OMG, TGIF

I have finished working around 6 pm today. I was sick so I had no energy for making more trials for my brief. I put every raw materials back, cleaned my balance with alcohol, switched off the water bath, arranged my trials in my box, took some samples that needed to be evaluated during the weekend, took out the trash and prepared my car keys for going home and start a beautiful sunny weekend.

I gave a ride to my japanese friend and colleague who lives really close to my place. People who have visited Japan are often saying that it is not just a really different culture and a very unique country, but it is rather like another planet. Even though I have never been in Japan, I think I can confirm this statement. My Japanese friend does behave like an alien from time to time.

The car was hot from being hit the whole day by strong sun, so I directly opened my window, my friend was sitting in a large hat and she even put on some long sleeved shirts and sunglasses that were covering not only her eyes, but probably more than three quarter of her face too. She explained that she is protecting herself against the sun, she wants to reserve the porcelain whiteness of her skin. We were halfway to home when she took a scarf and arranged it carefully around her neck, explaining to me that the sun is shining too much on her chest. She also explained me that for this reason she needed to use a thick scarf that would not let any sunshine reach her chest, she couldn't just use any thinner and prettier one unfortunately.

So I was driving, we would listen to music and we would try to guess the singers' name on the radio, though neither could her nor myself name more than 3 French singer. In the middle of a sentence she closed her eyes, and I would have thought she is chilling and enjoying the soft caresses of the sun, but obviously this was not the case, because she hardly left any surface of her skin without cover.

The only spot where the sun could knock was her hand. I was kidding her that her hand will tan if she is not careful enough. She opened her eyes and went to panic mode. She grabbed the reversed mirror and turned it towards her to see if her hand was darker than her face. It certainly was.

Not so much surprising, I though, taking into consideration that she puts probably at least half a bottle of baby powder on her face every morning... After a few minutes of incomprehensible murmurs which probably was "Oh my God" in Japanese - like a hundred times, she turned back the reverse mirror to its place and asked me if I don't get the impression that her hands and face look like they are part of different bodies. At this very moment I burst out of laugh and proposed her to stop on the way for buying gloves. She looked at me confused and the next second she was smiling as if somebody had just offered her the formula of Balmain's Vent Vert, than she started to search for something in her bag.

I thought she might have a list of shops offering sun-proof gloves, but no.... She took a pair of gloves out of her bag. And she actually put them on. I was hesitating for a moment to cry or to laugh, I finally went for the latter one, which sounded more like the mixture of two though.

We got into the usual Friday afternoon's traffic jam when we entered Grasse and I could only drive in the speed of walking, but it was ok, since there was sun and nice music and I had a certainly weird but kind company too. I was thinking of the perfume I am working on and wondered if it needed more spices on the top or rather I should just increase the concentration of it. I looked to the left jadedly and for a fraction of a second I thought I saw Jean-Babtiste Grenouille sitting in the bus stop waiting for a ride to Cannes. He was so much like in the movie. He was even more like I imagined him when I was reading the book!

Dirty looking, messed up hair, with an invisible devil-like aura radiating around him. As I was staring at him, I swear he was trying to smell himself under the arm. I wanted to see his reaction when he finds out that he still doesn't have any body smell, like normal people, but the same exact moment my Japanese friend shouted something incomprehensible that could have been "Look, Jean-Babtiste Grenouille is there" in Japanese, but what is really was "Stop, stop, stop!" - as I found it out later. I turned to her but I was already inside the back of the car in front of me.

It was my turn to shout, which sounded like "Oh My God" in Hungarian - maybe completed with some swearwords - for like a hundred times. After that I don't know what happened, I probably went out from my car, I probably saw that the other car had nothing serious though mine is a bit smashed in the front, I probably also gave her my contacts because I found myself in the car holding a small paper with her contact on it.

All I remember is the smell of friction on metal and burned out car light with broken glass.

Intuition

I remember top perfumers telling me that apart from my intelligence and creativity, what will help me the most in perfume creation is intuition.

I anyways continued to weigh the formulas till the end, even if I already knew that I made an error. I also paid attention during creation when some random raw materials passed through my mind and made trials with them. I often dream with raw materials! I wake up and I have one particular substance in my mind which also most of the time turns out to match my formula.

I sometimes go searching for a raw material and by chance coming back with another - some call it lack of concentration, but what if it really is a divine inspiration to my creation?

Recently, I smell creations and I feel what type of accords are missing from them. Not trying to guess what would match with those accords, but literally missing olfactively some ingredient from the perfumes. I talked about it to my senior perfumer who just smiled proudly at me and said that soon I would be ready...

Is there really such thing as coincidence?

By coincidence I spent most of the spring admiring Mimosa trees. I watched the hills of Grasse turning into a soft yellow carpet from my window. Everyday I would take my car and be touched and amazed at the same time how wonderfully fragile these flowers are.

By coincidence the master perfumer of a leading perfumer creating company shared his secret with me on how to create a head space mimosa. He said, it took him 40 years to find out what is the key characteristic of a mimosa soliflore. Without the scent of an other flower, the mimosa compositions stay "mute"! It only comes to alive when this other flower accord is added to the creation.

By coincidence I still remember one specific mimosa flower I smelled a few months ago. We were invited to a party with my boyfriend, and by the time we have left, it was raining cats and dogs. My boyfriend run to take the car so that I can just jump in without getting soaked to my skin. While he was getting to the car, from distance I saw a small mimosa tree in the garden. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, the flowers were gloriously full! Not too ripe, not too young, just perfect! There is maybe one day in the mimosa blooming season when the blooming is to the fullest, but fermentation haven't stared yet. It was that day. I mean night. I needed to smell it! I walked to the tree, slowly despite of the heavy rain, I didn't want to ruin this olfactive dessert by being too greedy. I first touched the beautiful creation, and than sniffed. It smelled like powdery heaven! Despite the famous fragility of the mimosa, the little flowers didn't get destroyed by the pouring rain. On the contrary, rain gave a special aura to them. It just added an amazing aquatic contradiction to the usual dryness of the mimosa, making me wanting to eat the whole tree. With only a little bit of exaggeration, if I die that moment, I could have been dying happily.

My boyfriend arrived with the car and murmured something like no more making efforts to save me from mud and rain. But I didn't hear it, neither did I pay attention, because I was busy being in love with the mimosa tree now. I wanted to wave her goodbye while driving away, and I definitely lived the "separation" so bad as a divorce after a decade of living together. She was the perfect mimosa! And I wish I could made a photo or took a little jar and somehow put the surrounding air above the flowers into the jar to conserve its fragrance for the eternity. Since than, I often thought of how to recreate that moving fragility with that special humid dryness.

By coincidence my first client asked specifically for a mimosa soliflore.

World Congress of Perfumery

The 2010 WCP didn't even start yet when we could already hear the rumeurs saying this will be the last congress held in Cannes, because more and more perfume creating companies are boycotting the organiser, who is selling the exposition stands for higher than one kg of Iris Butter and the conference places for around the same price as a kilogram of the finest Vanilla Absolute from Magadascar.

The exposition and the conferences are really not important. Everybody comes here for the contacts, for networking. During the day, the conference and the exhibition are like well repeated plays in the theater, but behind the scenes starting from 8 am, already everybody is trying to chose the best party for the night, which could be one of the fancy boat parties organised by leading perfume creating companies or dinners in the most expensive 3 star restaurants of the Cote D'Azur.

The first night it was a company owner that I get to know just a week ago who invited me to his house along with a 100 other perfumista. I learned the most during that party, among others :

- I can go to India and get employed as a perfumer before landing with my plane to Mumbai, because apparently the heroin of the Indian version of Ugly Betty ressembles me a lot...

- Smoking is obligatory. Especially if you are a perfumer!

- I am the sexual fantasy of the majority of the perfumers - strictly for the ones above 50 years. Though this isn't worth 5 years of experience at Firmenich. It only gets you the chance to see the interieur design of luxurious 5 star suits if you are interested.

- Everybody gets drunk, sooner or later, keep your strengh for until about midnight when real business is being made, just after the 11th champagne glass gets empty!

- A hand made visit card is nicer than most of the industrial ones, but slightly less professional.

Around 2 pm, just about when my friend's father started to flirt with me in front of him, and the host made guesses if I am wearing anything for sleeping, I decided it 's time to go home. I got loads of contacts, nothing really promising in my job search, but 50+ perfumers did for sure boost my self confidence! Maybe I should give up perfumery and be a plus size model for aging men?!

The next day I had the privilege to ask some of the top perfumers if they had already overcome their hangover.

I pretended that I still have it too - giving advice on how to get over quickly the hangover is one of the best conversation topics ever! - but really, I so much was afraid to get drunk on the party that I ended up having only one mojito the whole night.

So there I was, faking hangover, visiting the World Perfumery Congress' exposition, when at one stand there is a man looking deeply into my eyes, telling me he can help me to get a job. Appartently we met at the party yesterday, but obviously I made a more remarkable impression on him than vica versa... I thought why not just give him my CV, but he first wanted to shake my hand, and keeping it in his palm just a bit too much longer for any professional contact. Jan ( over 70, of course ) offered me a job at the spot as Junior Perfumer at the Norwegian branch of Tenkel corporations. I almost asked him where can I sign when he told me that just before finalising everything I have to pass some olfactory tests in the US where of course we would go together...

World Congress of Perfumery isn't really different from the annual Cannes film festival. Sex (if you don't mind the age difference..), drug ( I have smelled a very addictive ylang CO2! ), rock and roll ( cocktail parties every single night until 3 am ! ). Maybe on WCP there is more acting?!

I saw everybody charming everybody. I think it is because in perfumery you never know, who will become what one day, who can help you the next time, who you have to suck up in your next work place. So why not starting right now, sucking up to everybody? -one would think.

And believe me, I would love to! Seriously, you can be average perfumer with great sense of who to suck up an when, and you are directly overpassing those with less ass-licking capacities in spite of their great perfume creating capacities. Talking from experience. ...From the bad side though.

So I have decided that I will continue going to WCPs, wherever they will be held in the future, if not for anything, just to observe well how to charm people under retirement age.