Tonight the school organized a dinner (out!) for all of the currently ongoing classes: ours (basic cuisine), basic patisserie, and intermediate patisserie. After 9 hours of class i followed my friend Alexandra home for quick showers (faster commute) and then to a grand old classically decorated (frescoes, sculptures, tallest ceilings) restaurant right atop Gare de Lyon, one of a handful of major Parisian train stations. The evening was great — more details below — but the food was fine but not memorable. Of course a 70-person banquet is hard to serve à la minute, but after 3 weeks even the non-gastronomes among the group (here is where I raise my hand) have encountered such a surfeit of food every day that we're allowed — nay, forced — to be really picky. We've been making friends with the patisserie students, too, to quite symbiotic ends: currently they're in a genoise (slightly denser than sponge cake) phase and have been filling it with all sorts of yummies like almond buttercream, sugary rum, or a pear/plum mix.

The dinner started off rather sedately but as the night went on played a bit of musical chairs and got to chat with a bunch of classmates. Even people in the same practical group of 9 students each know each other in only a very stilted way: how nice they play in sharing equipment, how fast they work, how their presentation is. Tonight we got to talk about dreams and careers and randomness. One of my classmates is a sabbaticalled IT project manager with two young kids — saw a perfect location for an upscale wine bar/"epicerie" (spicer, basically/grocery, literally) where he'd have a tasting menu revolving around a featured spice of the day, which he'd also market. Jazz trios a couple of nights a week in the downstairs wine cellar. Unfortunately the spot, in a little lane near his neighborhood, is a third-generation boutique grocery whose third generation just inherited — it'd be awful karma to kick them out, and so the very specific dream must remain a dream. Though, who knows?

But good for him, really and truly. I think I wish in my heart of hearts that I had that specific a plan. For now I am excited to wreak digital revolution in general starting the first week of September.