whisk me away

There's a chocolate cafe here in Shanghai called Whisk. I've never been there, but some friends brought me and Romy some chocolate chip cookies from there a few weeks ago and they were seriously the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever had. Even better than my grammy's chocolate chip cookies (though I will deny ever saying this if anyone ever tells her).

Today was just one of those days. Y'know, those days when you just need a damn chocolate chip cookie.

So I decided to take a little solo adventure through Shanghai in search of Whisk and it's to die for pastries.

I should have written down the address, or maybe even looked it up. But instead, I relied on my memory of a vague conversation Romy had with a mutual friend discussing where it was. How difficult could it be to find? I thought to myself as I exited the subway in the middle of nowhere.

After several texts to my friends who had been there before and a frantic call to Romy, I still had no clue where I was or where Whisk could be so I decided just to walk around and look for it. For an hour.

Long story short, I couldn't find it. Actually, that's the entire story. So I guess it's not really as long as it is stupid.

When Steven Speilberg's film ET came out in 1982 my father was living in Alaska working on the pipeline in Prudhoe Bay while my mother stayed back in California. He really wanted to see the movie and asked my mom to wait for him to visit until she saw it so they could see it together for the first time. I guess my mom didn't think he really cared that much, so she saw it with some friends anyway and when he found out he told her he would never see ET ever. He was that mad about it.

The movie was re-released in 2002 to celebrate its 20th anniversary, and having been told this story by my mother I asked my dad if he would go see it with me (he was unaware that I knew his history with the movie). I'll never see that movie, he curtly replied. And he hasn't.

In much the same way, I'll never go to Whisk. My friends absolutely love it and I know they will try to get me to go some time in the next year that I'm going to be here, but nope, it's not going to happen. I tried too hard to find it and was left hungry, empty handed, and with 15RMB less in my wallet from the cost of transportation.

And to think, I was actually going to risk my health and buy a carton of milk to go with the friggin' cookies.