Day 55 - Back On Line

I'm kinda sorta back on line.  The computer is functioning.  I have a lot of really old software, and so upgrades are always full of negative surprised.  (What do you mean I can't use Thoth any more?!? Or my scanner?)  Love the new monitor, but I haven't worked out everything to get to use it for art.

I also had the problem that backing up and updating the computers and all that kept me up half the night.  Apple now, instead of shipping computers with system install disks, simply has a key combination for a complete fresh install via the internet.  I did go to bed while it worked... but then a friendly Apple voice woke me up to tell me my install was done.

I'm sleepy now.

So I decided to take a day off from writing.  Tomorrow I think I only have to cash a check and maybe send in paperwork for another one.  So I'm holding out hope for tomorrow to get back in the swing.


Watching and Eating - The Lunchbox

Reading has gone by the wayside while I deal with my computer upgrade, but watching and eating....

Went to see The Lunchbox, an Indian movie recommended by my sister.  It's a wonderful take on the pen-pal relationship story.  A young wife with a neglectful husband is trying to get his attention by making him wonderful lunches and sending them by the "dabbawalla" system -- a kind of post office for food. It is known to be highly accurate and efficient, but it's also huge.  Dabbawallas ("box carriers") on bikes pick up the hot home lunches, and then deliver them to commuter trains, which delivers them to more guys on bikes who then deliver the lunch to the worker.

It's supposed to be the most accurate distribution system on earth.  It is unheard of that a lunchbox would ever go astray -- except in this case the unheard of happens.  Instead of going to an ungrateful husband, it goes to a curmudgeonly widower on the verge of retirement.  Because he seems to appreciate the food more than her husband, she sends him another lunch with a note the next day.  He answers, and soon there is a correspondence via lunchbox.

It's a sweet and melancholy movie about life, family and relationships.  It's also a reminder of why sometimes the censors do us a favor by forcing filmmakers to go deeper into character, be more subtle, and of course, be creative.  It's a very grown up movie, but it also has to meet the standards of the Indian censors, but rather than skirting the rules with double-entendres,  it is instead just very human.  By stripping out the more overtly romantic aspects of the story, we get a more plain and honest story.  A story of a friendship.

The movie flows from English to Hindi and back again quickly but there are subtitles.  Here is the trailer at IMDB; The Lunchbox.

And, of course, after seeing this movie, we had to go to our favorite South Indian restaurant.  (While The Lunchbox is not really about the food, it is a movie where you really want Emeril's "Smell-o-vision.")

See you in the funny papers.