Last week I watched Hugh's Fish Fight on Channel 4, a 3-part series about how around half of the fish caught by fishermen in the North Sea are unnecessarily thrown back into the ocean dead. When they fish, they use massive nets which scoop up all manner of fish and due to fishing quota laws, they are only able to land a certain amount of fish, so all the fish they have caught above their quota gets chucked back into the sea - but they're dead.
Such a waste. And such a shame. No wonder so many species of fish are overfished and dying out - at least if they were thrown back alive they would stand a chance of growing bigger and maybe reproducing so that the numbers of these fish increase.
I had never really thought about this issue before. I buy Sainsbury's tuna because that is where I happen to shop - not because of the ethical issues surrounding it. But since watching these shows, I'm pleased to say that I do buy this particular brand of tuna as these are pole and line caught fish. This means that they are caught one by one, not in great big nets, so no other fish are endangered by this.
As well as Hugh's shows, Jamie Oliver did a cookery program that used lots of different types of fish, to help us stop eating really common fish such as cod, tuna and salmon. The idea being that if we diversify the fish we eat, the overfished species will have a chance to grow in number. Heston did a special edition of his Feast show... oh my God, seriously, one of my dreams is to eat in one of his establishments. And Gordon Ramsey did a show about Shark's Fin Soup.
Being Chinese, I do eat this dish. But not on a regular basis - not that that makes it okay - but I probably would have it 2 or 3 times a year made by my Mum on special family occasions. In the back of my mind, I knew what happened to sharks for this dish, but I don't think I ever realised the extent of the horror until I watched it on this program.
I watched it with my sister. We were both really horrified and shocked. All species and sizes of sharks are caught, even if they are tiny babies and endangered species. Their fins are sliced off their wriggling bodies and then simply thrown back into the sea as the rest of the shark is not used for anything. It goes against Chinese principles of using all of an animal and not wasting anything.
My sister and I have decided to give up eating Shark's Fin Soup. We have to somehow tell my Mum that we no longer want her to cook this dish. I'm not quite sure what we'll say, but we have to. I don't want this barbaric act to continue just for the sake of a soup. I don't want sharks to become extinct in my lifetime.
It will be easy to stop in the sense that I don't eat this regularly - I've tried giving up carbs before and I don't think I even lasted a day! But it will be difficult because I actually really enjoy eating it, and I associate it with happy family gatherings. Will it seem less special or that something is missing the next time we have a family occasion? Only time will tell...
While I'm not going to give up eating fish in general, or become a vegetarian, or start crusading for animals' rights, I am going to give up Shark's Fin, and I hope that any of you out there who eat this dish thinks twice before you next have it. Even better if you can give it up too. Oh, and do join the Fish Fight and sign the petition to stop dead fish being discarded into the sea :-)
Monday 24 January 2011
Monday 17 January 2011
Beauty and the Bus
It's been a busy start to January. Work has been absolutely mental, which in a way has been good as it's distracted me from thinking about Mr Special, but also has been very bad as I've had a couple of emotional and horrible days where I've just burst into tears.
I don't want to dwell too much on Mr Special, as there really is nothing new that I can say about him. I know in time that things will be better and I'll feel less fragile, but for now I just have to accept that I'll have some good days and have some bad days.
My exciting news is that later this month I'm off on a snowboarding holiday. I absolutely cannot wait - I know it's not been long since I had time off over Christmas, but I am looking forward to my holiday so very much. I'm not great at snowboarding, but I hope that I'll improve with loads of practice. And you never know, maybe I'll meet a hot ski instructor ;-)
I was out shopping for wintery things in readiness for my holiday over the weekend. I can't believe that it's mid-January and already the shops have stopped stocking winter clothes. Luckily I have loads of stuff from the last time I went snowboarding, but I just wanted to get some new stuff. Like I need an excuse to go shopping anyway!!
I had 2 of the most interesting bus journeys I can recall for a long time. While waiting for my first bus, there was a group of 3 girls chatting at the bus stop about glasses and contact lenses. I was half listening out of boredom, and one of the girls was talking about how she has an astigmatism in her eye - I have the same condition in my left eye so it was kind of interesting to hear them talk about it. Anyway, another friend joined them and then we all piled onto the bus. I stood near the back while these girls stood by the door. There was another woman with a pram standing right next to them. As we moved on, the bus got quite full, and then another lady with a pram got on. The first woman with the pram asked the girls to move back a bit to allow the second lady to push her pram into the designated space. The girls said there wasn't anywhere for them to move to, which, in fairness, was true. It then kicked off into a shouting match and then a full-on hair-pulling and shoving cat fight. The other lady with the pram looked quite scared, and to tell the truth, I was half afraid of looking too much in case they started on me. But everyone was watching. The girls were saying to the woman with the pram that she was scaring her child, and what kind of a mother was she to be starting a fight in public. I didn't get a look at the child, but it was a scary few minutes.
They eventually calmed down and the girls apologised to everybody on the bus, but not before several people got out at the next available stop. They then moved upstairs leaving me with the woman with the pram and her friend. She started to moan about a scratch on her face that one of the girls had given her, and that she'd only wanted them to move to help someone else. Which was true. I don't know who, if anyone, was in the right... or who had started it.
As I looked at this girl, it really struck me how unfair life is. She was young, maybe early 20s, with a baby and a partner - she had commented to her friend that if he had been there then those girls wouldn't have dared say a word to her. She was not terribly attractive in my opinion, and she was grossly overweight - don't shoot me down for saying that - but she seriously was overweight, and not just new mummy fat either. Okay, I'm not the prettiest girl ever, or the tallest or the skinniest, but I think I look reasonably in shape and yet I am not with a significant other.
I have often joked with my friends that ugly and fat girls seem to be all loved up with boyfriends and husbands... and that I should let myself go and maybe then I'd find someone who wants to be with me properly!
I know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it is all subjective, and it is not all about looks - maybe I have a terrible personality and I just don't know it?! But I do sometimes wonder how these girls manage the fairytale ending whereas I, a nice, normal girl who wants all that has failed time and time again. One could speculate that they end up with equally seeming unattractive men (that I would not want to date anyway) according to the matching hypothesis whereby people are attracted to other people rated the same level of attractiveness that they are.
Maybe I'm aiming too high?? But the thing is, the guys I'm attracted to are attracted to me too... but the long term relationship bit fails.
I digress... on my bus journey home, I was nearing my stop and started gathering my shopping bags. As I did so, a large black lady at the back of the bus started shouting abuse at someone upstairs. I didn't see the other person, but the black lady was calling her a white bitch and a racist tart and things like that. I've no idea what the other person said or did, if indeed anything, but she kept shouting and shouting, even after she got off the bus she kept yelling at the bus. I kept very quiet and scuttled off home as quickly as I could as I didn't want to risk being shouted at either - not that she would've had any reason to as I wouldn't have said a thing to her!!
So there you have it... 2 very interesting bus journeys. It's been a long time that I've actually felt afraid in London. It doesn't phase me walking home late at night or anything like that, but twice in one day on 2 separate bus journeys, I felt a little scared. Makes me think twice about being environmentally friendly by getting public transport - I should have driven my car!
I don't want to dwell too much on Mr Special, as there really is nothing new that I can say about him. I know in time that things will be better and I'll feel less fragile, but for now I just have to accept that I'll have some good days and have some bad days.
My exciting news is that later this month I'm off on a snowboarding holiday. I absolutely cannot wait - I know it's not been long since I had time off over Christmas, but I am looking forward to my holiday so very much. I'm not great at snowboarding, but I hope that I'll improve with loads of practice. And you never know, maybe I'll meet a hot ski instructor ;-)
I was out shopping for wintery things in readiness for my holiday over the weekend. I can't believe that it's mid-January and already the shops have stopped stocking winter clothes. Luckily I have loads of stuff from the last time I went snowboarding, but I just wanted to get some new stuff. Like I need an excuse to go shopping anyway!!
I had 2 of the most interesting bus journeys I can recall for a long time. While waiting for my first bus, there was a group of 3 girls chatting at the bus stop about glasses and contact lenses. I was half listening out of boredom, and one of the girls was talking about how she has an astigmatism in her eye - I have the same condition in my left eye so it was kind of interesting to hear them talk about it. Anyway, another friend joined them and then we all piled onto the bus. I stood near the back while these girls stood by the door. There was another woman with a pram standing right next to them. As we moved on, the bus got quite full, and then another lady with a pram got on. The first woman with the pram asked the girls to move back a bit to allow the second lady to push her pram into the designated space. The girls said there wasn't anywhere for them to move to, which, in fairness, was true. It then kicked off into a shouting match and then a full-on hair-pulling and shoving cat fight. The other lady with the pram looked quite scared, and to tell the truth, I was half afraid of looking too much in case they started on me. But everyone was watching. The girls were saying to the woman with the pram that she was scaring her child, and what kind of a mother was she to be starting a fight in public. I didn't get a look at the child, but it was a scary few minutes.
They eventually calmed down and the girls apologised to everybody on the bus, but not before several people got out at the next available stop. They then moved upstairs leaving me with the woman with the pram and her friend. She started to moan about a scratch on her face that one of the girls had given her, and that she'd only wanted them to move to help someone else. Which was true. I don't know who, if anyone, was in the right... or who had started it.
As I looked at this girl, it really struck me how unfair life is. She was young, maybe early 20s, with a baby and a partner - she had commented to her friend that if he had been there then those girls wouldn't have dared say a word to her. She was not terribly attractive in my opinion, and she was grossly overweight - don't shoot me down for saying that - but she seriously was overweight, and not just new mummy fat either. Okay, I'm not the prettiest girl ever, or the tallest or the skinniest, but I think I look reasonably in shape and yet I am not with a significant other.
I have often joked with my friends that ugly and fat girls seem to be all loved up with boyfriends and husbands... and that I should let myself go and maybe then I'd find someone who wants to be with me properly!
I know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it is all subjective, and it is not all about looks - maybe I have a terrible personality and I just don't know it?! But I do sometimes wonder how these girls manage the fairytale ending whereas I, a nice, normal girl who wants all that has failed time and time again. One could speculate that they end up with equally seeming unattractive men (that I would not want to date anyway) according to the matching hypothesis whereby people are attracted to other people rated the same level of attractiveness that they are.
Maybe I'm aiming too high?? But the thing is, the guys I'm attracted to are attracted to me too... but the long term relationship bit fails.
I digress... on my bus journey home, I was nearing my stop and started gathering my shopping bags. As I did so, a large black lady at the back of the bus started shouting abuse at someone upstairs. I didn't see the other person, but the black lady was calling her a white bitch and a racist tart and things like that. I've no idea what the other person said or did, if indeed anything, but she kept shouting and shouting, even after she got off the bus she kept yelling at the bus. I kept very quiet and scuttled off home as quickly as I could as I didn't want to risk being shouted at either - not that she would've had any reason to as I wouldn't have said a thing to her!!
So there you have it... 2 very interesting bus journeys. It's been a long time that I've actually felt afraid in London. It doesn't phase me walking home late at night or anything like that, but twice in one day on 2 separate bus journeys, I felt a little scared. Makes me think twice about being environmentally friendly by getting public transport - I should have driven my car!
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