And the lamb shall lie down with the tiger
Diamond Geezer has given us another list, this time of popular boy's names in the UK. I was pleased that neither of my sons' names are featured. I explored
the statistics further to check whether I'm the one and only Jakartass ~ I am, you'll be pleased to know, and spotted a link to the
UK Slaughter Statistics. Thinking about accidents with carving knives, buses and battering irons, to my horror, bearing in mind that I'm an avowed vegetarian, I discovered that these are statistics relating to the slaughter of animals for dinner plates, rather than
the Tally Ho fraternity.
This sent me scurrying back to the
Guardian Weekly which carried
a very succinct article by John Vidal which reinforced my reason for being a non-meat eater. "
Western diets, which depend largely on meat, are already putting great pressures on the environment. Meat-eaters consume the equivalent of about 5,000 litres of water a day compared to the 1,000-2,000 litres used by people on vegetarian diets in developing countries. All that water has to come from somewhere."
Well, it isn't coming from here. Jakarta has been dry as a dog's bone for the past few weeks, not quite the
drought of 97-98 but enough to cover everything with a fine layer of dust. High temperatures and hacking coughs are the order of the day.
Not all animals are killed for their meat. It is estimated that there are only 500 Sumatran tigers left in the wild, a number being diminished at the rate of 50 a year. It is good, therefore, to read about
Debbie Martyr who has been working in Central Sumatra since 1998 to stop the poachers. I'll be up that way at Xmas, staying at the yet-to-be-officially-opened
Hotel Rimbo, which means Jungle Hotel. A tiger has been spotted up there; it is part of the local community.
So will we be.
Blog off 2
The problem with the Blogger template is that apostrophes end up as question marks, even in the comments section. The following is a good demonstration of the need for clarity of thought, pre-planning and checking one's writing before publishing it. Not doing so is tantamount to declaring that you're a right berk.
(The following italicisation is mine.)
Can?t seem to shake me out of your system yet? Hell hath no fury like an expat in the third world scorned! And don?t tell me ? you employ servants over there for less than I give my 10 year old son each month in pocket money? Wouldn?t that be tantamount to paying slave wages in Old Blighty?
Posted by Mr. Anonymous to
Jakartass at 9/23/2004 02:09:12 PM
If Mr. Anonymous had bothered to read the rest of the post he's commenting on, he might have understood that my salary does not support a "
fat expat" lifestyle, though it does support quite a few of my Indonesian family. So, there's no
pembantu (maid) currently employed; if there were, I'd probably be supporting members of her family as well.
Anyway, I'm quite slim.
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