Scribbles

Some habits never die, including coming home after a late night’s worth of partying to pollo con arroz with Gino.  Just a typical Montmelian kitchen gathering – music, chicken, Johnnie Walker, drunken dialing, and four different languages spoken (sorta).

The locos are back

My Peruvian partner in crime once again succeeded in getting both of us loco, well before the main INSEAD gathering in London this past Saturday.  After the two of us were reunited with a liter’s worth of Johnnie Red, Gino miraculously had the sense to leave the bird in the oven before leaving the flat.  Too bad he didn’t have much sense for anything else.  Also joining us for the pre-party were two more Monty folks, another guy from our promotion, and some local friends of the host couple.  They managed to finish the other liter bottle of happy juice.

London weather in rare form

My very brief pit stop to London was fun, exhausting, and with the exception of certain parts of the night, memorable.  Five months after graduation and we haven’t skipped a beat. Getting together again with friends made every bit of the trip worthwhile.  My heartfelt thanks go out to Gino and Laura’s overwhelming hospitality.  There simply aren’t words to express gratitude to friends like them; not that they’re ever necessary.

Depressing and deserted.  That's how it is right now.  I'm in an empty chateau packing my things.  People are either long gone, traveling, or who knows where.  Officially there are only 3 of us left in the main house, and I think 3 down the hill.  But for the greater part of today, nadie, just me.  It's such a contrast to when I first arrived and most of the chateau was empty.  Back then, while I unpacked, I looked forward to meeting the new people who have yet to arrive.  Now, I just want to make sure I'm not the last one out.

So it begins.  Looking out the window from the chateau, we caught our first glimpse of snow.  Not surprising with the temperature hovering around 0 degrees.

Fighting all my urges to stay indoor, sip a hot drink, and even blog a little, I drove to campus.  At least it was fun; working on the national week nominations for next calendar year beats finance or completing CV book entry any day.  So next week we’ll be launching our campaign spread the word about Dragon Week – Chinese cultural week.  The goal of getting a high nomination is to have our pick of the week to run the event.  So yes, this is a pre-event to the actual event, a mini national week if you like.

Now as midnight approaches, I grudingly begin my finance assignment.  My only schadenfreude consolation comes from the fact that thousands of miles away, college seniors (including my younger bro) are slaving away on college applications over Thanksgiving break – teehee.

One of our residents told us about this site today, the official link to our cozy chateau.  It looks to still be under development, but if you click on “Le Parc”, you can see some pictures that I’ve neglected to post.  Less of interest would be the floor plans, oh well.

I’m in a muck.  The party last night was amazing, but hosting 400 people has left me with no energy now to write about it.  As a matter of fact, I should be writing my Leading People and Groups paper due tomorrow instead of blogging.  Argh… need recovery time!

We at the chateau have been busting our chops prepping for the upcoming party this Saturday.  So dearth of postings and sleep for the foreseeable future.  If you’re in the area, I hope to see you there.  If not, well, too bad you’re going to miss out on the largest INSEAD party this year. 

Two Thursday nights ago, our resident Italian delivered on his promise to follow up on our French wine and cheese dinner back in August. His parents having visited recently, he stockpiled on some very hard to obtain goods from his hometown of Bergamo. The guy toiled over the dinner preparations on a busy night (before our team party) in the middle of our midterm week. Even though many of us offered to help or buy things, he would simply say “your presence is all that I require.” When I offered to bring some wine to dinner, he promptly refused with “Italian wines only.” I took my cue and backed off immediately.

So what did we enjoy? For starters, we savored authentic Italian cheeses: Gorgonzola, Parmigiano Reggiano, Pecorino Sardo, Taleggio, Taleggio and 3 or 4 others. Don’t ask me which is which – I’m still figuring them out myself. The main dish was a handmade pasta, “Casoncelli alla Bergamasca”, meaning casoncelli made with the specific recipe* from Bergamo. At the risk of butchering it, I’m going to attempt a description – it’s very similar to ravioli, but has a different texture and more flavor. It’s served with an olive oil and butter based sauce with various spices and sliced strips of pork (see metal pot in the picture below). Knowing I was stepping into a landmine when I asked about industrial-made casoncelli, I had to do it to find out if there was any other way to get some other than going to Bergamo. The danger of this action can be compared to that of asking a French person if we can find the good French cheeses nicely packaged like Kraft Singles in the market. Being the nice person he is, my friend stopped short of killing me. He claims to never even heard of industrial-made casoncelli and hopes to keep it that way.

Delicious Italian Cheeses

And the wine? We enjoyed some very tasty stuff, including a bottle of 95 Brunello di Montalcino from the famous Catello Banfi winery. It’s a type of sangiovese and paired perfectly with the cheeses. I’ve been discussing my newfound affinity to cheese with some of my friends back in the States.  One of them said that he’d be 30 pounds overweight living here, given the tremendous quality and variety of cheeses, wines, and baguettes. And he’s right. Just yesterday, I was just proclaiming the need to cut back on my cheese intake, only to find myself munching down another block of it with fresh baked bread an hour later.

Dinner was concluded with a simple and elegant confection of ice cream and Limoncello. Think root beer float, except replacing the root beer with lemon flavored Italian liquor. Nuff said.

The bonanza of authentic Italian delights heightened my growing snobbery in culinary expectations. Living in Europe (and being around my European, and especially French, friends) will do that. I want to extend a special thanks to our Italian host for sharing with us a glimpse of his hometown delicacies. Speaking of which, anybody who knows him will vouch for his rare generosity and soft-spoken gentlemanly qualities. But I asked myself, was there a bit of competitive spirit behind this elaborate dinner, given his conversation with the French guy the other night? Perhaps. But we learned that competition is good for consumers, so I’m not complaining at all. All joking aside, we are very much spoiled by and indebted to all our gracious European hosts. I look forward to the Spanish dinner soon (wink wink hint hint).

*Email me if you want the recipe. I have it, in Italian, naturally.

To celebrate the end of our grueling week of midterms and relentless course work, my French neighbor suggested a brilliant idea – inviting all the team members of all the residents of Montmélian for a Friday night dinner social. Although we’ve been inviting people from various houses over for dinner on many occasions, we’ve never done anything on this scale. With 4 to 5 people per team, we were looking at 40+ guests. There was no way our dining room or outside patio could accommodate that many people. And how were we going to prepare enough food? Not one to suggest ideas without the solution, our resident Frenchy came up with lining up tables in the hall on the ground floor and running a potluck* dinner – each team responsible for bringing some food or drink. Under the organization of our diligent planner, we bought the necessary supplies (including of course kilos of delicious cheeses) and setup the arrangements for our guests.

Even though the date conflicted with the aforementioned Lebanese dinner, we decided to go through with it since we had already made the invites earlier, and after all, we know that it’s not easy passing up a chance to attend one of Monty’s infamously fun parties. Besides, this would be a great warm up for our huge party in two weeks.

Like everyone else who visits our chateau for the first time, our guests simply loved the drive in the forest leading to the spectacular view of our home. We couldn’t hear enough compliments about it. Soon after settling in, with the pleasant company, food and drink, people were mixing it up and enjoying themselves. We set a relaxing mood with some good music and played hosts to our best extent. Throughout the night, each of us gave guided tours of the whole chateau. In terms of division of labor, I assumed pizza heating duty. Because of the limited oven size, I would continuously bake and serve pizzas one by one. I had a pretty good system going, my cell phone alarm would go off every 20 minutes and I’d break off from some lovely conversation with our guests and scurry up to the kitchen. But their disappointment was more than made up for when I came back, and don’t even bother trying to convince me the smiles on their faces had more to do with the hot food than seeing my return.

In the main hall, you could feel the energy of the crowd. The delight of our guests was palpable and we were thrilled to help them start the weekend with such a gathering. The photo below was taken before it filled up. At one point, there was no walking room so you’d have to introduce yourself to each lovely guest in your path and make a new acquaintance before passing.

Half of our Monty gang – Thank the guy
in the bottom middle for this party.

After most of the people left, we hosts decided to entertain the remaining guests in a more intimate setting. We moved the music and wine upstairs to the dining hall. In a blink of an eye, our resident Salsa man from Peru had us dancing to hot latin tunes. As much fun as it was, our last batch of guests reluctantly departed around 2:30 – too early for my taste if you ask. Still, great fun for the night. I realize now how much we actually enjoy hosting our friends. I wonder if the nobles who lived here 300 years ago felt the same.

* The concept of potluck was completely foreign to some of our residents and guests. Back in their respective countries, they wouldn’t fathom inviting guests and then asking them to bring something. I’ll chalk that one up to a cultural learning experience.

One of the adjustments I’ve had to make here in terms of living accommodation is the shower situation. No, it’s not what you think. Luckily for those around me, I didn’t reduce the frequency of it, merely the procedure. To give you some background, the main chateau has two floors of living space for students, five of us on each floor. There are two apartment/studio type rooms, one on each floor, that come with full kitchen and bathroom. For the rest, some of the rooms have private bathrooms, and others share a the bathroom and toilette (separate from the bathroom). I fall under the latter category, which really isn’t bad at all since it’s at worst two people per sharing.

Back on the concept of shower/bath, when I first saw the bathtub, I noticed the shower head connected to the faucet, but no curtain. The first time using it, I made a mess and splashed water all over the place. Not one to repeat my mistakes, I asked our chateau owner about it, and he replied, “that’s how we want it.” I didn’t get it. Why would we want a shower without a curtain? The other shower on the same floor has one.

So I asked my French neighbor next door on the proper technique of cleansing oneself, a-la old style. What he described is what I will coin here the “shower/bath.” The concept is simple, you sit down in the tub with the shower on (which happens to have very low water pressure) and lather yourself up. Proceed to clean yourself, and before getting out, take one final rinse. That made sense. But then I wondered, what about during the winter, where sitting in a frozen tub seems highly undesirable. This is where the “bath” portion of the technique comes in. You plug the tub, run hot water for a while so you accumulate like 2 cm worth of bath water, and then as you shower, the tub gradually fills up. Here my inquisitive manner got me into trouble, I blurted, “isn’t that like bathing in a pool of your own filth?” The retort, “what the hell do you do all day that you get so dirty?” Touché.

Final grade: low-medium efficiency, low water pressure, high on style points for chateau living.

I just realized that there may be a disconnect in the housing section of this blog.  So long story short, I got very lucky and secured a spot at Monty, and didn’t pursue Tavers after that.  Look for an update for more details of this wonderful chateau soon.

That’s what it’s all about here, French cheese and wine. One of our chateau mates proposed the idea of introducing us to such French specialties over a special dinner. Who were we to disagree? So he took care of all the shopping in Paris (on a Monday no less, when many stores are closed.) Since no tasting would be complete without the proper wine pairings, our host handpicked a few selections up to par to his highest standards. And to top it off, he brought back some of the most delicious baguettes from Paris. The claim goes that French people get religious about their baguettes, and take my word for it, they really do when it comes to food. Needless to say, everything was top notch in quality and presentation – we all owe our very gracious host huge for going all out.

Although not a fan of cheese, I’m always open to trying and learning new things. The eleven select cheeses were divided into three categories: goat cheese, the creamy stuff, and the strong and slightly greasy ones, served in that order. The idea is to present them from light tasting to strong and to pair them with wines that bring out their flavors. For the goats we enjoyed a light white wine, a strong bordeau with the creamy cheeses, and finally a Sauternes-like sweet white wine with the last group. The second group reminded me too much of the Borden wedges wrapped in foil back in the States, so I was partial to the goats and one in the final group.

All of that served up with an imagination-stretching description magnificently delivered in a deliberate French accent (this guy amazingly turns it on and off at will) that I won’t even attempt to repeat. Others added in with their comments and suggestions as well. So our little soiree with the most fine company of our Montmelian gang thrown in would be grossly understated as a mere entertaining evening. Sante!

In my quest for future housing at INSEAD, I stumbled across the chateau option.  One of the current students in charge sent me some information about Chateau de Tavers.  Technically speaking, it is not in Fontainebleau, where the campus is located.  Most students live in the surrounding villages (of which Tavers is one) and small towns of Fontainebleau.  In these locations, housing options comprise apartments, larger country houses, and finally the grand prize – le chateau.

Chateau translates literally to castle in English, but we’re not talking about those ancient castles you see in movies, complete with moats, defensive walls, draw bridges, and arrow slits.  These chateaux were built for the noblemen to live in, probably circa 17th century (I’m just guessing here).

So for INSEAD students, this option means you live with a buncha (10+) other students and share some pretty fun experiences together – the closest thing I can think of at Fonty to a college dorm.  In addition, this particular one in Tavers has the theme of socializing, meaning weekly dinner and cocktail parties.  In fact, the owner insists on these events.  He is in the process of adding an indoor pool, sauna, and gym slated for completion this summer.  And one of the commonly cited factoids is their arsenal of 300+ champagne glasses.  Naturally, it means a lot of drinking and most likely not too much studying.  Hey, I ain’t complaining.

Two other huge drawbacks: it’s about a 25 minute drive from campus during rush hour, and due to wacky French municipal laws, no Internet access.  The latter is gonna hurt big time for me, being the online addict that I am.  But hey, I’ll have connection on campus, and how often do I get to live in a chateau near Fonty anyways?

I’m going for it.  I contacted the guy in charge of finding fresh fish, er, I mean, new occupants.  Understandably they want to keep a diverse group of interesting folks living there.  So I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my number will be drawn.  Should I get lucky enough to get in, my friends will have no excuse not to visit.