Singapore food culture explored at length by economist

One of the reasons I picked this book, Discover Your Inner Economist, off the shelves was because Nassim Nicholas Taleb kept poking fun of economists in Fooled By Randomness. So the only way to find out what makes economists tick, which in turn makes Taleb tick, is to read a book by an economist.

Given that Tyler Cowen is an economist who blogs, he is perhaps a rare find given the occupation's obsession with complex mathematical equations and model-building (highly incomprehensible to mere mortals). One of the outcomes, though, is that the book also reads like an extended blog post.

And Cowen more than qualifies as one of those advice-giving economists. He gives advice about reading, teaching your children driving and dining out.

It will be of interest to Singaporeans to know that he writes at length about Singaporean food and the local dining experience, venturing into the details about what makes fish head curry fascinating and why hawker centres will always be part of the city-state (due to public policy that protects food establishments from being taken over for other purposes, say, building another shopping mall).

On hindsight, the effect of reading those portions I can relate to appears surreal (local food suddenly became familiar but yet unfamiliar) but still clicked, but to non-locals who have never set foot on this place, I can only guess it will appear to be a pointless exercise in description.

Such kinds of descriptive writing can be interesting to know, but how useful and vivid can it get if you have never eaten, smelled or seen the food before? It is the (rather insensitive) equivalent of asking a visually-impaired person to imagine "green." And then try to taste it.

A quick check in the reference pages at the end of the book reveals that Cowen got his information on food from NUS sociologist, Chua Beng Huat (a dignified-looking mustachioed professor, I must add).

But kudos to Cowen, he did set foot on this island before and even made the effort to read about it. But I don't think nicking pages off Chua's research required that much effort either.

Mmmm...