Who dares to take up the challenge on #ClimateStrike like I do?

Development is measured by changing the landscape. Bulldoze an area and replace with bigger, taller or longer man-made structures. Jungle turns to village to town to city to metropolis.
“Development” and “progress” are defined by Capitalists. For humanists, environmentalists or socialists, development or progress are defined differently.

My lunch. Many times dinner too

I live in the middle of capital city Kuala Lumpur but pretty much ‘off-the-grid’ style. I changed my diet. My lunch and many times dinner too, I have a bowl of oats, some seeds, nuts & dried fruit thrown in. I add warm water plus a little bit of coconut milk to it. It might be the best & healthiest bowl of lunch. Many times it is my dinner too. Then I wash it down with a glass of lime/lemon or sodium bicarbonate water. Oh I don’t like eating breakfast. So it’s only lunch & dinner for me mostly. I’m trying to save the world, not by skipping breakfast but by trying not to eat meat or dairy products. But can I? The answer is a BIG NO. What I eat is mostly non-organics because I can’t afford organic food, to start with.

And I feel as if I am the only person trying to save the world. While I am consuming a bowl of vegan lunch, THEY, my neigbours next door, upstairs, downstairs and half the world over are chomping away a quarter-pound beef burger from McDonald’s, greasy & spicy beef rendang or peri peri chicken. My upstairs neighbours might be enjoying half a kilo of melt-in-the-mouth roast beef in red wine sauce, carrot, red cabbage, potato and red wine. All imported from Australia, probably. And before that, they breakfasted on toast with butter from New Zealand, strawberry jam from the UK, coffee from Colombia or tea from India with milk from Australia. Their breakfast and lunch alone used more than 25,000 litres of water and contribute 50% to the elements that cause global warming!

I don’t flush the toilet every time I take a leak. I flush only after finishing the “other” business. THEY might be flushing after every time they use it. I brush my teeth with the same PLASTIC tooth brush for the last five months. THEY might be changing PLASTIC tooth brushes every month.

I don’t have any products for facial cleansing regime. THEY might have all kinds of products in PLASTIC containers that contain micro PLASTIC beads for washing, exfoliating, masking etc. I have to admit that sometimes I use aloe vera from my garden for my face. Or lime/lemon. But mostly I just can’t be bothered. Too time consuming.

Hazy Kuala Lumpur, a few days before the haze worsened. Picture taken from my apartment.

My shower is very brief. If the day is cooler, I turn the boiler on for some warm water. Otherwise it’s cold shower. I don’t use soap or shower cream or shampoo. I spend less than five minutes in the shower which translates to about four or five litres of water used. Meanwhile THEY might spend ten to twenty minutes in the shower, drain about 50 to 60 litres of water. Many of THEM combine shower with shower gel & shampoo that contain Sodium Lauryl Sulphate(SLS). All beautifully packaged in PLASTIC containers. I can’t remember the last time I used razor blades. I don’t go to salon for haircut. For the last twenty years I chop my hair myself.

I don’t have any kind of gel or cream for my hair. I only have facial moisturizer cream which I use not just for my face but for my hair and skin as well. If it’s good enough for your face I’m sure it’s good enough for your hair and body. Meanwhile, THEY might have gel for hair, moisturizer for face and different type of moisturizers for body.

And to photo-shop their faces, so many items are used. Moisturizer, foundation, eye browser, eye shadow, eye liner, highlighter, lipstick, lip gloss, concealer, blusher and whatnot which mostly contain palm oil and chemicals. I don’t use any kind of perfume except roll-on deodorant. My underarms can emit very unpleasant odour. So a-RM10 ($2.50) Rexona deodorant is good enough to not offend those around me.

If I am at home, my typical clothes are no clothes at all. It’s the advantage of living in the tropics. Less clothes worn means fewer clothes to wash. More water saved. Less chemicals and LSL-powered detergent, packed in PLASTIC containers, is used. Electricity bill is lowered. Less fossil fuel burned. But I don’t think that’s the case with THEM.

The downside of living in the tropics is that the heat can be unbearably hot. Fans are my weapons to beat the heat. I avoid turning the air-conditioners on unless in rare cases of el nino running amok. To sleep at night I have all the windows open and fan on. However, THEY – my neighbours might fight the heat with air-conditioners at full blast to cool the interior of their homes. In doing so they are heating my home and the world by burning more fossil fuel. Heigh ho.

So there! I can’t win against the world. The world that’s ruled by capitalists. Their rules are easy to observe. Spend. Consume. Spend more on what you don’t need. Eat more meat and dairy products. Bake the world. I am sounding holier-than-thou much, ain’t I? Let’s all be holier-than-thou…

12 noon, 9 Sep 2019 taken my apartment in Kuala Lumpur. The haze gets worse from forest burning in Sumatera after the picture taken