I DON'T WANT TO MISS A THING
A weekend in the outskirts of Zürich.
Since I was going to be in the suburbs of Zürich for my karaoke party, I messaged my friend K to meet up at a nearby park, so we could all hang out. She picked a really cool park to go to, but alas, snow was in the forecast. Rather than risk running into dreary weather, we met up at her place instead.
Celebrating two birthdays
I had missed baby R's birthday, so we brought her a present—A German book about a grasshopper in a violin. I had picked up this book at this year's Fumetto Festival. Rather than buy R another stuffed animal, I thought I'd go the educational route. And since K has a design background, I thought she'd appreciate the book, which she did.
R is now one year and one month, which is much too young to enjoy a book. I tried to read to her but she lost interest after page one. She did bring out a book about Peppa Pig in Dutch and had me read her that instead. This is when I realized that Dutch sounds like the transition between German and English, as if the language is morphing from one to the another. If you speak Dutch/German/English, just think about it! Am I right!?
K's birthday was in two days, so I bought her some gluten-free brownies from Migros, and the rest of us enjoyed a bunch of vegan baked goods from Bakery Bakery.
An assortment of vegan pastries. The crookies (croissant + cookie) were my fav!
We went for a short walk in the neighborhood, where everyone taught me how to whistle into a blade of grass to sound like a bird. They were surprised that I had never done this before. My reasoning is: I grew up in East LA! We didn't do this kinda stuff!
K made orange tiramisu, so we had that after our walk. It was so good! I was tempted to get another slice, but it was nearing 17:00 and we had planned to go to a Vietnamese place for dinner. So I said no to the extra slice, "read" another book to R, and then danced to her current bed time song, "Karma Chameleon" by Culture Club.
Homemade tiramisu by K. Instead of coffee, she used orange juice!
My slice, so you can see it from the side.
Also, this was my first time meeting a baby with FOMO! I haven't met many babies in my life, but usually, they start crying when they need to nap, and usually, they just go and nap. But not R! She got a bit fussy, so her mom tried to get her to sleep, twice. And each time, she'd come back out, smiling, sleepy-eyed, because she wanted to just be part of whatever we were doing! I thought it was really cute, but that also encouraged us to leave, because we were preventing her from taking her usual nap.
We also started to come up with some gender-neutral names for me. My sister calls me "auncle" to her pets, but K didn't like that. "I don't like the feeling my throat makes when I say 'auncle,'" she said. Which is fair, because that's what I thought too, initially. But that word has grown on me now.
In the end, we settled for "zizi," which comes from the Italian words for aunt and uncle ("Zia" and "Zio"). But I just looked it up again, and it's also French children’s "cute" word for penis. (Source) So yeah, maybe I'll go with Tonkel*, as I had suggested to K the other day, which made her laugh.
* The German words for aunt and uncle are Tante and Onkel. Hence, "Tonkel."
Dinner at Du Du
When we told K and M that we were planning to go to Du Du for dinner, they got super excited. "Get the duck," said K.
"I don't really like duck," I replied.
"No, you will like it."
They suggested a bunch of other things, none of which we got, because Hallo, we are in Zürich! I don't want to know how much duck would cost.
I got beef pho and Vietnamese a hot coffee (it's CHF 3 more for iced). I was disappointed that the coffee didn't come in the special coffee press, but that was fine. I got to add as much condensed milk as I wanted!
Vietnamese coffee. I added 3 teaspoons of condensed milk.
If I'm paying over CHF 20 for pho, this is what I'd expect.
My bowl of pho was CHF 26.50, which is standard Zürich prices. The soup base could have been stronger in terms of spices, but other than that, it was really good! I usually ask for no coriander, and sometimes, they'll end up giving me no herbs at all. So I was pleasantly surprised that I got a plate of the usual herbs (sans coriander), as well as generous portions of onions in my bowl. The meat was good quality, thinly sliced and melted in my mouth. (In some restaurants, they use cheap cuts of meat that's not suitable for noodle soups!)
Karaoke party
After dinner, Daniel and I parted ways and I headed to The Church. When I arrived, S informed me that it would be a smaller group this time, which is never a problem, because that means more singing for us!
That week, I had purchased the Karafun app to take our karaoke experience to the next level. For those who don't know, this app is what many professional karaoke places use. There's one main user who projects the lyrics onto the screen, and everyone else can scan a QR code and access the "room" via their phones to add songs to the queue. And there's like, every song. (I had Daniel search for some Swiss German ones even, and we found them!)
There were some technical difficulties in the beginning (the app doesn't work with older Macs), but luckily someone had a PC so we were able to use the web app and sing to our hearts' content. At one point, there was over 50 songs in the queue.
I tried not to sing the same songs as last time. Some anonymous person kept putting on Red Hot Chili Pepper songs and then nobody would claim them, so I ended up singing a lot of them.
By 22:00, most people started to leave. This is when I got even less shy, and at this point, I was singing every other song. I tried to make sure to bump up other peoples' songs so I didn't seem like a mic hog, but...
By 23:00, it was down to 5 of us. S and her roommates were bunched together on the couch. I sat on my own couch, and M's bf another. When I sing, no matter how tired I am, I will go all out. But I noticed that the other voices were a lot fainter. Soonafter, S announced that, unless I absolutely had to sing another song, they were gonna call it a night. I was pretty tired too, so I agreed. After they sang the last song, S said, "I think I need a break from karaoke."
That made me sad, because I thought I had found my monthly karaoke crew. I felt like we sang more this time, because it was continuous, so I get that it's tiring. Hopefully, she will change her mind, but at the same time, that's ok. I can't expect everyone to love karaoke as much as I do, especially if they didn't grow up with it. It's not in their blood. I will continue using the app by myself, at home!
Breakfast, with cats!
The next morning, S and I met downstairs at 10:30 for our usual breakfast of toast and jam. We also had the most delicious homemade butterzopf, where the crust of the bread was just a little bit crispy. But the best part was, the mysterious cats finally came!
Neptune! He looks so concerned. ʕ´•㉨•`ʔ♡
He was born with one working eye. The other one never fully developed.
Neptune, the one-eyed cat, was so friendly! He purred nonstop and bunted everything, smashing his head against the plants. "If you pick him up, he will immediately climb on your shoulders and eat your hair," said S. "Try it!"
So picked him up and he climbed onto my shoulders.
Neptune, chomping away on my hair.
He was surprisingly weightless! He's not a big cat either. I feel like he's only a little big bigger than Boba.
Since I had some time before the train, I helped S clean up. That's when we ran into Sapphiro, the other cat. He's known to be a little feistier, but apparently, he seemed to be ok with me.
Sapphiro, who's a bit more apprehensive towards people, but he let me pet him.
He snuck into the chapel as we were cleaning so he could bond with this blanket.
After that, I took the train home. I was feeling pretty good on the ride, but the longer I became alone with my thoughts, the more insecure I became. I blogged about it in the last two posts, so I won't reiterate it again.
Before I left, S reminded me again that she wants to take a break from karaoke. "But if we have another party, do you want us to invite you again?"
I shrugged, trying to play it cool. "Sure, I'm always down to karaoke."