A ‘scentsational’ birthday surprise
The high school nostalgia feels started when I got a Viber notification on Sept. 1 that I had been added to a chat group called “Nina’s 60th Birthday Surprise.” I was added to the group by Nikki Paz, daughter of my high school classmate and ka-barkada, Nina Cruz Paz. In the group were 14 other 50-something classmates from St. Paul Pasig and St. Paul Quezon City, where we attended grade school and high school, respectively.
We were told to save the date, Sunday, Sept. 22, for a luncheon party at Francesco’s from 12 noon to 4 p.m. Located along A. Mabini Street in San Juan, Francesco’s is Nina’s favorite Italian restaurant. The invite also said to come in citrus colors and to arrive before 12 noon so as to surprise the celebrant.
On Nina’s big day, I arrived at 11:45 a.m. and already the function room on the second floor was filled with the sounds of my noisy former classmates. Nash, Nina’s other daughter, gave regular updates on our viber chat to say how close they were to the restaurant. When they were just a couple of minutes away, we decided to bend down and hide under the table to surprise Nina. This turned out to be a bad idea since many of us had a hard time standing up again! I guess we forgot that our bodies aren’t quite as agile and flexible as they were when we were school girls!
When Nina walked into the room and saw us emerge from under the table to greet her, the look of surprise on her face was so evident. Moments later, she began shedding tears of joy. How wonderful it was that her children were able to keep her clueless all this time with the cover story that she was going to have lunch with her mother-in-law since Nina had already celebrated the day before (her actual birthday) with her family.
After Nina recovered from the sight of seeing her classmates, we settled down to chat and wait for lunch to be served. Of course, the food was delicious- no wonder Francesco’s is Nina’s favorite Italian resto! For starters, we had Ceasar’s salad, the antipasti sampler (a platter of cured meats, cheeses and assorted small bites), and the divine arancinis. We also had two kinds of pizza: Francesco, which is sausage, mushrooms, bell peppers and gorgonzola; and Parma, which is prosciutto, arugula and cherry tomatoes. Our main courses consisted of a huge La Bistecca (t-bone steak with all the trimmings), the assorted grilled seafood platter (prawns, fish and octopus), plus an assortment of pastas (vongole, seafood marinara, ravioli and carbonara). Though we all claimed to be full at 1:30 p.m., we all raised our hands when Nina asked who wanted dessert. The cannoli I had with my café americano was the perfect combination.
By this time, Nina’s two daughters, Nikki and Nash, were joined by their only brother Jimbo, who preferred to have a quiet lunch downstairs with Nina’s husband, lawyer Jimmy Paz, and his mom.
Then came the announcement that the afternoon wasn’t over yet, because Nina’s kids had invited their friends Arianne Ching and Dione Gan of Alchemy Studios (Instagram account @alchemystudios.ph) to teach us perfume making! It was then that our age rally sank in: not only was our party a lunch date, but instead of having a round of drinks, we were going to have a tutorial!
Dione distributed brown pieces of paper where we were instructed to write the scent type of the perfume we wanted to capture. She gave us a brief background about perfume making, and I learned that it is the concentration level of perfume oils which determines which of the four categories it is: perfume, 20 to 40 percent; eau de perfume, 15 to 20 percent; eau de toilette, 5 to 15 percent; and eau de cologne, 2 to 5 percent.
According to Dione, a perfume has three notes. The first, the top note, is what you first smell in a perfume and it is the first to evaporate. They are usually greens, aromatic and marine scents. The second one, the middle note, usually stays for about 20 to 60 minutes after spraying and these are usually the floral and fruity scents. The third, the base notes, are usually heavier scents like gourmand, wood, musk and oriental scents. She was quick to point out that different body chemistries have different effects on each scent, so the scent selection is important for the perfume making process, especially if it’s for yourself.
After the quick lecture, Dione laid out three trays that each contained over 51 scents, each one bottled and properly labelled with an accompanying dropper. She then recommended we choose at least five scents up to a maximum of eight scents, combining them from the base, middle and top notes in a beaker. When we were done, Dione and Arianne formulated how many drops per scent we could use to define/encapsulate the scent we wanted. My formulation was a combination of two base notes (candied flowers and white musk), two middle notes (peonies and rainwater), and for my top note, powder. Dione then calculated how many drops per scent were to be poured into the beaker, depending on which scent we wanted to highlight and what best suited our skin types.
When Dione and I agreed on the formulation, she gave me a perfume bottle that already had alcohol in it. I then transferred the perfume formulation from the beaker to the perfume bottle and shook it until the alcohol and perfume oil blended seamlessly. The whole process took around two hours because we tried to sample all the scents available and sniff the concoctions the others were making. There were jars of coffee beans around for us to help neutralize our sense of smell if we felt our noses were already confused because of all the scents wafting in the air. What a fun, lively, and “scentsational” tutorial it was!
When we were all done, Dione and Arianne gave us stickers to name our personal scents and write them down on our perfume labels. They also reminded us to store our perfume in the refrigerator for two weeks to allow the oil and alcohol to blend while shaking the bottle once-in-a-while. I named mine “Oh My P” and gave back the brown paper handed to us earlier. This was so that Dione and Arianne would have all our “recipes” on file in case we wanted to re-order our perfume.
“Nina’s 60th Birthday Surprise” was one beautiful and nostalgic afternoon. A decades-old friendship with people you’ve known practically your whole life truly is a rare gift worth celebrating, as Nina mentioned in her birthday speech.
Happy 60th birthday once again Nina! I’m already looking forward to the celebrations which our other classmates will be inviting us to real soon!
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