1. Juicy, emotionally confusing, and morally questionable
2. Sensible, uptight, and boring

You’ll be happy to hear that my post is of the first variety. While it ranks high in the entertaining category, it ranks low in the my-proudest-moments category. So don’t judge, k?

I arrived at HB‘s to find him vacuuming. Apparently, he cared about making impressions, although this was not the first time I’d stayed at his apartment. Neither of us had planned anything for the first night, so we had dinner with his brother at a Korean/Japanese restaurant nearby. Then, we engaged in our favourite activity: wandering around The City. We walked through urban parks and impromptu art displays, we sat down on benches and stone garden walls, we held hands and linked arms. We were completely in-tune with each other, and conversation flowed endlessly. He never mentioned his relationship status and I never asked.

Around 11 pm, I said I wanted to head back¹, but he was hesitant. We ended up going to a dessert place with a huge menu and some quality patio space.

We shared the desserts, which were refreshingly sweet and cold in the warm night wind. There were four Japanese girls chatting away animatedly at the table next to us. I couldn’t help but stare.
“Why do you keep looking at them?” HB asked, giving me a funny look.
“I love the sound of Japanese. Plus, they look so animated.” I wondered if HB liked the sound of Japanese.
“Are you still dating that Japanese girl?” I asked, as nonchalantly as possible.
“Yes,” he said, without hesitation.
I continued to stare at the table beside us. There was a girl with sleek, straight black hair to her waist and a simple fringe, gesturing quickly with her hands as Japanese words spilled easily from her lips. She was very pretty. Is she the sort of girl HB would be interested in? I looked over at him to see if he was as mesmerized by her as I was, but he was looking at me.
“Let’s get the bill,” I suggested.
“Ok,” he said, not taking his eyes off me.

When we got back to his apartment, I started to get ready for bed, but he still hadn’t told me where I would be sleeping. I assumed the couch, so I asked for a blanket.
“Um, this is my only blanket,” he said, gesturing to the one on his bed.
“Oh.” Well, this is awkward. “Then, what am I going to sleep with on the couch?”
He hesitated. “I actually hadn’t thought of that.”
Seriously? I looked over at the bed, with its two pillows sitting neatly side by side. Bullshit. I guess he planned for me to share the bed.
I should have just slept on the couch without a blanket that first night, because then the whole weekend would have been very different. But I didn’t. I slept in his bed.

Of course, all we did was sleep. I stayed on my side of the bed and he stayed on his. At 2 am, we were awoken by the sound of his air conditioner exploding (it did this every five minutes after that), and he got up to get some water. Something must have been in that water because when he came back, he was suddenly lying much closer. He put his hand on my hip (above the blanket) and pulled me closer. Without a word, I let him spoon me. Then I turned around to face him, and he stroked my hair. I fell asleep in the crook of his arm with our limbs loosely tangled together.

Whenever my friends told me about some scandalous thing that happened in the dead of the night, I always wondered how they let it get that far. They were sensible girls, and most of the time, it wasn’t something they necessarily would have wanted, they just didn’t say ‘No.’ I always wondered how it could be so difficult for them to say ‘No.’ Whenever my friends told me they had had sex with someone and “it just happened,” I always wondered how something like that happens without any discussion. But now I know. Sometimes, in the dead of the night, the silence can be so comfortable that you’d do anything not to break it. Sometimes, in the dead of the night, things that you know are wrong can seem so right. Sometimes, it feels like whatever goes on between 2am and sun rise is part of a dream, not reality.

The next day, we met our friend PL for brunch at a little French place that had received rave reviews. I had been excited to check it out, but I was disappointed. The food was mediocre, the portions small, and the place less charming than the pictures.

PL yammered for two hours without coming up for breath, and by the time our bills came, I was bored out of my mind. To my dismay, she insisted on hanging out with us for the rest of the day. We followed her to an urban park she’d found, which had a few interesting water structures.




She spent the entire time yammering into HB‘s ear while utterly ignoring me. At first, I thought it was simply because she had a lot to say, but after being ignored or cut off for the fifth time, I determined she was purposely being rude to me².

HB was still hungry after our brunch, so we went to another breakfast joint for a second breakfast. I was starting to get annoyed with PL, for she was being unbearably rude and obnoxious. She shot me the most offensive look when I said I didn’t like egg yoke, only egg white. When I didn’t feel like ordering a second breakfast, she promptly said, in her loud voice, “I hate people who go to restaurants and don’t order anything!”

After our second breakfast, we went back to HB‘s place and they watched TV in the living room while I studied the LSAT teacher training materials in HB‘s room. PL came in randomly, and started flipping through my teacher’s binder, making me lose my place in my notes. Then she sat down on the bed and asked, “So, where did you sleep last night? On the couch?”
“No…” I said slowly, not turning around to face her.
“Then where?” she asked, in that obnoxiously loud voice.
“On the bed…” I said, even more hesitantly.
Silence.
“So what’s HB‘s girlfriend’s name?”
“I don’t know…”
Silence.
“He just refers to her as friends,” she says, as if to console me.
I said nothing.
She finally left the room.
I let out an audible sigh and continued working, but my mind was elsewhere.
WAF just happened to message me, so I told her what had happened.

me: i just want this weekend to be over, i think i made a huge mistake coming here
PL has been a bitch to me all morning and now i know why
she totally disapproves and thinks i’m a slut
WAF: …or maybe she’s concerned for you as a friend?
HE’S making the choice to cheat.
me: yeah but i’m going along with it
i guess her judgemental-ness kind of makes me see what i’m doing in her eyes and i don’t like it
WAF: oh so it was okay for her to break up a marriage?³
she’s just enjoying that you are feeling like shit

As soon as PL left, I sat down with HB for a serious discussion. I told him what PL had insinuated, and he confirmed my suspicions. Apparently, PL had called him a few days before the brunch and asked whether he and I were in some sort of ‘secret relationship.’

Our serious discussion was extremely awkward. We had never acknowledged our ‘special relationship,’ much less tried to define it. I was so embarrassed I could barely look at him. We still danced around the facts, never mentioning the previous night or holding hands or any of the things we did that indicated we were not ‘just friends.’

“I think I should sleep on the couch tonight,” I finally said.
He nodded.
“Ok, good discussion!” I spun around in the computer chair and continued working. I didn’t know how to bring up what we really needed to discuss: are you cheating on your girlfriend with me?

That night, I slept on the couch, without a blanket. As I was falling asleep, HB woke me up.
“I think we should have our second serious discussion.”
I groggily rubbed my eyes open and turned around to face him. “Ok. I’m listening.”
“Oh, actually, I hadn’t prepared anything to say. I just thought… we should talk about it. Can we do this in my room?”
I rolled my eyes, but followed him to his room.

We sat on opposite sides of his bed, looking straight ahead. By nature, I am the talkative one, but this time, I kept my mouth shut. I wanted to hear what he had to say, I didn’t want him to just piggyback off my sentiments with half-hearted agreements like “me too.” That would be too easy. I needed him to say what he wanted.

“I’m so confused,” was the best he could muster. “What do you want to do?” He asked me.
I knew he was fishing for something, but whatever it was, I didn’t want to give it to him. “I think this is more your decision than mine. I’m not the one in a serious relationship.”
He looked downright anguished. “I think we’ve always been somewhere between friends and more-than-friends,” he finally said. “I did like you, back in high school, but I felt too guilty⁴.”
I didn’t ask him what made him feel less guilty this time. “I wish we’d settled this three years ago,” was all I said.

Our second serious discussion was even more awkward than the first one. There were a lot of silences. Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer. I needed my beauty sleep.
“I think we only have two choices. Either we’re just friends or nothing at all.”
“What’s ‘nothing at all’? Are we not allowed to see each other anymore?”
“We’ll still see each other at high school reunions I’m sure, but we just don’t see each other as often.”
“I don’t want that…”
I let him think it over.
“Do you think we could be ‘just friends’?” He finally asked.
“I think so. If we wanted it to work, it could work.”
After an even longer silence, I finally asked, “So, are we cool? Have we decided we’re just friends?”
“I guess so…” He was very hesitant. “Why are you so indifferent about this?” He seemed offended that I didn’t care more. I knew what he wanted. He wanted me to tell him I liked him, to tell him to cheat, to fight for ‘us’ – whatever we were. But I could never do that. I could barely fight for my relationship with MFL when I was in a real relationship, why would I fight for this murky, undefined ‘us’? Personally, I just wanted to finish this discussion and go to bed.

He finally agreed to do the sensible thing and I escaped to the couch. The couch was too short and too hot, but ironically, it was the best sleep I had all weekend.

The next morning, we stuck to our “just friends” pact and didn’t hold hands once. We had a huge breakfast, strolled through a street festival, and then he accompanied me in my last-minute frenzy to buy a business casual outfit (I’d forgotten to bring one, and I needed it for the training session).

After my training session, we celebrated by going out for martinis at a cute little whole-in-the-wall joint in the heart of the martini bar district of The City.

As martinis with metrosexual names arrived one after another, he seemed to forget our pact and started reaching for my hand on the table. By the fifth martini, he was drunk. I was only tipsy, so I had to take care of him all the way home.
He was more aggressive as a drunk. This was a side of him I’d never seen. He was normally very passive and even shy; he never made the first move and always seemed to care about placating others. But as a drunk, he was completely uninhibited. While we waited for the streetcar, he pulled my body against his and locked his arms around the small of my back. I felt embarrassed – there was another girl waiting for the streetcar and I knew she knew we were drunk. I tried to get away but he wouldn’t let me go.

When we got home, I put him to bed, and as I turned to leave, he tried to pull me into bed with him. I reminded him of our serious discussion, our decision to be ‘just friends.’
“I don’t think we can do that,” he said, this time with no hesitation. “It is clear we like each other. I don’t want to be just friends.”
His straight-forwardness took me by surprised, but I had some liquid courage myself. “Do you know what you’re saying? Cheating is a slippery slope. Are you sure you want that?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t believe he really understood, and I told him so. “I don’t want you to regret this in the morning.”
“I’m not going to.”
I tried a different tactic. “I would not recommend this if you think you have a future with your girlfriend. If you’re serious about her, don’t do this.”
“I don’t know whether we have a future or not. But I know I can’t just be friends with you, and I certainly don’t want to lose you.”
In the end, I agreed to be more-than-friends⁵. Though I had been fine with the sensible decision we came to earlier, this sounded far more exciting.

We shared our first kiss. I was happy to find he was an excellent kisser. As he caressed my bottom lip, and then my top, I felt tiny little explosions all along my spine. This was a kiss three years in the making.

However, the euphoria from the kiss and the excitement of a ‘secret relationship’ did not last long. As soon as we decided to go down the slippery slope, his whole demeanor changed. The power dynamic shifted. Suddenly, I was the one in control and he was this clingy, needy, pathetic little boy. I was quickly starting to regret my decision.
He kept asking me questions to reassure him that I liked him when, in fact, I wasn’t sure that I did. He even alluded to love at one point, but I cut him off because I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to know how he felt about me (“Aren’t you the least bit curious?” I wasn’t). He asked me a million questions about my love life (“How many guys have you dated since high school? How many serious relationships?”). When I didn’t want to tell him, he got a little angry. He told me he felt like he could tell me anything, but when I told him I didn’t want to know, he got suspicious (“Are you letting me off the hook so that you can refuse to tell me something later?”). I had never seen this side of him. All the emotions he’d held back for the last three years came spilling out. Not only did the power dynamic completely shift, but it was completely unattractive. He was smitten and curious to know everything about me, and I was disinterested and just wished to be left alone. Was this what I had waited three years for? I felt like I had been tricked, tricked into agreeing into something that had been kept hidden from me all this time.

He became so unbearable that I kicked him out of bed. There he was, more vulnerable than I’d ever seen him, and I was so cold to him, more emotionally detached than I’d ever been around him. He thought I was mad at him, so he spent the rest of the night on the couch while I slept in his bed. Although he didn’t bother me the rest of the night, something scared me awake at 6 am (he had left at 5 am). I heard the TV on in the living room, but I didn’t go out to check on him.

In the morning, we went for breakfast⁶ and HB was back to normal. The controlling, clingy, insecure boy of the previous night had almost completely disappeared.

Then I went to a meeting with some clients for a consulting project, and by the time I was done, it was about time for me to go back to University Town.

HB wants me to go see him again in two weeks, but I’m considering calling off this whole thing. After his emotional gates opened, I realized that he likes me more than I like him, and I don’t think I can handle that.

Besides, I’m a fabulous girl. Why should I play a supporting role in his life when I can be the leading lady in someone else’s?

1. I still had a lot to prepare for my LSAT teacher training session on Sunday, and we had to get up to meet our friend for brunch the next morning.
2. On Twitter, I refer to her as Obnoxious Girl.
3. The short story of PL‘s background is that she started dating our economics teacher in the final year of high school, and by the time she graduated, he had divorced his wife, changed his style to look 10 years younger, and was officially dating her.
4. He had been dating another girl at that time, too.
5. Is there a better term for this? I’m not his mistress, since he’s not married. We’re not lovers, because we’re not having sex. What other terms can be there be for this sort of infidelity?
6. Number of breakfasts I’ve had this weekend: 4.5

When I arrived at the banquet hall, I realized that they were frisking us and checking our purses for alcohol. I had, unluckily, brought with me two (250ml) bottles of alcohol. I chugged one and hid another one beside a vending machine, which I planned to retrieve later. Chugging a 250ml mixture of vodka and coke (mostly vodka) at 6pm was not the smartest decision I’ve ever made. Within 20 minutes, I was undeniably drunk. Luckily, and let me just throw this out there because I am quite certain of this, I am the best drunk in the world. When I am drunk, I can act completely sober. As in, no one at my table knew I was drunk (other than the one person I told), not even my accounting professor, who was sitting with us. I talked to her for a good 15-20 minutes about the course, designations after the course, and career prospects. According to the one person at the table who knew I was drunk and witnessed all of this, I made some very sensible comments. He was in absolute shock of how composed I was. No one realized I was drunk – much less how drunk I was (the room was spinning and I probably could not walk in a straight line if I was asked to). Ergo, I am the best drunk in the world.
But because I couldn’t keep it to myself, I let a few more people into the loop about my drunken state. Since they were so shocked at how composed I had been throughout dinner, the word spread quickly, and soon, half my class knew I was anything but sober. While this was funny amongst ourselves, a few professors overheard, and my operations professor (a very old and pervy man) came over to talk to me. This was weird, obviously, because when I see him outside of class, we never exchange more than a courteous “Hello.” For most of the conversation, he was looking down my dress (I was sitting and he was standing, which was probably not a good call, but I didn’t trust myself to be standing) and had his hand on my shoulder. May I remind you that the man is a million years old?

But drunk me brushed it off as no biggie – everyone knew our ops prof was pervy – and I continued being overly happy. Although drunk me is great at saying sensible, sober-sounding things, drunk me is also a lot more friendly. Sober me probably would have made small talk with a good number of people, but drunk me was flying around the banquet hall, saying hellos and giving hugs. Yes, I give a lot of hugs when I’m drunk. I am also a flirt when I am drunk (the only time I seem to pick up on flirting, apparently), and DEB honed in on that fact right away after I hugged him and cooed “I’ve missed you since Boston!” He told me he had missed me as well. Another hug. Then he asked if he was going to see me in the summer – he was working in The City after all – and I said, absolutely, we can lunch! He made me check his phone for my number, and I confirmed that he had the right number. In the middle of whatever he was saying, I exclaimed, “You have beautiful eyes.”
“Thank you! I get that a lot.”
“I never noticed.” – a lie, obviously, since his name is DreamyEyedBoy. I squinted my eyes as I stared into his. “What colour are they?”
“I don’t know, they change.”
“My eyes don’t change colour. I have boring eyes,” I stated, matter-of-factly.
He laughed and his eyes twinkled. “You are unbelievably cute.” Another hug. We must have hugged four times in the span of four minutes.

I exchanged the same sort of banter with NB. Since those were the only two boys with whom I had had legitimate flirting history, I felt like I had accomplished my mission for intoxication by the time I returned to my seat.

I flirted with a few more boys that evening. Not flirting with words so much as with photos. I didn’t even have a camera, so the photos ended up in the possession of a variety of people. In some photos, a boy and I would embrace passionately as if we had been separated by a long war. In some photos, a boy would give me a piggy-back ride, as if I was a little kid. In some photos, a boy would kiss my hand on bended knee. This was all unplanned. For some reason, the boy just got down on one knee, took my hand, and kissed it. It’s surprising how gentlemanly my classmates are when they flirt with me. I guess I come off more feminine than I feel – or maybe it was the pink dress I was wearing that night. In one picture, a boy even picked me up (he is 6’5 or something ridiculous) and spun me. This scene was so cute that we had to do it several times for the benefit of everyone with a camera. My flirty photography was getting a lot of attention, and the girls in the room got a little jealous. One girl even asked the boy to do the same lift-and-spin for her. Except she is not a small, Asian girl, and the boy politely refused.

Which made me realize: I have really underestimated the power of being cute and small. I mean, the slightest bit of boldness and there were boys lined up to take pictures with me, scoop me in their arms and twirl me.
I can’t believe how clueless I was about this phenomenon. It turns out being cute, small, and Asian is an automatic “in” with the majority of guys in the room. Being outgoing and silly just made it that much easier. I have never had to work less to get the attention of an entire roomful of people. I felt fabulous.

I ended up going home early with CBA. I had gotten as much fun out of my intoxication as I was going to get. Nonetheless, it was weird to be leaving at midnight; in first-year, a night like this would not end until 4 or 5 in the morning. But if there is anything I have learned from my wild nights out, it is to get out while the going is still good, because it only goes downhill from there.

Thus, I ended my first year in The Business School, not with a whimper but a bang.

UC Berkeley itself was a short stroll from the subway station. The main visitor center was housed in an unimpressive industrial-looking building just outside the front gates in a tiny little corner office. The young brunette behind the counter looked my mother and I up and down and informed us (rather snottily) that to walk up to the law building was an uphill climb all the way, and would take us at least half an hour. She recommended we take the bus. Wait for a bus when we had a good pair of legs on us? Pish posh! So away we went, I striding in front while my mother lagged behind.

When we finally got up the hill (it did take half an hour), I couldn’t find the damned law building anywhere! After fifteen minutes of searching (i.e. running around in a circle in the area that the map told us the building was supposed to be located), we finally found it. It was tiny! I mean, I really thought we’d made some horrible mistake. There was only one hallway, with about six large rooms, and that was it! Granted, part of the building was under construction, but even from the outside, the building did not look that big. And there was no office or anything, so I couldn’t even ask if I had come to the right place. But it was called Boalt Hall, School of Law, no doubt about it. Disappointed and depressed, my mom and I found a shaded spot and started eating a large container of fruit we’d brought. One thing we have in common, food always cheers us up.
“You know, it’s not that small. Plus it’s under construction. Maybe there’s a whole other wing,” my mom suggested, trying to cheer me up.
“But even on the layout, the area we didn’t see is small. This is it! This is it!” I shook my open hands in the direction of the building in despair.
“It is kind of strange that such a highly ranked law school could just be this one little building… but they only have about 270 people in a class, so I guess it doesn’t need to be that big.”
I was unconvinced. “Maybe there are other buildings that also belong to the law school. Maybe this isn’t the only building.” I tried to be optimistic.
“But the other buildings around it are all for something else,” my mom pointed out.
“And how can they not have an office of some sort? Even the Western law school is better than this!” Keep in mind, I do not view Western’s law school very highly.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s also under construction.”
“Bah!”
I gave up and we headed down the hill, back to the BART station. Suddenly my dream of going to Berkeley Law seemed much less impressive. My mom also seemed to be disappointed by what she saw. Although the campus was beautiful, it was on such a steep hill – what a pain it would be to ride a bike to class, she pointed out. And although the weather was great and it was close to the great city of San Francisco, it would be more expensive to live here. By the time we were back in San Francisco, Berkeley Law had dropped two places in my list of law schools I wanted to attend.

We stopped by the Westfield San Francisco Center food court for lunch, after I read some reviews on Yelp. Indeed, the Westfield food court is like no other. It is the highest quality food court I have ever been to. Not only is the food good, but the food court itself is renovated very nicely, just as if they were real restaurants.




We walked off our large meal by spending some time in the mall itself, but most of the stores were out of our price range. My mom and I had become super frugal ever since we calculated how much this trip was going to cost in total. After looking at one too many out-of-our-reach price tags, we quickly exited the mall. Outside the mall, the streets were lined with more shops, many brand name retailers that also had stores in Canada. Most of the shoppers were also tourists, but the Asian tourists seemed to be the most enthusiastic consumers.




The only store I entered was Forever 21, because they don’t have stores in Canada and I buy a lot of their clothing online – but I couldn’t find anything I liked, so we headed over to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF MOMA).

The SF MOMA is a very well-known museum and a landmark in San Francisco. It’s been around since 1935 and is solely dedicated to artworks of the 20th-century. There was a special Frida Kahlo exhibit on while we were there, so I convinced my mom to buy us tickets even though she was not at all interested in art and had never heard of Frida Kahlo. I, on the other hand, had heard many things about Frida Kahlo from my Spanish teacher, but never understood why her gruesome paintings were so well-received. I was curious, and thought that perhaps this exhibit could solve this mystery for me.
Indeed it did. While there were many pieces in the exhibit that I recognized, I had never closely inspected them. I rented an audio tour as I walked around the exhibit (it was a timed exhibit and CRAMMED with people) so I listened carefully to the explanation behind each piece and took my time in front of each one. There were so many pieces in the exhibit, it took me three hours! By the end, my feet were aching, but I had a newfound appreciation for her works. This, from someone who has never been “in” to art, was a wonder indeed! Her paintings were so emotional, it was like reading a diary. A diary of someone who had gone through hardships in life, but who also represented womankind. Because the kind of hardships she went through, although unfortunate, were not all that far from the average woman. Her life revolved around her husband, and she constantly tried to be everything he wanted in a woman, but could never really succeed. She’d had a miscarriage, she’d had a divorce, and she’d also had affairs. When I first saw some of her works, I’d flinch. They seemed so uncouth and gruesome. Her works were not “pretty” or skillful in the classic sense but they were incredibly intense and detailed. Everything meant something, nothing was by accident. It was like a poem, where every line, every word, even every punctuation mark, was on purpose. The true wonder was that she could make her emotions into a material thing, into a picture or a drawing – it reminded me of The Ring, where the little girl “made” the video tape with the images in her mind. With Frida’s works, you could actually feel what she’s feeling… that is a true artist! My favourite was the piece, Two Fridas:

One interpretation by The Guardian:

The Two Fridas, a harsh double self-portrait, is now Kahlo’s most famous painting. She began it while the divorce was in progress, and told a friend that it was a record of her unhappiness at the split, her two selves representing the Frida Diego loved and the one who’d been rejected. In the painting, a Mexican Frida in traditional Tehuana costume holds hands with a bridal Frida clad in Victorian white lace. Both stare sombrely at the viewer, their hearts ripped out and joined together by a rogue and brutal vein. The Mexican Frida holds in her free hand a tiny photograph of Diego as a boy; blood flows from the photograph into her heart, outside her body, through the other Frida’s heart and out into her lap, where she has cut the vein with scissors, and left it to bleed on her white skirt. The blood drips and turns into a form of decoration, fusing with the border of red flowers around her hem.

Additional interpretation (from what I remember reading at SF MOMA and my own interpretation): she’s trying to cut off the blood flowing out from her heart like she’s trying to cut off her love for Diego. But the blood drips onto her dress and becomes some of the flowers on the hem, like it’s part of the fabric (of her life). The Mexican Frida holds a picture of Diego as a boy both to represent the part of her that loves him and tries to be what he wants her to be (she wore traditional Mexican clothing because that was what he wanted), also as her old self. The Victoria Frida is the Frida in the New World, after she followed him to the States, and I believe also a representation of the New Frida, the one that no longer wants to love Diego after he’d hurt her so deeply. There’s also something to be said about the fact that the clothing is torn on the Victoria Frida while the heart is whole and clothing un-torn on the Mexican Frida.

We divided the rest of our time in the museum between the Contemporary Chinese Art and Lee Miller exhibit. The Contemporary Chinese Art gallery showcased a variety of contemporary (post-Cultural Revolution) pieces of different mediums. Most of the pieces were critical commentary on the Maoist regime. They did not portray the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath in a good light – in fact, just the opposite – and this incensed my mother immediately. Sure, she’d seen innocents denounced during the Cultural Revolution, personally known accused defiers who’d been pressured into suicide – and still, she believed, one way or another, in what the Cultural Revolution stood for, the original ideals of the Maoist regime. Maybe she was more offended by the fact that an art museum in the United States would only show one side of the story, even if the original artists were Chinese people who may have experienced the Cultural Revolution first-hand.
The Lee Miller exhibit was not as meaningful as the other exhibits, but I was surprised how unique some of Miller’s later photographs were, like the World War II photos. Especially this one of Lee Miller in Hitler’s bathtub. I wanted to buy some posters of her photos in the gift shop, but they didn’t have any of the ones I wanted.

After leaving the museum (my mom is really not into art and was getting quite antsy), we took the infamous cable car back to our hotel.

Montreal, one of the largest French-speaking city outside of France, the city of smoked meat and designer fashion, Canada’s cultural capital, and the birthplace of the Montreal bagel.
For us, it was a city with all this and more. It was a city where you can buy wine and beer from any dépanneur (convenient store), of which there were many. Suddenly, we were no longer constrained by the short hours and sparse locations of the LCBO (the only licensed retailer of alcohol in Ontario) when we felt like filling up with wine instead of food. It was a city where you couldn’t turn right on red lights. It was a city where we were immediately identifiable as aliens because we spoke English¹. It was a city where there was a boulangerie (bakery) on almost every street, and every single one was better than any bakery I’ve ever walked into in The City. It was a city where people were better dressed, better dined, and better wined.

We arrived in the city around noon, and immediately headed to Schwartz’s for some of Montreal’s famous smoked meat. The place was tiny and packed and there was an equally long line-up for both eat-in and take-out. Apparently, this was normal for Schwartz’s at any hour of the day. We managed to cram ourselves in and ordered two heaping platefuls of smoked meat.



Unfortunately, I wasn’t too impressed by the smoked meat. The slices were fat and rather thick, although it definitely had the famous smoky flavour. I personally preferred the smoked meat at Dunn’s that I’d had on a previous trip to Montreal (but that might be influenced by the fact that I was slightly drunk when I’d stumbled into Dunn’s at 2 in the morning).
After lunch, we had some time to kill before check-in, so we strolled up and down Saint-Laurent Boulevard. I counted at least three bakeries on one block, and each of them looked better than the last (I made a mental note to buy some baguette at some point but in the end, I didn’t get a chance to). I tried on a dress with a price tag of a whopping $1000 in u&i, apparently by some Swedish designer. Then I tried on another dress by the same designer for a slightly cheaper price of only $850! Both of them looked terrible on me, possibly because I’m not a stick-thin, 5’10 Finnish supermodel.

After checking in to our hotel, we took the subway to Old Montreal. This is the oldest part of the city, started in 1605 when Samuel de Champlain first set up a trading port by the Saint Laurence River. This is also my favourite part of Montreal (possibly of Canada). The streets are gorgeous, and nothing could make me feel closer to Europe. There were cobblestone paths and horse-drawn carriages and street performers. There were hordes of pedestrians, there were narrow store fronts packed into small streets, and there were tons and tons and tons of restaurants.


We picked a particularly excellent restaurant, called Jardin Nelson, for dinner. This restaurant is one of the most beautiful in Old Montreal because it literally has a garden in the back. And it’s huge! It’s a two-layer courtyard with large umbrella canopies and hanging potted plants and live music. The menu mostly consists of meal crepes (as opposed to dessert crepes) such as seafood and veal and even rabbit meat²! We had white wine sangria with dinner, and I was once again reminded of why I loved the French. Not only are they famous cooks and even more famous romantics, they’re famous drunks. But in a classy kind of way. Alcohol, especially wine, seemed so plentiful and accessible here. The prices were cheaper and the quality was better. Yum!
After dinner, we walked around Vieux Port, but it was raining on and off, so there were fewer people on the streets. We headed back to our hotel to regroup, and then walked along Saint Catherine where we happened upon a Nascar party of some sort. The street was closed off to cars and there was a concert going on. It was too crowded and noisy for us though (we kept losing members of our group), so we ended up heading to Rue Peel where the infamous Peel Pub was. Infamous because it had some of the cheapest drinks that I’d ever known (although I found out later that there was a taco place with $1 beers).

After several rounds of shots, a pitcher of rum and coke, and a couple of beers (and a tab that only amounted to about $10 per person), SSS and I were sufficiently buzzed. We decided we were bored of sitting around in the loud, cramped bar and ran out. We flew down the street, hand in hand, nearly knocking over a group doing the Amazing Race. Eventually, we ran out of steam, and by the time we walked back to Peel Pub, were awfully sober.

Sunday morning, I got up bright and early to exercise and shower before the rest of my friends stirred. We didn’t make it out of our hotel until 11, and headed straight to Chinatown looking for dim sum. We didn’t find dim sum, but we did find a Cantonese restaurant peculiarly named “Beijing.” I was immediately put off by the fact that the waiter did not speak a word of Mandarin (strictly Cantonese) – what kind of “Beijing” is that? The food was sub-par, except for the seafood chow mein that WAF ordered. Disappointed, we left Chinatown and walked to Rue Sainte-Catherine, famous for its shopping. Most of the shops were having sales (although some stores were too expensive for me even with the sales), so I bought a couple items of clothing. I tried to restrain myself though, because I was pretty broke as it was – but it was hard with all that gorgeous clothing around me. Of all Canadians, Montrealers definitely have the best taste in fashion. The most memorable store was Simons, this huge complex housing local designer fashion. It was so big and intimidating that I hovered near the rack closest to the door for half an hour before WAF pulled me deeper inside. Did I succumb to the cute pink headbands and polka-dot skirts? Not really. I did buy one school-girl-esque skirt with a black lace fringe for an undiscounted price of $29, which wasn’t too bad. After I tried it on, I just couldn’t put it back! Afterwards, I didn’t try on a single item of clothing, for fear that I might bankrupt myself in Simons.

That night, we separated for dinner because WAF and SRB wanted to have a romantic dinner at a seafood restaurant (I was turned off when I heard the name “Oyster Shack”), and SSS was having Mexican food with a friend I did not care for. Since I disliked both seafood and Mexican food, PGB and I went to have dinner ourselves. We ended up going to O Noir, which was the best decision of my life. O Noir is a restaurant where you eat in complete darkness. No, not a darkened room, a completely pitch black room. I could not see any better with my eyes closed as opened. I could only use my other senses, my sense of hearing, smell, and touch. It was unbelievable. We were really lucky because we’d checked with them earlier and they were all booked up for the entire weekend, but then we decided to try our luck and just walked in. The gods must have been smiling upon us because a couple canceled right when we walked in, so we were then introduced to our waiter, Fay. Now, the entire wait staff at O Noir is blind, and Fay was no exception. He was fairly young and very friendly, and explained to us in a French accent that he was to lead us around in there and that it would be quite loud. We left all our belongings in a locker, then PGB put his hand on Fay’s shoulder and I put my hand on PGB‘s shoulder and we were off. We shuffled in the darkness slowly, and I could hear the sound of a live band and people’s chatter all around us. It was really loud inside, so much so that I couldn’t hear anything Fay was saying, so I just clung onto PGB and hoped that he’d heard the instructions. It was extremely weird walking around in pitch darkness with so much activity all around us. I can’t even begin to describe what it felt like. All I can say is that, at one point, I gave up trying to use my eyes at all, so I closed them and just concentrated on listening. Suddenly, in my mind, I felt like the entire room lit up, not with light, but with sounds. I felt like I could “see” the room – how big it was, how many people were in it, what the live band looked like, etc. – all from listening. Fay first led us to the washroom, which was also in darkness, but there was a special light bulb that lit up the ceramic toilet and some dim lights at the sink, thank god. Then, Fay took us to our seats. Once we were seated, PGB and I started commenting on how absolutely bizarre and unreal this experience was. The room felt at times both large and small. We seemed quite close to other customers, by the sound of their conversation, but the darkness seemed cavernous with the sound of many customers chatting farther away.
Eating our food in the darkness was another world of bizarre on its own. It never occurred to me the kind of role sight plays in eating. Simple things like knowing where to stab my fork, or whether there was even food left on my plate, suddenly became challenges to overcome. We’d both ordered filet mignon (we ordered from the front desk before we entered), which came with some vegetables that I soon realized to be string beans, carrots, and potatoes. I was at first tempted to just feel around my plate with my hands, but that would’ve been extremely messy, so I settled on moving my fork around and stabbing randomly. I entirely gave up on trying to cut my filet mignon into pieces after a few forkfuls of nothing but air, and just bit off pieces of the filet mignon that I managed to stab successfully. Luckily, it was cut in strips, so I didn’t make a huge mess. Dessert for me was a slice of dark chocolate and raspberry mousse cake, which was slightly easier to navigate since there was no cutting or stabbing involved. But even spooning the cake was difficult because sometimes I got nothing and sometimes I got the cake right on, so much so that I spooned more than I could handle, and some mousse would drip off the spoon. I was lucky to discover, later, that I didn’t drip any on me, but I’m pretty sure I left some dollops of mousse on the table.
Surprisingly, or maybe not, the food was really top notch. You’d think that for a place like this, most people would come just for the experience, and the food could be average but they’d still be a hit. However, I can say with confidence that they did not skimp on hiring good chefs at all. The filet mignon was so juicy and savoury that I spent a good fifteen minutes making sure I didn’t have any left on my plate.
At the end of the meal, most of the customers had left and we found that we were one of four tables left (my sense of hearing was getting better and better). They served in two-hour-long “waves” I believe, and clean up in between before the next “wave,” so customers were not being continually let in. One of the tables, a rather large group from the sound of it, started making animal noises, and we called back with noises of our own (PGB mooed and I barked). Then, they started a round of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and the other tables joined in as well. We all had a good laugh. That was when we befriended the table next to us, a table of four females who were from The City as well, we found out. When we came out of the restaurant, we started calling their location, “Mississauga? Mississauga?” and found each other by the lockers. I think both parties were surprised to see the faces of the people they’d been talking to in the dark. We were all happy to have someone to relate our experiences to³, and excited to have made acquaintances in one of the strangest ways possible – in complete darkness.

After dinner, PGB and I walked over to Oyster Shack, which was near Crescent St., a street known for its bars and pubs. It was literally lined with pubs, mostly Irish, and PGB and I ducked into one called Grumpy’s to wait for WAF and SRB.
Over a tall glass of Sleeman Honey Brown Lager, we befriended the bartender, a native of a small town on the edge of Quebec and Ontario. He spoke perfect English and was not at all put off by our ignorance of Quebecois culture. There were virtually no other patrons in the bar, but the people who were there we were sure to strike up a conversation with. First, I met a cute musician, then PGB and I talked up an Asian girl and her boyfriend. Turns out they were writers (well, the Asian girl was a writer, the boyfriend was an editor). They seemed much younger than they actually were. We chatted about university and our careers, and we swapped contact info before they left in case she ever came to The City. Later, WAF and SRB showed up, and we started taking shots together. When SSS showed up two hours later, we were already known by every one in the bar and BFFs with the bartender. We went behind the bar to take a picture with him, we took shots with him, and we even controlled the playlist on his Ipod. He made many custom shots for us and named them after us (i.e. the Purple City Shot), and gave us a couple rounds on the house.
Although the night was a blur of drinking and laughter, I do remember being chatted up by a cute blonde-haired, brown-eyed boy. MontrealBoy was also a musician, and though we had very little in common, we both shared a love for food and spoke almost zero French⁴. The conversation definitely started off on the right foot when he said he loved Thai food. He did the courteous thing of offering to buy me a drink, but I knew I was already drunk so I declined. Plus, he was a starving artist, how could I take advantage of him?
I had a lot of booze flowing through my veins by then, but even so, I could tell 1) he was cute, 2) he was interested in me. I was tipped off to the latter when I mentioned something about being an only child about two minutes into the conversation, and him saying “I could be your older brother.” A strange pick-up line, no doubt, but nonetheless, it was obvious he wanted to simulate a closer relationship between us than we actually had. I spent the rest of the night talking to him while the rest of my friends did their own drunken activity of preference (SSS ran around giggling, PGB chatted up more strangers, SRB passed out, and WAF floated between taking care of SRB and taking more shots). I must admit, I do not have an inkling of memory of what we talked about, except that he had mesmerizing eyes and a rather large nose. I leaned on him and looked for stars in the cloudy Montreal sky while he smoked and talked to WAF about philosophy or some such thing. I was so drunk that even the smoking didn’t bother me. I should have realized how gone I was, but I was in that happy floaty place where everything seemed perfectly reasonable. It was glorious.
At some point, WAF took SRB back to the hotel, and then later, even PGB and SSS left. MB and I continued to chat until he finished his beer, then we walked back to my hotel hand in hand. At this point, I realized that we had another thing in common. Neither of us wanted to sleep together. Maybe that was why I felt so comfortable around him – because there were no warning bells going off! Sure, he’d put his arm around me, and sure, we’d been holding hands all the way home. But when we got to my hotel, he made excuses about having to get up early and whatnot. I almost laughed. I’d never been on the receiving end of excuses not to sleep together. Usually, I’d be the one awkwardly declining and running away. But here was a boy who was content to hold my hand and walk me home. The French really do know how to win a girl’s heart.

Monday morning, I woke up late and hungover. I felt nauseous and barely human for most of the morning, and did not start feeling alive again until after I’d had some food. After checking out, we drove to the Quartier Latin, which is known for its theatres, artistic atmosphere, cafés, and boutiques. We had lunch at an Italian restaurant, but I was still feeling nauseous at that point, so I ended up only having soup. The soup really hit the spot though, and I felt much better after, so I left a large tip for the waiter (even though he didn’t speak English and I had to say “Hot. Water.” five times before he understood me. “Eau. Chaud.” !). We walked up St. Denis to a gorgeous chocolate boutique called Suite 88 Chocolatier. I really wanted to buy some (even though it was quite pricey), but the lady said that the chocolates were very thin and delicate and would definitely not survive the long car-ride home.
Finally, we drove to Mont Royal, Montreal’s namesake, and took some pictures before heading back to The City.

When I returned to The City, I felt like I’d traveled to a different continent this weekend. Even though I only had to resort to my broken French twice the entire trip, Montreal had a strong European vibe. I had some of the best food and wine at the best prices this weekend. The food was original and unpretentious, and the wine (especially the $16 bottle I bought in the convenient store across the street from the hotel) was the silkiest I’ve ever had. I felt like I’d gone to culinary heaven.

1. Although most people in Montreal are bilingual, certain parts of the city contain more English-speakers than others. We only encountered one waiter who couldn’t speak English almost at all. Nonetheless, French is the preferred language, and some locals treat Anglophones (especially tourists) differently.
2. I didn’t order this one but SSS did. I tried some but preferred my veal. Not that it wasn’t good, but it had a subtle taste that I did not really care for. Plus, I’ve had rabbits as pets before, so it was just a little bit weird.
3. One of them got chocolate on her white sleeves. Another had decided to forgo using cutlery completely and just ate with her hands.
4. Most of the patrons in the bar seemed to speak more English than French, and it turns out that the bar is a local haunt for musicians, which explains why we met so many of the artsy type.