Smell & Taste

I'm happy to report that I will be joining the ranks of mid-Atlantic commuters... by starting a new job! I'll be working in fragrance development / evaluation with a great company, and I'm really, REALLY excited about this opportunity. Planning to stock up on audiobooks to make the commute more entertaining.

Recently I learned some interesting facts about smell and taste from Audiodigest's Family Practice CDs:

• "Taste information does not go through the medial temporal nerve and hypothalamus [unlike smell, so] the emotional aspect of taste is not as strong as that of smell." Even though rocky road ice cream may transport you to childhood, it won't do so as effectively as your mother's old perfume. It's interesting to learn that it's all because of the way our brains are wired and which nerves go where.
• Possible / potential causes of smell disorders: vitamin B12 deficiency, zinc deficiency, low thyroid function, cigarette smoking and yes, even alcohol consumption. Alcohol was shown "to produce smell impairment in 50%" of cases because of toxicity to the temporal lobe and other structures involved in smell and taste. Cut back on cough medicine to smell the roses!
• And, it's now generally accepted that there are 5 senses of taste: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami, which refers to MSG and savory broth flavors often found in Asian cooking.
• As we age, sweet and salty flavors are the first to go.
• Most interesting is the fifth cranial nerve which allows us to detect texture, temperature, and "spice sensations."

I wonder if people who like spicy foods have less active or less sensitive fifth cranial nerves. I love the flavors of salsas and other hot mixtures, but often find them too spicy to enjoy. Perhaps alcohol impaires the fifth cranial nerve. That could explain why spicy Mexican food goes well with good tequila! And also why Mexican food is such a delight: a Margarita offers cold, sweet, and sour. Chicken mole offers spice and possibly umami. Cold but spicy salsa sends the cranial nerve for a loop, and it's all topped off with smooth, cold, sweet, creamy flan. Nothing like a good meal to get your brain in high gear.

Temptation

First, it was Bonne Bell lip gloss. In high school my best friend and I would amass our collections and revel in the flavor choices, like old misers running our knubby fingers through golden coins. Dr. Pepper, Strawberry Banana, Cotton Candy, Vanilla, Raspberry...we were shamelessly addicted to these candy-colored plastic tubes of lip flavors. We counted them, traded them, shared them, and laughed at our infantile obsession with little-kid "make-up." We gave ourselves up completely to the temptation and bought new tubes without a second glance. We were obsessed with Bonne Bell lip glosses, but our juvenile indulgence was acceptable because...we understood each other. These days I'm still impressed by the flavor offerings (and licenses with candy brands such as Skittles and Hershey), but as I walk down the Target aisles, I simply make a mental note and walk away. My temptations of late have moved to other departments.

It was never cigarettes or drugs, but instead, vices that were less obvious to the public. Smoking is hard to hide. But very, very few people know what your underwear looks like. In college I turned from lip gloss to lingerie. Before Victoria's Secret turned neon green and trashy, back when it was pink and white and feminine, that was my temptation. Lip gloss was tossed in favor of colorful bra-and-panty sets. I realize now that all of my indulgences--lip gloss, lingerie, perfume, chocolate--I can chalk up not to being vices, but simply to being feminine. I wasn't falling for anything, I was simply being a woman. Hah.

It all got worse when I went to France, the lingerie capital of the world. (Come to think of it, all of my obsessions intensified while I was in Paris). Lingerie boutiques line the streets like bakeries, and walking into one gave me the same feeling that walking into sugar-free candy stores in Madrid would give me many years later. Look at all those colorful choices. Indulgence is always sexy, with or without the calories.

And of course, laced throughout the years and the changing obsessions was the one that would always remain: perfume. Working in the perfume industry, with entire closets filled with every fine fragrance and body wash imaginable, my interest in perfume has not lessened in the least. But part of my job is also monitoring the cosmetics market. I am forever on the internet, in Sephora, in The Body Shop, looking for new fragrances but only after sweeping through the cosmetics aisles. It's another type of candy shop altogether. It's hard not to confuse eye shadow with cupcakes, lipsticks with candy sticks, cheek stains with fruit juices. Makeup is a delicious and, if not kept in check, quite expensive habit. When a coworker and I discovered our mutual obsession with lip products, it was like high school all over again. We trade information, we compare results, we drop brand names, we share new loot. (She started off with Bonne Bell lip glosses as well, a good 15 years ahead of me, but she progressed to Chanel long before I did. She was wearing Chanel in high school while I didn't buy such a serious lipstick until 2 years after college). But no matter. Now we're on to warming, stinging, plumping lip glosses and blusher compacts with zig-zagging summer shades and crisp magnetic closures.

Makeup is such a sensual indulgence. It's not just about trying to look "pretty." It's about pleasure, just like a good meal and a glass of wine. Color palettes flirt with your eyes, rosy perfumes tickle your nose, magnets and brushes and powders and liquids beg for your touch, occasional flavors talk to your tastebuds. It's a miracle I can separate Sephora from La Perla from Godiva, because when I use makeup, I may as well be smearing chocolate on myself.

Last week I broke down and bought an eye shadow compact. It was expensive, but it's covered in cushy fabric and closes with a delightful 'click.' (With more expensive brands, no detail is left to chance. Some designer on the other side installed hidden magnets to create a closure with a "luxury feel." I've been obsessed with makeup containers and closures my entire life. When I was little, my mom would ask me not to open and close her lipstick tubes so frequently, because if I continued I would wear down the bumps and the caps would no longer stay attached. But I love feeling the clicks. I love the smell of blue minerals ground into particle dust. I love the soft brushes on my eyelids. I love that it feels like I'm painting my face).

I knocked on my coworker's door to share the the latest find. She stopped her work, smiled with understanding and approval, and said, "Good for you, my dear. It's fantastic. Enjoy."

Silly, maybe. But it's marketing at its finest. Nobody needs more eyeshadow, but nobody needs any kind of temptation. I'm just sharing mine.

"Perfume School"

For everyone interested in studying perfumery, I'm happy to share with you what I know. The program I completed at ISIPCA (www.isipca.fr), called The Fragrance Academy, very sadly no longer exists. (It was a one-year program for non-French students in perfumery and evaluation). If you are not French but would still like to study fragrance, there is a 2-year program available to those with a degree in chemistry or pharmacology, called EFCM (European Fragrance & Cosmetics Masters). The first year is spent studying cosmetics and fragrance in Versailles, the second year studying business in Italy. I believe you can find application details at the above-listed website.

The only other perfumery schools I'm aware of are within fragrance companies themselves. I think your best bet is to try to get your foot in the door at a fragrance company, be it as a fragrance compounder, sales coordinator, etc. Work hard, express your interest in fragrance development, make a real effort to get along with everyone...and hopefully through this route, you will find a way to move up.

Culture Shock

The US really is a jigsaw of various cultures. The landscape, the people, the food, the language, everything can change from place to place within the good ol' US of A. For me this is always easier to discuss than to experience. If you move to Japan, you expect major cultural differences. If you move to France, you expect more cigarette smoke (until very recently), slower movies, richer food. But when you move from North Carolina to New Jersey, you don't expect the differences to be that big of a deal.

When you transplant yourself you get a whole new life: new apartment. new job. new people. new license plates. new ridiculous ways of making left turns. new love life. new expectations for your future.

All of this can bring great joy and great anxiety at the same time. You start to wonder why you're experiencing culture shock in your own darn country. How can Japan seem like a better fit than the Northeast? Except for taxes that shoot through the roof, I think the most easily quantifiable difference for me in New Jersey is the language.

People around me curse all the time. This hardly ever happened in Japan, and in France, only young people still clinging to their teenage years did it on a regular to sound cool. I've been here for four months but hearing f*ck all the time still trips me up. Also, there are a few expressions I simply never heard before I moved to New Jersey, and some of them don't even sound grammatically correct:

credenza
food shopping
food store
going forward

and others that have escaped me at the moment.

Going forward, I should be able to surmount a language barrier, because it's still English. In the meantime, my work is piling up on the credenza, and I still haven't done my food shopping for the week. F*ck.

NJ, Part Deux

I have never seen more strip-malls, or more diners, in my life. Luckily I love me some coffee, pancakes, and eggs over easy. There is something charming, something strangely comforting, about all that stainless steel. Or maybe it's just the smell of bacon grease that brings me comfort.

In my spare time before work I crafted some mini-adventures -- I checked out the Laurelwood Arboretum, which has just enough nature to satisfy my craving. I wanted to venture through the entire thing, which could have taken a couple hours, but then I remembered Steve's warning about bears recently entering residential areas. (In New Jersey?? Apparently so.) Being chewed apart by a bear is one of my worst fears. When I realized there was no one else there to help or protect me, I decided to turn around. I was very disappointed, but visions of nothing but a cellphone and a few random teeth left for posterity forced me back to the car.

Then I decided to check out the private lake nearby, and noticed quite a few houses on the market, and found myself fantasizing about buying a little one and living on the water.

At the bookstore I picked out the best maps of Manhattan and New Jersey, and a couple books on day-trips to lead me beyond the strip-malls. One of them said New Jersey is the most densely-populated state in the US, with the densest highways. This actually made me laugh out loud. (No kidding!) I thought about how crowded Japan is and decided that it prepared me well. I'm looking forward to investigating why this place is called The Garden State.

Then I found a dance class and decided to sign up for jazz lessons. Despite my lack of experience, I LOVE taking dance, because you must focus on every part of your body. The hour goes by in a snap and you realize that absolutely nothing was on your mind but jumping and tummy tucks and finger placement and pointed toes, and that it was so much fun.

Back to my internship for one last day...and hopefully a movie or two before I start WORK on Monday! Whoo!


**Does anybody else think that the first two sentences would make a great opening line for a novel in which the main character shoots someone? Or is at least in love with weapons? I mean what kind of person would describe cold gray metal as "comforting"?

New Jersey Wisdom

When driving in New Jersey, where everyone has forgotten that you pass on the left and use a blinker to signal a lane change, there are only 3 rules:

1. take lots of cash
2. take lots of gas
3. GO!!

News

Yesterday my best friend from college got married. The wedding was absolutely beautiful, extremely well-planned, genuinely touching, and even better for a bridesmaid - fun. I had a blast with friends and family of the bride and groom, and the food was delicious. Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Lee.

Also, I have accepted a marketing position with a great fragrance company in New Jersey. It's one of the largest in the world and I'm both proud and excited to be joining them in October. I found an apartment less than two miles (!) from the office and will be settling in shortly. I'll be there at least until December, but hopefully longer, because after all the recent traveling and changes that have taken place, I am really looking forward to feeling "planted." At least for now. :)

Dear Lauren

If you have questions about perfume, perfumed products, the fragrance industry, brands, anything -- please ask me in the comments. I'd love to test my knowledge and hopefully impart some as well!

Recently...

I read a quote that went something like, "Announcing your plans is the best way to see God laugh." With that in mind, here I go anyway:

I've more or less adjusted to being back in the States after my two years abroad. It feels great to be back, and ideally I plan to stay in the US. I hope to always look back on my decisions to move to Japan, and then France, as some of the best ones I've ever made -- Japan especially for my personal life, because I met so many amazing people who taught me so much; and France for my professional one, because I always would have wondered what I can now say with certainty: I am passionate about the fragrance industry, and there's nothing I'd rather be doing. So as I continue my job search, I will remind myself that I can't fail if I don't give up!*

Now. Since MOST of the fragrance companies are US-headquartered in New Jersey, I think I should get more exposure up there. I plan to move for a least a couple months while I do an internship with a very small, very young company. I'm hoping to gain some first-hand experience while showing my face and hopefully landing an interview or two. This may take a while (one man told me it took him 4 years to break into this business!), but I'm prepared to find out.

I am so, so excited to now have a car!! Until I make the (temporary? permanent?) move to New Jersey, I'll be breaking it in around Morganton, enjoying time with my family, and our mere 20-minute drive to the lake.


*from "The Last Kiss," just in case

Landscapes

I fall in love with places the way others can fall in love with people. Once I realize I'm sunk, I worry that I'll get lost in them, or lose them. I used to have nightmares that Paris was bombed World War II - style, monuments and cobblestones blown to dry dust and bits. I wonder if someday in my lifetime Lake James will be all dried up, a yellow bowl with orange fingers beneath blue and gray layers of lacy North Carolina mountains. I worry that the overdue earthquake and Mt. Fuji eruption will happen any minute, boiling the tatami mats in my old apartment and sloughing off the tea fields and fallen-in shack I loved, sleeping in the sunlight on the road that led to my high school. No more 7-11 onigiri or hazy sky with its view of Fuji-Shi down below, outlined by the glowing green caterpillar train. I used to stand on tip-toes on John's balcony, taking a swig of his beer and saying, "That's our city down there," as if the town were my child and mother-protector all at once.

I drank the last sip of my coffee today and what I saw left in the mug was foam. Like the foam from the tea ceremonies in Fuji -- foam that stuck to my lips like wet grass as I tipped the bowl and let the bitter, powdery remnants slide down my throat; foam of Octavio Paz's beach, boy and girl exchanging limes (love), sea and shoreline exchanging salt.

When I love someone I'm afraid that if I say it aloud, it could vanish like one of my cities; be swallowed like green tea powder; or fly away in the wind like the frothy residue of waves. So I hold it inside, with my landscapes, and hope that it doesn't change.

But of course, I know it doesn't really work this way.

The Jury

Contrary to popular belief, I am still alive and kicking! (Though mixing and smelling is more like it). Wednesday and Thursday we have an end-of-year evaluation, which consists of professional perfumers and evaluators coming in to check out our work. I will present four perfumes and their briefs:

• my very first one (based on a photograph of a girl in a yellow bikini)
• a "middle" project (based on a fashion exhibition in Paris), and
• my two last perfumes (one from a brand my classmate created, one from a piece of music written by a former Takasago businessman).

I'm hoping other people will see a clear evolution in my abilities and choices of raw materials. Looking back on the year, my formulas, and my perfumes, I see many ways to improve, which is extremely satisfying -- if I didn't understand it before, now I know why my perfumes smell the way they do. I can see the mistakes I made, and I feel confident that I could make better ones in the future. So far I've only scratched the surface. It takes years and years to really plunge your whole arms in, to have enough understanding and control of the materials to manipulate fragrances and become a great perfumer. I'm going to miss having access to the lab!!

French...Lavender

In our latest chapter of functional perfumery, we're designing a "lavender" scent for fabric softener. I put that in quotations because this is an interesting part of the fragrance industry: the perfume should not actually smell like real lavender, but instead like something that the general public deems acceptable for a clothing residue. What is appropriate for the market changes depending on the target population, country, and product. (For instance, an American "chocolate" smell contains a lot more vanilla than a French one.) So even though the process of making a functional perfume is academic, our interpretations of lavender are pretty flexible. Mine has a good amount of coumarine (vanilla-like, but with a stronger hay aspect) and some light cedar notes, in addition to synthetic lavender-like products.

The next is unrelated, but despite my ENORMOUS frustrations with the red tape that wraps around all of France, there are some really great things about this country (cliche or not!):

• Paris in the springtime -- tulips and wisteria!
• the lack of, and lack of appreciation for, multi-tasking skills (ahhhh)
• accessible intellectual media: bookstores everywhere, philosophical debates on TV, loads of info about the current presidential candidates, great magazines like La Philosophie and L'Oeil (art)
• everyday sensuality (watch the part in Amelie where she goes around touching, cracking, and burying her hands in things just because of the way they feel)
• the amazing things they do with eggs: omelettes, crepes, etc. etc.
• as a friend so aptly put it, the spirit that is 1/2 refined, 1/2 bohemian. (that may be the best description of France I've ever heard!)

Spring Break in Spain 4

...and at the coast.

Spring Break in Spain 3

Barcelona, off the beaten path...

Spring Break in Spain 2

...to Barcelona! Gaudi doesn't get nearly enough credit.

Spring Break in Spain

from Madrid...

No Fragrance, No Life!

Sure it's a play on words, but I'm starting to understand how people can become totally consumed by the work they love. Especially when it's challenging. I thought perfumery was a 9 to 5 job, but it's not. If I really want to be good, I have to do a LOT of work (smelling, studying, re-thinking, formulating, calculating) outside of my classroom "office hours." The most striking thing about this course is how monolithic it has become. In college I had study breaks from the work, like student health meetings, campus events, the gym, piano, romance, etc. But for the first time I wake up thinking about one thing, and go to sleep thinking about one thing.

You don't put down your nose when you walk out the door.

Stock Exchange

Stock, as in, raw materials. Raw materials that we usually use in easy-drip recipes diluted in 10 % ethyl alcohol. Today was a different story. We're in the middle of functional perfumery, which is extremely involved, but in short it goes like this:

1. smell the fine fragrance you want to put into a cream, shower gel, etc.
2. try to recreate the formula in your lab
3. figure out how much each raw material is going to cost, so that you can replace the most expensive materials with cheaper substitutes (We're talking adjustments that go from 80 euros for the perfume formula to 8 euros for the shower gel formula. And remember, it should smell the same as the 80 euro formula. Uh-huh.)
4. reformulate substitutes for the expensive products (this takes days)
5. recreate the cheap version of the fine fragrance, that you will then add to said cream, shower gel, etc.
6. start over with the cheap version once you realize that some products cause allergies, that others will make the shower gel cloudy when the client wants it transparent, or that the spices that form the signature of your fine fragrance will turn it red, or that some of the materials in your substitutes can turn the plastic of the eventual shampoo bottle into mush
7. finish all that, then measure out the correct proportions of fragrance to shower gel and body cream (about .3 fragrance : 59.7 gel)
8. mix and pour into test bottles
9. put some bottles in the oven, put some bottles in the sun, leave some bottles at room temperature...
10. wait one to six months and make sure everything still smells, looks, and functions properly

After days and days of work, today we completed step 9. When we formulate the final fragrances that will go into the shampoos etc., you have to formulate in pure. So instead of using the easy-drip bottles (as I call them), you have to measure out crystals, powders, gels, liquids, sticky crystals that melt into liquid at room temperature...All of these consistencies leave a lot of room for error. (Hah!) Not to mention, working in pure is more expensive than working with dilutions. So everyone had to share the same bottles. We worked wildly to finish everything today, calling out names of products, passing bottles back and forth, and alternately swearing when powders and crystals blew all over the room. And this, my friends, is what sounded like the stock market all day long:

"Citral! Anybody need the citral!"
"Methyl anthranilate at 1%, somebody give me methyl anthranilate at 1!"
"Damnit, there's coumarine everywhere!"
"Be careful, that crystal melts if you spill it!"
"Where's the rosemary? I'm searching for rosemary, people."
"Camphene, looking for camphene, can anybody give me camphene?"
"Limonene, somebody show me limonene."

It was a true team effort and now I am exhausted. But I've got some real stuff to show for myself -- my own lotion, shower gel, and shampoo based on a perfume currently on the market. I just have to wait a month and make sure nothing will melt or turn red, and then I'm good to go!

Perfume Quotes

"Perfumers are chemists no more than is the painter who manipulates chemical colors." --E. Roudnitska

"Une femme sans parfum est une femme sans avenir." (A woman without perfume is a woman without a future.) --Coco Chanel

* * *

Perhaps a bit extreme, but amusing nonetheless. Perfumery is truly a methodical art. It is really not chemistry. And actually, a woman OR man without any perfume would be totally excluded from society, which could be the same thing as having no future. Consider the perfumes in soaps, creams, gels, sprays, cosmetics, disinfectants, detergents, and other mass market goods everyone buys in order to function in today's world. Even if you buy "unscented" or "fragrance free" products, they are still perfumed in order to mask the unpleasant odors of the base chemical(s). For example, a lot of laundry detergents smell fatty or even fishy before some kind of fragrance is added. Who wants their clean clothes to smell like seafood?

"Tasty" Accords and More

Today we're studying various "tasty" accords that are used in fragrances (not only in flavors)! This morning we did caramel and chocolate, which have high proportions of a synthetic buttery note called diacetyl. Later we'll do marshmallow, almond, and coconut.

Needless to say, everybody was hungry at 10 am. I made a dilution of one of my favorite products, ethyl maltol, which smells like caramel and red berries (and is in Angel by Thierry Mugler). The pure comes in powder form, so I crafted a funnel out of paper and tape since regular pipettes wouldn't do the job. Unfortunately, I sprayed powder everywhere in the process,including down my labcoat. At least I smell "tasty" now. At least I don't smell like extremely powerful straight melted butter. Somebody else took care of the diacetyl.

* * *

I read a really great book, Buddhism: Plain and Simple, by Steve Hagen. It was exciting because it outlined many concepts I already thought, from my other readings, my own experience, and my time in Japan. Read it and get back to me with your comments!

I can also recommend: My Sister's Keeper, The Glass Castle, Without Remorse (Tom Clancy), and its sequel Rainbow Six, which I just started.