Double-Booked

My daytime activities today were relatively prosaic. After a successful morning at the market, I came home, fed myself some of the spoils of my shopping, and then set about doing some writing, take care of some business, and running a few errands.

In the afternoon, on my way home from some of these errands, I came across an Algerian pastry shop called La Bague de Kenza, which has this hard-to-resist storefront full of piles and piles and piles of little cakes made of various combinations of almonds, pistachios, honey, orange-flower water, and various other nuts. I went in and asked for an assortment of 12 pieces, with the idea that I could slowly work on them as the week goes on. When I got home, I ate 6 of them in 1 hour. Clearly, I’m not allowed back in there again without supervision.

All of the nuts in those Algerian desserts really filled me up, so I wasn’t really interested in dinner until around 21h00, and even then I was almost reluctant to eat. I headed over to Belleville (only a short walk from my new apartment!) and had a bowl of Pho at my favourite Viet soup place, TinTin. From there, I wandered over to L’Ile Enchantée, a café on the nearby boulevard de la Villette, where my buddies Molly and Damien (a.k.a. Timid Boy) were spinning; these were the folks I had hung out with on the parade float of Le Rex at the Techno Parade two weeks ago.

After hanging out with them and watching them start their sets, I said my goodbyes and headed over to my next stop, which was at On Cherche Encore, where Fantômette and Franck Valat were taking turns spinning. I ran into most of the Frenchy-Berlin Krew there, so we hung out and caught up and had overpriced drinks and generally had fun. I had planned on heading home a bit early and getting some good sleep, but then I got caught up in conversation and suddenly discovered that the bar staff had turned on the lights and cut the music. Was it already 2h00?

I spent the next few minutes explaining the expression “time flies when you’re having fun” to my friends.