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Music Review:

Everyone for Tennis! (Published in Eye Weekly, Dec. 9, 2010)

Review: Tennis, The Drake Hotel, Dec. 8, 2010

Ofelia Legaspi

Tennis— a.k.a. married band mates Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley — arrived right on time for Toronto’s extreme weather alert last night, as the Pitchfork- and New York Times-approved Denver duo proved they are more than capable of driving away the most serious case of seasonal affective disorder. Their weapon? Dulcet, dreamy, summery tunes, served up early-’60s style. Their debut album, Cape Dory, due out Jan. 18, 2011 on Fat Possum, is a Moby Dick-scale tale of adventures at sea (the duo lived on a sailboat for half a year) delivered through nostalgic, wall-of-sound pop. [Read more]

Suuns: Zeroes QC (Published in Eye Weekly, Nov. 24, 2010)

On Disc

Ofelia Legaspi

Book Reviews:

Review of Kevin Chong’s Beauty Plus Pity (Published in Existere — Journal of Arts and Literature, Fall/Winter 2011 Vol 31.1)

Reviewed by Ofelia Legaspi

“For Malcolm Kwan, the twenty-something protagonist and narrator, his privileged, liberal upbringing leads him to the unexpected path of least resistance. As a child, he had stared at an original Picasso in Madrid. His mother has familiarized him first-hand with the classic artistic temperament most only read in Sylvia Plath. He has observed his father’s filmmaking ambition atrophy as he embraces directing 2-for-1 pizza commercials and corporate training videos starring lecherous bosses who spit out workplace sexual harassment lines like “These grease traps aren’t dirty, but I am.

“Almost as a way of ticking off the exigencies of his musical leanings, Malcolm resigns himself to a part-time job at a record store. To stay in the periphery of his parents’ artistic shadow, he pursues modeling, the beginnings of which involved leather and body oil, and playing the unabashed nude model for a life drawing class his mother teaches. Instead of indulging his literary gift and writing his one-act play, he follows instructions to be “vacant-looking sexy” and to pose like “someone throwing an invisible Frisbee or rehearsing a soliloquy from Hamlet.” [Read more]

Review of Leanne Boschman’s Precipitous Signs: A Rain Journal (Published in Existere — Journal of Arts and Literature, Fall 2009 / Winter 2010 Vol 29.1)

Reviewed by Ofelia Legaspi

“Boschman here composes a poetic dedication, not to people, but to the muses and moments that embolden her poems – from the  “oilypuddles” formed after the seafest parade to the karaoke announcer “for letting / everyone   singtheirsong.” This compounding of words and the spatial pauses in this prelude introduce us to the language and rhythm of the collection, to words swept together in an organic marrying that creates a new light around their meaning. Her poetry has a glazed look on everything as in after a rain, and creates the impression of memories washing away, floating along and revealing the aftermath: the beauty of stranded moments.” [Read more]

Health Feature:

Finding could lead to cure for chronic pain (Published in the Toronto Star‘s Healthzone.ca, Jan. 21, 2011)

Ofelia Legaspi

Try describing this to your doctor: something about the size of an egg is lodged up about six inches up your rectum. And it’s burning.

This visceral pain came like a lightning for Beverley Perkins in the middle of the most unlikely activity: reading a book. Doctors in Vancouver where she is based, baffled by her unusual condition, gave her suppositories, creams and pills, but nothing could touch the pain.

One doctor gave her an exasperated look and prescribed her a drug for schizophrenia. But Perkins had something else in mind: she wanted to be paralyzed from the waist down. [Read more]

News Articles:

Ontario says it won’t step in to end Drivetest strike (Published in Excalibur, Dec. 2, 2009)

York student Kwadwo Gyabaa may have very well been the last person in Ontario to take a driving test in almost four months.

Gyabaa had been waiting for six and a half hours for his driving exam on a slow work-to-rule day on Aug. 21, when labour negotiations finally broke down between driving test company Serco DES Inc. and its employees, represented by the United Steelworkers Local 9511 union.

“My examiner managed to squeeze me in because I’d been waiting there since 8:30 in the morning,” said Gyabaa, who needed his G2 license to drive a car for his summer job as an audit supervisor at the Canadian National Exhibition.

Right now, almost 40,000 Ontarians whose driving tests have been cancelled have not been as lucky in beating the job action clock that has stopped driving examinations in Ontario for the past few months. Driving instructors, who are also severely affected by the examiner strike, turned up in the hundreds at Queen’s Park on Nov. 30 to urge the government to pass back-to-work legislation for the strikers. [Read More]

“Rocket riders stuff their pockets,” (Published in Excalibur, Nov. 18, 2009)

Ofelia Legaspi

While the TTC worries about savings-savvy token-hoarders affecting its 2010 fare hike profit, nursing student Darwin Sitchon worries about the increasingly unaffordable public transit and said he can’t even afford to “cheat the system with the rest of them.”

The looming January 2010 fare hike has forced some riders to stockpile tokens and has forced the TTC to further restrict token purchases from ten per customer to five to avoid shortages.

“I can’t afford to stockpile, yet I still can’t buy tokens that can cover me for a week,” said Sitchon. “To add to that, the lineups have gotten longer.”

TTC spokesperson Brad Ross explained that without restricting token sales, collectors might run out of tokens for riders as well as lose a projected $1 million in 2010 revenue that the system simply couldn’t afford.

TTC collectors are hearing the frustration of customers over the transit’s anti-hoarding measures, so Ross asks the public for patience and understanding when they do go to buy tokens.  “One-and-a-half million people ride the system everyday. About half of them use tokens,” Ross told Excalibur.  “There are other people who are going to need tokens. Our collectors are simply doing their jobs.”

The purpose of the fare increase is to meet the rising labour and fuel costs without cutting service.  TTC also hopes to bring some modest improvements in the system in 2010 as part of its ridership growth strategy.

For Suresh Kandasamy, fourth-year nursing student, TTC fare hikes tell the same old story. “This is what the TTC says all the time. If they don’t increase fares, they’re going to have service cuts. But the service hasn’t been getting any better.  It’s pointless.”

Kandasamy suggested that the solution to TTC’s financial problem is not a fare hike. “When I go to work, I can’t tell my boss that I need a raise because the TTC fare went up, my rent went up, York University fees went up. He doesn’t care, so why are we forced to shoulder TTC’s financial burdens?” Kandasamy commented. “They should be running the system more efficiently.”

Ross pointed out that the TTC hasn’t increased its fare since 2007. “I understand that 25 cents is a lot of money for one fare increase. We don’t want to cut service and have more crowded buses and longer wait for subways and streetcars. What we need is a combination of increased subsidy from the city and an increase in fare.”

Ross hopes for a long-term sustainable subsidy for public transit from Queen’s Park or Ottawa to cover rising operation costs and prevent high and frequent fare hikes in the future.

“ZeroWaste, zero work: Environmental initiative sparks controversy in York community,” (Published in Excalibur, June 16, 2010)

Ofelia Legaspi

York University’s newly implemented ZeroWaste program is garnering some early and unexpected foul reviews from a few key community members.

While the environmental initiative aims to minimize the amount of campus trash heading for the landfill and add numbers to its recyclables, some custodial staff and office occupants divided on the issue are asking where they fit in the equation.

ZeroWaste, which started June 7, introduced a drastic measure to cut back on the use of plastic bag lining by eliminating desk-side garbage bins. This means that office occupants will have to walk to their single communal office tri-bin to dispose their trash. The custodial staff will also no longer be emptying these office receptacles, except the kitchenette organic bins.

Cecilia Abrusci, receptionist and secretary of Stong College, said she suspects that the ZeroWaste initiative is not really about the environment, but is a job-cut initiative in disguise.

“[This program] is just an excuse for [York] not to hire any more custodial staff. It’s the same as the offices. I think that once somebody leaves, or retires, they’re just not going to replace those people,” said Abrusci, who has seen less of the custodians at Stong since one of its caretakers retired a couple of months ago.

According to Abrusci, the Stong Master’s Office has had to rely on on-call caretakers who could be at the other end of the campus.

Fourth-year finance major Hasan Vajid is also wary of the economic implications of this initiative. “The ZeroWaste program is good,” he said, “but can it create more jobs?”

Growing pains from ZeroWaste are already manifest in some of York’s offices. Franca Cece, Founders College’s receptionist and enquiries secretary, dubbed the program “horrible.”

“We have a common photocopier, so we generate a lot of paper waste. Who’s going to empty all of that?” asked Cece, adding that, if the bins are not going to be serviced, they should be removed altogether.

Bob Smith, director of custodial services for York, admitted that some of his staff members have said they felt threatened by what he refers to as ZeroWaste’s “redistribution of resources,” but that job cuts are not a part of the program’s goals.

“I’ve told them at our town hall meetings that to project out that there will be lay-offs is a non-sequitur,” said Smith. “We’re not doing this to reduce staff. Servicing the new organic waste collectors and communal tri-bins [...] are actually new work for the custodians.”

He also mentioned that the time saved emptying desk-side bins will be used to focus on vacuuming duties, improving office air quality. Smith explained that the no-desk-side-bin strategy aims for community members to become acutely aware of the waste they generate.

“It takes no time at all to service those receptacles,” said Wayne Shaw, a caretaking manager for the University of Toronto (U of T). The site under his purview, the downtown St. George campus, beats York’s recycling rate by more than three percent, and received the 1993 Waste Minimization Award for Best Institution from the Recycling Council of Ontario

Shaw said he believes that eliminating the desk-side garbage bins is a “mistake.” He suggested that, if York wants its plastic-liner use to be more environmentally friendly, it does not need to eliminate desk-side bins.

“York can use high-density plastic liners instead, which cost a third of what normal plastic liners cost, are two-thirds [more] environmentally friendly, a third as thick and are properly sized.”

Smith’s updated 2009 Green Cleaning Initiative report, co-authored by custodial manager Joseph Sanguedolce, addresses the same plastic liners problem Shaw pointed out. It was in this report that they first suggested the elimination of desk-side receptacles, not only to reduce bag-liner usage, but also to encourage community members to bring a “wasteless lunch.”

Abrusci guessed that ZeroWaste will not redirect more landfill waste to recycling and compost.

“I’m the only one right now using that compost bin in the kitchen,” said Abrusci. “If a faculty member has an office around the corner, do you think they’re going to walk all the way down the hall with their banana peel and throw it in the compost bin? I doubt it,” she said, adding that the banana peel will likely end up in the closest garbage.

But, this is exactly the type of reaction that Smith hopes to get: in his view, if people are inconvenienced enough, they’ll be motivated to bring coffee mugs and reusable water bottles to work.

As for the students, Vajid said he is confident that, over time, as students become more informed about ZeroWaste, it could work.

Smith predicted that, if this initiative, indeed, works, York will eventually be diverting 70 to 75 percent of its landfill trash to recycling.

“We’re going to do better than U of T,” he said with a laugh.

“Extinct bus tickets temporarily reappear to combat token hoarders,” Nov. 25, 2009

“Determined token hoarders will have to buy their tokens one by one, at token vending machines, and that’s not the only step the Toronto transit bosses are taking to fight stockpiling.”

“Profits plummet for York’s businesses,” (Published in Excalibur, Nov. 12, 2008)

Six days into the CUPE 3903 strike, business owners at York are already feeling the financial ramifications of a near-empty campus.

Business owners get only seven out of 12 months of good business on a university campus, and many are afraid of facing a situation similar to the one that occurred during the last teaching assistant (TA) strike. During CUPE 3903’s strike in 2000, three months of good business were taken away after the strike stretched over 11 weeks.

With rental fees of up to $10,000 a month in York Lanes, some business owners say it is impossible to break even when customers mostly consist only of people who stick around residences while classes are suspended. Jin Choi, owner of Pagoda in the Student Centre, bought his business immediately after the October 2000 strike.

“The previous owner lost 60 to 70 percent of his profit, but in this business, you’ve got to take a risk,” he said. “I am kind of scared it will happen to me, but it’s out of my hands.” Choi predicts that it will take about a year to make up what may be months of lost profits.

Maurice D’sa, who’s been the owner of Indian Flavour in York Lanes for the past 12 years, said he suffered a 35 to 45 percent loss in profits during the last strike – much lower than the 66 percent he has already lost this week. “Back then, classes went on and students came in, unlike now when the university is shut down,” he said.

Although business during the strike of October 2000 was better than it is now, D’sa still had difficulties making up his lost profits. “It took me a couple of years, not just one year, to recoup all our losses,” he explained.

Less financially stable businesses have had to reduce business hours in order to save on labour costs. The owner of Sakura restaurant, who refused to be named, said that a business located in a university campus is not easy to get out of. These businesses face the same monthly rent whether business is slow during the summer or almost non-existent during a strike. Rental costs force these businesses to stay open, even if only to break even.

Despite the possibility of a strike, business owners are attracted to university campuses because there is always a way to make up the lost profits – either through extended semesters or through the huge profits September brings. Some long-time business owners at York find themselves growing more and more pessimistic.

Charlie Korinis, owner of Jimmy the Greek in the Student Centre, has been in business at York for 25 years. During his tenure, he has experienced a number of strikes, and while he expressed his disappointment, he did not want to blame the TAs. “Every strike, it’s hard to meet the rent. What happens is you go bankrupt,” he noted.

New business owners like Raymond  Chi of The Original Panzerotto Pizza are afraid of the  possibility of a long strike, but remain hopeful in making up lost profits. Chi commented on how business is good otherwise and that, with this strike, he just has to cope and wait.

D’sa says that discipline is key when undertaking a lucrative, but risky, business at a university campus. He worries that this strike is likely to be much worse than the strike in 2000 and is concerned that the university administration and CUPE 3903 aren’t making progress in the negotiations to end this strike.

“Until they meet and sit at the table, nothing’s going to happen, and only when they do that we’ll have some hope,” he said. “I think it’s easily going to be four weeks. Right now it looks hopeless.”

“Laptop thieves strike Student Centre…again,” Nov. 11, 2009

“Excalibur was on the scene of yet another coordinated robbery targeting students with laptops in the Student Centre on the night of Nov. 8.”

Art Reviews:

“Wrapped landscapes enrapturing,” (Published in Excalibur, February 9, 2005)

Ofelia Legaspi

Thirty-six years ago, the limits of art stretched in the one million square feet of wrapped Australian coast. The fabric was held by a web of ropes, its loose parts creating a rare display of shimmering waves on the otherwise rugged panorama of rocks. For two months, this monumental art installation spread like a snowy new landscape from an alternative world.

After 46 long years, such signature projects by Christo and Jeanne-Claude continue to test the boundaries of the possible. This year, Canada, for the first time, is privy to the process behind these fleeting artworks. Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Works from the Weston Collection, now open at the Art Gallery of Ontario, offers an inside look at the preparatory stages of these massive installations.

The exhibit plunges the viewer right into the photographs of finished projects. Like Impressionist paintings, the close-up shots expose details such as rope patterns and fabric textures, while the far-away shots blend the composition into a unified whole.

The splendor of these long-dismantled works is alive in these pictures as they capture the space of the art with lifelike accuracy. The stark colours of the brighter projects (“Valley Curtain”, “Wrapped Walk Ways”, “Surrounded Islands”) stand out like flames licking the soft, earthy shades of the outdoors.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped everything from telephones, tables, trees, architecture, statues and landscapes. The idea may be simple, but the size and beauty of the effects is unimaginably huge. The ripples in the fabric create an illusion of a rough sculpture. Features disappear and contours are simplified in broad strokes that bring to mind cubist angles.

The duo also suspended fabrics in sweeping landscapes (one even resembled The Great Wall of China), planted upright umbrellas in fields, stacked rusty, multi-coloured oil barrels and surrounded the perimeter of eleven Florida islands in pink fabric. These highly original works commemorate the freedom of expressing the artistic impulse, even the most far-fetched.

The exhibit moves onto the elaborate preparatory drawings that go beyond sketches on paper. Christo worked with mixed media in these pieces, which is quite effective in predicting effects. He installed the fabrics in the drawings, and used twine in place of thick ropes. As a result, these collages had enough depth to visualize the grand scale of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s vision. The technical data, photographs of the location and samples of fabric to be used are framed with the drawings. Elaborate as they are, these artworks are far from polished. They serve as intimate portraits of Christo’s struggles to bring imaginary landscapes into topographical realities, if only for a brief magical moment.

Two more projects in the Arkansas River and New York’s Central Park are in progress. The latter, which is opening next month, will be an installation of 7,500 curtained gates along Central Park walkway. The former will be a long stretch of fabric running over the Arkansas River.

For now, these two installations exist as strokes of colour on paper. But it is only a matter of time until they stretch the boundaries of art as far as earth’s landscapes go.

“Me at the ROM with diamonds,” Oct. 29, 2008

“Picture yourself standing in front of a haloed gold diamond, the third largest in the world, the size of a throat lozenge. Diamonds like these earn their beauty in hell.”

“From Sarah Slean to the gallery scene,” Sept. 13, 2006

“Ever flipped through your CD booklets to see beautiful album art and thanked yourself for actually purchasing the CD? You can thank Upperton for those moments. She’s the art director of Canadian-based record label Arts & Crafts, where she directs and creates album covers for Canadian talents like Broken Social Scene and Sarah Slean.”

Relationship column:

“The Love & Sex Supplement,” Feb. 10, 2010, editorial

“Even the greatest love story I’ve ever known, if I had to choose one, still had its moments of ripped pants and my grandma chasing her son with a skillet because he had made my mother cry. There was music in the madness: the soft clang of the skillet against the railing and my father’s head, my grandmother’s mezzo-soprano curses and death threats and my mother’s maudlin nose and throat works in the corner.”

“Cherry on top,” Sept. 16, 2009

“. . . let’s skip the nauseating good parts when you guys feed each other Yogen Fruz in the Student Centre and jump to the part when you are throwing plastic knives at each other and thinking it’s the thought that counts. You then hurl a food item – a more effective and environmentally friendly weapon – at the enemy, but not in the usual cute manner. These are no donut sprinkles. This is La Tomatina in Spain.”

“Cherry on Top,” Aug. 19, 2009

“You’ve always thought he was the One. He’s magical, almost sparkling. Halo rays crown his tumble of golden hair (when his head eclipses your overhead lamp). God Himself blows apart your white lace curtains, as if opening up the clouds of heaven to beatify this sunlit man. Then God turns off the sky and switches on the moon, the stars, at which point it feels almost like a religious sanction to climb this man like a mountain. Still you doubt these signs, because the magic you’ve known has always been a really good trick involving a wand, a top hat and a white rabbit.”

Feature Articles:

“Judge this book by its cover,” Sept. 23, 2008

“A new world has emerged – a glowing space of a box. It has already beckoned the others. Behold its frozen faces, documented in their slightly different expressions, its museum of over-coiffed hair, toothy grins and peace signs. Pleasant lives are filtered through in the selective width of small boxes. This is their life summed up, blown up or made up. This is Planet Facebook.”

“A chance meeting with a bike being,” Aug. 19, 2009

“BMX bikes are tiny, silly and unimpressive. At rest, they are easy to underestimate. Nitsopoulos’s is painted blue and white, like foreknowledge. Once he mounts the saddle and pedal, a mass of metal joints scale the air after the ramp. The horizon is a movement of blue and white frame, deflected sunlight. Its smallness begins to make sense: it is easy to take to the sky. Then, always, there is a fall, either tragic or magic.”

“Survival of the sickest cell,” Oct. 7, 2009

“It grew quietly inside Demetre Nitchov, claiming his stomach as its womb. There, in that pocket at the bottom of the esophagus, the body nourished it like an organ. It grew blood vessels that fed and filtered it. Undiagnosed, it would spread its seeds that would flower and climb up slowly near the opening of the mouth, invade that dark tunnel and extinguish the light at the end of it.”

“Vegetarianism: going beyond the deep fried Mars bars,” Sept. 16, 2009

“I reached the peak of my patience and concentration very early in life – as a child dedicated to picking off veggies from her plate. And here I am at the 25th Annual Vegetarian Food Fair, the largest in North America, sampling products with vegetables I’ve never heard of and signing my name on the Veggie Challenge sign up sheet.”

“Tamils recall tortured past,” Nov. 18, 2009

“Kumar* began his work in the kitchen before he knew what onion was in English. To him, cooking knows no language, anyway. It’s all movement and instinct. One day, while I was waiting on a dish he was cooking, I asked him where his scars came from. I waited for small stories; wounds acquired in the kitchen.

“‘From the war. Oh, and refugee camp.’ He brought a calendar to work one day. It had lovely, balletic Tamil lettering and a group picture of scowling army soldiers in full military
regalia.”

“The state of the Canadian immigrant,” Jan. 20, 2010

“In the hallowed halls of York University, those who hand you your grub may be more educated than you are. They are easy to spot: wise faces behind cash registers or in kitchens flipping burgers and pouring drinks into paper cups. They tell you to come again in an English that has a different music to it and smile while they service you. But what lies behind this routine gesture of hospitality?”

“O true apothecary, thy drugs are expensive,” Jan. 13, 2010

“Disease awareness and medical research fundraising are two of our favourite causes. That’s evident thanks to the chorus of nose-honking in theatres playing last year’s film My Sister’s Keeper. But gone are the days of refusing to patent essential life-saving drugs and vaccines, like Dr. Jonas Salk did in the 1950s during the polio epidemic.”

Travel Articles:

“Lights, camera, Cuba!,” (Published in Excalibur, March 11, 2009)

Deck: Ditch the all-inclusive resorts of Varadero, brace yourself for central Cuba, and get the real picture

My boyfriend Chris and I watch the sky we’ve just descended from die up there, the sun bleeding all over the clouds. Varadero, under this light, is a glimpse of a period-piece film set, with its vintage American cars parked like abandoned toys under street lamps and the blackening flat houses speeding by like the film reel of an old classic movie. But, unlike actors, the people here aren’t playing a part.

Corners are swarming with people absorbed in chess games, rum-drinking, people-watching or sitting cross-legged at their porches with a cigar and a pensive gaze. Our Cuban tour guide, catering to our demographic, tells us first and foremost which local beers are best. On cue, someone busts out a cold bottle of Cristal he purchased at the airport, which he quickly learns is a “chick drink.” We are also advised not to skip breakfast and to nourish ourselves in the morning with a tall glass of a refreshing beverage – any beverage at all, so long as it’s spiked with rum, also known as vitamin R. On this holiday, everything is inclusive, much like a communist life under Fidel Castro. You are provided with your basic necessities, but you are left to wonder what’s outside this tidy little dreamland.

Cuba, because it’s a common destination for travel virgins and sun-tanning dipsomaniacs, wasn’t my first choice. But, as human nature would have it, I opted for comfort, security and affordability as fast as I would opt for a cheap, greasy, fast-food combo. Besides, for a North American student traveller, Cuba is a rite of passage.

The bus pulls up and I step out into an ordered paradise, with its illuminated blue pools undulating like jello and decorative palm trees sprinkled evenly into place, white beach chairs planted underneath them. I can hear a choir of waves nearby and closer still I can hear an a cappella choir of drunken tourists. In the morning, our pasty bodies, bright like halogen lamps, run for the ocean until our flip-flopped feet sink into the sand. We kick off our sandals and run to the water, but with the sand scorching our boot-loving Canadian feet, we make an abrupt trip back to retrieve our sandals.

While Cubans are often portrayed by travel guidebooks as creatures of charm, one hotel wait staff leaves me wondering if the guidebooks we perused through were fairy tales instead.
“Where can I get a glass of water?” I ask politely at a buffet. “What do you think?” the waiter replies dismissively, and, just like a proverbial needle, bursts the fantastical bubble I was in.

Looking around for a clean table or beach chair on which to eat, I find plastic cups, dishes and leftover food strewn everywhere – even by the pools. In a country where people have to work twice as hard for half the money, you aren’t always going to deal with hospitality staff who have the customer-is-always-right, servile, ass-kissing mentality we are familiar with in North America. As this waiter peels away his façade of perfect charm, Chris and I want to see more. While most of the people we meet sign up for the popular catamaran trip (dolphins, lobster dinner), we pack our bags for a dirt-cheap two-day excursion to central Cuba, which cost us only 120 convertible pesos each.

The bus ride is a scenic documentary of Cuban life outside our window, narrated by a tour guide educated in Cuban history and geography. Our first stop: Cienfuegos, which feels European with its symmetrical 19th- and 20th- century neoclassical structures. The main square, bathed in the sun, glows in its colour palette of white and pastel blue, yellow and green. Imposing Corinthian columns dwarf me; arches invite you into their grand entrances and redundant frames; porticoes swallow me like a cave; and balustrade terraces crown and bejewel the architecture. It’s a Roarkian nightmare, but for travellers used to imposing structures of glass and steel these constructs are my refreshing escape from the steely gloss of the city. Though the central square looks fairly well maintained, the fading Cuba is right around the corner. Although the nation’s poverty is evident, it’s every escapist’s dream: a world untouched by commercialism, the antithesis of the flashy Times Square.

We stop at Trinidad, Cuba next. I witness the 500-year-old cobblestone road; the cracks in the paint like facial wrinkles; the web of overhanging electrical wires; and random Cubans parked on tall doors and windows through the lens of my camera. Capturing it on film, I easily fall in love with it. As I walk down the cobbled path, I can’t bring myself to compare it to the Distillery District. It’s infused with so much culture that you half-expect it to be behind museum glass and velvet rope – but not Trinidad.

A vibrant community lives in these 16th century Spanish colonial structures. Passing a house, I see a woman folding her laundry through an iron lace of window grillwork. I almost get toppled over by three teenagers on horseback, racing through the streets. Around the corner, a tiny six-year-old dancing with his grandmother charms me. I buy a shell necklace from a pregnant woman who tells me in her prepared English phrase that the few pesos I gave her are “for baby.” A woman and her son show me honesty and decency by returning my backpack, which had my passport and cash in it.

Equally humbling is the beauty of Mother Nature. Our next stop takes us to a gravity-defying climb by bus to the hotel where we stay for the night. It is located in Topes des Collantes, a nature reserve 2,625 feet high. The next morning we board a Russian truck – a squeaky vehicle with a skeletal wooden and metal body and a top cover. We ride even higher up through a scenic dirt road to our hiking trail. Here, in this mountain range, is where Chris and a few members from our tourist group jump from a small waterfall. It’s also the first time I sit under one. Though the water here is quite strong, it’s powerless in hosing down my smile.

The excursion wraps up in Santa Clara, the home of Che Guevara’s mausoleum where pictures, letters, weapons and other personal belongings are exhibited. It reminds me of our hike in Topes des Collantes where a group of musicians serenaded tourists with a Spanish song. For the remainder of the trip, the chorus “Commandante Che Guevaaahhhrraah” repeats in my head, affirmed and reaffirmed by images of Cuba’s national hero at every turn.

Havana, our next destination, either lacks discontent or hides it very well. Being the capital of Cuba, it is very busy, very urban and very big. Armed with knowledge of Tagalog, a language partly rooted in Spanish, I crack my knuckles and start to bargain for good deals for souvenirs. After winning just one bartering match, Hurricane Gustav starts to rain on my parade, and we all head back to the bus. Our tour guide confirms that those flying tomorrow, which included Chris and me, will be delayed until the hurricane passes. And so just like a true Cuban, we sit in the lobby for the remainder of the day drinking mojitos, smoking cigars and debating the controversy surrounding the heroism
of Che Guevaaaaraah…

“Exploring your own backyard,” March 21, 2010, Travel supplement editorial

“Today – Friday noon in Toronto – you can find me at precisely the opposite  end of the world. Picture my floating, fluorescent (and jet-lagged) face in the dark, typing  to the symphony of throaty tricycles  and karaoke singers at the next-door bar.”

Film Reviews:

“York films showcased at the Bloor cinema,” Nov. 2, 2005

“Luo Li draws an unexpected parallel between the fluid movement of birds and the liquid grace of calligraphy in his short film Fly. The words take flight naturally as the birds map out strong strokes in beautifully framed shots. The backdrop is dynamic. Appropriately stark colours change and flicker. In the words of Canadian director and York alumni, jury member Sudz Sutherland, “[This] experiment worked.”

“Bicke vs. Dick,” Feb. 9, 2005

“Samuel Bicke (Sean Penn) boards a plane with a plot in mind: To crash it into the White House. Niels Mueller’s The Assassination of Richard Nixon, written five years ago, is based on a historical event – an attempt on Nixon’s life in 1974 – and is eerily resonant in the history that the 9/11 tragedy was made into.”

“It’s Bonnie and Clyde in expressive silence,” May 18, 2005, 3-Iron

“Kim’s minimalist technique accommodates the progression of the plot from odd to fantastical. It is in the movie’s building tension and significant shift in its reality that we finally see the characters come to life with their motivations and desires.”

“Religion and all its Eves,” Jan 25, 2006, Eve & the Fire Horse

“Could Jesus and Buddha be friends, since their teachings are essentially the same? Our titular character believes so and more: She imagines that Jesus and Buddha dance at night.”

Editorials and opinions:

“Putting an end to a bloody tradition,” Nov. 19, 2009

“Imagine: a hand was severed to decorate another, that the diamond in your mother’s wedding ring – the rock that has adorned her finger for 25 years – was the reason an innocent was dismembered. Imagine: the too-small hands that procured this shining symbol of love and commitment often exchanged at the altar, hands that tried to escape and hands that have vanished. Look at abusive diamond mines and imagine no more.”

“What about the students?” Nov. 5, 2008

Tomorrow is a day of reckoning. We’ve heard CUPE 3903’s side, and we’ve heard the university administration’s side, but the voice missing in these negotiations is, sadly, the  consumers’ side – the students.

“The summer that sucked,” Aug. 28, 2009

“. . . because one record-breaking, life-altering three-month labour disruption is just not enough for York students, why not throw in an olfactory experience just for kicks? Why not make life literally stink for 39 more days with the city of Toronto strike?”