If summer were a handbag she’d be a one-of-a-kind gorgeous bag of white woven cloth and handmade wood buttons with her handle an intricate braided wood. And I’d forever pity her because people keep trying to stuff all sorts of stuff into gorgeous summer: vacations you wanted to have starting ten years ago but failed to do so due to buggers known as school or work, visit an old person you call lola and who is so very distantly related to you that even your mother isn’t sure exactly how either of you are related to her either (which you don’t really want to do anyway but will because it’s, after all, the summer and you’ve nothing else to do), visiting the grave of the same very distantly related to you person that even your mother isn’t sure exactly how either of you are related to her because she’s passed away five years ago and you weren’t able to make it to her burial or visit her grave ever (which you don’t really want to do anyway but will because it’s, after all, the summer and you’ve nothing else to do), all those mall sales you missed last year because you instead went to the bazaars that promise great finds and which springs up everywhere, the bazaars that promise great finds and which springs up everywhere which you missed because you had to do something utterly dreadful and a horrifying waste of your perfectly good time like filing your tax returns.
If summer were a handbag she’d be a one-of-a-kind gorgeous bag of white woven cloth and handmade wood buttons with her handle an intricate braided wood, and she’d be wondering how in the world she’d make all those things fit inside her delicate, handmade interior.
After that two hundred ninety-six word intro, we get to my point: this summer, at least for several days, discard everything and spend time, and all the cash you have, on you. For a couple of days, forget about all of the crap I mentioned in paragraphs one and two. And do this:
Grab your bag, put your mobile in silent mode, and settle into a luxurious foot spa @ the Nail Loft. Said foot spa is composed of a scrub and massage that lasts for a solid heavenly hour. Try the paraffin treatment. They soak your hands or feet or both in warm paraffin and once its completely covered and all you need is a candle wick to finish the job, they cover your hands or feet or both in plastic and let it stay. After about half an hour or maybe a bit more (I can’t clearly recall as I’ve already fallen ten minutes into the foot spa), they peel it off and it comes off whole like squishy rubber and your hands or feet or both are baby smooth and soft. Then to mani-pedi. Try a new color. Not, horror of horrors, an orange or coral blue lest you want heaven to strike you down there and then; you should be safe with a nice pearl or deep plum. An eye pad with cool cucumber slices on them and hot tea completes the relaxing hour and are complimentary. Soothing music is softly played in the background. My fave branch is the one @Shopwise Commonwealth, basement level. Said foot spa/mani/pedi is called package 2 and costs 6oo bucks, the paraffin is around 450 bucks. When your bill reaches a thousand bucks, you get a loyalty card which is not so much a loyalty card as you can get it on your first visit but really a reward-for-spending-a-thousand card. This pink card entitles you to 30% discount on your next visit, etc. Good for five visits and to be consumed within the next six months. I’d say its worth it as the rewards costs around a thousand and five hundred bucks.
Now dash to Melisa’s @Rockwell’s Powerplant Mall. Don’t pinch those bills. A good pair of anything should set you back a little. My summer essential sandals this year is a pair of brown wedges from said shop. It’s soft but firm brown rubber coated all around with woven abaca in brown and white; there one horizontal strap at the middle of your foot, one around your big toe and a diagonal one across the rest of your toes, all made of again soft but firm brown rubber, the shiny type this time around. This wedge can go anywhere: from malls to lunches to dinner to beaches.
Since you’re already @Powerplant, get a tub of BareMinerals ID mineral veil. I strongly recommend applying said light powder, which incidentally illuminates your face for a healthy glow in addition to making it appear super smooth when it really is just smooth, with a Kabuki brush. If you can’t live without blush, I recommend Body Shop’s bronzing balls, applied sparingly with ModelCo. brush across your cheekbones and vertically over your nose. Lipstick in your lips’ natural color topped with Mac Lip Glass finishes everything.
Now you’re looking and feeling like the goddess of summer, off to refreshing lunch @Italianis. For the love of Tom Ford I can’t recall what it’s called but order the salad dish with the peeled oranges, vibrant greens and goat cheese on them. If you’re more of a carnivore, them jet off to Jack’s Loft @EastWood. Their Panini sandwich serves two (so does their Fishbowl Icedtea. You kinda get it with the name alone and yes, they did serve it in especially made Fishbowl glasses before, now they’re more of a Flower Vase Icetea) and comes with some chips. Take your lovely time eating every inch of the said sandwich while leaning back on their comfortable couches while soaking in the dim, laid back atmosphere. I love biting into the grapes in the sandwiches; gives the dish that oomph.
Now get some gelato from Fiorgelato @The Podium, then off to your trusted hairdresser. Have your frock trimmed, and along with it get an aminomint treatment. This is an hour of hydrating your hair – they give you said hydration by massaging the aminomint potion into your hair and scalp with firm, relaxing, rejuvenating massage moves. If you want to try waves, this is the time to try digiperm. Tony and Guy does good job, and so does this place @ Tomas Morato I just cant remember what the place is called . If you’ve got longish hair, be prepared to shell out around 5,ooo bucks, but then again you get wash-n-wear waves as if you were born with it. Although I’ve never tried this one I know it works because my sister had it and I had to pay for it so yes, this digiperm thing works.
By now its late afternoon. Skip Starbucks; we’ve had enough of that throughout college, try something else now. Go instead to Figaro. This is a Filipino-owned cafe which serves magnificent, and I do magnificent, Al Tono pasta and their sandwiches, to die for. Really. It’s also so much more elegant and quaint that Starbucks, not to mention it’s not packed with college students dying to tell their friends, and everyone in the shop is free to listen to it too as their voices are just that loud, every detail of their lovelife. Now enjoy your food. Feel all the texture, taste all spices, absorb it all. Read a paper in leisurely pace if you want to. Better yet, pick up a book and spend the rest of the afternoon enjoying it.
Good Omens is ideal. This one’s a collaboration between Neil Gaiman of Sandman graphic novel fame and Terry Pratchett creator of the Discworld Series. Gaiman’s brilliant story plots and inspired use of names (in his book American Gods – one of my unquestionable favourite books and I have high standards – the main character is befriended by fellow inmate called Low Key Lye Smith, who turns out to be Loki Lye-smith, god of mischief. American Gods is about the fate of gods, old and new and though some people may view it as anti Catholicism as the dominant religion of the day, I think it’s a daring piece of work that doesn’t challenge the Roman Catholic Church or any other Religion so much as it is simply putting another way of looking at things out there. This book is marvellous and is a must read for everyone) combines perfectly with Pratchett’s talent for effortlessly humorous lampooning everything set in stone.
The book opens with Aziraphale, the angel guarding the Garden of Eden with a Flaming Sword, having a conversation with Crawly, the serpent who tempted Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Crawly was saying that he was just told to create some trouble and then sent up to Earth; tempting Adam and Eve seemed to fit the bill. Aziraphale, wretched that the creator was, more or less, pissed off, tells him that perhaps Crawly couldn’t have helped it, him being created evil, and a highly illuminating (once you get past the highly confusing part) conversation unfolds. Crawly gets annoyed at the angel’s trust in the Ineffable – good is good bad is bad and good always win) argued why in the world would anyone create a tree with fruit that was not for eating and put it smack the middle of the damned garden in the first place, and cuts the conversation with asking where Aziraphale’s sword, which apparently flamed like anything, was. Turns out Aziraphale pitied Adam and Eve who were banished the Garden of Eden after all and there were all sorts of beasts outside the garden as the lord has created and the first storm of the Earth was on its way as the clouds had announced and it was cold and Eve was expecting already, so he gave them the flaming sword. The two beings had been on Earth since. The modern times arrive and Crawly, now A.J Crowley, in his shiny vintage Bentley whose gas gauge was pointing to empty as it has been for twenty years since, was taking care to break all speed limits because every little helps. He was summoned by Hastur and whatshisface (dammit), Dukes of Hell; he was handed a basket and informed that time has come. This was the anti-christ, the Spawn of Satan, Devourer of Beasts, etcetera, etcetera, deliver him to the sisters of the Chattering Order (nun satanists who babble all the time, the lot of them, whose sole purpose was to switch the anti-Christ with the son of the wife of the American diplomat in London), who promptly messes things up and puts the kid in the wrong room. They also bomb naming him and instead of Damien and the like the kid gets named Adam and is raised human by his parents. Fast forward eleven years and Armaggedon is due to take place that Saturday, and Aziraphale and Crowley (enemies for thousands and thousands of years which really makes them sort of BFF) are at the birthday party of the son of the American Diplomat waiting for the arrival of the Hell Hound who would be the guardian of the son of Satan, only it never arrives because it has a built in homing device and it goes to Adam. And Adam goes on and names it Dog to save all the trouble and, built to obey its Master, it becomes a small dog, Adam’s every dream and desire: a pedigree mongrel. Enter an ancient witchfinder sergeant who keeps on referring to his old, nice female neighbour with phrases like ‘Awa’ wi’ ye, harlot!’ and who recruits Newt Pulsifier who turns out to be descended from witchfinder major Thou-Shall-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifier who has 9 brothers and sisters with names which I bet you can guess, who then falls in love with Anathema Device descendant of John Device who invented the Device and of Agness Nutter, Witch, who, with her burning at the stake, brought witchfinder major Thou-Shall-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifier with her to wherever it is they go to when they snuff it. Turns out Agnes is psychic and wrote The Book which you will later on find out is in fact not the bible but one entitled The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agness Nutter, Witch in a time when witch-hunting was in its peak. Said book predicts the future, specialising on those affecting her descendants like Newt and Anathema getting it on after an earthquake and hours from the Armaggedon; and she writes in it such a way that you really understand it only after the predicted event has already happened, so it’s a challenge getting meaning from it. Oh, there’s also the Four Riders – Death who is the leader who never shows his face and doesn’t really do anything, doesn’t even know how computers work except if they’re the kind you play games on in diners, which annoys War, a redhead and a real adventurer, which is fine by Famine a sleek guy whose made his millions in Meals TM, Snacks TM and such which tastes like food but isn’t really food but just junk (oh, wait, just like all the existing fastfoods, right, lol) and Pollution, who was really just a young man as he had only recently taken over when Pestilence retired when the Penicillin was invented. And they ride motorbikes. They’re to meet up with Adam and he shall lead them, his generals, and the rest of the hosts of hell in their war against the hosts of heaven. Adam is now a powerhouse of raw force and 11-year-old reasoning, and leader of the Them as they’re called by the elders of Lower Tadfield and composed of Pepper (a girl), Brian (who seems like he’s made of dirt) and Wensleydale, the intelligent one. It’s all up to him to decide whether old people are messing up the Earth what with killing the whales and nuclear weapons and obliterating the rainforests and it would be better if he got rid of them and everything else, leaving only the Them and things they like and he can go ahead and re-make everything as he likes it, or he can decide that there’s much of the Earth he hasn’t explored and discovered yet and riders and heavenly hosts and those from hell go away now. A really nice read by Gaiman and Pratchett; not really surprised, like ‘em both, ‘course I’d like their collaborative work. And you even get to meet Adam’s father.
When the sun sets, you may now book your whole body massage for after dinner and a shower.
Head home and prepare dinner for the family. Have fun doing so. Smell the sauce, feel the heat of the stove. But before cooking, slice half a watermelon into inch chunks, lay on a tray and slide into the freezer. This is dessert. Back to the pasta. I use Smirnoff, and prefer to add a bit more of it, and cover my portion (on my plate) in parmesan. Recipe from about.com
Ingredients:
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1 cup (50 g) grated Parmigiano (buy a chunk and grate it fresh)
• 3 tablespoons tomato paste, diluted with 1/4 cup hot water
• 1 hot pepper
• 1/4 cup or so (maybe a third of a cup) good vodka — you want something that has a taste to it
• 1 teaspoon brandy
• 2/3 cup fresh cream
• 1 pound rigatoni
Preparation:
Bring pasta water to a boil, lightly salt it, add the pasta, and give it a good stir.
In the mean time, melt the butter in a large pot and stir in the tomato paste and the hot pepper. Let the mixture simmer over a low flame for a couple of minutes, then stir in the cream, and when the sauce comes back to a boil, the vodka and brandy. Fish out and discard the pepper, stir in the grated cheese, and continue stirring gently until the sauce is well amalgamated and creamy.
By now the pasta should be about done — you want it still somewhat al dente. Drain it, transfer the pasta into the sauce (this is why you need a large pot), and cook over a brisk flame, stirring energetically, for about a minute to help the pasta absorb the sauce.
Serve at once, with a light red wine.
Yield: 4 servings penne or pasta alla vodka.
Pair with garlic bread. Use the best china. Talk over dinner. The possibilities are endless: music, clothes, your pets, clothes, everything you saw earlier – from fashion victim people to trend setters, to your new secret recipe (only let on that it’s got vodka in it, that should spark enough interest). When the pasta’s all gone, get the tray of watermelon. Drizzle with honey. Serve. Take compliments graciously, and they can further thank you with washing the dishes.
Bath. Do a sixty-minute one, not one second short. Scrub furiously then scrub lovingly, or the other way around, but scrub. Soak. Use up half of the whole bottle of rose body bath. And again. Dry with towel. Pick out decent undies and cover yourself with robe or towel. Time for that massage you phoned for.
Choices are now endless, from those with aromatherapy (they now have scents from flowers and things you haven’t even heard of) to those with stones to reflexology and stuff. I recommend an hour of Shiatsu followed by an hour of Swedish, top off with an hour at the sauna. If you don’t have sauna at home, skip it. I have to say, I prefer home service; you can drift right off to sleep without the bother of getting your clothes back on or anything.
Now wasn’t that wonderful.
![Almost Like Another Planet... Pamukkale Blues (UNESCO World Heritage) [Explore #1, THANK YOU]](http://static.flickr.com/7079/7209710670_f67079c754_t.jpg "Almost Like Another Planet... Pamukkale Blues (UNESCO World Heritage) [Explore #1, THANK YOU]")
