oui je veux tout // yes i want it all

I just had an orgasm in my mouth. Except it was better.

Yes, I know that's what she said, but I'm pretty sure that this metaphorical girl's experience can't have possibly been as good as mine.

In the 4th arrondissement, on L'île Saint-Louis, there is a little store called Berthillon. Berthillon is widely considered to make some of the best--if not the best--ice cream in Paris. Because it's a local establishment and all, you can only find Berthillon ice cream on l'île Saint-Louis. In case you can't make it to the original store, most of the restaurants/bars/cafés on l'île sell Berthillon ice cream; I hear that it's delivered daily.

I took the parents out for ice cream tonight (they are visiting for the week)...actually, I guess that they're the ones who took me out since they paid. In any case, it was amazing. Amazing.

I had the famed caramel au beurre salé ice cream. Something about that salted butter caramel left an explosion of taste in my mouth. It was sweet and buttery and salty and wonderful. I think that it definitely goes on the list of Things That Would Turn T. Into An Easy Woman.

It wasn't all all ponies and unicorns, however. By the time I had finished my ice cream, the sweet aftertaste was a bit cloying and stuck to my throat. Sorry. Didn't mean to take the sexual analogy this far.

Mom wasn't the biggest fan (thought it was too sweet), but she did enjoy the mango sorbet. Likewise, Dad liked the vanilla. They both complimented the coffee ice cream.

It's okay that they didn't like the caramel ice cream though. I guess not everyone is up for having orgasms in their mouth.




...Paris has obviously turned me to the the most depraved of souls. In retrospect, I'm kind of disturbed that I mentioned "orgasm" and "mom and dad" in the same blog post.

une vie à la fois // one life at a time

It's a pretty small world out there. Before I left the States, I'd heard some mumblings from the relatives about how I had a cousin here. To be honest, I didn't really pay much attention. You see, I had this idea that I was going to be all independent and rely on no family member to help me navigate the treacherous waters of an unknown country. Goddammit, I was going to figure out how to get to my apartment from the airport without some cousin waiting for me with a car!

Well, I did manage the independence. I am Asian, however, and you don't ignore relatives if you happen to be part of an Asian clan family. After my mother asked me for the umpteenth time whether I'd contacted the cousin yet, I realized that I'd left the phone number I'd been given...at home. But distance cannot stop AsianDetermination, so before I knew it, I had a phone in my hand and was trying to decipher a number blurred by my chickenscratch penmanship.

The phone call went well and we made plans to meet.

Before I continue further about my cousin, maybe I should explain the degree of our association. Ong Tu is my grandfather's first cousin. That is to say, he is the son of my great-grandfather's sister. Waaaay older than I am, which means that there was the potential for an age barrier as well as a cultural one.

But I had no need to worry. Ong Tu is a pretty awesome guy. He is married to a quarter-Vietnamese Eurasian woman, and they have four children. I met one of them when I came to visit. I felt weird speaking to Cousin M in French (he cannot speak Vietnamese), but I managed. It's kind of funny, because in the course of our conversation, I found out that Cousin M is engaged to a woman in Vietnam. I wonder how that happened? I guess love really does overcome language barriers.

Ong Tu knows everyone. There were all sorts of characters who greeted him as he was showing me around the neighborhood (Chinatown in France?!). Their friendliness towards him was transferred to me after he introduced me as his little niece. Despite his age, Ong Tu is a really cool guy with a surprisingly youthful outlook on life.

I found out more about him during the course of the day as he took me out to lunch and on a little tour around Paris. He's been in France since 1954 after a psychic convinced his mother that he'd die an early death if he stayed in Vietnam. Knowing that he'd be living in France for a long time, Ong Tu told me that he prayed to find a woman who looked French but had a Vietnamese mentality. Enter his wife. She speaks Vietnamese, but had blonde hair and green eyes when she was young.

He's lived a full-fledged soap opera of a life, that cousin of mine.

Ong Tu seemed to understand, much more so than a lot of my American relatives, my need for independence. Instead of being overbearing and trying take charge of my life in a well-meaning-yet-somewhat-smothering manner, he told me simply that I knew where he was, and he'd help me if I ever needed anything. While he was genuinely happy to see me, he made it clear that I had no obligation to do anything.

So much love for that man.

In other news, I went to a cooking class a while ago in a snazzy apartment. There, I caught a glimpse of a former Bond Girl. Story to come later.