Rannie “Photojunkie” Turingan’s opening for his show of Accordion City photographs, Toronto Squared happens tomorrow from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Le Petit Dejeuner restaurant, 191 King Street East. If you want to see some stunning photography in a place where I hear the food’s quite good, check out this event. Wendy and I will be there.
Those of you from the Philippines, Thailand or Singapore are familiar with the “spoon and fork” style of eating. The fork goes in the left hand, spoon in the right. The spoon can be used as a cutting implement, and the fork is used to push the food into the spoon which then goes in the mouth. It’s perfect for dishes served with sauces and rice.
(In some cases, the “fork and spoon” method could be perceived as snooty.)
I just got sent a link (thanks, Daejin!) to a story about a seven-year-old Montreal area boy who’s being punished for eating at school Filipino style:
Luc Cagadoc’s table behaviour is traditionally Filipino; he fills his spoon by pushing the food on his plate with a fork, his mother, Maria Theresa Gallardo, says.
But after being punished by his school’s lunch program monitor more than 10 times this year for his mealtime conduct — including his technique — the seven-year-old told Gallardo said last week that he was too embarrassed to eat his dinner.
…
When he eats with both a spoon and fork, instead of only one utensil, the Grade 2 student said the lunch monitor moves him to a table to sit by himself.
Upset over Luc’s story, Gallardo confronted the lunchtime caregiver the next day and on April 13, she telephoned the school’s principal, Normand Bergeron. His reaction brought her to tears, she says. “His response was shocking to me,” Gallardo, who moved to Montreal from the Philippines in 1999, told The Chronicle. “He said, ‘Madame, you are in Canada. Here in Canada you should eat the way Canadians eat.”
…
She disagrees with the lunch monitor’s approach to teaching children how to eat and says it is emotionally abusive to Luc. When she questioned Bergeron about punishing students for their table habits, she says he replied that, “If your son eats like a pig he has to go to another table because this is the way we do it and how we’re going to do it every time.”
What a bunch of sweethearts. This story is already being reported in the Philippines, on the ABS-CBN News (ABS-CBN is a Filipino TV channel) and the Manila Times.
I myself tend to use the etiquette that’s appropriate to the situation. I use the Filipino fork-and-spoon method at Sunday dinner with the family, the knife-and-fork method when dining with “The Man”, use my chopsticks as both eating and serving utensils at dim sum . Depending on the situation, I eat pizza with either a knife and fork or my hands. I think that Luc should learn a number of eating styles for all situations, but I don’t think that the fork-and-spoon method is so offensive that he should be punished for it.
To my mind, it’s another case of intolerance married to Quebec “for me but not for thee” cultural insecurity, where they whine about being Francophones drowning in an Anglophone sea, and then turn around and pull this kind of nonsense.
These somewhat cryptic posters have been put up all around the Parkdale area of Accordion City (my office is just east of Parkdale). I assume they’re to encourage ho — erm, I mean sex trade workers — to call upon the local constabulary when the clientele cross the line. Does anyone know?
This is a priceless moment in Canadian rock history: John Mikl Thor, better known as “Thor”, performing on Merv Griffin’s show in 1976. Not only does he perform a number called backed by Merv’s band, but he also performs his trademark hot water bottle stunt. This is rock cheese at its best and worst.
Standing behind Thor is the Watermelon Jug Band, who must be thinking “The long nights rehearsing, the long days in the studio, the endless touring, the sacrifices…it’s all come to this.”
I caught Thor’s live show a couple of years back; I wrote about him here.
(By the bye, I think that the number Thor performs, Everybody Wants a Piece of the Action, would make a terribly fitting anthem for ICT Toronto.)
Although I am Asian, a phenotype that often means less facial hair growth than caucasians, like my Dad, I’ve got the same beard power as “The Man”. Maybe it’s a fluke, or perhaps the goatee and splendiferous sideburns are my Irish-American great-grandfather’s gift to me. Either way, shaving is a daily ritual if I don’t want to look like a random thug from a Tony Jaa movie.
I’m going to see if we’re all being lied to by Big Foam. For the next month, I’m going to try shaving without shaving cream. I usually shave after coming out of the shower, and both McSweeney’s and an article on Lew Rockwell.com titled The Shaving Cream Racket suggest that in such situations, shaving cream is completely unnecessary. My skin’s pretty smooth, so the idea of shaving without a lubricating layer of cream doesn’t put icy daggers of fear into my heart.
Today is Day 2, and strangely enough, shaving sans foam seems to make no difference at all. Better still, it’s easier to navigate around the beard and ‘burns. I’ll keep you apprised of my progress.
If you missed last night’s Colbert Report, you might be unaware that as of today, there are 999 days left in the Bush administration. In honour of this event, here’s a pointer to a comic I found amusing: Everything I Know I Learned from the Bush Administration. Some samples…
I love the “comic book convention” joke:
Last night marked the fifth DemoCamp, Accordion City’s monthly gathering of the tech community where we show off our current projects to our peers. It took place at the University of Toronto’s Bahen Centre for Information Technology; use of the auditorium was arranged by Greg Wilson, whom I wish was my prof back when I was a computer science student at Crazy Go Nuts University. By Greg’s count, we had 141 attendees.
The crowd, with about 5 minutes before the start of the presentations. The place was packed by the time presentations began.
Greg expressed some concern at the small number of U of T students present. C’mon, kids — it’s almost summer, some of you a graduating, and right on campus was this great opportunity to see what’s going on in the working world and meet potential employers. Don’t blow opportunities like this!
The presentations were:
After the presentations, a large number of the attendees converged on the upstairs bar at Molly Bloom’s for beer, wings and burgers. Greg, I owe you some money for my food and beer!