Globalization

The other day at the Christmas market near the Saarbrücken palace (Saarbrücker Schloß) I spotted a stall with bright red-on-yellow sign saying “American Donuts”. Getting closer, I saw that the person frying and selling the donuts inside the stall was a middle-aged Indian man. Picture this – an Indian man, selling “American Donuts”, in Germany – am I the only one who finds this amusing?

An Italian striptease

I am going to Strasbourg today. I woke up around 6:30 in the morning; in fact, I didn’t sleep all too well last night in the anticipation of getting up early. The train was at 7:45, and I live a short 5-minute walk from the station. I still managed to miss the train! Don’t ask me how. But it gave me about 3 hours to kill before the next train, and I came across this rather amusing article in Spiegel about doctors from a cancer research institute in Naples stripping to draw public attention to funding shortfalls in cancer research.

From the article:

Chest hair, biceps and boxer shorts: Doctors at a cancer research institute in Naples have posed half-naked for a pin-up calendar. Research in Italy is burdened by bureaucracy and funding shortages. It is hoped that this private initiative will re-animate patrons.

Peas at 5:30

Last Sunday I watched a movie after almost 3 months, which is quite an incredible gap given my habit of watching a couple of movies a week through my Netflix subscription and going to the theaters every other week or so. But then, Saarbrücken does not make it easy to find movies in a language I will follow, and the sentiment that “dubbing is murder” does not seem to have many takers in these parts. OK, end of rant; now comes the review.

Have you ever thought how the world feels when you cannot see it? Do you still say auf Wiedersehen (or “see you again”) if you cannot see? Without sight, how do you define beauty, or yet, feel beautiful? Is it better to never know what yellow or blue is, than to know what you are missing? Can you see a face by feeling the raindrops bouncing off it? How do you eat if you cannot see your food, how do you know where the meat is or where the peas are? Lars Büchel’s movie “Erbsen auf halb 6” (English title: “Peas at 5:30″) raises many such questions. But instead of suffocating the viewers under the weight of the subject matter – blindness – it takes them on a fairy-tale journey full of joy and sorrow, tension and relief, desperation and hope.