I have been too busy to watch movies lately, but found the time for this strangely dark romantic-comedy about urban solitude in contemporary Argentina, and probably anywhere else urban as well. It is about two neighbours in their thirties, who share similar anxieties, and who are alone and have never met. The introduction on the madness of architecture in Buenos Aires is stunning, and Medianeras a charming movie.

94 mins, Spanish, Argentina, Director: Gustavo Taretto

"Haven't you ever wanted to go back to the middle of the story to start again?" Lucia y el Sexo is a story that becomes more complicated, and far better, as it progresses. Also, it becomes profoundly sadder. The movie follows the love of Lorenzo and Lucia, and their joint history on an Island in the Mediterranean. Lucia goes there after Lorenzo disappears, and runs into Lorenzo’s past. Lorzeno is a writer, and on that Island, his fiction and the truth merge.

Something more mundane struck me as I watched the movie. I first saw it in 2004, in Spain, while learning Spanish on a year abroad program. I was sitting on the floor, eating olives, in a lavender apartment that I shared with two Spanish girls, and a French boy. What struck me was the old technology, the clacking keyboards, the blue screens of Word Perfect 5.1. The technology was much older, much louder, and far slower. Maybe it was better for writing. Today, when I write on my the fast MacBook, the Internet is only ever a four-finger swipe away. Distractions are easy to come by, even in full screen text editors. Still, I am romanizing. On the old Performa I had in first year, I still found time to program Spanish verbs in order to memorize them.

I did remembered the movie being far better that it seemed during the first 45 minutes. But, by the second half, as the plot twists increased, I think it became an excellent movie.

128 min, Director: Julio Medem

via Mark Bernstein

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the recent movie adaption of John Le Carre's classic of the same name is a beautiful take on British espionage, circa 1970. What intrigued me, after the credits rolled, was that the author of the book, John Le Carre, was also involved in making the film.

So, I started googling him and came across the three part Smiley trilogy which I am quite excited to read. I also came across the history of British super spy Kim Philby who was a double agent for the Ruissians in the 1950s. Philby was almost made chief of the British MI6 before ending up in Moscow. There is a fascinating article by Ron Rosenbaum published in 1994 that argues he actually might have been a British triple agent. In any case, Kim Philby and the Age of Paranoia is well worth the read.

129 mins, Director: Tomas Alfredson

by Michael Ruhlman

via Mark Bernstein

Michael Ruhlman's cookbook is an epiphany for me. I have long been a bread baker and pie maker, skills infused in me by my mother, but I have rarely tried my hand at pastas, biscuits, cookies, pâte à choux and other baked goods.

Ruhlman's short cookbook Ratio explores the continuum of these combinations of flour, water, and egg. Ratios are the key to doughs and batters. He uses the same logic in other sections on stocks, sausages, mayonnaise, vinaigrette, hollandaise sauces, custards, and desserts. The key to each is their mathematical ratio, the proportion of simple ingredients, and the way that specific flavours are in addition to these ratios. My epiphany was to see the connections between foods, and the realization that recipes are simply variations on these themes.

A culinary ratio is a fixed proportion of one ingredient or ingredients relative to another. These proportions form the backbone of the craft of cooking. When you know a culinary ratio, it is not like knowing a single recipe; it is instantly knowing a thousand. Here's the ratio for bread: 5 parts flour: 3 parts water.

Aimed at beginning cooks, the Ratio is, for me at least, full of techniques that I am not familiar with, and machinery that I do not own. Ruhlman stresses that this former point is important. Cooking is about ratios and about techniques. I understand the technique of bread making, but, not for many of the other recipes. I am now excited to return to a kitchen, with an oven and more than one electric burner, to put ratios to the test.

English, 272 pages, Scribner, 2010

The Fall 2011 issue of Nokoko, the open-access journal of the Institute of African Studies at Carleton University is out.

This issue particularly addresses the ways racism continues to impact Africans and the Diaspora. Two articles examine complexities of the new diasporas while others venture into serious debates on feminism and gender studies in Africa.

The new issue has articles on perceptions of Africa and foreign direct investment, feminism, HIV/AIDs, identity, hair, and trading. I am on the editorial board.

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In light of the recent tragic incident involving the death of 10 migrant workers in Southern Ontario, I felt it was finally time to take the wraps off of a journal I kept during a two-week trip in early 2004 to investigate the conditions of undocumented Chinese migrant farm workers. I hope this can help shed light on the kinds of conditions faced every day by the people who tend, pick and process the food we eat.

A friend of mine spent two-weeks in 2004 investigating the conditions of undocumented Chinese workers in southwestern Ontario. After the death of ten migrant workers a few weeks ago, he has posted excerpts from his journal on Rabble: Inside a migrant worker transport van and Inside the working conditions of migrant workers: Journal two.

by Haruki Murakami

Murkami’s story is about K., a primary schoolteacher, and his enigmatic college friend Sumire. She reads Jack Kerouac, wears heavy overcoats, and wants to be a writer. My kind of writer:

Not that she suffered from writer’s block—far from it. She wrote endlessly, everything that came into her head. The problem was that she wrote too much. You’d think that all she’d have to do was cut out the extra parts and she’d be fine, but things weren’t that easy. She could never decide on the big picture—what was necessary and what wasn’t. The following day when she re-read what she’d printed out, every line looked absolutely essential.

Sumire has not spilt enough blood to write, she is barely 21. She falls in love, not with K, but with Miu. Miu is sophisticated, fourteen years older, well travelled, Korean Japanese, and a woman. At first, she is unaware, and later she unable to return Sumire’s love. Miu is an importer of wines and music, and gives Sumire a job as a personal assistant. They go to Europe as traveling companions to purchase wine, but are each lonely in their own way as they travel through Italy, France, and finally Greece.

Murkami captures the frantic reading of great literature in youth, the naivety, the optimism, and most of all the loneliness.

Japanense (English Translation), 224 pages, Vintage, 2002

by Julian Barnes

The winner of this year‘s Booker Prize, Julian Barnes tells the two part story of Tony. His memories of coming of age in the 1960s, and the unravelling of truths long unknown after a live comfortably lived. The Sense of an Ending is both a story of love, his and other people’s, as well as a story of memories poorly remembered and the tales that we tell ourselves. It is also the story of a narrator whom we follow, but who is not very reliable.

The novel is short, and I started and finished it in one late night sitting. Still, it shortness is a strength, and Barnes’ writing is concise, direct, and not too descriptive, or overly lyrical. It is too the point.

The ending is somewhat of a letdown, awkward in the way it wraps up Tony’s puzzle. Worth a second read.

160 pages, Random House Canada, 2011.

by Christopher Moore

A dirty job, but someone’s got to do it. Charlie Asher is a second hand thrift store owner in San Francisco. On the day of his daughter’s birth he unwittingly becomes a death merchant, helping souls find their new home.

A quick read, rather funny, certainly not high literature. Moore dedicates A Dirty Job to hospice workers and volunteers around the world.

English, 405 pages, HarperCollins, 2007.

I write about Yaaba as I saw it, without introduction and without discussion during a festival of African films in Quibdó, Colombia. Yaaba is a slow, visually beautiful, memorable movie about rural life in a small dry village on the Savannah. Two kids, Bila and his cousin Nopoko, befriend an old lady, Sara. Sara has been ostracized from the village and is called a witch. Bila becomes her friend and calls her yaaba, or grandmother. Nopoko is taken ill, and Sara finds help. The movie ends as it begins, with two children playing in the dry grasslands. The simplicity of the story left me with many thoughts. The movie was so slow that, at times, I found my mind drifting, yet it kept drawing me back in with gentle jabs. It shows a vision of the rural life without preaching, telling the small stories without statistics, poverty, violence, or explanation. A simple story of village life, one accompanied always by the wind.

90 min, Director: Idrissa Ouedraogo