Banana Sushi

I made sushi for the family last night. With the help of Stephanie, it took 2.5 hours ! It was the first time I have made sushi from start to finish, but they don’t know that ! I winged it well. I was even bold enough to fry some bananais and roll up morcels of that ! People seemed to like it. It is a trick to get the right ratio of rice to nori, and rice to other toppings. It is fun.

Yesterday Jean Luc (Steph’s father) asked me if I had any regrets about leaving Whole Village. I told him I liked it there, but if I went back this year, I would still be an apprentice, which is fine, except that I need to make more money than I was making as an apprentice (I don’t want to scare you by dividing total earnings by total hours worked). Also, as I have written earlier, I consider it a very good idea to learn some practical skills concerning construction and maintenance of houses. It is a sector that has not been hurt by the crisis, and a sector which continues to be undermanned (and underwomaned for sure). It is a sector which will necessarily continue to be relevant into most possible future outcomes, as long as anything is relevant. I then told Jean Luc about Yohanne, the senior manager of Whole Circle Farm, where Abhi is co-managing this season, and his offer for me to co-manage the farm. This was surely a great opportunity, and I started to feel some regret as I told Stephanie’s father about that. I took a difficult path, trying to inject myself into a different culture, in a country already quite saturated in work and hurting from the crisis. He (Jean Luc) said to me that this is good, because if things don’t work out in France for me, I can return to Canada and explore this opportunity. I am not sure if the door will still be open, but similar doors may be.

The question is : is it worth it to start a new path, one that will also initially not include much earning of money, but provide a more reasonable opportunity to make a reasonable income, or to continue on the path already started, the one of farming, where there is much to learn and master, but one must be a good businessman to make a reasonable amount of money. It demands a variety of skills, phsyical, commercial, fiscal, management.

I feel like I have lost my practice. I have lost the determination to practice meditation regularly, and I feel like my qualities of energetism and balance of mind are coasting, like a truck which had its engine switched off at the top of a hill. I watch daily my mind, when not occupied or sleeping, get lost in escapism, imaginations and fantasies, and anxieties, multiplying them and repeating them. It is, in a way, painful to feel like I just don’t have it in me to maintain meditation practice like I did before. My life so far as an expat has been a great challenge. I am frequently occupying my mind with learning a new language, and perhaps this is what challenges my capability to be meditative at the same time. Any way, I will keep going. I am here in France now, just beginning to explore something, better give it a fair trial.

I am going to buy a used scooter. I can choose a scooter, or a ‘mobilet’, which is like an old scooter with pedals. The mobilets are apparently not being made anymore. To me they are superior because they are less computerized (and thus easier to repair) and have pedals, so one can pedal like pedalling a bicycle if it pleases one. Once I am mobile, I can get around on my own, and get a job which I can get to and from on my own. In the country, having your own vehicle is necessary, without frequent buses or other modes of public transportation.

Stephanie and I had dinner with her friend, a guy who forgive me for forgetting his name, is a. His parents own a oyster and shrimp farm near La Rochelle. They have dammed ‘fields’ which they flood to 5 feet and grow the crustaceans in there. When they are ready to ‘catch’, they pump the water out until it is less than a foot high, and terribly easily walk over  and scoop them up (perhaps with a net ?). The particular type of oysters they grow are highly valued and their farm is protected as a cultural asset. There was a big storm on the atlantic coast at the beginning of March, and it pushed lots of polluted water into their farm, and the oysters caught a disease.

I am planning to make a simply delicious pasta dinner tonight. Spaghetti, olive oil, basil, and parmesan. Imagine everything Italian was that simple ?

I asked Jean Luc his opinion of the EU. He thinks it’s good, but has problems. He believes one problem to be that the USA pays European lobbyists to slow down the progress of Europe, and to keep its interests aligned with that of the US of A. Also, England is very resistant to the financial reforms of the EU, as it aims towards homogenization. He believes it is because England has many off-shore banks, where certain checks and balances against corruption and for transparency are not practiced. England’ physical distance from continental Europe seems to have always caused a political and philosophical distance. If we take a look at philosophy, this is obvious, with continental philosophy, including such famous philosophers as Nietszche, Sartre, Heidegger, Hegel, Husserl, Deleuze, etc., and then the Anglo-American dominated pragmatism with Peirce and Jame and analytical philosophy with Russell. How influential is philosophy on corporation, globalism, power, and environmental policy in the 21st century?


Stephanie's father, manning the washing machine, asked me if Stephanie has any 'affaires' (to be washed in the machine), or if I do. Well I hope she doesn't! hehehe.
Cheers,

Maurizio