Tip for Travellers

In case you're visiting France and for a taste of home refuse to go as far as friends of my parents, they who packed into their suitcase a sack of rice and a little rice cooker, then if you're attacked by homesickness maybe you can go to the nearest Mcdonald's. No, if you're thinking you can order a homesickness-killing Chickenjoy, you can't settle for second best and instead eat a Chicken Mcdo with rice. It's not on the menu. For consolation, get yourself a drink. After you've sipped a little of that Coke, study your paper cup. If you've got the right one, you should be staring at an Asian mother-daughter pair with pleasantly surprised looks on their faces. Floating near their heads is a bubble filled with red letters. The biggest sentence reads "C'est tout ce que j'aime." Somewhere in there, too, are "I'm loving it" and "Ich liebe es." There are some Chinese and Arabic characters. Unless you're very good at languages, leave them alone. Squint your eyes, and search somewhere at the bottom. There, you'll see it. Teeny, tiny, but an echo from home: "LOVE KO 'TO!" You can almost forget that when you entered, no one yelled you're a hermaphrodite with, "Good morning, Ser-Mam!"

P.S. If you've really got homesickness bad, try to find playing near you a homegown talent who's now big in France. Just last week I picked up the program for the international photography festival Les Rencontres d'Arles, and there on the last fold where they listed down all the events happening this summer in Arles, capital of the Camargue, I was informed that on the 17th of July, at the Théâtre Antique, performing would be Billy Crawford, formerly known as That's Entertainment wunderkind Billy Joe. It's the 20th. I missed it. Sigh.