Phuket and Quick update #2

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Sorry for the sporadic, and increasingly half-hearted, nature of these blogs.
Important news: from October 20 - November 5 I shall be in Europe. First I'll be taking leave from October 20 - 30, visiting Liege, Belgium and London. Then I'll be on a work trip, visiting counter-trafficking organisations in Kiev, Ukraine and Rome, from the 31s to November 5th. If your path happens to cross mine, send me an email 😊. More importantly, please let me know where the best places to eat in Rome are! And if anyone knows of decent, clean, safe and not too expensive accommodation in London, please let me know too.

Then I'm back in Bangers for a couple of weeks, before going to Australia in November, again for work. I shall be in Sydney from the 19th to 23rd working (though the 19th is free and all my evenings are free except for the 20th - Daniel and Jacob, please note), and then a very quick, but full of love and joy, trip to Melbourne from the night of 23rd till the 27th. I might take an extra day or two in Melbourne, but not sure how much leave I have left, plus I want to keep some leave for all the thousands of people who've promised to visit me over December and January...

I was just down in Phuket for a team meeting, but also took a couple of days leave. The vegetarian festival was on then, which was HEAVEN (or would have been if I hadn't been with a meat-eater who was not as acquiescent as I'd have liked in setting off on treks in search of the best vegetarian food). In Phuket Town, there was ONE WHOLE STREET closed off, with MOUNTAINS of vegetarian food. It was incredible. I was so happy. (As were the cows, pigs, sheep, chicken etc.) Sadly the festival ended, and I have now returned to the usual (THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FIVE days of) skulking around and begging for veg food... "please sir, no fish sauce sir.."

I have also started reading Animal Liberation (my first time - incredible, no?), which is brilliant. I urge you ALL to read it. It's one of those books which changes your life - you know, the first time you realise the inherent injustice and cruelty of an action or structure, and it makes you determined to do what you can to change the world, to make it a better place? For me, it's like some key feminist texts that I've read, where I really felt that I'd been in darkness till I'd read them. Singer sums up my vegetarianism when he writes, "If a being suffers there can be no moral justification for refusing to take suffering into consideration." And if you take that suffering into consideration, how on earth can you condone it and eat animals? So yes, I'm also becoming vegan (though I would consume dairy products and eggs if I knew that the animals who'd produced the products had been treated well, with full respect for their rights and their capacity to suffer). It's just a really easy decision to make when you understand how cruelly animals are treated just so that humans can eat them and wear them, (especially when so many other options are available to us).

In Phuket, besides becoming even more committed to vegetarianism/veganism, I also had dinner on a yacht, which was just gorgeous. The whole team, plus guests of the team, came along, which included Anne's delightful 5-year-old daughters.

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Comments

[anonymous]

Singer writes well - his stuff on the moral case for aid is convincing (though one hopes people don't really *need* convincing, and that his work is more an intellectual, academic exercise than a call to arms). I'll have to read Animal Liberation.