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Les Amoureux

My colleague asked me, casually as we gossiped over our meals at The Cheesecake Factory, “What does it feel like to be in love?” She was wide eyed and inquisitive, but I found myself quieter than usual when fishing for the answer to respond. A feeling that I've repressed habitually, each time getting better from the practice of multiple, heart-shattering breakups, it took me some time to retrieve the words to describe it to someone else, someone who wasn't sure if she has experienced what it's like. So I started with my first love, the puppy love, the feeling of overwhelming warmth - like a fluffy, protective blanket on the coldest day in Montreal, the hand holding and dependency, the sensitivity in every emotion, explosive from discovering so many things for the first time. First impressions at the university dorms, first crossing of the friend zone at a bar called Tokyo, first kiss in the pouring rain, to the first time I looked at him with blurred vision as I woke up from a night out with his childhood friends and decided - this is it, I'm going to tell him, “I love you too.” The naïveté of this love made me miss the way he would tell me - with all the truth in his eyes, that I was beautiful, everyday, even at my worst moments. Despite the turbulent end to our 6 year relationship, the moving abroad to discover "true" adulthood, the cheating and denials, I realised, that the preciousness of these words linger... I took a sip of my Arnold Palmer, looking around at groups of diners to detract from feeling the strength of the distant memory. I push it back into my body, washing it down with a gulp. Locking it away, I swiftly steered the conversation back to the mundane and day-to-day.

img source: http://smolak.tumblr.com

[theacdiscourse]

On random thoughts in the lead up to my 29th birthday...

I.E. the last year of my twenties... -insert horrified emoji here- But, promise I still look 16 and get ID’ed for buying painkillers at the grocery store. So yeah, get in my head.

I live in a hotel and get someone to wake me up every morning via a wake up call.

I fancied an authentic Italian pizza last night, found a place online, got it delivered and whilst eating it, remembered that I normally can’t finish whole pizzas and wished a friend was around to eat it with me.

I have a great job on paper working in Luxury Fashion Marketing, but wish I could pick up and leave, and just travel.

Dream travel itineraries of the moment... Can I just live them all?

#1 - 6 months in Tokyo, then chill out in Thailand or Bali, explore a bit of Vietnam

#2 - Go back to LA and live the balmy Silver Lake dream... and maybe hop on a red-eye, wander the New York galleries and soak in all the visual cues.

#3 - Live in Paris, eat croissants guilt-free, 24/7, live off butter, wine, charcuterie and cornichons, practice my French and find sales jobs during Fashion Weeks.

I dropped the most amount of money ever in my life shopping at Chanel, because I can? I feel a bit irresponsible but it’s done now. I’ll bring the items with me on dream travel itinerary #3.

I spend considerably a lot more time on YouTube these days.

I have a top shelf worthy of an Into The Gloss feature (gotta work on my #ITGTopShelfie) but still have trouble washing my face at night. I hope my Asian genes keep me wrinkle free for 20 more years to come...

I’m obsessed with Drake’s Teenage Fever. It’s just the most clever, emo dig to J.Lo. Don’t mess with the sensitive souls.

Starseeds - should I find out if I am one?

I need to do more yoga, drink more green juice, consume more chia seeds.

Love? Love yo’self.

[theacdiscourse]

On floating and the importance of your #girlsquad Part 1 – Floating around this thing we call Earth Apparently my horoscope says I am destined to travel, and maybe it is right. Google Aries Decan 3 for an explanation, I’ve been obsessed with precision personality descriptions from astrology as of late. I grew up in Hong Kong and was plucked away from the concrete jungle as a cute 5 year old with a bowl cut to match. To the suburbs of Canada I moved, unknowing that things like bonding time with my dad would not consist of sharing banana split sundaes after he came home from work, or shopping for toys, but shoveling snow off our driveway with my Barbie-branded, metal tipped shovel in weird, padded clothing they called snow suits. At 16, teenage rebellion drove me to spend a summer in Paris, France, where I went from feeling like a privileged brat, falling asleep in Art History lessons to ‘staying woke’ – quote Childish Gambino’s Redbone single. That formative summer abroad changed my life; I went from idly starring at endless fields in the backseat of dad’s Toyota Camry to frolicking around what is still, to me, the most beautiful city in the world, taking a million pictures of anything and everything that was foreign to me, from Rodin’s sculptures to a lemon sugar crepe or the love locks on the seine river, trying my best to flex my elementary school French skills while discovering that Camembert cheese left in a hot summer dorm could smell similar to the public urination stains that come out of nowhere, jolting your senses in the train stations and Metro. From then, travelling became part of my normal life routine. I moved away freely for university, spending summers in New York City, a small French Canadian town and Canada’s West Coast, finally packing up for London, England, to live the dream, only to discover that I was living the struggle… Somehow, after a lot of hustle, at the age of 25, I landed a gig that allowed me to travel all over the world for work. I was living a travel blogger’s parallel, without having to exchange experiences with advertising for it. As glamourous as it sounds, I spent countless hours of the next two years alone and felt like a nomad, a floater, never really at home but never feeling out of my comfort zone either. When friends would party to Disco or 90’s R&B in grimy East London bars or hipster loft flats until 6 in the morning, I was crammed on a red eye flight, or recovering from the jetlag of being in 3 continents in 10 days. Being in your mid-twenties with an unlimited access pass to social media, the fear of missing out would overwhelm me, and I felt people back home could relate less and less to me, never having experienced half of what I was living. However, through floating I managed to make friends – and from all over the world. These deep, powerful connections would only last for as little as days, but the correspondences would last indefinitely – and let’s not forget that correspondence never goes out of style. From connections like these, my circle widened, and small exchanges built a foundation of amazing friendships that may not come from those who are physically around me, but nonetheless, somehow these people are always there to inspire, comfort and share the biggest laughs – whether it’s through memory, spirit or virtual meet ups. And when expat flotation becomes isolating, I always draw back on the relationships that ground me and at the same time propel me into a dreamland of the richest experiences that go beyond any seeming hardships of reality.

[theacdiscourse]

On my first Ramadan diet...

Currently, I’m sitting at work in the fourth week of Ramadan.  I’ve only eaten a very sad apple and a bag of Sunbites Cheese & Herbs bread bites, which no one would ever consume on a regular day as junk food of choice. I washed my glorious meal down with two chai teas from the vending machine.  

My eating habits have officially become Ramadan random.  So as I sit here waiting for the sun to set (the Ramadan occasion equivalent of a cowbell ringing for ‘DINNERRR’), I quasi-document the food consumed during Ramadan to try and explain what it’s like for a non-fasting, non-Muslim girl like me, living here in Kuwait...

*inspired by a page (or chapter) in Lena Dunham’s book Not That Kind of Girl

Week 1 (pretty much the same everyday):

Wake up diligently 2 hours before work, make instant coffee, almond milk.

Prepare yogurt, low-sugar granola, blueberries or some other fancy fruit like figs (possibly only available at Dean & Deluca), or a banana.

Nothing for lunch after feeling guilty the first day for eating 2 Kit Kat chocolate bars and a pack of “Nicce” crisps, maybe a glass of water in a closed off pantry, to not disturb people fasting.

Snack on whatever I can as soon as I get home at 4pm if I don’t go to detox yoga, chug water.

Make a healthy dinner and feel proud of myself for taking this time to care about my body and cook.

One morning, I even managed to make steak and eggs from a piece of last night’s steak à point.  Needless to say, I was feeling like a rockstar before I even came into work.

Week 2 & 3:

Lie in bed until, shit, it’s time to get up for work. 

Blame my laziness on the oven-like, 50 degree Celsius heat and lack of food and water for a week.

Quickly brush my teeth as the water boils for instant coffee.

Quite literally dump yogurt into a bowl with general breakfast ingredients (as mentioned in week 1), removing any efforts in presentation.

Shove breakfast down my face, chug coffee as I put my shoes on and run out the door.

Discovery of cheap chai tea from the vending machines, drink tea in hiding and eat rice cakes for lunch.

Start eating out during Iftar hours (post sunset), sit at restaurants alone, guarding the table for my friends, waiting for the the sun to set and the prayers to come on.

Eat a date and try this buttermilk drink.

My friend and I decide to make Iftar a weekly thing... and turns it into pretty much a daily thing, sampling the menus slash overeating at Cheesecake Factory (Drake raps about it, I go as instructed) and places like my favourite London hangover prevention joint when out near Oxford Circus, Five Guys burgers.  Gluttony at its finest.

Week 4:

Can’t be bothered to ever wake up and make breakfast, so I ask a friend who drives to work to pick up some bananas from the corner store (ie. Bacala) for me.  I snack on these in a closed off pantry.

Chai tea for breakfast.

Chai tea for lunch with the exception of one or two days when other colleagues bring lunch in and share bits with me.  Today, we stumbled upon Starbucks staff testing out microwave smores for a new Frappuccino drink.  I gratefully accept a smore, discover the possibilities of microwaved food created from vending machine ingredients.

Chai tea again.

Dinner with friends - same procedure as above where we pig out after sunset. We up our game to include dress up Arabic places and stylish Indian cuisine.

If home, don’t bother to cook.  Although the housewife dream was well and alive, the novelty quickly wore off over the course of Ramadan, when I realised that I was just another 20-something year old office worker with no time or desire to cook for myself, and I would much prefer ordering my quinoa salads to-go and Chinese takeout.  

Ramadan Kareem everyone.

[theacdiscourse]

On Jeans & T-Shirts.   I’ve always loved wearing denim and t-shirts as a fashion uniform.  Maybe because it was simple but I could put it on with an “I don’t give a fuck” attitude and all of a sudden the look becomes appropriate for almost any occasion, work especially.  Anyway, I was never made to wear a suit like the rest of my business school classmates.  Tees and jeans - precisely white Fruit of the Loom and selvedge denim - were all my ex-boyfriend ever wore and I was over being semi-jealous of how quickly he could get dressed every morning whilst I fussed over my rail of clothing. I guess unconsciously, one morning, I decided to adopt his uniform.

In London, I started shaking out of my French (Canadian) cocoon, exchanging my skinnies for arguably unflattering, high-waisted mom jeans without a care, ditching my Wang tees for men’s tees, knotting them like the girls would do in London Fields, or Columbia Road Flower Market. I loved and relied on this effortless combination that was minimalist and youthful.  

Six months ago at the mid-twenties age of 27, I got recruited for a job out in the Middle East, and my adventurous heart tugged towards the idea of constant warmth from the sun, of discovering the culture under abayas and dishdashas (or DD’s as the youth here call them). And as I packed my uniform for my new life, I soon discovered that the clothing that once made me feel individual and free began to confine me.

Turns out, jeans and a tee are practically the only things I can throw on to keep my body covered in public.