Hello world!

I’ve decided to create a new blog to properly mark, record, and share my life stories on a high carb low fat plant-based lifestyle – yes I’m vegan. Since I’ve adopted this HCLF vegan lifestyle 2 years ago, my perspective, philosophy, principles and values in life have changed immensely, in a sense that they have become more clear and solid. I guess this is what people mean when they say they experience a new sense of mental clarity when they go vegan.

Once I rid my body out of the dead corpses and the negative energy of death, I began to feel so much healthier, energetic and clear-headed. I started to see clearly how my actions had consequences. How everything in this world is connected. I began to feel more spiritual. But it ain’t no rainbow hippie woo woo shit. Sometimes I’m afraid to use the word ‘spiritual’ because some people may not take it seriously and simply dismiss it as some nonsense new age scam thing. That may be true for some hippies who just smoke pot all day, but it means something different for me. Spirituality to me is based on the idea that “we are all connected”. It means every living and non-living thing in the world has a direct and indirect cause and effect on one another. It means the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It means that many small actions get make a huge difference. It’s like the butterfly effect. It’s like how the role of the small creatures, such as ants, are paramount in maintaining all ecosystem functions. It’s about ecology and seeing the big picture. It’s about wholistic (holistic) and systems thinking rather than a reductionist view.

Yeah, ok so what does all of this have to to with the “real world”? It means you can see the bullshit of our “real world”, and it’s every freaking where. We want to get jobs that earn big money, so that we can buy more things, and these things eventually get thrown away – we keep producing rubbish, rubbish has to go somewhere, and most ends up in the ocean or in landfill. We are harming the marine environment, which gives us our oxygen to breathe, and is the home of many beautiful creatures. We are taking a lot but rarely giving. We think money makes us happy or getting this latest thing will really make us happy – bullshit. When I see the advertisements on TV and streets, and hear them on the radio, I see the market trying to sell us shit we don’t really need and the agenda to drive consumerism. What’s wrong with consumerism? The problem is our market is mostly a linear system. Things go into the system and get shit out the back and into some landfill or the ocean. Who suffers along the way? Who are the workers producing this? Are they being treated fairly? Where did the resources come from, did we have to cut down some trees, or blow up the ground to get it? Was it done on public land? What did the extractors do about the land and water pollution during resource extraction?

Or we earn money, so we can spend it on “good food”; we think the western diet is so fancy, with the poached eggs, eggs benedict, medium rare steaks, cheese burgers etc. It’s interesting how so many pictures on Instagram of “good food” involves some kind of animal product, and most of the time there is meat in it. I’m not against eating meat, it’s your choice, but I’m against the process of getting the meat. Most people have no clue how the meat they are eating was procured (or they have seen the video evidence of animal abuse but choose to ignore it and believe it isn’t true) If you are eating it everyday, it was probably obtained with cruelty because there is always a price to pay for convenience!

I’ve heard about these concepts before I went vegan, and have already believed in them but never really made the connection. I’ve always been passionate about the environment and animals, I called myself an environmentalist and an animal lover. I probably had meat in at least one meal every day, but it was usually as a side dish. I saw the animal abuse videos and decided to eat less meat, but I believed that there could be sustainable and humanely-raised meat, though I know it was difficult to find them, and I could still be an environmentalist if I ate meat sparingly (well at least it was the first step). But I’ve learnt that producing grass-fed beef causes more damage to the environment than locking a cow in a prison and feeding it chemical-loaded industry meal because more land has to be cleared for cows to roam around. And the process of killing a grass-fed cow is the same as a factory farmed cow.

On the other hand, I’ve been to a friend’s parent’s house where they had a small flock of sheep, about 10 or so in Tasmania. I asked his mum what did she keep the sheep for? She said for meat. She also mentioned briefly that one of them is almost ready to be slaughtered for meat soon. I asked did she do it herself? She said she gets a butcher to come to their place to humanely kill it, and she gives some of the meat to her neighbours or sells it at some market maybe. I get conflicted in situations like this because she is obviously a very nice and good person, and of course me being a vegan, you must think I’m judging her. But no, I’m not. I respect her decisions, and I myself am learning more about what it means to choose to not eat animals and the morality behind it. Obviously, these kinds of situations are complex, and one could call it sustainable because the flock is small in number and so they can roam around the place and they poo on the grass so it does become compost and gets returned to the soil; and one could call it humane because their sheep got to live a “happy” life, they had space and they were left to do their own thing. Though, maybe the sheep didn’t get to live to old age and their death came too early for it to be considered humane (well I didn’t really understand what she meant by one of the sheep being “ready” for slaughter). And still, this is specieism when we think we have rights over animals just because we are the “smarter” species. I have still got to read up more about the moral issues myself so let’s say I don’t have a good argument for this. In these kinds of family farms sure, maybe it’s ok to consume the meat. BUT really, how easy do you think it is to get hold of this kind of meat? You can’t buy these from the supermarket, and certainly not in Singapore. The best way to get a meat raised like this is to start your own small-scale family farm. But not every single family in the world can do it because it wouldn’t be sustainable anymore then due to all the land needed to let every family’s animals to roam around. It will be sustainable only when the whole human population goes plant-based and really reduces our meat consumption dramatically.

Almost all my close and really good friends consume meat. I have 1 vegan close friend. I still love hanging out with them, and I’m always excited to reunite with my friends in Singapore. We respect each other’s dietary decisions. Of course, I would be ecstatic if ever anyone of them tells me they want to try going vegan. When I first became vegan, I was flooded with information. I see that a plant-based diet has so much potential to be a real game changer for the world’s problems from anthropogenic climate change, world hunger, poverty, cancer and other major health diseases, overfishing, water shortage, pollution, environment destruction and animal extinction. I was eager to spread the message but I know how people always think vegans are judging them. It’s funny because you immediately understand all these social stigmas and stereotypes of vegans when you go vegan. It’s difficult for me to spread the message, but I think one way is to blog about it and just put the information out there, and just hope people are curious enough to ask me more about veganism. It’s like you have this information that can dramatically help people personally and all creatures globally, and it’s such a simple piece of information, eat more plants, eat less animals (yes, fish too!). Every dollar you spend is a vote for what you believe in, that’s how the market works. If you had information that is beneficial to all, and you know it would make the world a better place wouldn’t you share it? Maybe humans don’t want to hear it, but the animals suffering from abuse would appreciate it. If you knew there were human slaves in a factory somewhere and they were all going to be killed soon, and you see someone doing something that is contributing to that, wouldn’t you say something?

So yes, it isn’t what I think of others, it’s who or what I’m thinking for.

Well, wasn’t that a nice first post?

Thanks for reading if you even read it this far!