There was only one paper in the morning today, so I went down to People's Park Complex after that to get my back checked. (A church friend practices TCM there, though it also says alternative medicine on the window.) OK. It was agonising because the back massage-thing (that was not quite a massage because it was only applied to one target area) was really ticklish in a painful way, and it was when I was lying down and my back was pressed and kneaded and twisted to one side that there came a popping sound from my upper vertebrae. So I'm feeling somewhat better now, and I'm thankful that it doesn't require invasive surgery and alien implants.
This may sound random but it totally is not: I really really really want to go to Alaska! I read the article about in today's papers and they got to see the totally wicked cool Northern Lights!
And after the whole treatment, I walked to city hall to take the MRT home, but not before trying out this new French dessert place in citylink mall. It's called Marvelous Cream, and I felt transported back to Tokyo and facing its enticing array of sweet shops once more.
There was a smorgasbord of parfait choices that the counter staff will assemble in front of you. I tried the macaron framboise, which has raspberry macaroons in vanilla ice cream with fresh cream, and the counter staff immediately began assembling my parfait. They have a very well-chilled metal surface where they lay a scoop of ice cream on. Then, as if the ice cream was as malleable as a dough or clay, she pressed the convex part of a spoon on the mound, which flatted it out a little. (During this time, I began to suspect that she might have just as well been one of those androids I see serving people on Japanese TV because she gave a brief introduction before each part of the apparently complex process but they sounded like instructions she was belting out to herself. Anyway;)
"I am now scooping the ice cream," declares the counter staff. She scoops the ice cream.
I was rather taken-aback by what she said, because it felt so random and out-of-place. I didn't get it the first time, so she had to repeat herself once more.
"I am now scooping the ice cream." A silence follows. I decide to nod appreciatively after every sentence she says.
"I am now pressing down on the ice cream." She presses down on the ice cream.
"I am now scooping berries on the ice cream." She scoops berries on the ice cream.
"I will now place a macaroon shell on top of the berries." At this juncture, I cringe inside, because I hate to see perfectly-good macaroon shells being crushed. I think she notices a facial twitch and hence, drops a pink shell which rolls down the counter. She picks up another shell, with slight embarrassment. She crushes it, shattering the delicate shells into tinier shards.
"I am now putting fresh cream." She sounds rather proud and triumphant as she says this, and smears on a glob of whipped cream. "Fresh" cream sounds so much nicer than "whipped", I think.
"I am now folding it into a parfait." The entire thing is folded with a spatula, and I watch in silent horror as everything melded together, offering only hints that there was whipped cream somewhere in the chaotic swirls of strawberries and a lonely raspberry macaroon, smashed and thus desecrated.
"Your parfait is done." She scrapes the entire thing into a plastic cup bearing a plastic spoon and I took a moment of silence to contemplate my shock over the $4.90 price of a lone scoop of ice cream with a single macaroon shell with a smidgin of cream and some berries.
Huh. But it tasted all right. Somewhat refreshing, but it dawned on me then that I hated berries.
And later on, my mum told me to come "look at something". Normally this would mean I have cleaning up/hard labour to do, but she appeared to be wildly gesticulating at the window, from where I was seated. I had thought, at first, that there was a UFO hovering right outside the window and she wanted to me to do something about it. Like take a broom to shoo it away or something.
But it didn't result in drama. There was a bird that seemed to want to come in through the window. It was really cute, but gosh it refused to go away.
So it lingered around, and I looked it up on the internet and concluded that it was *some* sort of warbler.
And I'm free tomorrow! And the student my sister is hosting for the bicultural immersion trip will be arriving tomorrow! And there's nothing left in prelims but MCQs! *\O/*
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