Tag Archives: food

SF

by jose

I had not seen him for over two years. I remember it well. Ladina and I had made a short trip to Paris, to see family, friends, and celebrate New Year’s Eve in the City of Light.

We made a call at his apartment one evening, the one he shared with Thomas at the time, another very good friend of mine: we all had known each other during classe préparatoire, that oh-so intensive two-year course aiming to make us enter the most prestigious schools of France. We had struggled together, endured together, stuffed our sleep-deprived brains with ludicrous amounts of knowledge, and had become close all the while. And we had left it, more disgusted by the pompous and arrogant elitism of it all, and by the dysfunctional educational and academic system of the Western world, than elevated to any prestige. But I had come out with the best friends I am to ever make, and for this I will never regret it.

Maël was there and as always, it felt like we had seen each other but the day before. Before I knew it, we were sitting on the floor watching Machete with a steak in our plates. He told me he was going to study a (third) Master degree in Berkeley, San Francisco Bay Area — or how he put it: “J’vais à SF” — and that was the last I saw of him.

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In the Bay Area

by ladina

The Caltrain came to a halt and dozens of IT specialists from different companies located in the Silicon Valley spilled out of the suburban train. As we waited for them to clear the way before getting on, our backpacks shouldered and exhausted from the twelve-hour flight from Auckland to San Francisco, a man with Google Glasses caught my eyes. Was he screening me? Or just checking his emails while walking? I could not stop staring at him. It was surreal and frightening. The doors of the train beeped, calling me back to reality,  and I swiftly got on the train before the doors closed behind me.

Oh brave new world; that is quite a change from the isolated, calm New Zealand to the heart of today’s technological development area. Hello Silicon Valley!

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Recipes against homesickness

by ladina

After one whole year of traveling, I had the first real blow of homesickness when we arrived in Wellington. I longed for my own room, my family and friends, for Swiss German, known places and European food. Constantly being on the move, meeting unknown people, discovering new places and cultures — I was fed up with all those realities that are the traveler’s day-to-day life. I needed a break, time to breathe and recover. Cooking my favourite dishes, drinking coffee and chatting with beloved ones on the other side of the globe helped a lot to ease my sadness and to start thinking forward again.

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Queenstown & The Routeburn

by jose

Only a few hours drive away from Te Anau, we knocked at another door: Leanne and Richard, the parents of my friend Ben, had once hosted me after Ben and I had flown away from the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake; and, coming back to Queenstown, it was a pleasure to see them again. They warmly welcomed us at their new house, and, being true born and bred Kiwis, enlightened us with a lot of opinions about life in New Zealand, a country so far away from the rest of the world, at once isolated and protected by its distance.

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Back in Te Anau

by jose

“Are you vegetarian?”

I goggled at the woman until it came to me it was a serious question.

“Um, no, why?”

“Oh Andrew couldn’t remember if you were vegetarian or not. You’re having tea at his place aren’t you? He’s cooking mussels.”

That is how, after having vainly looked for Andrew at his work, we ended up knowing we were having mussels for dinner before his colleague actually gave us the directions to his new house. The Hills had moved since my last visit, and apparently, they now lived a bit out of town.

We drove and turned back a few times before finding the house, set amidst meadows and pastures — and a golf course. As we went up the driveway, we had to pull over to let a 4WD pass the other way. Andrew was at the wheel.

“Hey guys! We’re just going sailing with Arlo — they’re in the back, in the garden! See you this evening!”

And he drove on.

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Cooking class

by ladina

Have you ever wondered how a delicious paneer tikka masala or a malai kofta were concocted? Probably not, because you do not even know the names of those dishes — just like me, before I came to India — and could not imagine whatever they might be. Well, over the last few weeks, we tasted as many different Indian dishes as we could. And, eventually, we started to know food-related Hindi words such as chana (chickpeas), jeera (cumin), paneer (Indian cottage cheese) or masala (a mix of Indian spices) and learned to distinguish different types of bread like roti, puri and naan.

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