Glimpses of Sunlight, and the Film Festival

It was a sunny day, for once, and massive fluffy clouds were floating across the sky as I cycled off to Charlottenburg to meet my godfather and a friend/former-colleague at a noodle house.

As it was the lunch hour, a few people came in as Japanese pop played in the background. Below boxy wooden lamps, near a courtyard window that showed a storeys-high carpet of ivy draped over early 20th-century or late 19th-century brick back wall, at a wooden table with a little potted plant that almost looked like samphire on it, I read a page or two of Walter Benjamin's Berliner Chronik while waiting for the other two to arrive.

We ordered a bento box, ramen with mushrooms and spinach and snap peas, and rice with tofu, respectively; ginger tea, the ginger shredded into delicate slivers, served in pottery cups with a piece of lime in it and honey on the side; and coffee for the first course.

Then, mochi ice cream (berry and coconut flavours, with a berry sauce on the side, also served on grey pottery) and matcha tiramisu for dessert, as well as more coffees.

Needless to say, we didn't all eat every dish.

It was warm, comforting food, except for the dessert (which was also delicious, however, and comforting in another way), and I enjoyed it very much.

Back at home, uncle Pu came to visit, then T.: we chatted and ate plenty of cookies.

Since then I've been researching the Berlin film festival again. Besides, speaking of films and competitions, I've been watching part of the biopic Rustin, because it was nominated for Screen Actors' Guild awards.

I've also been watching (to brag) a food documentary, where it was pleasing to find out that I can understand Brazilian Portuguese subtitles reasonably well.

Last night I reflected that maybe I have to take the leap and do my amateur reporting always in both English and German... such as it is. By now my impression is that becoming a Canadian foreign correspondent is a pipe dream because it would require ironclad bona fides on my part, networking, and an employer who could afford to pay me; I can't retreat into the comfort zone of English by itself forever.