Five Fingers

I've been having a great James Mason treat so far this week. The boyfriend and I went to see "The Reckless Moment" last night. Tonight, we watched "Five Fingers" on TCM. Mason was never afraid to play unlikeable characters and had a really long and interesting career - "The Wicked Lady," "Pandora and the Flying Dutchman," "A Star is Born," "Bigger Than Life," "North By Northwest," "Lolita." The list goes on.

I had forgotten what fun "Five Fingers" is - great, true story; brilliant dialogue; economically shot. It's a spy story, but it's really about class. A man decides to become a spy and sells Allied secrets to the Nazis because he wants to become a gentleman. For entertainment, that's pretty hard to beat.

Rain

I was getting dispirited by all the rain this summer until it was pointed out that the rain made for particularly lush greenery. Lush foliage and forceful waterfalls...

Oldie, But Goodie

This image was taken a couple of years ago in the Union Square Farmers' Market. Tomato season will be over before we know it...

Memories of Summer

Summer really flew by this year. Much of it was cooler than most years. I was a little flabbergasted when I heard a report on the radio noting that there were only 3 days in June in which it did not rain. And I worked in the rain many of the days it did rain.

That said, I had a mostly enjoyable summer on a lovely job. I met many lovely people and worked very reasonable hours. The latter part is very unusual in my field.

I thought I would post some pictures from this summer as a farewell to summer and a welcome to autumn:

The evening sky after a particularly dramatic summer thunderstorm I was lucky enough to enjoy under cover. Lightning bolts were going off very near by. When I'm not getting wet, I love watching summer storms, feeling the force of the winds.

This is someone's backyard in Carroll Gardens! I almost deleted the image because it looks like I used a filter. It looks so cliched! Then I realised that if this is the image from a first generation iPhone, the light is pretty nice. It felt psychedelic if I stared at the flora for too long. The garden also called to mind Monet, of course.

I got out of a subway station and waited for a van to take me to one of the Silvercup studios one evening. There was nothing there but a road and a subway stop. Then I spied a lit sign in the distance and I really liked the way the yellow light worked with the sky at sunset.

Rabbit Hole

Wow, May was a very light posting month.  I fell into a rabbit hole otherwise known as "The Twilight Saga."  For all kinds of reasons, not only simple pop cultural curiosity, the boyfriend and I watched "Twilight" on his laptop one evening.  After dinner, we cleared the plates and sat side by side at the little dining table and watched this rain-drenched, high school romance - it was kind of appropriate since it was sort of homework.  I fell under the "Twilight" spell.

Normally, I would just wait to watch the sequels, but I dove headlong into the series after reading Caitlin Flanagan's review in The Atlantic online.  I devoured the books one after another, just as the nice saleswoman at Barnes and Noble said I would.  I made my way through 2560 pages, plus the 200-odd pages of the "Midnight Sun" draft that can be found on Stephanie Meyer's website.  Much of the experience was like reliving the giddy parts of being 14 years old again.  "Twilight" is like swooning over your high school crush, looking at the cute boy across the school cafeteria - in my case, the school fountain - and hoping that he will look back and feel the same way.  "New Moon" is mostly a break-up/depression novel with a very nice dose of recklessness and best-friend-who-likes-you thrown in.  "Eclipse" is a tug-of-war/love triangle story, influenced by "Wuthering Heights."  And "Breaking Dawn" is something completely, completely different altogether.  Its siege story echoes and builds on that played out at the end of "Eclipse," but coupled with something else entirely.  I have to say that once the tension of forbidden, dangerous, erotic love has been resolved, there is not much else to keep me interested other than being a completist.  Wanting to find out what happens was nice, but it was a little cringe-inducing rather than satisfying.

Still all that life and death drama did remind of what it was like to be a teenager when everything felt so intense.  I was completely taken with the tension of having to restrain the savage, erotic bloodlust of the vampire to protect the pure and innocent heroine, who is quite happy to be corrupted by said bloodlust.  Some of the dark, lurid emotional tone of the movie and the books also reminded me of what I so love about the Gainsborough romances of the 1940s - I could being projecting rather a lot into it all here.

I staggered out the other end of the rabbit hole, blinking, realising that time had passed and I had inhabited a parallel universe.

The Twilight Saga

by Stephanie Meyer

2560 pages.

Little, Brown Young Readers

Happy Purchase

I wandered through the Farmers' Market in Union Square today with my friend, L, and this is what I came home with:

And there was enough for a second arrangement on my bedroom dresser:

Flowers in the house make me so happy.

Proustian Moment

A long time ago, in my last year of high school in Singapore, I discovered the Raffles Hotel.  This was before their massive renovation, which turned the place into the luxury hotel it is today.  So the hotel was old and a little down-at-heel, but it reeked of atmosphere.  I really could feel the colonial past and the ghosts of the writers who had passed through the corridors over the years.  It was deeply exotic.

I loved to go have lunch at the Tiffin Room.  They served a British Colonial Chicken Curry.  It was unlike any other curry dish around.  The thick curry was mild, but extremely flavourful, quite in contrast with the other very spicy curries served in the country, and indeed, the region.

At the time, the restaurant did not have air conditioning.  It certainly made for some sultry lunches, the slow hypnotic whirling of the fans a constant accompaniment.  One treasured memory is a rainy Friday afternoon in the Tiffin Room when I had my first real Singapore Sling.  The drink was quite delicious, but what remains is the grey, almost silvery look of the room in the tropical monsoon light.  I was far, far away from 1980s Singapore.  The drink had nothing to do with it.  It was the atmosphere.

After the renovation, I had lunch at the Raffles Hotel once.  The food was quite good, but it was really not the same.  The magic was gone, lost amid the pristine white walls and the air conditioning.  And now they have a lunch buffet, not exactly the same experience as having a Colonial lunch tray presented to you at the table.

For some inexplicable reason, I have managed to find a way to relive the moment.  In New York.  In Nolita.  I go to Rice on Elizabeth Street and have their Indian Chicken Curry.  Sometimes, on grey and gloomy days, I just crave the mild, rich flavours of the golden brown curry dish.  The raisins, chopped banana and mango chutney add just the right amount of chewy, sweet counterpoint to the savoury tastes of the velvety curry sauce and tender chicken pieces.  I used to order the dish with the delicate green rice, but have lately been seduced by the nutty texture of the Bhutanese red rice.  The wood panels and dark interior of the little restaurant can feel quite cosy on quiet afternoons, but I have the same warm, comforting, nostalgic feeling when I eat the dish as a takeout at home.  There are other delicious dishes on the menu at Rice - the Mexican Chicken Soup or the Warm Lentil Stew - but in the many years the restaurant has been in existence, I almost always order the very special Indian Chicken Curry.

Old restaurant sign next to the menu board at the takeout counter

Rice

292 Elizabeth Street

New York, NY 10012

(212) 226 5775

www.riceny.com