This blog topic is rather off from my normal topics and may throw you off but hear me out. I’m about to talk about a very important issue here, and that is the issue of understanding and appreciating where and how our food comes from. A good understanding on this topic at a widespread public level, I believe, will increase more conscious choices for food selection and thus promote public health and wellness, while also decrease the amount of pollution and greenhouse gases.

In our modern society, most people are accustomed to understanding food as something that is packaged and ready to go at the grocery stores. You go there, pay a few bucks, and you get harvested vegetables, packaged grains, and plastic-wrapped meat. That’s all dandy and neat, and it is part of modern civilization in which the advancement of transportation and storage techniques allowed the segregation of urban areas from rural areas. Why farm on expensive land? Let’s farm out in the booneys, or sometimes, foreign countries, and then bring everything over here to the stores and distribute it - it makes logistic and economic sense.

When I grew up in Korea, I had plenty of experience with nature. I grew some of our own vegetables in the small patch of a garden we had on our 1st floor apartment. I’ve been to a large green tea farm where they grew organic green tea leaves along the mountain slopes. I also took frequent trips to the country side, where there were mom and pop restaurants which grow their own pigs, goats, cows, and chicken, which they butcher on their own farm to produce meat for the restaurant. I’ve gone fishing for my own sashimi and filleted the fish on the boat without waiting to go to shore, and went to sea-side restaurants where they take you to a fish tank and ask you to choose which one you want. I’ve watched a live chicken get butchered (head cut off with a knife, or dipped live into boiling water by way of holding its feet - great way to get the feathers off), and I’ve heard a cow being butchered as well (I still want to see one being hacked away). I’ve watched a live fish getting pounded in the head so it doesn’t squirm, and gutted alive to provide the freshest sashimi and sushi possible. In short, I’ve seen how food is prepared at an earlier level than grocery stores, and I appreciate the way of nature.

You see, I understand food and I appreciate it for what it is. And as I grew older, that subconscious part of me came out more, and I am now more enlightened on making smart food choices in the sense that I appreciate what nature gives me. My bottom line for food is this - if the recipe could not have existed over 100 years ago, I try to avoid it. I’m not a tight ass - if that’s what’s available, I will eat it once in a while. And I’m not anal to keep my diet at 2500 calories a day - I eat a lot when there’s good homemade food with fresh ingredients.

Now, I’ve boasted how I am in touch deep inside with natures way of things, and let me rant about the problems. So many urban people grow up never watching how food is prepared. They see the end result of it, and that’s all they know. I think the lack of understanding of food sources beyond what’s set out at your grocery store is a huge problem for making conscious choices on food. If it’s convenient and it tastes good, many people will just buy it and eat it without giving it a second thought. Without appreciation of fresh produce and meat and poultry, a frozen pack of constituted meat or an artificially made veggie pattie has the same value as the free range chicken or beef that is also available. What’s the difference between the Five Alive juice, which is artificially compounded with some juice and a lot of sugar and preservatives, and the 100% juice that is not made of concentrate? Nothing, if you don’t understand it.

Let’s look at another problem. A lot of people who are completely out of touch with the nature of things as they have been for the last… millions of years, or for as long as omnivores and carnivores have roamed the earth, think that killing an animal for food is “cruel”. Many people grow up to be teenagers and they have never even witnessed a live animal being killed for the process of food. This is so sad - this lack of awareness must stop. And these naive kids will watch one or two videos of slaughterhouses, produced by people who are unaware about nature and are more concerned about being self-righteous and feeling good without knowing the logic of the food chain, will feel grossed out by the killing of an animal, and start pitching to stop the consumption of beef and pork. Believing that consumption of other living animals is a cruel thing is an utterly modern and unnatural concept - a bi-product of our busy and modernized lives, so out of touch with our nature and mother earth.

I understand that urban life is a reality in our society, and most things come pre-packaged, and pre-manufactured, often from overseas. But people need to start appreciating the goodness of nature and how food is grown and harvested and collected. They will appreciate naturally grown, or organic, vegetables more, produced locally. They will be aware that when veggies are shipped in from Columbia or Mexico, there’s a lot of pesticides and preservatives used to keep the vegetables fresh all along the way, not to mention that the transport of such items causes more greenhouse gas via consumption of gasoline. They need to be aware that a cow, or pig, which grew up in sanitary and normal living condition will be the healthier choice of meat, and they will also understand the value of the life which was taken to produce that meat, and appreciate it more.

So here’s a challenge for yourself, or your kids. Learn and understand nature. Learn how a vegetable is grown, and how it’s picked. Learn how it is fertilized (in nature, it is fertilized by other rotting plants, rotting animals, and poop). Learn how chickens and cows grow, and learn how they are butchered. Any kid should feel completely comfortable at the scene where a chicken is getting its head chopped off alive with a butchers knife. It’s natural, and that’s how it is. Kids should be aware that the nice big plumper looking tomatoes may not necessarily be the healthier choice if you realize how it was grown. The smaller ones that seem a bit more faded may be better if they were organically and locally grown. The pre-packaged frozen fish sticks are not just fish but a compound of extra ingredients such as modified corn starch and sugar and salt, and that veggie dog is most likely made of fake food items and glued together at a factory. This is an awareness that will make you healthier, and the world a cleaner place. Keep food simple. Keep foods natural.

Michael Kwan is looking for cases where we’ve done something charitable for those in need. Well, I have a charitable act that I do very often that helps many many sides of our society.

You see, I’m not the average North American - privileged from birth, full of empathy and sympathy, trying to be self-righteous by doing small insignificant deeds of good that only makes the doer feel good while it does not fix the problem. I’m a very realistic person who sees things for the truth rather than idealism. I don’t believe in basics or minimums that are guaranteed by default, and I believe in Darwinism. Even the right to survive is, technically and truthfully, not a guarantee. We have won it as a society, and we also need to sustain it as individuals.

When you decide to cross the street at night wearing a black jacket, you are gambling with your right to life. When you decide to go to war with Iraq, you are forcefully taking away the right to life from innocent Iraqi civilians. In an ideal world, everybody has the right to live. But who said these rights are guaranteed? I don’t understand how these standards somehow became a philosophy. These standards we set are merely artificial human attempts at achieving a higher goal, but really, there’s no law in physics that grants us any kind of rights whatsoever.

When you ditch out on a job and decide to shoot up on heroine, eventually you will lose your right to an income. When you lose right to an income, you lose your rights to food, shelter. You’ll also lose the right to heroine, since money will be scarce. Eventually you will lose rights to live. You will die on the streets. Unless. We encounter the idiots who decide to give petty change to these people, feed them in soup kitchens, so as to grant them the right to food and heroine that rightfully should be taken away from them. It only makes the problem worse.

Some people might be saying at this point, “In some cases, it’s not their fault. They have mental illnesses.” or something of the sort. Once again, going back to the very basics of physics - nothing is guaranteed. Unfortunately some are born without adequate ability to survive. If they have rich parents who are willing to lend them the right to carry on, great. If they found some other talent through which they can obtain the right to live, great (paralympians, for example). If not, who the hell says that we as society should guarantee them basic rights just because they’re human beings? It’s all man-made, and merely an opinion. It’s not a golden standard, unfortunately.

When a homeless person asks me for change, my response is “No. Get a job.” If you are incapable of getting a job, REGARDLESS of whose fault it is, then you lose rights to money, and in consequence, you lose your rights to food, shelter, and ultimately, survival.

You see, if you give these guys change, they’ll carry on for another day. Buy cheap food, and cheap drugs. That doesn’t solve the problem. The only thing it might do is make you feel like a nice smug person who is generous and all. But it doesn’t really help anything in the long run.

I’m a more charitable person than those donating soups and change to the drug-addicted homeless people in downtown and the eastside (I live in Vancouver by the way). Because I encourage them to learn how to fish, so they can find their own rights, rather than borrow rights from others on a daily basis. We as society, thanks to our ancestors, have created this magnificent world of opportunity and wealth. If you can’t grasp even a tiny bit of it, too bad. Darwinism says you will just perish away and nobody will remember you. It’s cold, it’s sad, but it’s the truth.

Just to make things clear - I donate for other charitable causes that involve childrens charities, as well as international charities for Africa and what not. Their economy and way of life has been raided by the influence of Western civilization, the global economy and the currency exchange system that enslaves some of the poorest nations. This is a fact I cannot change because I’m not that powerful. To offset the fact that the wealths I enjoy are trickled down wealths from the global economy that leeches from the poor 3rd world countries and piles it up in the hands of North Americans, I donate for those causes. I just don’t give a single fucking penny to homeless people in Vancouver.

Shawn Knight just sent me an article on his blog about the intense tornado activities in the Mid-South USA. The pictures are just mind-blowing. Most people in Vancouver, which is where I call home for the time being, have no idea what a tornado really is like, because we don’t have it here. However I could relate to Shawn’s article because I grew up in Missouri, USA, which neighbours the famous Mississippi River, and Kansas City as well as Kansas State, and during my 2 years there, I’ve seen my share of tornadoes.

In Kindergarten and Elementary School, we used to have tornado drills, as it was a frequent visitor in the prarie area that we lived in. The drill was to either get to the basement part of a building, or, if that’s unavailable, go to what would be considered the deepest core of the building, in order to minimize your chances of being hit by flying debris. In case of schools, those were the hallways. Classrooms would be evacuated, so as to minimize the chances of getting hit by flying glass. Once you hit the hallway, you would crouch like a turtle, with your knees to your chest and your arms wrapping your head, into a small ball, with your head directly against the walls. This was supposed to reduce the chance of you getting blown away, or getting hit by other objects, in case the intensity of the tornado rips through part of the building. Even if the roof got blown away, this covert position would reduce surface area, and help to keep you on the floor, in the building.

Tornado alarms were installed in all the municipalities, and that thing was so loud and the noise hit a large area. It was a long wailing sound, sort of like a ambulance siren except much longer in its high-low wave. When you hear that, your best bet is to hide according to your drills. Our apartment was on the 2nd floor, but in such places, neighbours are always there to help. Anybody living in lower floors would happily welcome their neighbours into their apartments to hide out during a tornado blast. All apartments were built with the first floor as half-basements, specifically for tornadoes. Most houses were built like that too, if they did not have a full basement under it! Even the architecture of such towns were affected largely by this powerful natural phenomenon.

When I went back to Korea, however, the government was not so much interested in natural disaster relief, but leaned more towards wartime provisions. There was training for bombings and other aerial attacks that may incur in our city, which was 4 hours away from the North Korean border. This was not only for schools, but it was a city-wide provision. All schools, offices, and homes were to comply when this happens. If I remember correctly, everybody was supposed to be indoors during that short period, but it was not enforced very well. It had been more than 40 years since the Korean War, and not many people took it seriously. However they would still do the military drill of emergency take offs and what not, as well as police officers being put on alert until the military took over.

And then I came to Vancouver, and went to highschool in the GVA (Greater Vancouver Area). We are located on the Pacific plate belt, or whatever it’s called, and we’re considered to be at high-risk for earthquakes. We constantly had earthquake drills, where we’d hide under a table or desk to avoid being hit by falling objects. And then, before the second wave would hit, we’d all evacuate through the designated evacuation routes, assemble with our teacher, in order to make sure the head-count matched from when the class begun, so that missing students can be easily identified and searched for.

Growing up in 3 different countries, in very distinct environments has given me such a wide array of emergency preparation training, and it’s actually quite amazing that I managed to experience all this throughout my life.

Does anybody else have any interesting anti-disaster training that’s not often seen in many parts of the world?

I think many of you have heard of the $100 laptop project - a project to research and invent a $100 laptop which allows it to be distributed to children in less privileged countries around the glove, so that they can have access to modern technology and concepts, and get better education.

Well, as hard as they tried, each laptop ended up costing about $200 a piece (which is still a great deal) and now it is available!

Here’s the concept :

One learning child. One connected child. One laptop at a time.

The mission of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child. In order to accomplish our goal, we need people who believe in what we’re doing and want to help make education for the world’s children a priority, not a privilege. Between November 12 and November 26, OLPC is offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada. During this time, you can donate the revolutionary XO laptop to a child in a developing nation, and also receive one for the child in your life in recognition of your contribution.

I was informed of this donation opportunity through Gary Lee and John Chow’s blog posts.

Being the techy that I am, I had to go check out the software specs and what not of this XO Laptop. This laptop is based entirely on open source Linux, and has custom applications pre-loaded, with the option to download additional applications. It has basic learning applications to help develop a youth’s brain in a cognitive, visual, and logical manner, and is designed to last. Hell, this $200 laptop is probably a lot more sturdier than my $1500 beast of a laptop that I bought in Canada, with Windows on it.

The cost of this donation program is $399 - you will receive one of these laptops as a recognition of your contribution, and another one will be donated to a child somewhere who needs it and wants it badly. Hence it breaks down to $200 a piece, more or less, and you get a tax receipt for $200 as well for the donation ($399 minus the fair market value of the unit you receive).

Please go and donate a laptop to a less-privileged child - it’ll make you feel warm and fuzzy.

The ongoing debate between Canada’s role in Afghanistan is one of the hot issues in this country, and the opinions vary quite a bit. Many, led by the Liberal Government, feel that Canada’s role in Afghanistan has gone beyond that of peacekeeping and that we should pull out. Others, led by the Conservative government, are quick to assert that Canadian troops do belong there to quell the militants of the opposite side of the Axis.

I’m not writing this article to debate whether our role in Canada is right or not, but I’d like to point out what we should and should not be criticizing. Recently an anti-war group in Ontario wrote letters encouraging soldiers to NOT join the mission in Afghanistan, but instead, desert the military before they end up in Afghanistan. Other critics are blatantly criticizing the military itself for its actions in which Afghanistan civilians are killed.

Soldiers are meant to obey. They are trained to obey. People who are well educated and well opinionated do not belong in the army, and will not join an army unless drafted upon because they cannot handle the idea of being in action killing people without completely agreeing to the mission themselves. They will question the authority, and question the motive of their missions, hence reducing their capacity as a well-equipped, finely-tuned combat machine.

Do not criticize the soldiers. They are not the ones you should be criticizing when you are against the war in Afghanistan, but you should be criticizing the government, including Stephen Harper and O’Connor. The soldiers are not the ones to make the decisions on where to fight. They simply do as they are told, with the utmost belief that they are serving their country. They are courageous, self-less, and they endure many risks and loss of lives to accomplish what they feel is right.

Regardless of whether you are against the mission or not, sending letters to soldiers and their families and criticizing the military personel is a stupid, misguided act. By sending those letters they spat on the faces of soldiers, who, regardless of politics, are willing to put their lives at risk for what they believe is right.

If you have a problem with the war in Afghanistan, write letters to the Conservative MPs, or to Stephen Harper, or O’Connor, the Minister of Defense. Don’t write to the soldiers. They are doing what they feel is the best, regardless of how un-opinionated or brainwashed they may be. They genuinly feel that they are doing this for their nation, and for you, and are brave beings.