SOUL SCRIBBLES

I went fishing in Norway last week; at a fjord near Bergen, a city on the west coast of the country, to be exact. The weather was fine; a little chilly despite the temperature recorded at 20°C.  Between the 13 of us, including the captain of the boat, we not only caught five fishes, but also got ourselves a little bit of a tan being in the sun. Jon Erik Steenslid, the Norwegian Seafood Council regional director for South-east Asia, identified the fishes we caught, which were then released into the water after a brief photo taking for keepsake.  The Norwegian Seafood Council arranged for the media trip to enable us to learn more about the Norwegian fisheries industry, especially on two of their biggest exports, namely salmon and trout.  Contrary to popular belief, the salmon we eat at most Japanese restaurants here do not come from Japan but from Norway. In fact, salmon was never part of the Japanese sushi and sashimi menu until the 1980s after a Norwegian seafood deleg...

In kindergarten, I remember singing this English nursery rhyme asking for the rain to “go away, come again another day, little Johnny wants to play”. In the Malay nursery rhyme Bangau oh bangau, however, the frog calls for rain as a snake wants to eat it. With the heatwave that we are currently facing, we would be more likely to sing (or in this case, pray) for the rain to come.  The average temperature here is 27°C, but, in the past month or so, temperatures have soared into the upper 30s. One can check the Meteorological Department’s website, where there is a banner with information on temperatures in 15 or so locations. On Workers Day, for example, the highest temperature recorded was 37.9°C in Kuala Krai, Kelantan. The highest temperature ever recorded in Malaysia was 40.1°C in Perlis in 1998.  The Instaweather application on my iPhone tells me that the temperature may be, say, 33°C but it “feels like 42°C with 9kph winds and humidity of 66 per cent”. I daresay that the ...