Tell me if you love me, Paris

I was in Paris for most parts of last week. The main reason was to celebrate my Singaporean friend's birthday. After 2 years in France for her masters, she is returning to Singapore. I thought this would have been a momentous occasion - and it was!

And since I was already going to be in Paris, I asked for an appointment at the Singaporean Embassy to get a certified copy of my birth extract. I know, why didn't I just bring my original birth certificate? Because it's safer with my mum, and since it's laminated, I can't really put a stamp on it for other bureaucracy reasons (like getting it translated). So the alternative was to get it certified at the Embassy. The extract itself was obtained from ICA. It's a whole thing. I need it for my insurance.

Anyway, before I came to Paris, the birthday girl asked if I had any Parisian (read: touristy) things I wanted to do. And I told her, "hurhur... no." I feel like I've seen most of the sights and heard most of the sounds of Paris. To be fair, this was my 5th trip to Paris (and the second one since I've moved to France!), so I didn't feel like I was really missing out. Plus, I have time to visit Paris again and again, considering I don't live too far away now. It's akin to visiting Malacca from Singapore (which I had only done twice in my life, oups).

I've been making content (uhu WATCH OUT une creatrice contenu quoi) around Lille in English and I know it's difficult to scale for many reasons. One of them being that most content related to Lille are in French and are active in terms of covering events and all that. I'm not that person. I don't cover events, nor do I speak much French (for now). I'm just a little housewife uhuhu.

Another reason is that I'm not a travel vlogger. I'm not Voyage with MC (I do like some of their stuff when I come across them) and I don't intend to be. It takes a lot of effort and planning, and since I'm already in the country, I'll just take it slow and easy.

But I think the algorithm (at least mine) only cares about Paris in France, and my little tiny city of Lille doesn't get much love. Which I think is okay - it's a wonderful city to live in and to grow a family (if that's the intention).

From what I have gleaned through account building guides around the net, it seems that I don't really have a focus. Is it a travel account? An account about migration? A coffee account? Jalan-jalan? WHAT IS IT??? LIFESTYLE?

That's also why I haven't really created much content around Paris (although that would probably earn me some eyeballs). Everything that I can think of that is related to me: halal food, muslim woman, traveling as a muslim person, a wife who moved to France - they are all oversaturated with content when it comes to Paris.

But most importantly, my time in Paris was supposed to be spent with friends. Making new memories, celebrating our lives, having a jolly good time. And maybe, for once, it was nice to keep our phones in our bags and engage with one another - instead of creating for the world to see.