up for a couple of years to buy a computer with a bigger screen and I can't tell you how nice it is to be able to see all the photos that I'm editing because they are now bigger than postcards.  

Another useful (?) present from Eddie and Shirin - sex dice.  Thanks, guys!

I also finally, finally managed to finagle a reading corner in my room.  The furniture is all Ikea (even the stuff we moved over from my parents' house) so it's fairly cheap, light and pretty easy to take care of.  Shlomo Finkelstein came along with me.

And the new hipster lights I bought from Balestier, the sultan of all neighbourhoods when it comes to lighting.  They were on a 40 per cent discount and I thought they would go nicely with that one cucumber green wall in the corner.

One last bit of nonsense: I am growing very fond of my furniture.  Every day, I say good morning and goodnight to it and before I leave for work, I give it a pep talk.  ["Come on guys!  Be brave!  And make yourselves unappealing to cockroaches!"]

The person that I knew would understand this was Amanda.  Even though she's miles away in Perth, chasing her dreams, she immediately agreed that it was important to whip the furniture into shape and told me that hers, being veteran fixtures, were already well-primed to resist intruders.

"Don't worry, Bff," she texted, "Just keep talking to yours and they'll become experienced very quickly."

So far, it seems to be working.

Sleepover

Our dining table at six this morning, slow, good-natured waking round crumbs of peanut butter toast and hot tea.  I sat in the right corner, veins fizzing, amazed that the mere suggestion of wandering along a boardwalk at dawn had been met with such enthusiastic response.

The night before, four of us had piled into my parents' room, three of us huddled on the king-sized bed, planning our adventure for the next morning.

Earlier, I'd settled Bear, Edie and Wei Shun into the master bedroom and made to leave for my room for the night.  "Wait a minute," Edie protested.  "I thought we were all supposed to sleep in the same room!"

Bear sat up on her elbows, "Isn't that the point of a sleepover?" 

Yes, but I wanted to make sure they had plenty of space, I pointed out, and I didn't want to disturb them if I snored or kicked out.

Wei Shun grinned and patted the empty space next to her.  "Come on, Shuli, get in."

I demurred weakly for awhile and then after a little more cajoling, huffed off to grab pillows and a duvet.  Maybe I'm too old for this, I was thinking slightly embarrassedly as I wrapped my arms around the bed clothes and came back into the room, maybe there's some kind of age limit for hanging out in pyjamas.  But the girls were already comfortably piled high with blankets and setting their phone alarms for the crack of dawn and when I crawled into the space that they'd left me, I couldn't help smiling to myself.

We giggled until almost two and only settled down when Eddie laughed explosively and Wei Shun, thinking it was me, attacked me with her elbow.  The alarm rang us out of bed at five thirty, when the world was still and cool and silent.  And by the time we'd quaffed a quick breakfast and were driving down the Changi coast road, the sky was just beginning to turn colour.

Past the edge of the wooden boardwalk, Bear and I set up our cameras, settled our tripods in the sand while Eddie and Wei Shun sat on some old lounge chairs and talked, their faces turning golden in the soft sunrise.

We shot through the watery, ascending light and the fish-scaled sky and then we all walked backwards over an outcropping coated with thick, curly lashings of sea moss.  Eddie and Wei Shun found small snails creeping through the green carpet while I sank down into it, soaking my shorts completely. 

It was the most peaceful moment of my week on that miniature promontory, not talking much, feeling the salt-damp of the sea under my palm.  When we'd had our fill of the sea air, we clopped back slowly, stopping to look into houses and buildings that lined the boardwalk.  One structure with arched mustard walls and a brightly lit altar particularly intrigued me.  I can't imagine being a caretaker there and living in a house slowly caressed to pieces by rust and salt.  

After heaping plates of nasi lemak and fish at the nearby food centre, I drove us back to the East Coast, laughing and protesting as everyone shouted over the radio about my terrible sense of direction. 

It was only a little after ten when we finally got back to my house to gather belongings and pull on work skins and in the car, on the way to work, I glanced in my rearview mirror and couldn't help but smile at us, sun-warm and sleepy from the simple morning.

I'm ready to turn in now, and beside me, the mattress is still piled high with all our cushions and coverlets.  I'd love nothing more to dive right back in and I know two things: one, as soon as my head hits the pillow, I'll be out like a light and two, come on!  You're never too old for a good old-fashioned sleepover!

Europe, Episode 8: Nice, further inland

Apart from walking the beach at Nice, Bear and I spent many hours getting lost in a maze of market streets and squares.  Under the Mediterranean sun, the buildings were more garish than those in Avignon, bolder reds and oranges and sometimes with ridiculous trompe l'oeil cornices.

Over two afternoons, we walked beneath buildings frilled and painted like gaudy cakes and explored shops crammed with herbs and salts and soaps.  The streets, at time cobbled and sharply sloping, thronged with people sitting on folding chairs and drinking glutinous wine. 

Of course, we celebrated the discovery of a chocolate shop by noshing on truffles for tea and Bear ordered a glistening dôme noir filled with layers of untold vanilla, dark chocolate and biscuit-y glory.  As I savoured a richly-melting sea salt caramel, Rebecca discovered that her preferred coffee in France (where she had previously been receiving watery crap that she reviled) was a sufficiently strong baby café crème.

For breakfast, we devoured full sets of flaky pain au chocolate, bread, jam, omelette and what, in my eyes, is the ultimate morning luxury: both coffee and orange juice.  Thus satisfied, we took our time wandering through the narrow alleys and people watching.

For me, the most fascinating part of the walk was emerging into a tightly-packed market square redolent with the heady odour of wet feathers and sun-warmed fish.

The air was thick with seagulls, raucously flapping and fighting over fish guts and splattering droppings over everything.  I had never met such big gulls before, and Bear and I stood there for nearly an hour switching between fascinated staring and horrified ducking and running.  (I am particularly fond of the last seagull photo above - the bird looks like he has just said goodbye to his parents and is setting off to find his fortune with an aspiring look on his face.)

Above the clamour and cobblestones slick with fish juice, a man warmed his arms in the sunshine.

When a seagull nearly flapped into our faces, we decided it was time to move on and plunged back into the fray.

Rebecca and I found this woman so attractive that after hiding behind a pillar and watching her argue with someone for ten minutes, we finally plucked up the courage to ask if we could take her photo and she sheepishly agreed.  (As Bear says, people in the south of any place are very nice.  They usually said yes to us taking photos after making jokes about having to put on make up.)

Having walked through a park filled with romping children, we decided that it was time for yet another meal and that we would retrace our steps to a restaurant that we had found selling oysters earlier that day.

Oysters were an acquired taste for me but I eventually grew to love them and I remembered greatly enjoying heaps of shellfish in large melamine crucibles on top of metal tripods with my mother in Cannes.  The restaurant in Nice served seafood in a similar fashion and I had subconsciously latched onto the idea of having dinner there.  Unfortunately, we had walked so many kilometres that we were completely lost and we were about to give up on the idea when we turned a serendipitous corner and ended up smack in the middle of hundred of diners enjoying alfresco seafood feasts.

Right then and there, I sat down and had one of the best meals I have ever had in Europe, or indeed, in my life.  While Rebecca had prawns and fries, I ate six gigantic oysters that were so insanely fresh and cold that I felt like I was smoking some kind of sea-flavoured crack.  I slowly savoured each dripping, savoury, piquant one, knowing that it would be some time before I had access to such good oysters again.

Then, groaning at our fullness and good fortune, we took a long, slow walk back.

When I look at pictures of us from that time, I see two very happy, healthy campers.  In hindsight, I realise now that I really appreciated the two days of just slow-walking and eating.  We emerged well-rested, well-fed and well-prepared for what essentially became ten days of stair climbing in thirty-five degree Italy.

Most amusing of all, my diary entry for the day reads: "Bear and I have managed not to kill each other yet."

Well, it is a city called Nice after all.