So, this is the logical consummation of my vacillating obsession with Chinese pop: passing off Jay Chou as "the arts of Southeast Asia" at SEA night, ordinarily a display of cute pre-colonial romantic ritual and rural charm. Instead, we have two girls in Singapore Girl tops and jeans, plus an aloof act-cool Jay Chou lookalike. Heheh. How Singaporean is this playlist: Sun Yanzi, Chen Xiaodong, Jay Chou, David Tao, Ella Fitzgerald, and Lam Yishan.

From the program, my mischievously drivelly-blurb-subverting blurb:

Singapore is, strictly speaking, culturally rootless, extending its tentacles to appropriate any number of foreign influences, giving rise
to an almost exclusively derivative youth culture. We have no ethnic or national music per se, patriotic anthems excluded. How many times have students been forced to endure "cultural" performances, wistful mother-country legacies which a nation of pop-culture adulators has now largely abandoned? These songs, therefore, are Singaporean in the way that Dance Dance Revolution, instead of noh theater, is 'Japanese', or karaoke, instead of wushu, is 'Chinese'. These are songs by Taiwanese pop poster-boys and Cantopop queens. Not your typical sappy love songs, though. Mandarin can accommodate lots of maudlin imagery and trite metaphors before it merits being called sappy. (That's why we've decided not to give translations of the lyrics). Asian languages get away with things like that.

Hen Hao (Very Good)
originally by our very own Singaporean Stephanie Sun Yan Zi
It would be pointless to attempt to describe this song in English. Briefly, and literally, love is compared to the steadfastness and
constancy of a fortress. Less a love song than a pledge to solidarity and mutual support.

Hui Dao Guo Qu (Return to the Past)
originally by Taiwanese pop poster-boy, Jay Zhou Jie Lun: "ni diao bu diao?"
This song is a misty-eyed look at lost innocence, simpler times, the dizzy pre-sexual bliss of puppy love. The original MTV featured a courtship conducted via SMS, atop a Vespa, aloof bad-boy posturing on Jay's part, and super act-cutesiness by the girl.

Goodbye (Goodbye)
originally by Daniel Chen Xiao Dong aka "Dongdong"
A guy and a girl at an alfresco cafe. They're sharing earphones. She smiles sweetly. He bids her farewell (do they break up? Is
he moving to Mongolia? It's not clear).

It's 83 degrees out, breaking the previous record of 82 on this same date back in 1896. And instead of frolicking in the sunshine I'm indoors playing Rockman 3, SMB3 and Final Fantasy 1. Yes, 1. All part of a conscientious second-childhood kickback program to counteract a quarter-life crisis. I want to be at home, loitering in Junkspace, in shopping centers brimming with thrilling tedium and commercial conformity, shuttling effortlessly between the high luster of Wallpaper venues (go look at the photospread in this month's issue, with the octopus-shaped fountain in Marina Square) and the lost-world vernacularism of the neighborhoods. I'm glamorizing, of course (one stupefied by reminiscence can hardly act otherwise). But this time I am well and truly homesick, beyond reasonable degrees. By which I mean that I am not to be consoled if I had weekly shipment of belacan, fried shallots, pineapple tarts, chwee kueh. Nor even if more close friends were here. Barring the weather (but really, how can one exclude the one persistently annoying, and hence cloyingly integral, aspect of Singapore from any wish list?), I want it all. Anal restrictions, parochial neuroses, material fixations, churning contradictions, I absolve you all. You are my sustaining tensions, my inveterate specters, my relished bugbears.

Montreal was not just about food. I saw a Miles Davis documentary, a heart-shaped card of a Zauberflöte, Morvern Callar, Habla con Ella, Herzog and de Meuron at the CCA, Gillian Wearing and James Casebere at the MAC, Gauguin and Matisse at the MBA.

OK sorry sorry.

Boris Bistro, of the fabled duck and caribou pie, with the sort of menu that you could order from everyday. In other words, a select stable of fond favorites, respectable and pragmatic, none of those magical flourishes and somersaulting accents. So. Venison sausages with frites. Duck confit with frites. Steak tartare with frites. Steak with frites. Moules-frites. Frites. (appetizer portion)

Now I know that doesn't look terribly varied. Aha, but the frites were absolutely fantastic. I could have eaten a truckload, and then have the truck drive another load back to Cambridge. They crackled with perfection, with the lingering whiff of earthy goodness on their parched skins, with the grizzled branchiness of their proportions (svelte but having the assuring solidity of a farming implement). I had a fricassée of wild mushrooms of thrilling woodiness, and also competently grilled swordfish.

We returned, of course, and I had more frites, while A had a risotto of such fabulous dimensions that I considered having it for my dessert. Rough-hewn duck slivers, more magic mushrooms, judicious sage, in a moist mixture which oozed cream, wine, fat.

Le dimanche matin, nous sommes allés à un restaurant qui a été décrit dans mon guide de cuisine comme "une perle très très rare." Il va de soi que nous avons dû l'essayer. La plupart de la foule était plutôt vieille. Les vieux languissaient dans leurs chaises au milieu d'un journée d'hiver, en sirotant leurs cafés, en regardant tout le monde passait par la fenêtre. Quelle paressse.

Notre serveuse semblait d'abord un petit peu muette et sourde, mais enfin elle s'est reveillé et nous a servi. J'ai commandé un plat de nombreuses choses - un petit pot de rillettes, quelques tranches de fromage et de rosette de Lyon. Mon copain a eu une grosse crêpe farcie aux champignons et épinards. La serveuse ineffectuelle a failli oublier le baguette et la marmalade à l'ananas de la maison, mais je l'ai rappelé. Cela en valait la peine.

Quand l'on se sent le besoin de varier la langue pour s'exprimer, c'est parce qu'il est las, et il a beaucoup de travail à faire. Une rédaction de dix pages, en fait.

Tandis que j'écris, je mange du chocolat très merveilleux que j'ai acheté de Montréal. Il contient du poivre rose. Un mélange des choses incompatibles, tu dis? Mais tu as tort. Un peu épicé, le poivre fournit d'excitation!