The New Diet

It's been about 8 months since I've adopted a vegetarian diet. My previous attempt lasted for about a year and a half before I went back to indulge in meat. Many people have and still do ask me the reasons for such a switch. But strangely, I don't know myself. With both my parents being vegetarians, it was just a decision made on impulse to join them and take it as a challenge. Surprisingly, they never once enforced the ruling of "No meat in the house".

It was just recently when I discovered symptoms of my health deteriorating
that I began to seriously think if it was really worth being one? What would I gain? These were some of the questions that were frequently running through my mind. But after giving much thought into it, I realised how satisfying it is to be a vegetarian. I am an animal-lover. The fact that I am not guilty of killing (not in the literal sense I mean) an animal gives me peace of mind. In fact, I do feel good after eating a hearty meal without feeling guilty.

Many people have the misconception that being a vegetarian translates into not taking a balanced meal, meaning that certain minerals or vitamins must be lacking. For some people, this may apply, but that doesn't make a vegetarian diet unhealthy. There are many types of vegetarian diets which many of us are unaware of. The lacto-ovo vegetarians eat dairy products and eggs, but not meat and I come under that category.
Definitely it's not an easy task to switch to a completely new diet. There will be temptations at the initial stages and I admit, I still do have temptations. But I guess it's just a matter of self-discipline. The satisfaction comes after. Maybe you should just try being a vegetarian for a day and feel the results for yourself.

::Archanaa Nivruthaa Raja::
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Isn’t there anything anyone can do?

The bus was crowded and the noise the people were making irritated me. Events of the day were going through my mind. As the bus was about to move from the bus stop, it jerked to a halt and a frail elderly lady stepped in. She was very thin and her hair was messy. She took out some loose change from her mended pocket and with trembling hands, dropped them into the coin stand. Not bothering with collecting her ticket, she bent to pick up her numerous bags of groceries.

The bus moved off. The driver seemed to have forgotten about his elderly passenger and swerved the bus. She tried to balance and, with much difficulty, made her way to the back of the bus. She stood beside me and gave me a weak smile. I smiled back and looked around for a seat. No one noticed her and what’s worst, no one offered a seat.

She rested her bags on the floor while tightly holding on to the handles. I had no idea what I should do but only to watch out for her in case she falls. As my stop approached, she picked up her bags again. I was glad that she had made it to her destination unharmed.

She got off the bus with seemingly aching feet. Her hands couldn’t hold on to the number of bags she had and she inevitably dropped a couple of them. I reached out to help her. She gave me a weak smile and said thank you in Hokkien. People around just stood and stare. Some of them even gave me weird looks, as though only aliens help old people.

This sounds like it’d only happen on TV but it happened to me. I saw the ugliness of us, respectable citizens of Singapore.

Show a little kindness the next time someone needs it. Trust me, it makes a difference to the people who receives it.

::Alicia Lim::
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Where is the love?

Love your Pet Day just passed us quietly. I believe most places recognise the day to fall on Feb 20.

I'm sure most pet owners love their pets. Or some just love the idea of having a pet.

Which brings me to something that still bothers me despite it having happened about half a year ago. My cousin bought herself a dog, which led me to believe that she must have loved it dearly. This dog, a Labrador mongrel, was adorable, active and in every way a bundle of joy. But it was also loud, too active, and not a best friend to the neighbours.

So these people demanded that the dog go. My cousin relented and the dog was sent to the SPCA.

I was furious, and I still am because the poor dog probably didn't make it.

She should have tried to find the dog a home. There are high chances that SPCA would have put it to sleep mainly because the non-profit organisation SPCA does not stand for "Singapore's Plenty of Carpark(space) for Animals" and that other people are unlikely to adopt a 'problematic' dog.

What added salt to the wound was that barely a month later, she got herself a new dog. Thankfully, the new cocker spaniel is still ‘under her care’. But then again, don’t envy the pooch, she’s rarely in Singapore because of her job.

Please tell me my anger is justified.

Keera, my cat, has been with me for 2 years and 7 months, which doesn’t make me an expert, since some of my friends are much more experienced pet owners. Keera grew from a palm-sized ball of fluff to, as my friends say it, ‘a very unbelievable 5 kg cat’.

He no longer sleeps on my tummy nor follows me around. But some things haven’t changed. He is still as playful as ever. His face is still as angelic as ever. He’s so funny and most of the time, clumsy. And that I love him as much as I did on Day One. In fact, I love him 99% and I hate him 1% when he shreds my magazines. The experience of caring for one is like Parenting for Dummies.

I’ve come to realise that as much as he needs me, I depend on him as well. Now isn’t that worth lavishing some time on your pet?

::Perrine Ho::
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The Chinese New Year resolution

Chinese New Year used to begin with my grandmother and aunts coming over to my house in the days leading to the big festive season. Under her supervision, my aunts and mother would make kueh bualu (tiny sponge cakes made from eggs, flour and sugar) to be given to the rest of the family. As the women made this New Year treat over the charcoal fire, ma ma, as we affectionately call my grandma would hold a bamboo fan in her hand and give instructions.

When she passed away 7 years ago, this tradition stopped and kueh baulu is now purchased off the shelves in Chinatown. This year, however, I saw my ma ma, again. I saw her in her older sister, tua yi or elder sister as my father calls her. She looks exactly like my ma ma, but just a slightly smaller built. With few years left in her, my father requested that my siblings and I make a special effort to pay her a visit.

At 93, she took my arm and held on to it with her soft, fair hand, stroking and squeezing it. It’s amazing how alert she is, her eyesight still good, except for her hearing, which is failing her. And as my family and some aunts squeezed into her humble flat, her eyes lit up as she spoke about her family.

Her husband of 76 years, though older than her by 3 years, was also around. And while he kept his eyes closed for most of the time, we could see him smiling and laughing at our jokes. My brother got up and gave him a massage, to which he replied in clear English, “It’s a good massage!"

For a project last year, I chose to do a photography assignment on old people. While it may not be an interesting or different topic, for a relatively shy, practically monolingual, person like me, it was a hard assignment. But I learnt the only thing you need to communicate to the older generation is your presence. It doesn’t matter what you say, a smile or handshake will open them up to you.

When I was developing my prints, a fellow student came over and looked at a picture of a menacing-looking man. She commented that the man looks so fierce and added that overseas, there are teens who write into magazines to complain about the older population and how disgusting they are. Then she said something that angered me, she said that the scowling man looked like one of those in the magazines.

What a shame! The elderly man is nowhere near disgusting, nor does any one deserve a label like that. Here was a man who helped me communicate with the other older folks, coaxing them to oblige to 1 picture. I can only feel sorry for that student for she will never know how much she has lost by condemning them.

While my paternal ma ma may have passed on, there’s always her older sister to visit. And to make things easier for me, she told me, “I speak English and a bit of Malay, but I can’t speak Mandarin.”

My mother’s mother is also still around, and I make it a point to visit her at least once a month. Recently, over lunch, my aunts were chatting away when 1 aunt asked the rest if they had heard of Russian diamonds. Sensing that no one was listening, my grandmother said no. I laughed out loud as my aunt said, “I wasn’t talking to you!” Well, I’m sure she knew that, but she obliged in an answer when there was no response. My grandmother gave me a secret smile.

This Chinese New Year, I’m going to make it a point to respect this wise generation with a simple smile.

::Melissa Sim::
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Reflections

Now that it's 6 weeks after the tsunami disaster that affected so many countries, things have quietened considerably. It was at one of my regular Saturday Novena services, when the topic was revisited by the Catholic priest's sermon that a couple of my perceptions about life had changed.

He explained that the tsunami was Mother Nature putting a test on human force. This is one her ways of proving to humans that she is always stronger and that this is a lesson the rest of us have to learn. While we may pursue terrorists to the gallows for taking a few or several hundred innocent lives, how do we even begin to pin accountability on something as powerful and as beyond us as Mother Nature?

The other thing that I realised is that although countless lives were lost in this disaster and we showed our care, concern and support through our tears, prayers and million-dollar donations to help the victims and their families, human nature is such that we forget about such incidents and move on after a while.

Maybe it's time we think about how many lives are lost in 3rd world countries every day because of starvation, drought, poverty and nothing much is being done about it. Or is a persistent problem somehow less pressing than one that suddenly overwhelms us?

::Archanaa::
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Valentine's Day

I was on the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) when this group of teenagers was having a very loud discussion about Valentine’s Day in front of me.

“I dunno lah! Valentine’s Day is the best time to just stay home and sleep! So much hype for what,” asked one of the girls. When I heard that comment, I started to think: When did this generation become so cynical? Has it become cool to spout sentences loaded with pessimism? It’s as if people nowadays are shunning occasions like these just to appear non-conformist.

Other popular anti-Valentine’s Day sentences among those cynics included:
“It’s becoming so commercial.”
“Everyday is Valentine’s Day, so why bother celebrating?”
“Everything’s so expensive. Staying at home is better.”

I understand that sometimes singles say these things to console themselves and to soothe their bitterness while couples say it because they don’t want to spend money, but I think there’s nothing heinous about celebrating Feb 14.

If there’s 1 day dedicated to the day you were born, what’s wrong with 1 day being dedicated to Love? You can’t pamper your other half with Godiva chocolates and 99 roses every day, so why not set aside a day when both of you can indulge and bask in each other’s passion. Yes, you can pamper each other on other days as well, but it’s the same logic as celebrating Christmas or Chinese New Year.

Life in Singapore is filled with work and a myriad of commitments and sometimes we do forget to truly love and spoil each other. Anything that will help us remember to cherish people over possessions had my vote.

::Alicia Chua::
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Online Gaming

It’s interesting how enmeshed we are with the Internet, and how “real” it is becoming.

I’m playing an online game, and an in-game friend of mine had just gotten scammed a couple of days ago, losing his character’s full set of equipment. While this may not seem like much, that friend was intending to sell off his character’s equipment which would have fetched something along the lines of a few hundred dollars (USD) on eBay.

Granted, he had spent a couple of months playing the game, but I’ve also heard of other people making thousands of dollars on eBay peddling game characters’ virtual goods in games like Diablo 2 and Final Fantasy 11, to name just a couple.

"It's sad to think that people will be so desperate to do better in a virtual world that they're actually prepared to commit a real crime,” said a senior security consultant at Sophos, a security firm, in an article from News.com about a custom-made virus that steals passwords for a specific game, Lineage.

It’s a little mind-boggling how much people will pay for virtual goods, or objects that don’t even exist physically. Though when you think about it, most people in real life do the same thing. Paying to watch a movie for example, where you take nothing except the memory of the film out of the theatre with you, or perhaps buying a CD, which, in the end, is merely a receptacle to your appreciating the music within the CD.

I guess, at the end of it, most things will fade away, and we shouldn’t put too much emphasis on collecting these things, but rather try to enjoy the moments in the day, before they pass us by in our frantic quests and futile struggles to amass material (or virtual) wealth.

As they say, dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

::Shawn Toh::
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