PhilPaine.com

Quite busy, late­ly. Work­ing on the set of cable tele­vi­sion show, and also doing some don­key work for a for­eign trade mis­sion. The rent will be late, but it will be paid.

One reflec­tion on life in Toron­to: No mat­ter how poor you are, there’s no prob­lem get­ting real­ly good food. I may have trou­ble mak­ing the rent, but I eat like an emper­or. Eat­ing well is, as far as I can see, cheap­er than eat­ing bad­ly. I can make a sup­per of cur­ried chan­na, steamed callaloo, and chick­en, brazed in yogurt and spiced with cumin, sumac and blaz­ing mit­mi­ta, served on a fill­ing Ethiopi­an njeera, for a total cost of $3.50. I can wash it down with thick, top qual­i­ty gua­va juice for three dol­lars a litre. I can lunch on bagels and fresh salmon & dill cream cheese for less than what it costs in a super­mar­ket, or find an aged herb gou­da at one third the super­mar­ket price, if I keep my eyes open in Kens­ing­ton Market.

The trick is to keep a good shelf of spices. I buy them fresh, by weight, at House of Spice, a store that is more enter­tain­ing to walk into than any amuse­ment park. By keep­ing the pantry stocked with sta­ples (rice, pas­ta, pota­toes, frozen peas and corn, wakame, njeera, crushed toma­toes), one can come across a cut of meat on sale and trans­form it into some­thing spe­cial. Soups are my per­son­al spe­cial­ty. A hardy bor­sht with sour cream, a spicy shrimp and lemon grass in coconut or tamarind broth, a stur­dy black bean and pota­to, a refresh­ing cold gaz­pa­cho. Any­one can make these in min­utes. The skills involved are trivial.

I most­ly shop in free mar­ket stores, not cor­po­rate ones, which in this neigh­bour­hood means most­ly Tamil, Pilipino, Soma­li, Ethiopi­an, Kore­an and Jamaican food shops. All of them are geared to feed­ing big fam­i­lies on small bud­gets. Between them, I have a huge vari­ety with­in a five minute walk. But with­in a twen­ty minute walk, I can get to any­thing con­ceiv­able, in Kens­ing­ton Mar­ket (chaos and mys­ter­ies and bar­gains), or in St. Lawrence Mar­ket (high­est qual­i­ty, rarest items, such as muskox steak and arc­tic char flown in from Nunavut, an entire store devot­ed to caviar, and anoth­er that sells only hot sauces and mus­tards). Chi­na­town, Lit­tle India, and Greek­town, all with­in walk­ing dis­tance, each pro­vide their par­tic­u­lar delights. I prob­a­bly spend far less on food than the aver­age per­son, but nobody could call me deprived.

City life, with all its noise, rush hour chaos and car­bon monox­ide, does have some rec­om­pens­es. Hen­ry David Thore­au may have read the Mahab­hara­taat Walden Pond, to fill his spir­i­tu­al needs. But I find that a real­ly good chick­en tik­ka fills mine. I won­der, could I have lured Hen­ry away from the pond with a real­ly deli­cious kylbasa?

I pro­pose that Cana­da ini­ti­ate the for­ma­tion of a new inter­na­tion­al body. Mem­ber­ship would be defined by the fol­low­ing fac­tors: 1) a pop­u­la­tion of less than thir­ty-five mil­lion, 2) a per capi­ta GNI (Gross Nation­al Income) over US$20,000, and 3) a record of ful­ly func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy for a min­i­mum of fifty years. Switzer­land, which qual­i­fies, would be omit­ted by dint of its spe­cial neu­tral­i­ty and bank­ing inter­ests. The fol­low­ing coun­tries would be invit­ed: Aus­tria, Aus­tralia, Bel­gium, Den­mark, Fin­land, Ice­land, Ire­land, Lux­em­bourg, the Nether­lands, New Zealand, Nor­way, and Swe­den. In addi­tion, I would sug­gest that Green­land and the Faroe Islands, both enti­ties semi-autonomous from Den­mark, be invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate as full mem­bers. Cana­da has a spe­cial inter­est in close co-oper­a­tion with Green­land. Read more »