'Cause you said, said he was the one
Baby yes you said, said you were in love












Back to basics: Step 1
Arthur
JJC
Outgrowing 17
Dreamer
Poet
Lover
Atheist
Left-Handed Saggitarian

My passions: Step 2
Food
Company
Writing
Movies
Music
Debates


What i am: Step 3
Strengths:
Confident
Sensitive
Eloquent


Weaknesses:
Paranoid
Unorganized
Careless

Dreams of a globetrotter wannabe: Step 4
Paris
Shanghai
London
Gold Coast
Japan(Tokyo)
Rome
Taiwan
Hong Kong
New York
San Francisco
South Korea

Wishlist
My own domain
Scholarship
To publish a book

Want to know more about me?

Read my blog and you would start discovering fragments of me

P.S. All the works here posted belong to me unless stated otherwise. If you want to post them elsewhere, please seek prior permission from me before doing so. Thanks.

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June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 November 2008 December 2008

Bring your own bag day? A failure?
Thursday, August 28, 2008, 4:42 PM

Does "Bring your own bag day" work? I really think more needs to be done. The campaign itself is insufficient. In fact, I think the campaign's objectives would not be achieved and it's a failure. Can we really bring about a revolution to change the impending global meltdown or perhaps our fate is sealed.

I was out yesterday in town at Borders and I was asked if i needed a bag by the staff over the counter when i was making my purchase. I was charged $0.10 for the bag. I was happy, somewhat. It was heartening to discover that companies are doing more to help in climate change, although whether the driving force is to maximize their profits (by cutting down their cost on plastic bags by getting consumers to pay for them) or whether it's truly for a greener environment is debatable. But, it dosen't matter, does it?

Why does NTUC restrict it's campaign only to Wednesdays? I feel NTUC should just implement it every single day. Perhaps, now it's the right time to make this change as people are getting increasingly used to the idea of bringing your own bag. Anyway, I was at NTUC a couple of weeks ago and while I was queueing up, I saw the counter staff giving the customers the plastic bag without even asking if they need a bag. I am not sure if she got the customer to donate $0.10 for the bag though. But, this can't be the attitude that the staff have to adopt. I think it's important for them to ask if people need the bag and not just issue the customers with the bag and charge them for it. Ultimately, the purpose is not to charge the consumers but to inform them of it and try to deter them from using the plastic bags. Even though this campaign has been implemented for quite a while already, staff should still continue to ask that question. "Do you need a bag?" It's to keep that thought in the people's mind, bugging them, keeping them constantly reminded about the bags. Then, it would make an impact. If the campaign comes to a point where people are so used to this sort of a lifestyle, I say, the campaign failed.

Why? If it's part and parcel of their life already, people are unlikely to change. Think about it. The ultimate goal behind this camapign is to get consumers to change their lifestyle and not to charge them. It's simply just that. When people get used to this, they wouldn't change their consumption pattern and go on shopping and use the bags indiscriminately, the only difference being that they pay $0.10 more. On that note, did you notice something? The can that NTUC places at the counter askes for you to donate $0.10 for the bags you take and not pay for it. I suspect it's a marketing strategy to avoid an overwhelming response from consumers. But, again, what's the point if you don't put your point across strongly just like the cashier who dosen't make the effort to remind the consumers? It wouldn't work well. The use of diction has to be changed. Stronger words have to be used to drive the point across. The use of the word, donate, particularly disturbs me. It seems the least bit impactful and the fact that those funds are donated to sustain environmental causes irks me even more. It quenches the guilt in people. They know they have used a bag and paid for it and they wouldn't feel that guilty because they know they are helping to offset their carbon footprint by contributing to a fund as compared to if they were really just paying for a bag. If you were really just paying for a bag, I think it does more in terms of trying to get you to think about the issue at hand and to get you to change your lifestyle.

If we don't do something about the campaign or throw in some other campaigns, I think our efforts are futile. Perhaps what the doomsayers are talking about might just become a permanent reality.

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Tube-meat
Tuesday, August 26, 2008, 5:15 PM

Fresh meat from the butcher? Frozen meat from the supermarket? How about Tube-meat from the laboratory? Test-tube grown meat seems like it would become a reality in the future to come. But would anyone want to eat it?

I was browsing through the blogs that I provide links to as usual, keeping myself updated with my friends and one of them talked about growing meat in the laboratory. It isn't a very new breakthrough but still relatively recent, given that the first report on it was released in 2005.

Apparently, meat can be grown in the test tube just like how we culture stem cells. Cells are extracted from the meat of animals and grown in test tube to allow them to divide and eventually grown into meat. It all started when NASA researched into growing fish meat in test tubes to save space since storage has always been a problem in spaceships. It subsequently led researcher Matheny and a team of scientists to propose several techniques for growing meat in test tubes. This would however require different tissues such as muscles and fat so that it really is the meat that we are familair with. One huge challenge faced has been trying to get the texture right since research in this area is geared towards mass production for human consumption. Nobody would want to eat it if it tastes awfully different from the conventional meat we know.

Nonetheless, this still yields substantial benefits because we would be able to reduce our impact on animals. We wouldn't be eating poultry filled with so much growth hormones. I don't know if they can even be called poultry or animals, as a matter of fact. Sounds more like a hormone tank. This would probably put an end to the pressure we have been putting on the animals in order to sustain food production. With the world population growing still, the pressure we put on animals could pose a problem if we don't adopt a solution, i.e. growing meat in test tubes.

Just this year, the animal rights group Peta is putting up a million dollar reward for anyone who by 2012 can grow in-vitro meat that looks and tastes like the real thing. Money does wonders. This provides impetus for researchers to research into this area more extensively and more intensively than ever because not only would they be able to get the reward but would most likely be able to secure patent rights for such production and produce these meat for commercial purposes, reaping in millions and probably billions of dollars.

Most importantly, a team of 10 Peta jurors will taste the entries to make sure they match the texture and flavour of chicken, and they must score at least 80 out of 100 points to win the prize. There goes the worries about the texture and flavour of the chicken. However, even with this in place, can we convince ourselves to eat it? If we were to look at Sinapore's NEWater, it seems to have yet to achieve this. We have created an alternative source of water but it isn't accepted by everybody. I know of friends and relatives who refuse to drink NEWater. The thought of it being recycled from sewage water is repulsive enough to keep one from opening the cap and taking a gulp out of the treated water. Not to forget, the difference in the taste of NEWater as compared to the water we usually drink due to a lack of minerals is also one of the factors contributing to why people don't want to consume NEWater. The same might just happen to meat grown in test tube. Rejection from the public, that is.(Edited)

The meat produced from test tubes might have the same texture and taste, but would we eat it? Can we, creatures of habit, switch to consuming meat produced in the test tube? Will the thought of the meat being produced in a laboratory pose as a psychological barrier to the commercial success of such meat? All these, we don't know. But I'm sure we would find out soon enough.

Perhaps, we need to look at how morally wrong it is for us to OVERCONSUME meat. It has turned from a need for growth, development and survival to an addiction. A habit. A consumption pattern. We need to rethink the pressure we put on other animals. But, the question remains, how many people would truly switch to meat which do not put such pressure on animals for the sake of animals? My guess would be that very few would do so. Draw a parallel to global warming. It's been rightly described as a moral imperative by Al Gore and we are facing the problems of global warming. How much effort have we really put into solving global warming? Seriously. Would reducing plastic bags help to SOLVE the problem of global warming? No doubt, it reduces the impact but it's foolish to think global warming would go away one day just because we all decided to turn to using recyclable plastic bags. Would we really turn to consuming meat in test tube for the sake of animals? Cognitive dissonance, I say. Our voracious appetite for worldly possessions seems to suggest so too.

We would switch to such forms of meat. Yes. In the future. When animals are in the face of extinction, that is. Just like how we are turning to alternative sources of fuels when fossil fuels run low and oil prices jump. I can envision in the many light years to come, that is if we still thrive, how people would reflect on our consumption habits in disgust just like how we condemn slavery and authoritarianism.

Meat in the slaughterhouse and butchery. Frozen and packaged meat in the supermarket. Tubed-meat(as i would like to call it) in the laboratory. The question, "What nutrients would you like in your meat?", dosen't seem very far fetched now. Does it?

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Macdonalds killing more trees?
Friday, June 27, 2008, 11:09 PM

I am sure that most of us would have noticed that Macdonalds has changed the system in which they serve their customers. Instead of getting the customer to wait, they get the customer to move to the next lane with a receipt and wait for their order. I don’t know if you realise but more often than not, you don't have to wait very long to get your order placed on your tray. This is seen as being much more efficient compared to where the staff can only serve one customer per lane and has to wait till the customer gets his or her order most of the time. Sure, I do understand where Macdonalds is coming from.

But you do realise that the printing of the receipt is redundant, don't you? It just serves as a form of identification of the customers so that the staff knows who the order belongs to. This is redundant in my opinion. Are the staff at Macdonalds so inefficient and so scatter-brained that they really can't remember who ordered what? If it was during a peak period, perhaps it is justifiable to print those receipts but what about the non-peak period? Macdonalds isn't always having a full house. I am pretty sure everybody's aware of that.

Even if the Macdonalds staff is truly scatter-brained, it is still not justifiable to print these receipts. How so? Let's first assume that the Macdonalds staff is truly scatter-brained and can't remember who ordered what. For example, there are 5 customers on the next lane waiting for their orders to be served. If let's say burger A is ready and the staff dosen't know if the burger belongs to customer 1,2,3,4 or 5 and askes the customers who ordered burger A. Do you really think that the customers would start fighting and said i ordered it? The likelihood of such a scenario occurring is arguably almost out of the world. Most of us are rationale and wouldn't go around snatching others' orders which we probably wouldn't even feel like eating in the first place which explains why we didn't order it.

There's also the napkins which you can help yourself to at the self-service counter which are made of recycled paper. I am pretty sure that the step taken to switch to napkins made from recycled materials was a step by the corporation to reduce the number of trees it has to cut down and i applaud that move. Applaudable as it is, there are some inherent flaws with that. The first one being, the receipts printed would proabably reduce the number of trees that these recycled papers can help to save or even more than offset the number of trees saved and ends up resulting in more trees cut. What's more, the very nature that the napkins are self-service makes them subjectable to abuse. Not all of us are as environmentally friendly as we think we are and thus the abuse. To say that everybody is aware about protecting the environment is clearly a fallacious statement. In the case that it's not, we would proabably not even have to promote the campaign where we get Singaporeans to bring their own plastic bags or recyclable or environmentally friendly bag to the supermarket. The fact remains as it is. Most of us are not doing our part, small and insignificant as it is, to protect the environment. I've seen people pulling out dozens of napkins when they really don't need that much.

Macdonalds has done it's part to try to protect the environment by switching to recycled paper(although whether it's because of a lower cost albeit unlikely or because of the true desire to save the environment remains unbeknownst to me) Perhaps Macdonalds should take yet another step and only print those receipts when necessary because i am sure not all of us need the receipts and also because it is not of much practical use as we eventually chuck them into the bins. It's not that i am trying to fault Macdonalds. It's ultimately still a commericial firm and being that, it's profit driven, accountable to it's shareholders and does it actions based on whatever that's best to the company. As much as Macdonalds can try to play a part, perhaps we should start playing our part by saying no to the receipts and taking only what we need.

We need to save the environment for our future generations and something closer to our heart, reduce the effects of global warming. I am sure I don't have to preach about global warming given that it's a rather popular topic in recent years and can be easily researched on on the Internet. Eitherway, we should be more conscious of our actions and the impact on the environment.

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