Lunch at Adrian's. He made a seafood pasta for us which was yummy. Said he woke up early to get fresh ingredients from Chinatown, about an hour's bus ride from where he lives. His seafood pasta comprised spinach fusilli with fish, shrimp and calamari topped with a tomato-basil sauce and accompanied with sauteed champignon mushrooms (I would have preferred raw champigons, thinly sliced) and steamed asparagus. Slices of baguette from Delifrance to sop up the sauce and our contribution -- Waldorf salad -- on the side.

It seems I have very poor hand-eye coordination. As I was inserting a bit of sopping baguette into my cakehole, it bounced off my teeth and landed sop-side down on the chair I was sitting on before bouncing off again to hit the floor. It left a couple of faint sauce stains on the cream-coloured upholstery which sent Adrian scrambling for the Scotchgard. Oops, 'scuse signore. Hope the stains are not permanent (crosses fingers).

I make a simple Waldorf salad based on the recipe the American tourist recited to Basil Fawlty in an episode of Fawlty Towers. Green and red apples cut into small cubes, celery, walnuts and raisins well mixed with mayo (we use Kraft). The apple cubes should be thoroughly soaked in lemon juice to prevent them from turning brown. The apple cubes are cut by June herself 'cos she doesn't let me play with sharp objects -- soaking the cubes in blood makes them turn brown faster. Adrian doesn't like raisins, so we kept them on the side for ourselves. I don't know. It just isn't right without the raisins which, if used sparingly, give an occasional sweet surprise to the generally sour salad.

The rest of the afternoon we reminisced over our Hawaii trip, pouring over the photo albums we brought over to his place and seeing the shots he took of his trip to Europe and Japan. The lucky pig spent a couple of days in a Japanese onsen! He said if he was going on vacation again this year, he'd like to go see some real snow once again. It's been years since I've seen real snow too. Will I get the chance this year? Hmm... (thinking hard).