The multiple uses of chocolate

• When you miss breakfast, two squares stuffed into a croissant under the mini-grill at work make great pain au chocolat.
• From Jeff de Bruges, when you spent one week in Paris without your wife and you need to soothe hearts once you’re back.
• From Juliette et Chocolat, le traditionnel à l’ancienne, to give yourself indigestion because you couldn’t stop early enough.
• Dark and semi-sweet, to make yourself happy (you’ve heard, haven't you, about the endorphin burst and how indispensable to happiness chocolate is?).
• To survive hunger pangs when you’re in Portugal, kilometres away from any food, and the only restaurant you find is closed for siesta.
• From Kinder, with a little toy inside, to make children ecstatic (even when they’re 30).
• To discover that lavender is gorgeous, especially when cocooned in dark chocolate from Odile Chocolat.
• From Nutella, in a glass container, to make anything taste good, but also, to build your collection of drinking glasses, as is apparently well-known by every French person.
• From Godiva, wrapped in beautiful wispy paper, with a card attached, as a surprise from your parents on your birthday: to remind you that you are loved. The best kind.

Bollywood Cinema Showcards at the ROM

How could you not love a city where you get this kind of invite in your mail? In anticipation of IIFA 2011 taking place in Toronto,  a number of institutions are organising activities, including the Royal Ontario Museum.

So looking forward to it!

Where are you from?

This article was part of the daily news digest from our communications department at work. Many non-Canadians don't get why Canadians would be offended by the question "Where are you from?". I didn't at first either. After all, it's healthy curiosity, and in Mauritius, we often relate to people as cultural entities as much as as human beings (whether that's a correct thing is a debate for some day soon). Still, if you've grown up in a country and you relate to no other country than this one, it can get tiring really fast to have to answer this question ALL the time. Below is an excerpt:

The Top Ten Answers to the Question: “Where Are You From?”
Canada is made up of immigrants, some here earlier than others. It’s become a bit of a game to see who’s from here – as in their family has lived in Canada for a few generations – and who may not be from here as often experienced by Canadians of colour despite being born and raised in the country.
It tends to follow a pattern. You’re talking to someone when the Question comes up, “Where are you from?”
“Uh, here.”
“No, where are you really from?”
And so on.

So we did a quick and non-scientific straw poll to find the best answers to the Question. Here are our top ten:

Click here to read the Top 10 answers.

"Il faut laisser le temps au temps."

- Didier Barbelivien -

Before Summer Rain

Rainer Maria Rilke

Suddenly, from all the green around you,
something - you don't know what - has disappeared;
you feel it creeping closer to the window,
in total silence. From the nearby wood

you hear the urgent whistling of a plover,
reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome:
so much solitude and passion come
from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour

will grant. The walls, with their ancient portraits, glide
away from us, cautiously, as though
they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying.

And reflected on the faded tapestries now;
the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long
childhood hours when you were so afraid.

Notes from a newly-landed in Toronto

These are raw notes from a newly-landed immigrant in Toronto, two weeks after arriving in November 2008, in the middle of a recession: the angst, the puzzlement, the shock. Gauging the evolution in mindset and outlook since then, it's a vivid reminder of the resilience of human beings.

"Toronto is a big city. I watch people in the bus, and think of how much more difficult it is to spring to celebrity and greatness from within the morass. How amazing it is that Obama has become President in the States, where there are bigger cities and 10 times more people. This society ceaselessly invites and invites you to consume. Flyers with cheaper and cheaper prices for food, sales of buy 2 get a 3rd free. Canada is made in China.

Mothers speak their native language to their children, who respond in broken Russian, Spanish, Urdu and English. Mothers hug their babies close, having spent about 20 minutes just to dress the little ones against the cold. You have to think of everything before braving the conditions here.

It is strikingly absurd that we should persist in acting as if all is right with the world and carry on shopping, "bussing", working, eating and playing as we would have had it not been minus 10 degrees outside. Women still feel the need to be fashionable. Guys still have the willingness to style their hair in the morning. That must be part of the bravery. And the same bravery leads them to learn how to end up being exceptional.

Hot dog vendors attempt to personalise their stall: European-style hot dog; Polish-style hot dogs; veggie hot dogs.

Malls: collections of stores brought together with the intention of easing the necessary job of shopping to fufill human needs. But shopping... block-like agglomerations scattered along bus routes designed to drive droves of hungry minds to the branded and brandless outlets. The realisation that things are just things, that they are right there for the taking, and that beyond the interest for shopping to live will need to arise a fulfilment that comes from an active mind, a healthy body, and socially meaningful action.

This society creates deep, harsh poverty. Poverty of the mind, poverty of the heart.


Politeness is everywhere. People can be shocked at the rudeness of someone and share deep looks of contempt with strangers on the same bus. They will not acknowledge a tramp sleeping between cardboard sheets behind a store as a call for action. Because humans are like that. Creatures of habit.

The ceaseless reminders to shop are the most striking. Shopping is good for the economy... Which one? The Chinese one? Eventually, you're getting branded jeans for $99.99, Made in China and non branded jeans for $9.99, Made in China. What's making the difference between the two: better paid labour? Improved conditions of living for thousands? For whom? The consumer gaining the benefits of a heightened sexiness factor or the worker reaping the gains of better wages resulting in higher standards of living for his child (because children it isn't). And if it is the latter, what is that standard of living going to turn his child into? A consumer of someone else's labour? Whose?

Advertising in the Toronto subway and magazines ranks in popularity as follows: redesign your face (or rejuvenate your face), continuing education to gain employment (presumably to afford consumption that will keep the economy healthy), protecting yourself against the flu by staying away from anyone who has it.

Food portions are huge everywhere. People in public transport range from the fashionably thinly dressed to the bulky oversized folk. Grey is the predominant shade. My soul seeks the pockets of colour on wide, wide streets.

How weird we must look to Martians."

Klein blue

This is the blue I've been obsessed with for quite some time now. Just full of wonder.

Monochrome bleu sans titre (IKB 45), 1960, 27 x 46 cm.

Here's a look at Yves Klein's blue monochromes. A new square bearing his name will be inaugurated this week in Paris 14e. The colour above became known as "International Klein Blue" (IKB).

Summer

I had never before made the link between Sanskrit/Hindi sama and summer.

summer (1)
"hot season of the year," O.E. sumor, from P.Gmc. *sumur- (cf. O.S., O.N., O.H.G. sumar, O.Fris. sumur, M.Du. somer, Du. zomer, Ger. Sommer), from PIE base *sem- (cf. Skt. sama "season, half-year," Avestan hama "in summer," Armenian amarn "summer," O.Ir. sam, O.Welsh ham, Welsh haf "summer"). O.N. sumarsdag, first day of summer, was the Thursday that fell between April 9 and 15.

Summer camp is attested from 1893; summer resort is from 1832; summer school first recorded 1860; theatrical summer stock is attested from 1942.

Indian summer
"spell of warm weather after the first frost," first recorded 1778, Amer.Eng., perhaps so called because it was first noted in regions inhabited by Indians, or because the Indians first described it to the Europeans. No evidence connects it with the color of fall leaves or a season of Indian attacks on settlements. It is the Amer.Eng. version of British All-Hallows summer, Fr. été de la Saint-Martin (feast day Nov. 11), etc. Also colloquial was St. Luke's summer (or little summer), period of warm weather occurring about St. Luke's day (Oct. 18).

List of abbreviations.
- Online Etymology Dictionary -

Dog days
–noun

1. the sultry part of the summer, supposed to occur during the period that Sirius, the dog Star, rises at the same time as the sun: now often reckoned from July 3 to August 11.
2. a period marked by lethargy, inactivity, or indolence.

And, interestingly,
Canicula (kəˈnɪkjʊlə)
— noun
another name for Sirius
[Latin, literally: little dog, from canis dog]

Footnote:

"It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial
repositories, put together well after the languages they
define. The roots of language are irrational and of a
magical nature."

-Jorge Luis Borges, Prologue to "El otro, el mismo."