A cozy kitchen – I like the frogs on the fridge.
You know, a lot of people hardly use their high tech designed monster kitchens and yet they renovate them, let us say, every ten or fifteen years.

Bernard

My mother is a great cook. She cooks hours every day. We installed her a new hightech kitchen a few years away. Since that day she cooks on a small kitchen plate in the annex.

Arnon

Why this preference for champagne rosé?

Do you not have proper cooking utensils? Because Judith is holding a knife and fork.
I love cooking.

Laura pointed me towards an article in the Scientific American about the recent jump in reports of infection with the Japanese salmon tapeworm ("Are urban tapeworms on the rise?").
According the article, "The parasite (...) has been steadily increasing its global distribution and prevalence--mostly among yuppies with a hankering for sashimi and ceviche."

I am a great cook. I don't cook often, but when I do, people love it. With another mother I might have been a chef.

@Mieke
Indeed ! Many do so.

I'll take it the top photo is from 1996, that picture with the goose has been hanging there for almost thirteen years now.. What happenend to your friend Karol? Are you still friends?

Mieke

Don't you know that champagne-rose is 'top of the line' ?

David

Champagne rosé is snob; I prefer a Veuve Clicquot, brut.

M Hordijk

I think I can recognise a picture on the fridge from Mayu, Arnon's godson.This means it's recent.
Karol is male if I'm not mistaken.

Mieke

No, Laurent Perrier Rose for example isn't 'snob' at all.

David

I still prefer my champagne 'brut' in stead of 'rosé'.

Hordijk

I got the "blue goose" picture this year for my birthday.

Mieke

I like the color darling.

Oscar

Interesting. When I go to a late movie – like I did yesterday – and I want to have dinner afterwards – I’m a creature of habits – I tend to go to Sushi Samba on Park Avenue where I drink pisco sour and eat four tiradito’s. (I never fully understood the difference between tiradito and ceviche, but in Peru I learned that it is not done to eat ceviche in the evening, it’s really a dish you eat in the morning or afternoon, and since that time I comfort myself with the tought that it is better to eat tiradito around midnight than ceviche.)Usually I’m surrounded by young women in Sushi Samba, from New Jersey I assume, who are dressed in an attempt to show that sluttishness is their god. Before they binge on other things they binge on ceviche and tiradito.In other words I always thought that it were sluts who have a hankering for ceviche.

Dens

What did your mother to you darling?
How is your sister?
Please tell her, ceviche is waiting.

Arnon

Honey, it's the taste that ought to delight you.

doesn't look too great

Mieke

You are so mundane.

Arnon,
It must have been a shock to your kitchen!

13 years

I seem to be the only one here who doesn't believe this.

Hanny

Many people in Manhattan never cook. Whatever you wish to eat you can order or get in a restaurant often cheaper than if you were to cook it at home. Really, you name it, they've got it. No need for a kitchen.

Arnon

That's what I find so reassuring about you: If I hit you, you'll hit me back.

Hille

Yes I know. But 13 years. I didn't know Arnon lived there since the age of 25... Well. Of course. People can order what they want all over the planet.

Mr. Arnon

My sister is doing great! She's blossoming again.

NY Catcher

Mister Grunberg, have you read The Catcher in the Rye? If not, I highly recommend it.

Tabatha

Of course.

Do you remember the paragraph where rich kid Holden says a few words about being labeled bourgeois? I thought that was funny. Insightful of course. Btw, recently reading it had me wondering whether Foer may have done some close studying of Salinger's technique. Anyway, how about Orwell's 'Down and Out in Paris and London'? Have you read that? Your life always makes me think of him, so I think you might enjoy it.

you look happy, nice