About Rose: I grew up in Singapore, lived in Melbourne but currently call London home. I love gastronomic adventures, especially while travelling. I stated writing at 17 to remember how it all began.
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22 October 2012
Monday, 10.04pm I suppose this is why you don't put too much of yourself into work. But trying to do that is so contrary to my nature and very counter-intuitive. And yet if I don't learn to desensitise myself to certain things, I become disillusioned.
Perhaps it is a good thing after all, to get away - a week in The Hague and then Paris. It's become an annual pilgrimage, one that reminds me of the six months I spent in The Hague and the way Paris always brings with it something new.
The six months in The Hague 3 years ago clarified and reaffirmed my passion for what I do. It gave me the opportunity to travel, traversing 3 cities in a single day (Casablanca, Lisbon, Amsterdam), allowed me to form life long friendships and discover a new side of myself.
And Paris, is that city I return to constantly. It was my first European city, one that I explored on my own in my early twenties, and then returned with a group of friends where we zipped around the city on the metro and on a boat along the Seine. I have seen it in the fall wandering through Rodin's garden, and in the summer on Le Quatorze Julliet watching the fireworks erupt as the Eiffel Tower sparkles in a thousand lights. I have laughed with friends, stood transfixed by Monet's water lilies, enjoyed an afternoon of pâtisserie and took walks through Jardin des Luxembourg with someone who carried my heart in his.
It's easy to return to these memories, to indulge in that moment of wide-eyed wonderment and happiness. It is a refuge from the harsher realities of how (annoyingly!) difficult things can be sometimes.
"Each one believing that love never dies" - Here, there, everywhere, The Beatles