Well, as you can see, the past month hasn't been overwhelmingly exciting. Let me think.... I am learning to sing one of my favourite pieces of music of all time - Pergolesi's Stabat Mater.

Work is ridiculously busy, and with it has come bouts of insomnia... guess what time it is right now? 5.13am - the birds are starting to sing and I am grrrr awake.

I did get to do a confiture making class at one of the local 5 star hotels. It was cool to see behind the scenes in a big hotel kitchen (boy do I suffer from kitchen-envy!) and I made a batch of tasty pineapple, rum and mango confiture.

A parcel of christmas goodies arrived at last; from America and filled with all sorts of fun foodie things - it was part of a "blog by mail" round. I now have a foodblog by the way, just showing off my cooking bits - not that it is worth talking about most of the time, but...every now and then I have a bit of a success story, and I am determined to make more efforts to document those successes.

That won't stop me from posting up the occasional boasting picture of my culinary creations here, by the way! It is also helping me to hone my food presentation skills as well as my cooking and photography. I am totally inspired by people like Nordjus and Kuidaore, who are awesome.

Speaking of cooking though; a group of friends here in Geneva have started doing challenge dinner parties like we used to back home. Tonight's challenge was aphrodisiacs. I did a ginger fish recipe (my first experimentation with a bamboo steamer; hard to believe that I haven't owned one before!) and a dessert of baked ricotta with a ginger glaze. I was moderately happy with the fish; the fish itself wasn't all that fantastic, but the sauce tasted very good. The ginger glaze was very tasty and I think sat pretty well with the creaminess of the ricotta. The winner of the night for me though, was a wicked chicken 'jerk' dish made by Rosa. Mind you, her chocolate obsession dessert was also very impressive, and Rai whipped up a batch of home-made raspberry lemonade, which was very tasty and also attractive.

Next challenge... 'hidden secrets'.

14 February

Well, quel surprise, no grand bouquets delivered to work today, no letters declaring true love, no emails, no phone calls. I did get an sms'd invitation to dinner in a fancy restaurant, but that was followed, within half an hour by a withdrawal... urgent business meeting.

(shrugs). Whatever.

I did get given a long stemmed red rose, but that was by the local socialist political party... I'd vote for em. ;-)