We have visited TWG on previous occasions for scones and macarons, but this time my choice was madeleines.

Madeleines... Proust... A la recherche du temps perdu... That book I never finished, either in English or in French, but whose madeleines sequence still remains literature's most powerful evocation of the senses' power to trigger memories. The narrator, drinking a spoonful of tea in which he had soaked a morsel of madeleine, is overwhelmed first by an inexplicable feeling of pleasure, and then by a string of memories, which recreate a portion of his childhood:

"And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray ... my aunt Lonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it... But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.

"And once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me... immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theatre..."

Now, there was always a bit of a mystery about this, because in my childhood, madeleines meant individual tall cakes, coated in jam and coconut, and topped off with a cherry and some angelica "leaves". You wouldn't go dipping them in tea... It turns out these were English madeleines, rather than French madeleines, which are those shell-shaped things that Proust describes.

But the other mystery, it seems, is how the crumbs ended up in the tea. And yes, someone has really investigated this, and come to the conclusion that Proust is remembering it wrongly...

Which, when you think of it, is very, very ironic...

Anyway, on to other bits of French confectionery this week. Franco, which used to be called Miam Miam, is a "French-Japanese" eatery. (Remember my Franco-Japanese week? And in Japan, we saw heaps of French bakeries. So it's a promising combo.)

Franco is famous for its French toast and its souffle pancakes, and rightfully so, it turned out:



Lastly, we tried Levain Boulangerie Patisserie. They have a Japanese baker on board as well. My croissant aux amandes was nice enough, but I have terribly high standards in this department, and it didn't quite meet them.

Three movies also featured in our week, courtesy of the Singapore Film Festival. The thread that linked the three was Singapore's famous Housing Development Board (HDB) flats.

The first, 0-3 Flats, is an intimate exploration of the homes of three single women, and the lives they live in them. It's a quiet movie, abjuring moral and message to linger instead on domestic details. It frames humble collections of everyday items, and holds them for seconds. It patiently observes the women as they go about their daily lives, cleaning, working, entertaining, or relaxing.

I had expected interviews, oral history, and at first I thought I was going to be disappointed with the low-key, fly-on-the-wall approach. But I ended up finding it rather moving. There is nothing so affecting, I suppose, as slices of lives. This is how most of us live, after all. We live small.

It is an "ironic gaze at HDB living", I suppose. The juxtaposition of reality and propaganda is very clear. But I would have no problem with the "cell-like structures that they call home", as that same reviewer puts it. The flats are plain, old-fashioned even. But they're bright and airy and comfortable. They have a door you can shut or open on the outside world. They are canvasses that the women paint to suit themselves and their own needs.

For us, it was also a nostalgic depiction. We lived not in, but definitely among, these blocks. The ubiquitous fans (because not everyone has aircon, and electricity is fiendishly expensive in Singapore), the void decks, the exercise equipment, the drums for burning offerings -- all so familiar.

Dizzy the cat was great, too.





The second movie, Ms J Contemplates Her Choice, was the total antithesis of the first. Here, we have a plot, albeit a slightly surreal one, and we have a definite message: choices matter, and they will come back to haunt you. We also have lots of swipes at modern media (ratings-obsessed, superficial) and modern education (results-obsessed, losing its roots). And a portrayal of Singapore as "a haunted urban dystopia riddled with social malaise... Eerie, unnatural urbanscapes set to a soundtrack of incessant drilling add to a sense of crippling isolation." Hmmm...

The third movie was 12 Storeys, made in 1997. Weaving together the stories of four sets of people within the same block, it is unremittingly bleak. The spirit of the guy who -- ill and empty -- took his life right at the beginning lingers throughout. And he, it seems, is the only one who offers compassion, as he hugs the sad, silent woman whose brain is filled with the grating soundtrack of her hatefully critical mother, now dead, and who is herself contemplating suicide. The rest of the protagonists all lecture each other, and in a variety of ways betray and disappoint each other.

I will choose to hold in my mind the three women from the first film, whose undramatic lives spoke volumes about quiet dignity.