Art

I am finally glad to almost get over with this stressful and hectic week at work. This morning was our School of Art, Design and Media's Convocation ceremony. The Class of 2009 finally got kicked out after 4 years of bumming around campus. =)

We featured some beautiful Final Year Projects at the ceremony. I was duly impressed. Photos added.

(I tried to get a s close as possible but these were the best results I could get from an iPhone camera)

Websites for Writer Meet Ups

Another friend from Saturday Morning Writers sent some fantastic links for aspiring/established writers looking to meet with other like-minded individuals.

If you reside in Sunny Singapore, look out for the local writers meetup group HERE.

If you would like to submit work for publication, Singapore has a Quarterly Literature Review. You can check it out HERE.

There's also the previously published Caferati.

Good luck!

The Many Faces of ....Madness =D

Here I am sitting with my pink lappy like a good girl about to research my article when my iPhone and potential mischief beckons. Let the camwhoring begin!

Oh! What is this? Oh my my my! What have you done now Miss O Hara?

I imagine this is my best Calpurnia expression. (To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee) Else, I don't know what name to give it.

I'm going more for an Angelina Jolie-esque look here, but failing miserably. She's too sexy for her hat, or her shirt, or even UNICEF these days. Oh well. Back to work!

Caferati

A friend of mine from Saturday Morning Writers hooked me up with a very interesting writers group called Caferati.

I received the following email from their President, Ashish Kumar:

Hi Ketki

Thanks for your interest. Is it OK by you if I make you a member of the Caferati mail group? You'll start getting our mails then. We mostly use the group to schedule our Read Meets, unfortunately, but you're welcome to use it to share your writing, or information on writing related events.

Do confirm so that I can "do the needful" as we Desis say.

Best
Ashish

Basically, Caferati works on a peer review system for writers, giving feedback to help writers improve their technique. The organization started on the online social networking site Ryze (India) and expanded rapidly into other cities around the world. Members meet once a month for read-meets.


It is definitely an exciting prospect and a must try for any one looking to improve their writing. For more information on Caferati and finding a chapter in your country, go to http://www.caferati.com/

I Work Too Hard

In my defence, it was a busy Monday! (You can see my colleague's head peeking out a bit from the other side!)

Lady of Leisure

I spent my weekend at the town club with my dad. He huffed and puffed away at his Latino Jam class (I have a video which I have been banned from circulating!) while I lazed by the poolside, watched part of Beverly Hills Chihuahua (do NOT watch that terrible movie), and ate ate ate.

The pool! Luckily there were no Speedo-clad men.

Main Lobby side entrance. It's a pity I couldn't get the whole thing, I always feel like a princess coming down the big stairs at the side. My photography is terrible. It really is.

The Pool...again!

The lobby outside the gym. I wish I had taken more photos of the jazz bar and the Cellar&Humidor. They were so pretty!

Funniest Horny/Desperate/Wannabe Messages I Have Received

So every girl has her share of weird messages she gets on Facebook, Myspace, or whichever social networking site she uses. I have collected the true winners of my inbox for your reading pleasure. Hope you chuckle as much as I did when I first read them!

In reply to me asking him whether we had met before as I was unable to recall. He had requested me as a friend on Facebook:

Dear Ketki,
Thanks for your reply. Yes, we do not know each others but just
willing to have friendship with you. By profession, I am chemical engineer. Please mail me on xxxxxxxxx@yahoo.co.uk.
Do reply please.
Pxxxx Mxxxxx

___

From a very strange guy who does not know how to spell "gorgeous" or "peace". I checked out his profile and all he loves is weed. Apparently that's also all he smokes.

Just wana say u look goergeus in ur Photo's.. Take care
PE@C=

Nxxxx Lxx Nxxx

___

This next one is clearly the winner I think (If you can make any sense out of it):

first n foremost i had to say this... u look so so so so astonishingly beautiful.... absolutely gorgeous....
n i really re:ally would like to know somethin here...

r u local... u dont look like one... no way ok...
n is that ur natural hair.... im so crazely in lov with them sweetie...
pls do reply my dear..... thanks... in advance that is... for the reply.... that u gonna send me... i assume.... lol... tc.

from Rxx Hunk

___

The next I picked is a bizarre correspondence between myself and a Facebook Romeo:

In response to a friend request I pinged him the usual message:

Me: Hey, really sorry to ask this, but do I know you? I sometimes tend to forget names and faces of people I've met briefly.

Him: hehe...hey not e problem cuz i m e new face for u ...we haven yet met...so howz ur holidays goin on ?????????

Me: New face for me? I guess the future looks pretty bleak for me then, eh? =)

Him: do i look so very ugly??????

Needless to say, I did not reply after that.

___

I think this one really has stalker potential:

have seen ur profile u r soo nice and cte i want to be ur friend.. will u be my good frined... where ru living,,,,, nice looking ,, soo cuteekeep in tuch bybye
thx...well i wanna say something about ur beauti and ur sweetness please accept this small words from my pure hearts, ur pics are really sooooooooooo amazing.


dear, Now really i miss u so much,u know, coz ur pic made me mad, its really awesome, and u r looking sooooooooooooooooooo beautiful as Miss Singapore, cute as Singapore Princess , sweet as honey, nice as pretty angel. u look like the princess of butterfly, the queen of Jasmine flower. actually the words of dictionary cant explain ur beauti, i am jus speakless, if i write whole of life narrating ur beauti, i will die but ur sweetness wont be end, ur eyes are jus like diomand pearls, the sky is feeling jealoous beause its two beautiful star u take as it becomes ur eyes, i wish and i dream that i can see this Masterpiece of the GOd, beauti of universe live with my naked eyes.

with best and sweet regards
Rxxxx

___

This next one was just plain weird. I still don't get what he means by me having a "student" look?:

Hey, how's it going. Hope you're enjoying yourself here. Let's go deeper and talk like normal people =)

All I know abt you now is that you have a student look and can be a little naughty at times. I'd like to know more.

So what's your story?

___

Saturday Morning Writers

This is Miranda doing her reading during today's Saturday Morning Writers' session. The exercise was basically each of us having to come up with a strange character we each knew or had seen, and outline what was going on in their mind. The catch was that we could not write about our own character. Miranda is voicing the inner ramblings of the cleaning lady from my office who is really tough on me. Hope you like it as much as I do!

Dan doing his reading on defining an accent and searching for an identity? Nevertheless, it was great! He was too shy to be videotaped

(If you are interested in becoming a Saturday Morning Writer, drop me an email at abrupt.ending@gmail.com. We meet every Saturday morning - doh! - drink great coffee, have plenty of fun and let our imaginations run wild. We also strive to achieve our best when it comes to writing and are currently aiming to get published as much as possible without compromising the quality and integrity of our work.)

MTV EXIT - Awareness on human trafficking

Please support the MTV EXIT campaign in any way that you can. This is the video The Killers made in collaboration with MTV to spread awareness on this campaign.

Please support this amazing cause.

Some statistics about global trafficking:

27 million - the number of people held in modern day slavery

800,000 - the number of people trafficked across international borders EVERY YEAR

1 million - the number of children in the child sex trade

50% - number of CHILDREN in the transnational sex trade

80% - number of transnational victims who are female

70% of trafficked victims are in the sex trade, 30% are in forced labor

US$32billion - profits generated from the human trafficking industry, second after drug trafficking

For a full summary and more statistics, you can refer to this link.

Goodnight, travel safe.

Testing

I just got this new phone and I need to run a quick test on the blog.
Bear with me!

Sent from my iPhone

Ninjas vs Professors

'Nuff said.

Creative Non-fiction on Human Rights Issues

I opened my inbox today to find this really exciting email from the Hauser Center for Justice and Human Rights at Harvard University. They were looking for writers who were willing to write articles on human rights issues for an upcoming conference for international law and human rights issues at the UNHQ. I think this will be good practice for my creative non-fiction homework!

Now I need to figure out what topic be best suited for the conference.

Dear Ketki,
So sorry for the late reply—it’s been extremely hectic planning for the September conference on international criminal justice at the UNHQ—take a look at the website we just launched for the Conference: www.internationalcriminaljustice.net — read through the background etc, which will give you a better idea of all the issues we’re hoping to hash out/discuss/engage, and then maybe if you’re interested in writing about a particular issue relating to that array of topics, we can move from there! Given your interest in trafficking, maybe you would be interested in writing about issues of gender violence in conflict zones, intersecting the role of NGOs in victim assistance, accountability, or the like (just off the top of my head)--it would be great to get some kind of NGO perspective on the ground, though, so if you can find a way to tie in the work your doing to the issues to be raised at the conference, that would be ideal! We’re looking for 500 to 600 word pieces op-ed style, so nothing too long at all, but researched, insightful, and interesting.
I hope to hear from you!
Take good care,
[name removed to protect privacy]

Bruno! Can't Wait

Waiting for this!!

15 Coolest Facts

A friend sent me an email recently titled "50 Cool Facts" and they were actually very very cool. I picked 15 of the coolest ones and decided to list them here. You will have a few Eureka! moments after reading these =).

A duck's quack doesn't echo. No one knows why.

On the average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily. (I always suspected I was one. I am NOTHING like my parents)

Most lipstick contains fish scales. (I wonder how many vegans will want to comment on this)

Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.

Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.

Dentists recommend that a toothbrush be kept at least six feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush. (Why don't dentists tell you things like these instead of doing painful things to you?)

The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer. (Shame Shame)

Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than the entire Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined. (SHAME!! SHAME!!!)

Adolf Hitler's mother seriously considered having an abortion but was talked out of it by her doctor. (&*^#%$#*&#)

A cockroach can live for 10 days without a head. (I always hated those &*$@ creatures dead or alive)

Brains are more active sleeping than watching TV.

It's against the law in Iceland to have a dog.

Coca-Cola can be used as car oil. (Imagine how poisonous it must be!)

Marilyn Monroe had six toes on one foot.

Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to slow a film down so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm.

Look at your zipper. See the initials YKK? It stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushibibaisha, the world's largest zipper manufacturer.

Getting Paid to Write About the Newest Shit? Noooooo

As you can tell by now, I am a huge fan of the New York Times, considering how many times I keep reposting their articles! They just featured a great article about bloggers who get paid to review products. Just thought it would be an interesting read!

by Pradnya Joshi

Colleen Padilla, a 33-year-old mother of two who lives in suburban Philadelphia, has reviewed nearly 1,500 products, including baby clothes, microwave dinners and the Nintendo Wii, on her popular Web site Classymommy.com. Her site attracts 60,000 unique visitors every month, and Ms. Padilla attracts something else: free items from companies eager to promote their products to her readers.

Marketing companies are keen to get their products into the hands of so-called influencers who have loyal online followings because the opinions of such consumers help products stand out amid the clutter, particularly in social media.

“You can’t really write a review if you haven’t used it or done it,” Ms. Padilla said. “It really is a valuable thing for marketers. It’s a real mom with a real voice.”

Ms. Padilla typically acknowledges in each review which products were sent to her by companies and which items she bought herself. Other items on her site include her own videos for brands like Healthy Choice, which she labels as sponsored posts. But unlike postings in most journalism outlets or independent review sites, most companies can be assured that there will not be a negative review: if she does not like a product, she simply does not post anything about it.
The proliferation of paid sponsorships online has not been without controversy. Some in the online world deride the actions as kickbacks. Others also question the legitimacy of bloggers’ opinions, even when the commercial relationships are clearly outlined to readers.

And the Federal Trade Commission is taking a hard look at such practices and may soon require online media to comply with disclosure rules under its truth-in-advertising guidelines.

A draft of the new rules was posted for public comments this year and the staff is to make a formal recommendation to be presented to the commissioners for a vote, perhaps by early fall.
“Consumers have a right to know when they’re being pitched a product,” said Richard Cleland, an assistant director at the Federal Trade Commission.

Yet in many ways, the hypercommercialism of the Web is changing too quickly for consumers and regulators to keep up. Product placements are landing on so-called status updates on Facebook, companies are sponsoring messages on Twitter and bloggers are defining their own parameters of what constitutes independent work versus advertising.

TNT, for instance, is experimenting with a paid relationship with a popular blogger, Melanie Notkin, founder and chief executive of SavvyAuntie.com, a site that has carved out a demographic niche of professional aunts without children.

Ms. Notkin is sending out several messages to her more than 10,000 Twitter followers on Tuesday nights, when a new episode of “Saving Grace” is shown.

Ms. Notkin declined to disclose how much she is paid by TNT, only saying that she is “well compensated.” But she says she is upfront with her readers about the relationship with the network by labeling every commercial tweet with “[sp],” which stands for sponsored post.
“TNT never told me and will never tell me what to say,” Ms. Notkin stressed. “They want to associate with brands that people trust.”

For some bloggers, product sponsorships have become a lucrative side business. Drew Bennett of North Attleboro, Mass., began a photo-a-day blog more than four years ago and was one of the early participants in the site PayPerPost.com in 2006 and later, its sister network SocialSpark.

In three years, Mr. Bennett has written more than 600 posts for companies including Blockbuster and Xshot, a telescopic camera extender, typically making $5.35 to $10 a post. Through some arrangements, he says, he earns 11 cents to 68 cents every time a reader clicks from his site to a corporate site that sells the product.

“You can gain a whole different audience with social media,” said Mr. Bennett, who runs BenSpark.com and other sites. Mr. Bennett is also making money by recruiting and teaching other bloggers how to optimize their sites.

Izea, an online marketing company based in Orlando, Fla., which created PayPerPost, says it has 25,000 active advertisers ranging from Sea World to small online retailers. It feeds to 265,000 bloggers in its network, and pays, on average, $34 a post.

“Our focus has always been sponsored conversations,” said Ted Murphy, founder and chief executive of Izea.

Within the next few weeks, Izea plans to introduce another way to outreach to consumers — a “Sponsored Tweets” platform for Twitter users to blast promotional messages to their followers.
A campaign that Izea conducted in December for Kmart generated 800 blog posts and 3,200 Twitter messages that reached 2.5 million people over 30 days, Mr. Murphy said. In the campaign, six popular bloggers known to be influencers were given $500 gift cards to shop at the discount chain and asked to write about their experiences.

Many of these marketing practices have created gray areas as to what constitutes advertising versus consumer outreach. For instance, an expensive gadget in short supply in the hands of influential bloggers could be worth a lot more intangibly than a cash payment of, say, $50 a post.
Mr. Cleland said that the F.T.C. would most likely not spell out the disclosure requirements but instead would rely on Internet users to judge what constitutes fair disclosure, adding that a lengthy description written in legalese would probably be counterproductive.

At the same time, the marketing industry has also been revising its guidelines. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s ethics code says that manufacturers should not pay cash to consumers to make recommendations or endorsements, but it is evaluating how companies should handle disclosures of product giveaways to bloggers.

“I’m actually thrilled that the F.T.C. is looking hard at the issue,” said Paul Rand, president-elect of the association, a trade group representing 400 companies.

For many bloggers, commercial messages are often integrated into their missions. Katja Presnal, who created the Skimbaco Lifestyle and Skimbaco Home blog, recently wrote about e.l.f. cosmetics after meeting its chief marketing officer at a conference. The company has since provided her with products for giveaway bags for events she has hosted and has asked her to provide testimonials for an online video, all of which she did free.

Mrs. Presnal, who has more than 14,000 followers on Twitter, says that while she is paid fees for a few blog posts, she does not always accept endorsement deals.

“There is this misconception that bloggers write product reviews to get free stuff,” said Mrs. Presnal, a mother of three who lives in upstate New York. “I don’t blog about a product if I don’t really like it.”

In March, Better Homes and Gardens gave her a $500 gift certificate to do a bedroom makeover in her house using its new line of home furnishings bearing the magazine’s name. She also received a fee for providing a review to BetterHomesandGardens.com.

When Ford Motor flew her to Detroit this year for a test drive of the Fusion hybrid, she says, she expressed her true assessment on her blog, saying that she thought the vehicle would work for a family with teenagers, but would not fit the needs of her three children and a dog.

“I still wrote my honest opinion,” said Mrs. Presnal, who did not receive a fee from Ford, but had her travel expenses paid. “If you don’t, in the long it’s going hurt your credibility.”

Still, the encroachment of commercialism into new-media formats worries some consumer advocates. Many forms of online word-of-mouth marketing depend on the perception of unsolicited or personal opinions, said Robert Weissman, managing director of the advocacy group Commercial Alert.

“It’s a contrast to the Tupperware model, where everyone knows what’s going on, and no one’s trying to be deceiving,” said Mr. Weissman, whose group favors stricter oversight of marketing practices.

Link to this Blog

If you would like to be listed on or linked to this blog, just click on the 'Follow' button on the right and proceed with the instructions. Your blog link should appear.

If you have any problems, email me at abrupt.ending@gmail.com.

More Dance! (Night at the Roxbury)

I just watched one of the funniest movies - Night at the Roxbury. Reminds me of my massive club hopping days. I found a hilarious clip off youtube of one of the wacky dance scenes they try to pull off in one of the nightclubs. Total madness.

This movie is a classic.

Evian Babies Commercial

I found the cutest and most creative ad ever made! Evian's branding as a "refreshing" sip of water is reflected in its new advertisement.



This is the behind the scenes version of the ad, babies galore!!

What Writers' Block??

So today, with the help of the Saturday Morning Writers, I broke through the shackles of writers' block and emerged victorious - almost. For writers struggling with writers' block, these are a couple of exercises you can do to overcome it:

What If
Narrate a scenario, preferably one filled with adventure, drama and suspense. A true story is preferred. Do not tell the group how it ends.

The next person has to continue by saying, "What if so and so and happened and he/she had done this or that."

To list an example, our scenario was: A young girl gets into Costa Rica, her native home. She gets into a taxi and requests the driver to drive her to her district/town. Soon, she notices that the driver is driving farther and farther away from the destination and towards secluded areas. She panics and asks him what his intentions are. He then confesses and admits that he needs money.

From here, other members continue with their additions such as:
- What if the brakes failed and they ran into a gas station causing a huge explosion and killing everyone?

- What if it was a stolen vehicle and the cops were already tailing him?

- What if Juan Valdez crossed the road on front of them on his donkey and offered all of them coffee?

The point of the game is to get as crazy as possible =).

The second exercise you could do is to take your plot or the part where you're stuck and force yourself to literally come up with the most outrageous continuations to the story. You will be surprised with the results!

The plot we used was a recycled one from my previous attempt. My necrophilic Prince Charming in Sleeping Beauty had just kissed the corpse of the dead princess. What would happen next?? One example:

Prince Charming, overwhelmed by her maggot-ridden and decrepit corpse, began to tear heavily. "Oh Princess, you are truly Nature's gift." Upon the utterance of these words, he hopped on to the settee where the cold skeleton lay, placed one leg on each side and struck a pose.

"Soldier, press play!" he ordered.

"I'm too sexy for my hat, I'm too sexy for my shirt," crooned Right Said Fred from the 1980s boombox. The Prince began thrusting and gyrating. It was a special lap dance for his special lady.

Okay, so maybe I got too crazy with this one! But you get the point =).

"I Want To Go To There"

I always dream of Parisian cafes with cute croissants, lattes and adorable accents. Recently New York Times published an article about cafes in Buenos Aires. Apart from charming me to the core, it is probably a great example of creative non-fiction, something I have been trying to achieve for a while now. Enjoy.

by Camille Cusumano



ON Saturday nights in Buenos Aires, the Miramar cafe crackles with the energy of local families, famished tango dancers and gregarious waiters delivering plates of crisp-skinned sardines, shrimp and fresh oysters. Miramar is in San Cristóbal, a barrio known for its tango dance halls but otherwise off the tourist beat. Local diners come to share generous servings of oxtail soup, rabbit hunter-style or chorizo-laced Spanish frittata. Even with a couple of bottles of malbec and mineral water, the feast seldom tops the equivalent of $15 a person.

Still owned by the Ramos family, its founders, the Miramar began life in 1948 as an almacén, or bulk-goods grocer, and its endurance qualifies it for the city’s recognized list of cafes — or bares notables. In 1998, Buenos Aires legislated this official designation for bars, cafes, billiard halls and confectionaries whose antiquity, architecture or historical significance make them worthy of note and of preservation efforts.

The annually expanding list (now more than 50) includes some magnificent and famous cafes, like Las Violetas and Tortoni with their beveled mirrors and polished-wood bars — cathedrals where tourists gather to worship legends like Carlos Gardel, a tango crooner who died in a 1935 plane crash and “every day sings a little better,” it is said. But other bares notables are humbler, and it is there, amid the worn interiors like that of the Miramar, that you can find the traditional menus designed to please Argentines, whose melting-pot cuisine has a marked Italian influence. The food is home-cooked good, abundant and, with the favorable dollar-to-peso exchange rate, inexpensive.

Like the Miramar, El Preferido de Palermo, in the Palermo barrio, opened as an almacén in 1952, when its founder, Arturo Fernández, arrived from the province of Asturias on Spain’s lush north coast. The grocery, with shelves of canned eel, olives and good wines, remains, sharing tight space with trendy orange-and-green tables where a limited menu is served to Palermo’s young and hip.

A photo of Francis Ford Coppola graces the counter, but the barrio’s real luminary, Jorge Luis Borges (the street bears his name), lived across the way from 1901 to 1914. A wider menu is served in the connecting main restaurant, warm with red-and-white tablecloths and wrought-iron chandeliers. A must-try is the fabada asturiana (30 pesos for two people, or $7.75 at 3.87 pesos to the dollar), a time-honored recipe known to call for “ear of pig.” El Preferido’s version (no ear) is a steamy casserole of creamy-textured favas tossed with morcilla (blood sausage), fresh pork, pancetta and chorizo.

Café Nostalgia, also in Palermo, occupies the ground floor of a 1935 building where coffins were once made. Although bona fide Argentine gastronomy is represented in dishes like calabaza-stuffed ravioli (25 pesos) and butter-tender beef with toasty brown fries (about 30 pesos), the menu mostly reads like that of a French bistro: sweet-and-sour pork with pear compote and sweet-potato chips (35 pesos), almond-crusted salmon (40 pesos), truffle with ginger ice cream in a cranberry coulis (15 pesos).

It’s much farther from downtown Buenos Aires to the pretty, tranquil barrio of Villa Devoto — about 30 minutes by taxi. But make the trip anyway, for the broad-canopied rosewood trees shading the avenues and for the gargantuan picada (56 pesos per person) at Café de García, opened in 1937. A food saga told in about 30 items, the picada is a kind of gastronomical parade of small dishes, paid for in one overall price. Take in the scene as you wait for your dinner. A Boca Juniors T-shirt signed by Diego Maradona joins accordions, cue sticks, wineskins, firearms and numerous vintage items on shelves and yellowed walls. This is a Quilmes-beer-on-tap kind of cafe. Mineral water comes in old-fashioned soda siphon bottles. “You choose the drink, I take care of the rest,” Rubén García instructs first-time customers as he skirts billiard tables.

One Saturday night last April, the picada began with a basket of tantalizingly crisp potatoes. Small plates and crocks arrived in pairs and included vitel tonné, a cold veal dish defined by a cream sauce spiked with anchovy, capers and tuna. The array was dizzying — herbed meatballs, empanadas and other savory pastries, stewed squid, roasted peppers, olives, garlicky beans, fish, dessert and a chalice of sparkling wine. Espresso drinks were set before a party of five men whose interest alternated between the soccer game on an overhead TV and free plates of pan dulce (fruit cake) and nougat candies. They chatted and nibbled in slo mo.

Like Café de García, Café Margot, in a 1903 building, is a reference point to its barrio — in this case Boedo, an artist refuge that was home to the tango lyricist Homero Manzi. Local sculptors’ works rise from the busy sidewalks, and the cafe exhibits artwork in its rustic brick interior. Hams and salamis dangle over the bar, but the specialty here is turkey, which reportedly brought visits by Juan Perón. It’s offered in more than 30 ways (for about 13 to 19 pesos), including in escabeche, a confit of dark meat in a tangy vinaigrette.

This is also a good spot for matambre — the name, an amalgam of matar and hambre, means “kill hunger” — and the dish, made with flank steak, was favored by gauchos who roamed the pampas with it strung to their saddles. Most Argentine households have a recipe for matambre that is filled, jelly-roll fashion, with carrots, herbs, spices, garlic and hard-cooked eggs.

San Telmo, the oldest part of Buenos Aires, boasts seven bares notables, including a bohemian haunt called Británico, a prime scene in Tomás Eloy Martínez’s novel “The Tango Singer.” Most cater to young customers looking for hamburgers and fries. But the most rundown and least self-aware, La Coruña, which clings to a corner of the San Telmo market, is where you’ll find the uncompromising grub that feeds local laborers: lentil stew, sardines, hake fillet, liver and onions, vegetable omelet, kidneys à la Provençale — all between 9 and 13 pesos.

Carmen Moreira, daughter of the family that has owned the cafe since 1961, sets the food on milk-glass plates before customers sharing the long tables. It’s straightforward unadorned cuisine but an experience to savor, like the magical realism of a Borges story, from many angles.

SO NOTED

The “notable bars” of Buenos Aires can be found on the Web site www.bue.gov.ar. Click on Directorio and select Bares Notables from the list that comes up. Here is a sampling.

Miramar, Sarandi 1190, San Cristóbal; (54-11) 4304-4261.

Café Nostalgia, Soler 3599, Palermo; (54-11) 4963-0903.

Café de García, Sanabria 3302, Villa Devoto; (54-1...; www.cafedegarcia.com.ar.

Café Margot, Boedo 857, Boedo; (54-11) 4957-0001.

Bar Británico, Brasil 399, San Telmo; (54-11) 4361-2107; www.barbritanico.com.

La Coruña, Bolivar 982/94, San Telmo; (54-11) 4362-7637.