Failing my RelativeOffset program
July 30, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Rants & the Ridiculous , 12 comments
Lately positive vibes are bouncing around the green blosphere as many are forming APLS, yahoo groups, and book clubs. There are also a few that vent their frustrations, about the incredibly incompetent Bubbles and about the down trodden folks who have lost any interest in caring for themselves and their dwelling.
I feel the positive vibe, I do. But I also have some BIG griping to do. So here it goes.
We all know carbon offset - a financial instrument representing a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. It “alleviates” some guilt for people like me who occasionally use up a bunch of energy jetting across the Pacific Ocean.
As a spoof, CheatNeutral was born – it is all about offsetting infidelity. The founders of the website believe that carbon offset is as much of a joke as cheating offset. One of the convoluted examples they give is:
“Steve and Lisa met while on holiday in Spain, and quickly fell head over heels for each other. That Christmas, at his office party, Steve got drunk and unavoidably repeatedly cheated on Lisa with Cheri, a co-worker. He paid Cheatneutral just £2.50 and we invested his money in Alex, a single man with no prospect of finding a partner. In return for the payments, Alex agreed to remain single.
Thanks to Cheatneutral, Steve was able to come clean about his cheating to Lisa, and when he presented her with the Cheatneutral certificate they realised they wanted to get married. Their wedding is taking place in the summer. Steve continues to regularly cheat on Lisa and Cheatneutral continues to fund projects like Alex with his offset payments.”
Secretively I too have a program running at the back of my mind - RelativeOffset. Not that I am a green super hero, but compared to my brother-in-law’s (BIL) family, I am a green saint. Often times I feel that we have to cut back more to offset the waste my BIL’s family generates.
We have been overwhelmed with the stuff that they are tossing out – two-year new convection oven, very gently used kids’ furniture, three-year old golf clubs (I don’t even play the game), and many other random things.
“We don’t need to take all their junk, you know,” my husband reminds me.
“But if we didn’t, all of it would go into the landfill,” I am frustrated. I post the items on Craigslist and Freecycle so someone can use them.
But lately I can’t keep up anymore. Even if we don’t breathe, don’t drink, and don’t eat, we can’t offset their escalated spend. A year ago, they remodeled their home for the 3rd time in ten years. A couple of months ago, they proudly acquired a 47-foot motor boat and flaunted that high gas prices were of no concern to them. This week I have been informed during a “catch up” call that it is their intention that a personal plane will be their next “big ticket” item.
Worst of all, I have to listen to all the bragging. Even their preteen kids are starting to associate everything with a $ value. So knowing it is totally lame, I phone screen the calls. The one-sided avoidance can’t last forever though.
I quit my own imaginary RelativeOffset program, since it has zero chance of working
Whew, it feels great to rant.
But seriously, how do you deal with family members that have starkly opposite values?
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Lost art of fix-it
July 29, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Green Journal , 9 comments
This weekend my vacuum cleaner stopped working. It was humming beautifully before our vacation. Surely someone must have broken into our house to vacuum our floor when we were away. In any case, since I did part with a handsome amount of fund for an engineering degree, albeit from long time ago, I decided to open the chassis and fix it myself.
A couple of frustrating hours later, the chassis was jammed back on with some loose nuts and bolts scattered on floor. It was still not working!
Leafing through the yellow pages for repair shops, I managed to find a few within 25 miles from our house. Unfortunately most of them are not open on weekends. It’d probably cost as much as half the vacuum cleaner.
Is repair work a lost art?
During our trip to China, we found a few out in the rural areas. Want to fix the right heel of your otherwise wearable shoes? Here is the man for you:
Are your pots and pans all dented or rusted? These nice looking men can turn them into shining new cooking vessels again:
Dulled knives or scissors? This clever man powers his sharpener with a bike:
Unfortunately in the wealthier Chinese cities, repair shops are disappearing as well.
It’s the economics - with virgin material being undervalued (thus seemingly cheap), the labor cost of repairing an item is often close to or more than its replacement cost. Throw in the inconvenience of not having the item while it is being repaired and the almost instant availability of a replacement item, the choice of junking old and buying new seems perfectly rational, at least to most people.
I am not sure if the art of fix-it will make its massive comeback next year, though I suspect in time the cost of virgin material and cost of labor will shift the balance once again. The economics will tilt back to the side of repairing.
For me though, repairing an item as much as possible rather than chucking it has its elegance. Tossing out a vacuum cleaner without at least trying to figure out the problem is simply crass. Go ahead and laugh. But there is a universal beauty in maximizing the efficiency and usage of resources.
The elegance of maximizing resource efficiency is manifested in living creatures and man-made designs. Even in building computer chips, unnecessarily utilizing silicon space and power is considered to be sloppy and poor engineering.
So yes, to me, fixing things is not about the economics; it’s about aesthetics. You can call me a kook, but I am sticking to it.
This weekend, you will find me sitting on our driveway, with the vacuum cleaner manual and parts all spread out. I may tear my hair out again, but at least I feel elegant, maybe not Birkin bag sort of elegant.
***************************************************************
Also want to also pass on some good fix-it information from a bay area simple living group. Thanks Kathryn Benedicto.
- www.RepairClinic.com is a website that gives useful tips for fixing stuff yourself, plus resources for finding repair shops in your neighborhood
- www.recyclethis.co.uk is one of my favorite sites (though more for repurposing than repairing). Can’t figure out what to do with old socks? Let me count the ways.
Locally:
- Menlo Vacuum and Fix-It, 1179 El Camino Real, Menlo Park, (650-322-9333) - repair all sorts of small appliances and electronics, also recycles batteries
- West Bay TV, 3219 Middlefield Road, Menlo Park, (650-368-3384) - repair TVs, stereos, cameras
- Rancho Grande Appliances, 2890 Bryant, San Francisco, (415-641-51390 - repair washers, dryers, refrigerators, stoves
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Luxury or Frugality
July 28, 2008
Posted by CindyC in : Opinions & Thoughts , 10 comments
During a weekend get together, some friends and I got into an interesting discussion. It started out simple enough with us talking about summer movies. Amazingly, I had actually seen a few before they came out on DVD. In any case, we were talking about Sex and the City (SATC) when one friend said, “You must be totally excited about these rent-a-designer-handbag websites.” It took me a second to realize she was referring to “Louise”, the wanna be fashionista in the movie, and her economical entry into high fashion that involved renting Louis Vitton handbags online.
Huh? I admit, once upon a time, I had the same obsession as those glamorous ladies in SATC (except I wasn’t so glamorous). But that was long ago, before a mortgage, family and a clearer shopping conscience. So I was a bit confused by her comment.
“Well, doesn’t it warm your heart that fashionistas are embracing the idea of community and recycling?” I must have had a doubtful scowl on my face since my friend defensively responded, “Does it really matter that these people are renting and reusing bags to satisfy their own vanity as long as they are reusing and not buying another handbag? How is that any different or worse than buying at consignment stores? Aren’t you a pragmatist?”
I suppose she has a point. I often tell my friends that the motivation doesn’t concern me too much as long as people are cleaning up their act. I also believe that you don’t have to make significant changes in your lifestyle to start making a difference, as long as you make changes and stick to them. But does renting (rather than buying) expensive handbags actually counts as a change? After all, does anyone (other than Carrie Bradshaw and company) really need a Hermes Birkin bag, especially considering the cost can probably feed some impoverish village for a year?
Maybe I’ve become less pragmatic and more skeptical but I don’t buy this idea as a change for the better.
CindyC at Organicpicks
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Seasonal food with shark fin soup
July 24, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 9 comments
Without unique local food, traveling would not be nearly as intriguing. Every bite takes me closer to a culture. Elizabeth Gilbert devoted a third of Eat Pray Love to her eating her heart out in Italy.
It’s fascinating to observe what people eat and how people procure their food in various countries, the closer to the food source, the better. A number of years ago, I visited the Tokyo Tsukiji fish market, the sheer scale of which completely shocked the “romantic” inference of The Old Man and the Sea out of my system.
I love visiting fresh produce market in different regions and countries. This one is fairly typical in China. In smaller cities or rural areas, markets are often outdoors. Notice there is no refrigeration, no spraying of fine mist to keep the produce “fresh”. When asked, the vendors told me exactly where the food came from - all within 25 miles of the market.
One of our bus rides took us to hilly farm fields in the south east of China. Farmers plowed their fields with water buffaloes and planted with hands. I was also told that most fields were mix-planted, i.e., many different produce and grains planted in close vicinity. This picture has beans, peanuts, orange trees and some other green veggies. The endless plantable Midwest plains simply don’t exist in China. Mass production of a single crop is probably not feasible.
In the northwest of China where deserts reign, amazing fruit and nuts are harvested in occasional oases - grapes, melons, apricots, dates, plums, walnuts, and almond. Sorta like the central valley of California.
Spices were one of the precious trading items along the Silk Road two thousand years ago. You can still find crates of spices lining the streets.
Along with the good, we also found the absurd - gimmick food like these nectarines that had patterned paper pasted on them as they were ripening. The end result? nectarines with characters on them.
And of course there is the ugly, very ugly! Shark fin soup is often served at Chinese banquets as a symbol of wealth and prestige. While the practice of finning of sharks has always been brutal, the problem was not noticeable until the economic booming in China. With the rise of the middle class, the demand for shark fin soup has been increasing. The demand is likely a primary contributing factor in the global decline of many shark species.
This restaurant proudly displays its shark fin. I am there to demonstrate the size.
Every time we are in the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I read about the horrifying practice of finning of sharks. But I think they are preaching to the wrong audience. Spend money and run smart ads in China. Educate the young. Hire celebrities if it works there. Traditions with hundreds of years of history are not easy to over throw. Then again, women there no longer have bound feet.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Trains, buses, maglev?
July 23, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Transportation , 6 comments
Before we had children, my husband and I traveled quite a bit – passports? Check. Plane tickets? Check. Backpacks? Check. Yes, it was that simple.
After the children arrived, we had to reset expectations of travel. We retooled our on-the-go style and slowed down the pace. Still, we vowed to continue seeing the world in our own way. Last year, we took the kids to Italy, devouring a whole lot of pasta and walking a whole lot of miles in the Dolomites.
This year, stars aligned and pointed us to China. My retired parents are spending a summer there. Our friends are interested in joining in our jaunt.
I’ve always been intrigued with the famous Silk Road, 5,000 miles of ancient trade routes that connected China and Europe through central Asia.
(image courtesy of www.easytourchina.com)
A large section of the routes closely hug hundreds of miles of harsh desert and extend over snow capped passes. Camel-led caravans carried with them silk, satins, rubies, spices, diamonds, and rhubarb. Merchants, soldiers, pilgrims, nomads, monks, adventurers, and robbers left their footprints for thousands of years.
Cultures were formed and exchanged along the routes. Various religions spread and influenced each other. Ethnicities interacted and mixed. Can history get any more romantic than that?
It also seemed that on rare occasions when I found and posted any news about what China was doing in the environmental area, controversial and passionate comments ensued. So what is really going on in the world factory? Rather than relying on various news channels, I want to find out on my own.
With bags packed, off we went.
I will start with the transportation we took. Since travel is an eco-sin I repeatedly and willingly commit, the least we can do is to take as much public transportation as possible. Aside from the flights to and from, here are the various public transit vehicles we used:
Maglev - short for Magnetic Levitation train. Though it is a public transit line, I suspect that it is probably not particularly green to operate a Maglev train.
But it reached 220 mph in 2 minutes and hit 268 mph at top speed. I have the picture to prove that. Well, even a non-technophile like me was impressed.
Not so fancy were the buses we took almost daily, most were air-conditioned and many had TV that blast advertisement at us.
Then there is the train where we spent 36 hours. A severe storm wash off a few sections of the train tracks and destablized others built on the desert sand. What else could one do other than reading books and chatting with strangers? While the tracks were being repaired, we met a South African couple who had been volunteering in the remote villages in Kazakhstan for the past 10 years. I stuttered in my head, “but, but, I, I, recycle regularly. Really. Equally virtuous, no?”
More exotic are the 3 wheeled taxis that drop you off a few miles away for 10 cents.
My favorite is when I got to be a driver for a few minutes on a water taxi.
My overall impression of the transportation greenness:
An overwhelming majority of Chinese people ride public transit to go places, whether it is buses, subways or trains.
There are very few SUVs on the road.
Private cars are seen as a status symbol. Chinese people are striving to become car owners. Ironically the traffic is so horrifying virtually 24 hours a day, driving your own car is more of a torture than pleasure. Whether one rides a bicycle, a bus or a BMW Z3, it take 30 minutes to go 5 miles.
This has nothing to do with greenness. Traffic rules seem utterly discretionary. Red light, what red light?
CindyW at Organicpicks
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My welcome home committee
July 21, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 4 comments
I am finally back from our month-long journey to the far east. It was both exhilarating and exhausting. Even though we are footloose in our bones (even our kids are getting to that state of mind), it is still nice to be home.
The first thing we visited was our nascent vegetable garden. Our hard dug and freshly planted palm-sized garden was on our minds, even when we wandered about the ancient Silk Road in the deep desert. I’d imagine the luxurious silk, satins, rubies, diamonds, pearls, rhubarb, pilgrims, monks and nomads that journeyed through this route and shaped many civilizations. Then I’d wonder how my vegetables were doing with an experimental sprinkle system.
In the cool morning air, our welcome committee glistened in the sun. My gosh, they surely grew while we were gone!
Have you ever seen one and half foot tall red-leaf lettuces? Here is one of my monster lettuces with its open arms.
Our corn is not bearing any sweet kernels yet. Still the plants are tall and graceful.
Bush beans are ready to be picked.
So are the carrots.
Apparently some uninvited visitors have been feasting on our strawberries and have taken the liberty of lifting our peppers altogether. But seeing our other healthy plants put me in a good mood. So I won’t hunt them down or even hold any grudge. But critters, we are back. Don’t mess with my garden again!
I laughed at my strange attachment to our silly little vegetable garden. I’ve come home from far away places many times before. But this time, it is different. This time I have a welcome committee.
p.s., I will post pictures of our journey later this week.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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More experience less stuff
July 14, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 6 comments
We are still on the road where internet access is at best inconsistent. Still, every so often I check in with friends and family via email.
Last week among my large collection of unread messages was a recommendation email from a friend in the bay area. She wrote, “If you visited our home in the past, you know what a mess it was. We couldn’t see the floor in the kids’ rooms, couldn’t find a shirt in our closet, and certainly couldn’t park a car in the garage. But Karen changed all that. She is a professional organizer highly recommended by my local mother’s group. She did an amazing job creating a flow in all the rooms. She compartmentalized the kids’ rooms. Now I can actually find something to wear in my closet. Our minivan finds itself happily parked in the garage with space to spare. I highly recommend Karen to anyone who may need to reorganize their homes.”
Home organizers seem to be a profession de jour. Lately I have encountered quite a few in various forms - closet organizer, home organizer, garage designer, etc. Normally when an email like this arrives in my inbox, I simply delete it without giving it much thought. However, being six thousand miles away from my ordinary environment seems to provide me with fresh perspectives. The idea of a professional organizer for an average home suddenly just seems, oh so absurd.
For those who are professional organizers, I sincerely apologize for snickering. Clearly there is a reason for the birth of such a profession in our consumer based society.
Being in the bay area, where the mere purchase of a small lot can break your arms, legs, and more, our homes in general cannot compete in size with an average American home. My friend’s home is 1,600 square feet, about the average in this area. Have we lost the ability to manage 1,600 square feet?
No. But it seems that we have lost the ability to manage what we put on the 1,600 square feet. Simply put, we have so much stuff that we need a professional to tell us how and where to spread it so we don’t trip over it constantly.
Undoubtedly professional organizers have acquired skills to streamline stuff placement and perhaps even help families prioritize and trim their stuff. But isn’t the profession somewhat a band-aid rather than a solution?
Over a beer (actually a few) with a group of newly acquainted folks who were from various corners of the world, the topic of profession came up. “What do you guys think of professional organizers?” I interjected.
Hmmm? What do you mean?
After my probably inadequate explanation, most people in the group were quite amused. “So you spend your hard earned money on too many things. Then you spend your hard earned money to hire someone to either help you get rid of the things or put them away.” A lady from Belgium reflected.
Sounds about right. Fresh perspectives are always helpful.
A man from UK admitted that he could use the help from such a professional, “Our house is a bloody mess!” Apparently the overflowing of stuff is not a unique American problem.
I don’t remember how we ended the conversation, after all a few rounds of beer often obscure one’s memory. But I recall that at one point we toasted to “more experience, less stuff.”
Wait, wait, can that be a solution to our clutter problem? More experience, less stuff instead of professional organizers? Can beer occasionally provide some level of clarity? Can a random group of people with diverse cultural background arrive at such a simple solution to our unique 21st century problem?
I will cheer to that - More experience, less stuff…
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Sweet Sweat of Summer
July 10, 2008
Posted by CindyC in : Opinions & Thoughts , 5 comments
“Mommy, you missed a branch up top!” yelled my daughter.
While others chose to hide at the mall and wait out the heat, my family decided to duck under the shade of our old apricot tree and harvest our ripe fruit. Perhaps an unexpected benefactor of the recent heat waves, our tree has produced more fruit this season than the last few years combined. Okay, maybe it had this much fruit last year but the greedy racoons beat us to the harvest. This year, with a little help from our vigilant dog, we have yet to see those sneaky thiefs.
With a little reaching, climbing and summer sweat, we amazingly had collected 2 whole buckets (and I don’t mean the small toy kind) of ripe golden fruit, just from one side of the tree! Embarassed but proud of our bounty, we filled several bags with apricots and knocked on our neighbors’ doors. Actually, it was just me as my husband is still a bit weary about being the “crazy neighbor” that drops by unexpectedly. Three doors and 45 minutes later, I think I solidified my position as the friendly neighbor 
But my neighborly gesture barely made a dent in the buckets, so in the cool of the night, my mom taught me how to make apricot pie. Four pies to be exact - 1 to eat and 3 to freeze. Who knew you can freeze uncooked pies!
Still with a bucket remaining, the next night I made 3 batches of apricot jam/preserve. Thanks GreenBean for teaching me how to make jam! Although I am suppose to wait 10 days for the jam to set, I couldn’t help opening one this morning to spread on my bread. It was delicious.
Now I am eagerly waiting for the remaining apricots to ripe and searching for new recipes. Anyone got suggestions?
CindyC at Organicpicks
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Comin’ around different mountains
July 7, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 5 comments
One of the great aspects of traveling is meeting new people, people from entirely different walks of life and from far away countries.
A couple of days ago, I had a conversation with Anika, a Danish lady on a train somewhere in China. Turned out that these days she lived in the U.S. for the most part. Go figure. Anyhow starting with chit chat about gas prices in various countries - seeminly an international topic these days - we moved on to peak oil. Now I had not read enough books or research papers to be completely convinced whether we were close to, right at, or post peak oil. But the theory of peak oil seemed entirely plausible. My new acquaintance on the other hand was very admant that we still had enough oil reserve to last us centuries and centuries. She believed however that because of the unique location of the oil reserves, we (rest of the world, particularly the west) were clearly hijacked politically by the region.
We beat around the bush about peak oil or no peak oil for a while and it was getting frustrating for both of us. It seemed that we could not come to any common understanding.
But then I found out that back home Anika did not own a car. She biked everywhere, work, stores, and kids’ schools. Apparently she grew up in Holland and biking around town was just the way of life. Further discussion revealed that she was equally admant that we needed to be energy independent to achieve political stability. “Conservation and alternative energy” she insisted would be the only ways to get us out of the current hijacked circumstances.
We seemed to come from divergent paths but somehow landed at the same place - conservation and alternative energy. I almost felt like saying, “hell, why didn’t you just say so?!” Surely she felt the same way.
“Amused” by the conversation, I thought about the “conflicts” I had at home.
Raised by a mother who grew up working on a farm in Ohio, my husband inherited some of her frugal habits. “Please turn off the light”, “Please turn off the water”, “Why go to Starbucks when you can make your own coffee?” he would blabber at me. For a while, I found it extremely irritating.
My parents did not grow up rich. But thrifiness has never been their priority and is certainly not a value that I was brought up with.
So you can imagine that we had a bit of conflict when my husband and I started our own household. My weekly trips to Target irked him to no end. I chalked it up to the compromises we both had to deal with.
It was to his great delight that I stopped buying “crap” and started turning off everything a couple of year ago.
“You’ve finally seen the light and come to my side,” he would tease.
“Not at all. I am not doing it to save money. I am all about creating a better environment. My goal is way nobler,” I would protest.
“But our actions and outcomes are exactly the same,” he would not give up.
“Yeah, but, but,” I would insist.
Then one day, I realized that it was not at all important that we came into this from orthogonal perspectives. Our results are the same - less resource consumption. That was the day we stopped splitting hair and called ourselves Fruecos.
These realizations broadened my view of environmentalism. We’ve all come to this from diverse perspectives and experience. Some of us want a better future for our children, some of us are heart-broken over the dim future of wild lives, some of us see the earth as God’s creation and are protecting it in his/her name, some of us are outdoor enthusiasts and want the beauty of nature here to stay, some of us outrightly reject wastefulness, and some of us are simply brought up with green values and practices.
Anika, my accidental fellow traveler wanted nothing to do with the precarious geo-political instability.
Whichever paths and whatever paces we have taken to get here, we are here. Forget about focusing on individual motivations, forget about arguing over the small differences in approaches. We are all on our way to achieve the same thing.
Now that is something to celebrate!
CindyW at Organicpicks
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My Indulgence
July 2, 2008
Posted by CindyC in : Opinions & Thoughts , 3 comments
Yesterday, one of my friends asked what I’ve been doing with my extra time (freed from my summer blog slacking). Well, I sheepishly opened my handbag and showed her my guilty pleasure - a large single book collection of Jane Austen novels that I picked up for $3 at the library book sale. I admit I am an Austen-holic. I’ve read all her novels and pretty much seen all the versions of Pride and Prejudice that were ever made, including multiple viewings of the 5 1/2 hour BBC rendition.
Okay, I know some of you are probably disappointed by my “confession”. After all, Jane Austen remains a respected literary figure and even have college courses dedicated to her work. I guess I view this as an indulgence as I am rereading Pride & Prejudice for probably the hundredth time, instead of my planned “green” book for July.
However, I am glad to see that unlike me, some of my friends are still diligently reading and thinking about important issues. My good friend Michelle recently took the opportunity to hear Michael Pollan talk about his new book In Defense of Food. Thanks Michelle for a great summary and when it’s finally my turn to get the book from the library, I swear I won’t let Mark Darcy, Lizzy Bennet or Emma Woodhouse get in the way.
CindyC at Organicpicks
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