we have PLANS, my friend and i.

parisian plans, berliner plans, moving in together plans.

but the best plans we’ve made so far are the ones involving red wine and good food. oh, and endless cups of machiato made by real italian men.

There’s been some foreign adventures.

Easter weekend in Paris on my own was liberating, although after a day or two, I started to feel as if my throat was getting rusty and I couldn’t enunciate properly anymore. It didn’t help, of course, that I didn’t speak any French and was therefore relegated to observation-only, rather than being involved in any exciting conversation.

My hotel was on the rue lepic, on Montmartre just up the road from Pigalle and on the same stretch as the café de deux moulins (i.e. where Amélie worked in that eponymous film). Montmartre was beautiful, and I loved how a 5 minute walk transported me into a completely different world where the swarming hordes of tourists vanished and I could peek into windows watching artisans doing antique furniture restoration and painters and sculptors in their workshops.

Of course I did all the touristy things as well - Tour Eiffel, Louvre, Jardin des Tuilieries etc. But half-way up the Champs-Elysees I got bored and turned my back on the Arc de Triomphe. I could see it from where I was, but I lost all interest in seeing it up close, so I went to have a café crème instead. Jim Morrison’s grave at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise was similarly disappointing - I was more excited that I’d chanced upon Balzac than the cheesy circus that was Jim Morrison’s.

And obviously, all the best patisseries and cafés were to be found on the back streets, hidden away from the main boulevards and tourist attractions, through doors that stick and with menus written on the chalkboard behind the counter. And the tiny bars filled with parisians, huddled around tiny tables drinking wine and beer and sharing hunks of bread and pate, cold meats and cheese served on wooden platters resembling a chopping board.

Next time I go (yes, I’m already planning a next time), I’m going to try the credit-card-operated bicycle rental scheme, and also do some clothes shopping. Thinking back now, I was ill-prepared to confront the boutiques of le Marais, but now that I’ve got some experience of the area and of the stores, I know exactly which brands I like and where they are. So now the plan is to start budgeting for those 100% cashmere jumpers by Zadig et Voltaire and the linen-and-silk dresses by Ba&Sh.

it’s been hectic.

there have been days sitting in ‘meetings’ and visiting sites and wondering why i ever agreed to help. but there have also been other days of sitting around and reading and writing (although much fewer). and other evenings of catching up and chatting about all the inconsequential and yet all-important things. karaoke and drum n bass too.

i still sleep till noon, which doesn’t help the jetlag much, but i don’t really have to be up anyway. the food’s good, although some have been disappointments. the mythology of singaporean food probably grew into a over-sized totally delicious monster in my head, either that or my friends are failing in their duties to bring me to the best places.

photography’s fallen off the radar. it’s just too hot to be standing around in the day trying to take photos of the things i see. i really want to photograph it all, but the heat! the humidity! i can’t balance a bag in one hand, an umbrella in the other, a bottle of water as well as a camera. it’s all too complicated.

it’s been a week and a half of history and the future.

i’m back in london, following an early morning flight from berlin and a day of glorious sunshine, cider and bloody marys in the park.

we’re staying at some friends’, and trying to cram in as many social meetings as possible before i leave on tuesday. which is kinda hard work considering we have a 30th birthday party tonight that will most definitely leave me with a hangover tomorrow morning. but, y’know, noblesse oblige. and anyway, it looks like it’s going to be a lovely bank holiday weekend, so it makes everything go down so much easier. like a spoonful of sugar.

all this travelling has gotten me really excited. places to go, people to see, opportunities for adventure. i’m going to spend a lot of my flight back to sg dreaming about the cities i’m going to visit while in south-east asia.

so the FTSE slips back into the red, and heathrow protestors superglue themselves to the department of transport building. on the BBC world service this morning, a man on the panel concluded that there is no such thing as a rebel/rebellion art anymore, and all the articles on tomorrow.sg make me go ‘hmm’, ‘mmm’ and ‘yah, whatever’

all is good in the world.

berlin is still hot, but i’ve invested in a cap to protect my face from being burnt off in the midday sun. arms i can’t do anything about, unfortunately. long sleeves are not an option - there is no airconditioning while cycling, unlike sitting in a car during the 2pm traffic jam on the cte/pie when long gloves are a necessity.

the other day we attempted to visit the hamburger bahnhof museum for contemporary art and the neue national galerie, but our attempts were thwarted by the €10 entreipreis. while i understand that museums do need money to carry on the good work that they do, and that without my support they might very well just give up, and also that the federal government recently decided against giving Berlin anymore money therefore forcing Berlin to support itself (or something similar)… still, €10 to see even the permanent exhibits that are there every single day, for the last few years? you have got to be kidding me.

gradient entry fees are acceptable, not a big flat rate that just puts me off.

anyway, that was how our opportunity to finally do something high-cultural disappeared. so now we’re back to just cycling around and feeling Berlin. it’s great and it’s free.

now that i can say ‘ein cappucino/latte mit sojamilch, bitte’ without hemming or hawing, t’s all systems go mein freund.

totally sweltering here in berlin - it’s like singapore without some of the humidity. the back of my neck is chaotah, and i’ve a bright white shape of my watch 2 inches above my wrist.

but after the rains and floods of the english summer this year, this is probably a good interim location to get me used to the heat and humidity of singapore. i can’t wait.

anyway, we haven’t actually done much sightseeing at all. that’s the one drawback of visiting a city that is a sometime-residence of one’s travel companion: there are other things to be sorted out like bills and taxes and buying furniture. so, until all that gets done, i’ll just have to be content myself with reading the guidebooks and taking note of the places that i’d like to visit once all this boring administrative stuff gets done. on the other hand, it’s quite nice to not be doing touristy things since it’s much too hot to be running around in the midday sun, and i’ve already seen a lot of the landmarks the last two times i’ve been here.

on that note, i’ll continue sitting here at karvana on gabriel-max strasse in friedrichshain, trinken meines eis tiger spice chai mit sojamilch, watching berliners pass us by.

now, seeing as it’s my last real academic exam of my life (i hope, until i decide to do a masters for some god-only-knows reason), i have been doing very much of nothing today.

of course i’ve read through my notes, once. and i’ve skimmed through the past year’s paper, once. and there’s a mcquestionnaire open on word which i really ought to get started on. but, y’know, tax isn’t my strong point and this exam is a whole lotta tax. and a whole lotta employment law as well. i mean, TUPE? what the hell is that? and more precisely, why is it making my life hell?

the only really interesting thing on the whole 3 month slapdashcrash-course in private acquisitions is actually coming to understand what private equity funds are about, and how the acquisitions are structured. and of course, it also gives me muchos kudos when i can explain to all my non-lawyer friends why exactly that man from KKR or whatever pays less tax than his cleaner. it’s to do with income profit vs capital gains tax, plus a bit of business asset taper relief on the side and an annual exemption. and it’s actually all about percentages, so while this Private (In)equity Gazillionaire pays less tax in percentage terms than his cleaner, in absolute terms, he probably pays a lot more. see, easypeasylemonsqueezy!

(in my opinion, what the government needs to do is to make the whole tax system more finely variegated, so that there are more tax brackets with smaller ranges and maybe a 2% - 5% difference in tax rate between them - but that’s just me, and i’m not the chancellor or a tax lawyer even, so whatever)

anyway, to the real crux of the matter: because tomorrow i shall finish my last exam in a long while, holiday plans are afoot today. and to motivate me further, i received my travel scholarship from the kind folks at my future employer this morning. yes, they’re giving me money to go on holuday, how cool is that? (i also think the cheques that come with spaces for 7 or 8 figures are amazing, but moving on swiftly…)

while i’ve already got july and august mapped out (london-hampshire for wedding-berlin for august-london-singapore), i don’t have any concrete plans for the duration of my south east asian holiday, which is troubling because i can’t stay/live in singapore/parent’s home for more than 2 or 3 weeks at a stretch without feeling like scratching my eyes out.

so, these are the places that i’m going to pencil into my calendar and hopefully some, if not all, will materialise:

• perth, to see my cousin
• krabi
• bangkok
• hong kong + shenzen/guangzhou
• shanghai
• laos
• vietnam
• pulau ubin/other offshore island

it’s not that many places to cover in the space of 3 months, so it’s definitely possible. now it’s just a matter of convincing friends and family to skip school / take leave / sacrifice weekends to come along with me. it’s probably going to take a charm offensive, but i’s gotta do what i’s gotta do, y’know?

right, now that i’ve gotten that out of my system, it’s time to get back to grafting. i’ve not got much hope for the exam tomorrow, but as i repeatedly tell myself, i just have to pass it and everything’s gravy.