Recently
got to watch Jean-Pierre Melville’s debut movie ‘La Silence de la Mer’ (The
Silence of the Sea). Arguably one of the finely crafted movies I have
seen in recent times.
The
above scene from the movie does make me wonder if at all our global leaders do
learn anything from history. The irony of it all.
"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center"
- Kurt Vonnegut
I'm in Singapore and there's fresh oysters on the menu. And they are from Canada. In fact it is the main attraction for this restaurant and is featured prominently on their 'specials' board outside.
Is there a place called Canada on the Indonesian or Malaysian coastline (like how they have London in Ontario and Delhi in the US state of Iowa). Or maybe there is some powerful super-duper canon somewhere on the British Colombia coastline where the fisherman are firing bundles of fresh oysters towards Singapore where it's caught by an equally super-duper giant mechanical net. Or I could be a complete idiot. It could be the name of a particular breed of oysters found in the Singapore straits.
Anyways, I am wondering what people perceive of 'fresh' in different cultures. Especially when it comes to food. In South and South East Asia they have preserved dark eggs which are served as fresh preserved eggs. As in they were just taken out of the pit where they were buried. In France and Italy you have cured meat served fresh from the cellar. While in US you have to get FDA approval to even call it fresh, let alone sell it. Just some random thoughts!!!
Here's Richard Dawkins take on religion in Europe (in a recent weekend interview in FT): 
While he explains thus the idea that constitutional separation of church and state has helped American religion:
"In the US, religion has become free enterprise, with all the benefits of high-pressure advertising and marketing."
I remember while I was interviewing last April for a planning job with a research consultancy here in Singapore, they asked me why religion is so intertwined with politics in the US while it kind of lays dormant in Western Europe. I wish I had this explanation by Dawkins then.
