The Secret to Lightness

"Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

(Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.)

Last week, I couldn't believe what I read when I stepped on the weighing scales. 48! Finally. In terms of personal satisfaction, it rates higher than scoring that last piece of chocolate cake at Menotti's. No, really.

I've been trying all year to go down from 55 kilos (heaven knows how I got there in the first place) , all while avoiding the oldest trick in the book - dieting.

Clinging on, as one does, to fabulous food and the odd dram is no good for the journey towards 48, you'd say. In lieu of starving, I ran heaps, went for accupuncture and cut down to one sugar per coffee, from two. But the miracle cure that lost me the final 3 kilos - and not something I recommend as a weight-loss strategy - was overwork.

I've been working flat-out through March ( we all have been, with too many events and too few heads) sometimes past 11. (I hate u helga :P) In all the hurly-burly of meeting deadlines, I forgot something I never thought was possible to forget, for me at least - dinner.

It is not like "I'm famished, I'm rushing, when can I grab a bite?". But rather, at midnight, when the adrenalin recedes and I tumbled into bed, a thought strikes me: "I seem to have left something out. What is it?... Oh right. I haven't had dinner. Too knackered for it now."

It also helps that the sinful November - February season of frenzied face-stuffing corporate lunches is over. And coinciding with the last season is a traditional lull in activity. Quite a deadly combination.

So there you have it. Due to work patterns, I am sentenced to having an Autumn/Winter weight and a Spring/Summer weight.

Excuses, excuses.

P/S I went shopping for new best friends today. The lady at Larry's was cool. Even though I made it clear that I am not spending the equivalent of a third world country's GDP, she was nice and found me gorgeous stuff. I think I will go back with SK next week, for a second opinion.

The Steak Lottery

Sometimes it happens by chance. Other times, through dogged, passionate pursuit. No matter how, finding the best place to eat a certain dish is an endeavour I'd happily devote my weekends to.

The best char kuay teow is at Zion Road, the best pepper crab in an old mansion on East Coast Road, the best Thai on Liang Seah Street. The best sushi bar, to me, is a casual corner shop in an Orchard Road building full of Japanese bars. I'm not being coy. Like my best friend's house, I know how to get there but, for the life of me, can't remember its address. You just order "omakase" and let the chef make whatever takes his fancy - at $150 a head, you get the most artisanal morsels quite unlike anything you get at the plebby conveyor places.

The search for the best steak, however, goes on. Sometimes, the honour goes to Hoggies. You can't help but have a soft spot for Hoggies because the people working there are so cheerful and the pictures of Bondi on the walls remind you of Sydney. The steaks are however a tale of hits and misses - sometimes they're so good you let out a blissed-out "Mmm". On occasion, they are so tough, you stop eating to give your jaws a break. It's a pity, because badly done steak is a waste of the poor cow's life, and the chef's time.

Why do they get it so right some days and so wrong on others? Is it because there are different chefs on duty? Or because the cooking let the side down during peak hours?

The last time we went there, I was determined that this would be a hit, so went into Meg Ryan's Sally mode and ordered "medium, and can you make it exactly medium, because sometimes it comes out undercooked, sometimes overcooked and other times it comes out perfect..."

When I've finished, he gave the waitress an apologetic smile and gave me a look that I think says "I am so not taking you here again".

"I think you freaked the waitress out."

I did, (or Sally did) but we got them good juicy ones that day.

Why do we keep going back if things are so erratic? Just for the chance of striking steak lotto -when the stars are aligned, and meat comes out thick, tender, pink and smoking. No other place have we had steak this orgasmic. Once you have been there, you will take your chances again.

And Now, We Wait

"Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair." - George Burns

Phew, I've recovered from my pesky virus, which means I've got a lot more living and slogging to do.

Thanks for googling my illness, even though I'm sure you have better things to do on a cold, stormy and hail-ridden Canberra night. Or maybe not. Oh heck, that's not the point - you know what I mean.

It's been a slaughter fest on the markets, and you know it is really hurting when the elegantly grand dining room at Raffles Hotel is virtually empty, except for the three of us journos.

A few weeks ago, it would have been filled with the low hum of busy chatter, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a spare table. It is now so still, every word, every clink rings through the airy, chandeliered room.

"What is the greatest thing about being a journalist?" asked the old boss.

"Um... being in the front seat when something big unfolds?"

"The big stories. We live for the big stories," he said.

I guess this week counts for a biggie. As with every storm, the only thing to do is to wait it out.

The End of a Beautiful Day

It was 5.23 am. I stared at the blood. It stared back at me. It occurred to me that I have to see a doctor. But which one? How? When? Why?

When it first started a few days back, I tried to blank it out. Three days later, it got worse, not better. I had put off doing anything about it. If I didn't see a doctor, then it wouldn't be official, then perhaps it would just go away like a bad dream. I don't like to be fussed about. I don't want to trigger any fuss, any hassle.

My first thought was: I've been a good person, You can't give me an illness. Then I started to think of all the kinder, decent-er people around me who had gotten things. Hmm.

But I have been good to me, too. Religiously, I eat my greens, drink my reds, run 4km a few times a week, cut sugar, sleep well. In the car that day, I was still joking that Boy always gets numerous minor colds, while I am in such rude health, anything to hit me must be some major pent-up illness. There was no wood in the car to touch.

Maybe it is not a cause-and-effect thing. Maybe it is like business cycles. You have little say over the ups and downs. When your life is beautiful, it must go downwards in one way, one day. The sunset is beautiful, only because the day is ending, goes the saying.

Then it struck me: do you want to do something about it, or do you want to continue arguing with Someone you weren't completely sure existed anyway?

Before I went in the doctor's office, I read up all about it. It could be as trivial as a simple infection. Or some things growing. Or kidney malfunction. Several possibilities. Big help.

I told the doc the details. Calmly, rationally, in precise and economical language - as only a journalist could. A funny thing to be proud of at this time, considering.

They took it and sent it for tests. I don't know the doc's reaction when she saw the blood. I was in the lobby and passed it to the nurse, who passed it through the little window to her office. After 20 minutes, I was in there, and she said it woud take a week for tests to come back, "then we will see."

I hope it is just an infection. The medicine she gave me seemed to work. The blood cleared. Maybe everything is fine now. Maybe I am just nervous because it has never happened to me before. I still want to get married someday. And have heaps of cute munchkins. And cook beautiful meals in the big kitchen I will one day have. Let the day continue.

If Someone Knocks On Your Door

"No one is perfect. That's why pencils have erasers." - printed on a piece of eraser at the Stadel Museum shop.

Ah, I spoke too soon. The temperature plunged overnight from an agreeable 10 degrees to a bone-chilling zero. Fans of cheap thrills - i.e. me - have fun making clouds each time we breathe with our mouths.

I am the only person in the group still here. The sensible thing to do would be to order room service. Crossing a Frankfurt road at night, it seems, is only second in risk to crossing a Shanghai road. It means being at the mercy of countless Mercedes- and Audi-driving speedsters doing their best impressions of Michael Schumacher.

In a situation like this, what does a starving, chilli-deprived girl do? She braves the elements and the Schumachers to walk to what is reputedly the best Thai restaurant in town. Turns out that the tom yam soup at the Rainbow, a ten minute walk away, is really quite authentic. Bliss.

Our bunch of journos has done its fair share to advance the prosperity of Belgian and German breweries. But last night topped it all.

Dinner was a traditional German feast of such huge and carnivorous proportions, it is not to be repeated for the sake of our health.

Fifteen of us squeezed onto long benches in a crowded century-old tavern in the Sachsenhausen restaurant district. This establishment is known for the local brew, ebbelwoi, or apple wine. Hmm. It tastes neither like apple nor like wine. More like vinegar. We quickly switched to the excellent beer, and lots of it.

I had ordered the pork knuckle, a dish as German as it gets. It was gigantic, even by my standards. The knuckle was covered with a layer of crispy skin, and underneath, the most sinfully indulgent pork fat that melts in the mouth. As my knife and fork prise open the meat from the huge bone, smoke escapes, and each bite is tender and soft.

Frankfurt food is like its people. Straight, unembellished and clearly not in a popularity contest, with food names such as "blood and liver sausages".

I offered 10 euros to any person who can eat a "liver dumpling". One brave Japanese guy took up the deal. When the ping-pong sized boiled meatballs arrived, he took one bite, made a funny expression, then decided there are easier ways to make 10 euros.

Even when some locals aren't gruff and are even borderline friendly, shopping is not a strong point of Frankfurt's. So on our free day this morning, the Thai girl and I walk across the romantic Main River to visit Stadel Museum.

It is a jaw-dropping treasure trove of Renoirs, Rembrandts and Monets, but that's not the point. It also has a collection of incredibily life-like portraits from the 14th and 15th century. The Dutch masters, in particular, kicked some 16th and 17th century ass. That these fragile and unnecessary artworks were protected and preserved for up to 600 years says a lot about how much the people respect art. I would have stayed longer, except, yes, I was starving again.

Tonight, on returning to my room after the tom yum pig-out, I realise that my keycard failed to work again, as it does like clockwork everyday. This time, the receptionist offered to send a technician to check. "If someone knocks on your door at night, do not be alarmed."

It is approaching midnight. No one has turned up in the last few hours. It is a safe bet that no one will. Zzz.

For Better For Wurst

The weather is grey and rainy, but not freezing.

I am reading restaurant critic Ruth Reichl's memoir, Garlic and Sapphires.

I am craving chilli. Very, very, very badly.

Travelling to Brussels and Frankfurt in winter is quite the beer-fuelled odyssey I had imagined it to be. And you get the most awesome wurst and mussels to go with the 600 or so beers in the market.

Except for the rest of the time, my head swirls with countless back-to-back meetings with economists, journos, central bankers. Embedded in the latter's DNA, I reckon, is the ability to say in a hundred different ways "I cannot tell you the answer". The French just do it in a more witty and charming way. But still, no harm prying. The market mood is jubilant, and not just because Christmas is here.

Brussels, capital of Belgium, is a place you would bring your grandmother to. It has a Hansel and Gretel-like fairytale quality. In the old city, you see miles of charming little shops selling all manner of handmade chocolate truffles, lace and jewelry. You are greeted with a warm "Bonjour, Madame" as you enter.

You see couples huddle in moody, chandelier-lit beer cafes that look like they have been there for a few centuries. The cafes, I mean, not the locals - although one or two did look a bit ancient.

And there are no mammoth shopping malls. Only quaint little boutiques. It is like Wal-mart never happened. Even in the belly of the subway stations, you find fine chocolatiers such as Leonidas rather than newsagents. Heaps of 16th century buildings and stately 19th century townhouses too.

Where I stayed is pretty sterile. An administrative zone as anonymous as Canberra. No shops. No nothing. Only brand new glass office towers.

The Christmas fair at the old city square is quite something else. It is full of handicraft and food stalls. The rain was a good excuse to drink hot red wine (vin chaud) and a bowl of piping-hot and peppery escargot soup for 1.50 euros.

The super-luxurious ICE train takes you across the Belgian plains, a Flemish-painting landscape lined with bare trees. Three hours later, voila. It deposits you onto the grand old Haupt Bahnhof or Main Station in Frankfurt.

Germany's financial capital throbs with activity, with money running through its veins.

What it lacks in the adorable stakes, it more than makes up for in size and cache. Skyscrapers jostle for space with imposing old bank buildings - marble and chandeliered palaces of finance that dare you to trespass.

Coming from charming and civil little Brussels, one thing I found is that most people in Frankfurt appear quite sullen. And the speeding traffic waits for no man - or woman. I feel the wintery chills in more ways than one. The saving grace is however sharing meals, alcohol and laughs with journos from so many continents and of so many tongues. Everytime you sit next to someone new, you learn about an entirely different world. Salut!

Happiness Is

... An intense, aromatic cup of coffee when it rains in the November afternoons. For some reason, coffee tastes more satisfying on cold days, when you can see big fat drops of rain hit the office parapet . Can't explain. It just feels good.

... The new dessert at Taste Paradise - yam paste infused with almond essence, in a baby coconut shell. Being addicted to yam paste comes with being Teochew, like a package deal. And having tasted so many versions, this Teochew girl can tell you one thing yam paste cannot be is pretty. But this is the most heavenly ugly thing I've eaten.

... Having perfectly fluffy scrambled eggs with crab meat and sundried tomatoes for breakfast at Menotti's. The second-best brekkie you can buy in the CBD - cheerful and nourishing. The best is of course charcoal toasted kaya bread with still-frozen slivers of butter.

For Richer For Poorer

If I didn't care for fun and such
I'd probably amount to much
But I shall stay the way I am
Because I do not give a damn - Dorothy Parker ( 1893 - 1967)

You know the poaching war has spiralled into something surreal when you are sitting across one of its newly-minted prize catches. When a 30 year-old like him switched masters for nothing less than seven-figures.

We were having lunch at one of the deceptively understated Cantonese restaurants in town, where we just ate the equivalent of a Furla tote ( Ok, so I think in bags, so sue me).

I couldn't help but notice the monogrammed cuffs on his bespoke shirt, and the blindingly shiny cufflinks. Or that his hair had turned an eerie shade of salt-and-pepper grey. Is this the same guy I knew when we were both 17 years old, sneaking out of a Beijing hostel in deep winter to eat steamboat at midnight? He is just as witty and hilarious. Now we are several tax brackets apart, and he dresses and talks like someone several years older, too.

"You cannot work in finance and think, oh I've lost or gained the equivalent of a house. Otherwise I'd have gone nuts at the number of bungalows I've seen change hands. They're just numbers, numbers," he said while gulping down the sharksfin soup.

He's one of those who started with zero and made it up, up and away through plain hard slog. You've gotta respect that. But I wonder what it is like to devote your life to racking up those ... numbers.

I have never spent time thinking of ways to get bizzarrely rich. Which is probably why I will never get there.

Me? I just need enough, um, numbers in my bank account to be comfortable. To fulfil my dreams of travelling to Morocco and Eastern Europe. And to have nice dinners whenever we feel like it. And to own a place with a BIG kitchen (the living room can go, but I cannot cook osso bucco in a teeny nook meant for milo and instant noodles). And most importantly, to have the time to finish reading the books I've started, and then start new ones. Right now, I'm in the middle of a book on the Crusades' history, Hanif Kureshi's social essays in The Book and The Bomb, a murder novel called Perfume and the deviantly pornographic The Bride Stripped Bare ( is it sexy because it is banned, or vice versa?)

You don't need many cars because - look, how many bottoms does a person have? Ditto palatial houses. How many places can you be at the same time?

Books, though, are a different matter. My plan this Christmas is to give everyone books as pressies. Heavy reads, light reads, naughty books, nice books. Why? Because you can never have too many books, and a book can only make you feel richer. All it asks for in return is your time.

Woman Confidential

If I were to choose my favourite hour this past week, it would have to be the evening spent catching up with Ash, over whisky and bites. There is something to be said about good ol' conversations that bring your life back in equilibrium.

Reminiscing about how young and reckless we once were in uni reminds us, ironically, that we are no longer young and reckless. When you have shared a house, a room and one bottle of vodka too many, you kinda develop a connection best summed up as "I take your shit, you take mine". I like it that with these kinds of people, no matter how seldom you meet and how different your lives, the conversation immediately falls into place, without preamble, without small talk.

Conversations are something we busy, driven adults seldom have nowadays.

Someone recently said, we have so much talk, so little real conversation. We talk over meetings, with an agenda, with a purpose. We fill up the space during business lunches with small talk, as if silence were a bad thing. It is not. It takes two people who are comfortable with each other to enjoy the patches of silence in between words, like enjoying the space in a Chinese painting.

Looking back, some of life's moments of clarity, of "oh my god, you're right", of "how come I didn't think of that?" are had during these sessions over wine and coffee.

So here's to the conversations in our lives. Ones that challenge the intellect. Ones that made us change our minds and sometimes, the course of our lives. Ones that reinforce our choices and inject them with courage and fire. Ones that chart how far we have come. Ones that look ahead at how far we have to go. Ones that already happened. And precious ones that are yet to come.