What would you do with a million?

Frankly speaking, a million euros is not much if you live in Paris. Hypothetically, if you have won a million euros by way of lottery or bonus, what would you do?

For many Parisians, it would be to purchase a bigger or more comfortable apartments. Some would even have spare to upgrade their car or to get a second car. Most would take a long vacation in some exotic faraway places. In reality, after taking care of the basic needs, there isn't enough left for you to quit your job and have an early retirement. So the very real situation is that you would now have a nice place to live in but you would still have to continue with whatever you are doing.

Further hypothesis. What if the amount is 5 times more?

I would want to do something different. I would perhaps stop working for 3 years to pursue a course in the creative field, such as textile designing and fabrication.

You can hypothesise further and logically, the more the merrier. But I don't want to imagine that far because a sudden influx of money in your life will cause a great change of lifestyle. I'd like to have a comfortable life but I prefer it to be normal so to keep my feet firm on the ground.

Movie!

We both like to go to the cinema, mainly on week-end and we appreciate to watch different kind of movies.
We are lucky to have a big cinema within five minutes walk from our apartment, and we both have a card that gave us unlimited access for only 18€ per month.
It offers a choice of 16 different movies every week, and always in the original language, with French subtitles.
Over the last two months, we have seen a lot of interesting movies.
My favorite is the last we’ve seen, last Monday, “Into the wild”, directed by Sean Penn.
It’s based on a true story and it’s absolutely brilliant. It’s a quest of a young American man, who left everything behind him after his graduation, to travel across the USA and go to Alaska. The scenery is majestic and adds beauty to the film.
I also liked some others, such as “We own the night” (la nuit nous appartient), with Robert Duval, Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg, a family story around the NYPD,
“Gone baby gone”, directed by Ben Affleck, with his brother Casey and Morgan Freeman, “American gangster”, by Ridley Scott, with Denzel Washington, “My blueberry nights”, by Wong Kar Wai, with Norah Jones and Judd Law, “Atonement” (reviens moi), a sad love story with Keira Knightley, “It’s a free world”, by Ken Loach, a very political movie, “Rendition” (detention secrete), with Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Whitherspoon and Meryl Streep, a critics against the dark face of the American foreign policy, and “Bee movie”, a very funny animated movie, written by Jerry Seinfeld.

This coming week-end, we plan to go watch “Lust, caution”, by Ang Lee, and “Charlie Wilson’s war”, with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

Desperate cat lover

Sometimes, particularly in the afternoon, I feel bored in the office. I would take a look at videos of cats in YouTube because I don't have a real one at home to go to and receive a big hug from. I love cats but we can't keep one in the house until I am sure that I will not be pregnant anymore (pregnant women who have no immunity to toxoplasmose is advised to stay away from cats). All I can do now is to watch them on videos and on my neighbours' balconies and windows. How desperate!

My favourites are those with dark and short hair and athletic body types. No, I'm not talking about men. I like for example, the french breed called Chartreux and the british shorthair. With shorter and darker hair, their features are more distinct.

Cats are beautiful animals but having them as pets come with responsibilities. They are not merely some soft toys and we should be aware of that before jumping into the decision of adopting them. It would be a learning experience for both adults and children that pets are living creatures and should be treated with care and responsibility. I read in a cat adoption site that certain cats get along well with children. I like the idea that both the children and the pet keep each other company and at the same time the children learn to appreciate and treat living creatures with care.

I like animals in general. I think that God is such a genius that he created them so beautifully and sprinkled them all over as decorations on the earth. I mean, not literally decorations but essentially, they beautify nature. That's what nature consists of, isn't it? Flora and fauna.

Tea for Two

I have always liked tea. Being Chinese, I often have my meals with warm tea instead of soft drinks or wine. The tea sort of balances out the taste of grease and salt in the little dishes that we eat with rice. Even though I eat Asian food a few times a week and French cuisine the rest of the time, I still continue to consume my favourite drink on a daily basis. It is a routine now that we have tea for breakfast every morning. On some days, we take tea in the afternoon to go with some cakes and biscuits. Almost everytime after I have braved the cold outside, I would want to recuperate my warmth and morale through having a nice tea with cakes.

We get most of our supplies of tea from a tea house named Mariage Frères in Paris. It has become my Singaporean friends' favourite tea house as well. Just an hour ago, I came back from their shop near Odéon to get a box of mint tea and a box of perfumed green tea for a friend. The green tea that I got for her is named Vert Provence. The tea contains good quality green tea with light infusion of flowers and fruits from the south, such as red berries, blackcurrant, lavender and rose. We have a box of this tea at home too and we usually drink it in the afternoon. The taste of the infusion becomes more distinct when a little sugar is added.

Cité Jardin

A few weeks ago, Bernard took an unusual route to go to the 13th arrondissement in Paris. It is apparently a shorter route to the south east of Paris. At the roundabout, he took one exit before our usual one which takes us to Clamart.

Along the main road that cuts through Le Plessis-Robinson, we saw many old-fashioned but newly-constructed apartments and some were remodeled after the Hausmann apartments. Antiquated in outlook and yet new in substance. I have been having a crush on ancient apartments and this is ideal as I have been hoping to find an old-in-new apartment for purchase in a couple of years' time.

It is also known as a cité jardin not soley because of its award-winning floral town but also being a self-contained community surrounded by greenbelts and consisting balanced areas of residences and industry.

We have to go back there to take a walk, hopefully in a better weather, or perhaps in spring to enjoy the flowers in bloom and the environment in its entirety.

Soldes!

I'm looking forward to shopping this Friday. Even if I have to rush my lunch and hopping about in 6ème, it all seems worth the wait and hassle. The winter sale is here! It starts on 9 Jan and I make it a point this time to make the purchases within the first week of sale. The reduction starts at 50% from the very first day and I already have in mind what I want to buy. I need warm clothes and shoes for immediate use and I want to get the handbag of my dream at a discount.

The cost of living in Paris is high and we have low purchasing power (at least I have been convinced by the president that it is). I no longer have the luxury of making frivolous shoppings as I used to do in Singapore. My Carrefour bills now take the biggest slice of my disposable income and I'm usually left with small and precious amount of extra money.

The only solution for most of us, especially the fashion victims, is to wait for the twice-yearly sale. I have been to the summer sale and I must say that I got pretty good deals from that. The winter sale is equally interesting for me as winter clothings can be rather expensive and I definitely need the help of the magic word soldes to get me some good quality cashmere at affordable prices.

Food Chain

Following my post on Go Organic, I recently received an e-flyer from a purveyor of organic and natural products owned by a major lifestyle merchant in Asia. Supernature has been selling organic products since more than 10 years ago in Singapore. I might have been to the store in its early days, tucked in a quiet corner in a mall.

After checking its website, I'm impressed that business people are taking such a serious interest in organic products. The chain now has two stores in Singapore, of which one of them is in the prime shopping area.

Interesting articles on health and living are posted on the website regularly, which I will not elaborate in my blog for the simple reason of avoiding plagiarism. All I can say is, you eat what your food eats. Remember the food chain we learned in school?

A friend who is a meat-lover used to tease us with this:

"Why do you call yourself a vegetarian when you're eating beef?"

"My beef feeds on grass and herbage, it's vegetarian. So by eating the beef, I'm feeding on the grass and herbage too. Therefore I'm vegetarian. "

"Duh...."