when shall we awake to the sublime greatness, the perils, the accountableness, and the glorious destinies of the immortal soul?

another birthday come and gone...

another year older, hopefully another year wiser.
each time i gain another year i like to compare how i spent celebrating the day of my birth from the previous. most people will take the time to reflect on how they have spent the year since, but i just like to examine the snap shot of the actual day in question. this is how i can best gauge the new, the constants, the no longer in my life.

i was convinced for many years that somehow i was affected with a birthday curse. for nearly a decade, right around my birthday some sort of disaster strikes. nothing truly horrible, but irritations that i wish could've waited until the following week. you know the kind -- car accidents, sprained ankles, cracked discs in the lower back, wretched birthday evenings due to a blow out with current beau, etc. the last time i felt truly and wonderfully happy on my birthday was four birthdays ago spent alone wandering the streets of paris. sitting alone on top of the sacre coeur, watching the most beautiful sunset of my life, i took a rare deep breath trying to inhale that feeling, that moment. i still haven't forgotten how it tastes.

this year, joined by a few of my favourite people we took off for a weekend trip to paris. i might have to make it a tradition of sorts. just a couple of hours on the eurostar later we arrived in paris. many 'happy birthday' toasts, croissants, plats du fromage, vins rouge later we were back in rainy london.
who knew travelling with people could be so much fun? i may have to convert my loner travelling tendencies...

until next year!

due to overwhelming demand

for photo evidence of my thanksgiving dinner..
here you go!











I AM A DOMESTIC GODDESS

lol

thanks be to you

after searching in four supermarkets, three butchers, two street markets sam and i finally located two turkeys for our thanksgiving-in-london dinner party. the idea was solely mine -- i like the idea of celebrating canadian holidays abroad. it helps me feel a little bit closer to home. our grocery shopping trip took five hours -- who knew it would be so hard to find a turkey in london in october? apparently turkeys are very seasonal over here, available near christmas time only. same with chestnuts and cranberry sauce. we managed fine though and after nearly getting ripped off LARGE by the sainsbury's car park attendant (what.. £20/30 minutes to park if we don't actually buy anything here?) we filled the boot of sam's 70's mercedes full of thanksgiving-y ingredients.

so after a seven hour cooking fiasco (aided by a few enthusiastic canadian helpers) we managed to put together the following menu:
2 turkeys
gammon cooked in cider & braised with (pure canadian) maple syrup
chestnut stuffing
roasted potatoes
sweet potato casserole
garlic mashed potatoes
brussel sprouts with apple & bacon
creamed spinach
tomato & buffalo mozarella salad
and last but certainly not least... POUTINE!

all 15+ guests ate to their hearts' content, and at the end of the evening we worked off all the butter we'd just ingested with a mad dancing session which lasted until just over 3am when sam's downstairs neighbour barged in through the front door in her dressing gown, stating that 'some people have to work the next day'.

when we laid out all the food on the massive dining table, turkeys ready to carve, i felt my heart smile and looked around at my london family with thanksgiving.

gobble gobble

a beautiful life

a dear friend lost his beloved grandfather over the weekend. his text message read simply, 'he's with my grandmother now..' i am thankful that his outlook is one of hope and fond memories and wish i could be there in person to hear of the many stories he and his grandfather shared together.

j..
all my prayers are with you and your family. i'm glad you're surrounded by people you love and those who loved him as much as you do...

all my love,
anne

thinking... always thinking...

it's sunday late afternoon and i am sitting alone at the suck office listening to murs & 9th wonder. there is something a bit beautiful about this day. it's a rare cloudless, sunny day in london and walking up the street along broadway market to work i wished i could join the crowds of people who were sitting on the curb along the pavement (as the brits call sidewalks) enjoying their sunday pint.

this week has been a bit of a weird one -- flashes of ILL (i love london!) moments amongst pangs of homesickness. i landed at gatwick airport on tuesday morning and in an attempt to pinch a few pennies took public transport home. as the no. 48 bus drove along london bridge i peered along the thames river and breathed in london all over again. this is one of my favourite bus journeys in london.







leaving london bridge station and across the thames, it tumbles into the city along bank, past shoreditch and liverpool street before letting me off on hackney road. just a hop skip later, i was back at the studio trying to catch up on two weeks of missed work.

after spending the last six months anxiously awaiting the approval of my work permit as luck would have it my papers were finally approved the day i left for toronto to participate in jinny's wedding. so my one week trip home was extended an extra eight days, giving me the opportunity to tie up loose ends. now back in london i watch the healing process happen before my eyes. old wounds are no longer there making me feel like a snake that has shed its old skin.

the mean reds prevails often still, and i wonder when i'll finally realise
what it's all about.

my best friend's wedding

every close knit group of girl friends (which for me consists of a small-ish number of the most amazing girls anywhere) have had that oh-so-funny discussion about who will be the first one to walk down the aisle. according to my mother, the girl everyone thought would be the first to go usually doesn't at all -- they are the ones who are destined to be the perennial old maid. in our case, we were all right on the money. funnily enough jin is not the most romantically inclined, no great lover of sappy romcoms, or one to speak obssessively about her future wedding as if it were the single greatest event ever in history next to the fall of the berlin wall.

quite the opposite actually.

jinny was the one who was consistently pragmatic about relationships, marriage and all that comes with it. she could give you viewpoints that most women couldn't even wrap their heads around. she is romantic but sensibly so -- never one to expose her inner feelings to the whole world, the way i often do to even to people who don't give a rat's ass.

jinny & alex's serendipitous meeting is one that most women can only hope and dream would happen to them. in fact, you could probably write an incredibly romantic, though entirely unbelivable screenplay based on their chance meeting. i told jinny it's fate, destiny, roses & rainbows! jin gave me a hard look and said 'no honey, it's just love.'

so my best friend is now a mrs. in typical style i was more nervous than she -- jinny single handedly planned this wedding on her own in just a few month's time while her useless maid-of-honour camped out selfishly in london. i have had several moments of 'i am the worst maid of honour ever of all time', not quite ready to accept that my best friend for the last 14 years will soon be a smug married, while i the perennial singleton 'try to convince myself i'm ok being alone' (my flatmate's words, not mine! haha)

the truth is, i was just as excited for jinny's nuptials as she was. perhaps even more so, because in general i am much more excitable than she. i am thankful i get to live it all through her -- the wedding, future pregnancy, followed by the birth of her first daughter whom she will undoubtedly name after me! she is like the big sister i never had, and the truth is as i'm still undecided whether it's something i foresee in my future or not, how better than to watch my best friend go through these passages in her beautiful life with joy in my heart?

dearest jinny & alex -- i wish you both all the happiness that this world & beyond has to offer..

x

something new something borrowed

i realised recently that i've forgotten how to write. there once was a time when the words would just flow -- out of my head, onto the page. it is a rare moment when i am speech-less, thought-less, mind-less. my head is always brimming with thoughts of 'i wonder', 'what if' -- not in regrettable terms but out of sheer curiousity and due to the obssessive nature i know i harbour. i've often chased this idea of clearing one's mind. being an escapist with an obssessive tendency sounds like an oxymoron but i am living proof that both states of being can co-exist relatively harmoniously.

these past eight months have been the most tumultuous and lonely time of my life. the allure of living in a new city in a foreign continent lost its initial lustre several months back, and now i am faced with thinking of london, uk as my second home. my life is once again completely unrecognisable from what it looked like just a year ago, and once again i find myself embarking on yet another new phase in my life. many remnants of my former self remain however.
dependable friendships of over a decade;
the relationship i have not been able to forget, even after all these years;
the taste of my favourite childhood candy remain as a constant reminder that you can never really leave it all behind -- even though sometimes, i wish i could.

then i come to my senses and give thanks for all the memories... the constants... the enduring spirit of the real.