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Posted in pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags bike storage, Birmingham, borders, Coventry, COVID-19, customs, England, flight, frontier worker, lockdown, pandemics, UK, University of Warwick on October 3, 2021 by xi'an
a journal of the plague year² [reopenings]
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel, University life, Wines with tags Baba Yaga, book review, butternut, Cantonese, censorship, clafouti, Communist Party of China, COVID-19, CPC, fig cake, film review, gardening, homecooking, Hong Kong, Journal of the Plague Year, Kill Bill, online lectures, pandemics, Polish folklore, pumpkin, Quentin Tarantino, samurai, Tokyo, tomatoes, YA novel on September 30, 2021 by xi'an
Returned to some face-to-face teaching at Université Paris Dauphine for the new semester. With the students having to be frequently reminded of keeping face masks on (yes, the nose is part of the face and need be covered!). I do not understand why the COVID pass did not apply to universities as well. I also continued an on-line undergrad lecture in mathematical statistics, as I found that the amount of information provided to students this way was superior to black-board teaching. (I actually gave some of these lectures in a uni amphitheatre, to leave the students free to chose, but less than 20% showed up.)
Read the very last volume of the Witcher. With a sense of relief that it was over, even though the plot and the writing were altogether pleasant… And Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, with a permanent feeling of amazement at this novel been praised or awarded anything. Once more, I had missed that it was a YA [but not too young!] novel. Still, so many things go wrong, from the overly obtuse main character to the transparent plot, the highly questionable romantic affair between the 100⁺ year old wizard and the 17 year old teenager he more than less ravished from friends and family, to the poor construct of the magic system, and to the (spoiler alert!) rosy ending. As I read the book over two sleepless nights, not much time was lost. And it had some page-turning qualities. But I’d rather have slept better!
Watched Kate, thinking it was a Japanese film, but quickly found to my sorrow it was not. Not Japanese in the least, except for taking place in Tokyo and involving cartoonesque yakuza. To quote the NYT, “as cheap as a whiff of a green tea and musk cologne called Tokyo wafting over a department store counter”. Simply terrible, even lacking the pretense of story distanciation found in Kill Bill… And then came by chance on Time and Tide, a 2000 Hong Kong film, a much better distanced action picture, with enough ellipses and plenty second-degree dialogues, some mixing Cantonese and Portuguese, plus highly original central male and female characters. I am wondering if the same could be filmed today, given the chokehold of the PCC on the Hong Kongese society and the growing censorship of films there.
Had a great month with our garden tomatoes, as we ate most of them. With a dry spell that stopped the spread of mildew and the aggression of slugs. And had a steady flow of strawberries, a second harvest that is not yet over. And more recently (late) figs, although I bring most of them to the department. The fig harvest seems to be less plentiful than last year… The last and final product of the garden will be a collection of huge butternuts that spontaneously grew out of last year seeds.
a journal of the plague year² [new semester looming]
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel, Wines with tags Corsica, courses in English, COVID-19, gardening, homecooking, Journal of the Plague Year, korean TV series, Myamoto Musashi, Olen Steinhauer, pandemics, pumpkin, samurai, seasonal workers, tomatoes on September 2, 2021 by xi'anReturned from Corsica with two relaxed weeks where hardly anyone was anywhere in Paris, including the University. Which made plenty of room for preparing the incoming lectures of my undergraduate course (in Paris), cleaning our garden (and saving tons kilos of tomatoes from mildew into tomato sauce),
and cutting some of the fast-invading pumpkin vines,
and finishing reviews of grants, papers and PhD theses.
Still some time for reading, including the very final volume of the Yalta Boulevard series, Victory Square, which sticks rather closely to the fall of the Ceausescu regime (a proximity acknowledged by the author), but also contains shocking (to 
me) revelations and some somewhat unrealistic foreign excursions. Nonetheless enjoyable enough to see the quintet as a formidable collection. Also read a short book on the non-elucidated murder of a Moroccan worker in Corsica, Les Invisibles, which I had bought while there. The style is a bit heavy and journalistic, and it certainly does not avoid clichés, but the report on the exploitation of North Africa seasonal workers by vegetable producers there is gripping (if reproducing identical patterns seen from Andalusia to Puglia…)
Watched two Kenshin movies [out of five] as well as some bits of the hilarious and rather silly very light Mystic Pop-up Bar series [with a lot of fast-forwards during my watch]. At the start, Kenshin is a prolific manga series set at the emergence of the Meiji era, series that ran from 1994 to 1999. And following a swordsman, Hitokiri Battōsai, who reminded me (to some extent) of the 16th century samurai Miyamoto Musashi.
a journal of the plague year² [across the sea]
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel with tags Aléria, Étang de Diane, Bastia, Céline, Corsica, COVID-19, Daniel Defoe, Fred Vargas, homecooking, Isola d'Elba, Journal of the Plague Year, Napoléon Bonaparte, Olen Steinhauer, pandemics, restaurant review, The Witcher on August 17, 2021 by xi'anRead the beginning of a Japanese locked-room mystery, Murder in the Crooked House, by Soji Shimada, but either due to the poor translation or to the story itself, I quickly gave up and left the book in my Bastia rental. Also left Quand sort la recluse by Fred Vargas (which I bought in emergency for being stuck on a Corsica beach with my kids!), as the irrational basis of the plot never completely vanished and the number of coincidences was just too high… And went through the fourth volume of the Yalta Boulevard Quintet by Olen Steinhauer, which follows the same team of homicide detectives in an imaginary Eastern Bloc country between Hungary and Romania. The most disappointing of all books since, while women receive a better share of the plot than usual, the rather shallow hunt for the mastermind behind a plane bombing and the even more ambiguous role played by the political officer of the brigade are doing nothing to help with the paranormal aspects of the story… (The presentation of the Turk people is furthermore caricaturesque and somewhat racist in the same way Midnight Express is racist.) Found a short book by Amélie Nothomb in an exchange bookshelf in Bastia, L’Hygiène de l’Assassin, which I read in a few hours before I shelved it back. Highly original with connections with French authors like Céline and Pérec.
Did not cook much on the island, except for home-made houmous and grilled sardines, but tasted local cheese like Niolo and Rustinu, local fresh water oysters (from Étang de Diane) which were already renowned in Roman time and a usual treat for Napoléon (while exiled on nearby Elba Island), and tested a local restaurant that could have made it to a Michelin star!, L’Étoile, in Ville di Pietrabugno. The dishes were highly original like a leek millefeuille or a mock tomato made of brocciu…
Watched for the first time Good Morning Vietnam!, on French TV (as my rental internet was down for the whole week!), which I found completely appalling! From the lack of realism in the action parts to the portrayal of the Vietnamese people to the lack of criticism of the Vietnam War. (It stands miles below The Quiet American.)
a journal of the plague year² [no end near]
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel, University life with tags cornichon, COVID-19, Daniel Defoe, fantasy, farmers' market, gherkin, homecooking, Journal of the Plague Year, Korea, korean TV series, Legends of the Condor Heroes, pandemics, rhubarb, The Grace of Kings, The Three Body Problem, The Witcher, Trolley Problem, Waste Tide on August 8, 2021 by xi'anRead the beginning of The Grace of Kings, by Ken Liu, who also translated Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem, and Chen Qiufan’s Waste Tide. But I just could not find enough interest in the one-dimensional and cardboardesque characters or the shallow plot to finish his book. In a sense, it reminded me of Jin Yong’s Legends of the Condor Heroes, which I also could not finish. 
Kept harvesting large amounts of raspberries, with a second round coming sound. And monitored the tomato patch rise, thanks to a very wet month. But compared with earlier years, the tomatoes are still far from being ready to eat. Hopefully they will resist our vacation break (if COVID permits!). We also harvested the first rhubarb stems in three years (that made for a marmalade) and our very first gherkins/cornichons.
Watched Possessed a fairly dark Korean TV series that seems to merge most of the tropes in the series I have watched so far, from the grumpy cop to the joker role, from evil spirits to slow-paced action, from numerous scenes in cars with tachometers reving up to hint at high speeds to even more scenes in a police station, &tc. Plus the characters giving in to horrible blackmail to “save” loved ones In short, in a sort of cheap trolley dilemna… Not a series I would recommend! And had a second look at The Witcher series, after painfully completing the books: it did not sound so great upon reflection, especially the threadbare battle scenes, even though some parts and characters made more sense after reading the whole series. But Dandelion (not connection with Ken Liu’s trilogy) is even more unbearable on a second run!
