Bastille Day

14th July 2010

Bastille Day – the day the French peasants ambushed the Versailles prison after tolerating years of tyranny under the Louis XIV and his predecessors.  While the peasants’ kids were wailing in hunger, the French aristocrats were basking in wine and caviar in their summer garden party! Enough is enough, they said. And the rest they say is history which changed Governments forever. Legend has it that King Louis the XIV’s consort, Marie Antoinette, was captured at the Austrian border whilst escaping from the mob. When she was hurled back to Paris, all her hair turned white overnight! That was the act teaching that Mr Lee Kok Keng taught back in the History class of Form 3B in 1978 and I still remember it like it was yesterday. And his visionary statements about Onn Bin Jaafar being a forward thinking leader who quit from UMNO when his idea to open the party to all Malayans was shot down. That was the type of teacher we had back in our schooldays. We respected them and words that came out from their mouths were pearls of wisdom. It is time to remember my secondary school teachers… next few blogs, perhaps...

"Let them eat cake" is the traditional translation of the French phrase "Qu'ils mangent de labrioche", supposedly said by a French princess upon learning that the peasants had no bread. Asbrioche is a luxury bread enriched with eggs and butter, it would reflect the princess's obliviousness to the nature of a famine.