Month: January 2015

An appetite to appreciate anomalies

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I read with interest the news story of the three young students (two Dutch and one British) who on finding themselves stranded in Turkey for eight days, survived by eating insects. I thought the piece was interesting not for the regaling of the student’s survival plight but that the headline focus on insect-eating implied this was the real shocker of the incident.

One thing I’ve never been afraid of is trying new foods. I remember my parents being impressed enough to tell all their friends (one of whom’s children had spent several years only eating baked beans, smash and chocolate mousse) that I had eaten squid kebab whilst on a family holiday, when I must have been about eleven or twelve. To me it wasn’t that big a deal but after that I probably reveled in and strove to live up to my reputation as a gastronomic dare-devil.

Like most people I do judge edibles on how they look and allow appearances to affect what I think of certain questionable foodstuffs, but preconceptions wont stop me from trying these. So I’ve never really understood why people are squeamish about eating certain things.

Capture d’écran 2015-01-22 à 16.45.30When I was in Cambodia in the summer of 2013 (gosh, that sounds so much longer ago now that it’s 2015), the guidebook I read in advance informed me that fried tarantulas were a common snack and that insects were often on the menu. The though of eating creepy-crawlies was definitely a bit weird, and still is, but I’m not really sure why.

Yes, they are a bit gross to look at with sticky-out eyes, feelers and too many legs but prawns are just as disgusting and have you ever really looked as a mussel as you are eating it? Yet these sea-insects, if you will, are eaten by many who would be horrified by the thought of eating crispy noodles with red tree ants or a nice bowl of fried crickets.

Eating bugs is definitively a cultural thing and I suppose that because, unlike prawns and mussels, they are so readily available in the dirt around us this makes them less desirable in the way that caviar is probably valued more for its seeming rarity. Eating insects is also often associated with poverty and starvation and that might be where part of our preconceived distaste comes from.

Generally my food-philosophy is to try anything once and I wouldn’t automatically turn my nose up at any local cuisine whether that’s frog’s legs in France, black pudding (congealed pig’s blood) in England, paella with prawns and mussels in Spain, fried tarantulas and snake in Cambodia, Chicken’s feet in China or a Matcha Green Tea Latte in Geneva.

I’m not committing to liking these things but I’m definitely willing to have a go. Actually all of those items above I have tried (although not necessarily in stated country) and the only thing I thought truly vile was the Green Tea Latte I ordered this week but even that I still managed to slurp down, albeit shuddering with every mouthful. I wont order that one again.

Capture d’écran 2015-01-23 à 16.28.57I’m often motivated to try new things by the fear of missing out on great opportunities if I shut myself off to these. And from experience I know that whilst every activity is not necessarily for me there have been things I’ve tried without enthusiasm that have positively astonished me. If I’m honest I find snorkeling too scary to actually appreciate. But volunteering to run sessions of a legal programme for teenagers, that I thought I would struggle with, I really enjoyed.

In the same way I wouldn’t want to miss out on cultural culinary opportunities that might amaze me. I like green tea but thought the green tea latte revolting. I am pathetic around living specimens but found fried arachnid legs rather tasty.

I love travelling, and hope to do a lot more of this, but what I really enjoy is attempting to get under the skin of a different culture to find out what makes people from that part of the world  tick and to think about how they live the lives they do. I know you can’t generalize whole people from brief visits to a place but you can at least try to get an understanding of certain similarities these people may share.

When I went to Thailand about a decade ago I saw fried locusts for sale in busy tourist areas but declined to try them, partly because I was less brave than I am now but mostly because I wasn’t convinced that this was something real Thai people ate. I thought the eating of locusts might have just been a touristy gimmick with locals snickering from alleyways at the foolish farang.

However in Cambodia, at a local party celebrating the official opening of one of our favourite hostels/bars, we were enjoying the cheaper-than-water-beer when out came steaming dishes of crispy once-jumping hexapods. As the Cambodians there started tucking in I recognized the legitimacy of the dish and knew I would have to participate. The locals watched us expats with interest to see how we would respond to the unfamiliar platter and their curiosity was amply rewarded by the looks on our faces as we braved the many-legged snacks. But actually, once we got over the strangeness of eating a food so foreign to us, we enjoyed these little critters, which a friend accurately described as meaty crisps.

I wonder if those stranded students came to like their bug-based diet, once they allowed hunger to overcome initial misgivings? More likely their having to eat insects as necessity impaired their ability to truly appreciate these. I hope their ordeal will not indefinitely put these young adventurers off from future expeditions and perhaps they will even have the occasion to sample some intriguing local cuisines prepared in more favourable circumstances.

Magic in the Mundane

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I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes, magic is all around us and so the feeling grows…” (if Love Actually can adapt Wet Wet Wet’s song for their own purposes I don’t see why I can’t).

“Faith was a choice. So it followed, was wonder” – Carter Beats the Devil, Glen David Gold

I recently underwent a family rite of passage; not marriage, having children or enduring yet another mass family event without my eardrums exploding as twenty different discussions compete for volume within a confined space. No, this was very specific to my immediate family, something my parents and brothers had gone through before me. I was tasked with reading ‘Carter Beats the Devil’ and either enjoying the book or never darkening the doorstep of the family homestead ever again.

I read the book, loved it and passed the test. In summary, it’s a fictional tale that begins with the death of the President of the USA, who died shortly after participating in a magic show, and unravels from there. ‘Magic’ is central to the book and whilst there is no pretence that this is real, it doesn’t stop you from being drawn into the mystical narrative and creating a great yearning to be amazed.

However, I’ve stumbled across some texts recently suggesting that as we get older we lose the sense of magical wonder at the world easily experienced as a child. In something I recently read, but have forgotten the source, the author said nothing was magical any more, even things such as a new birth and falling in love, whilst capable of bringing happiness, lacked that sense of wonder he remembered as a child. Another well-written blog I found recently said the “greatest and saddest life lesson to learn, is that we only know true wonderment once it is lost”. 

Those thoughts on the dearth of wonder prompted me to think about when I last experienced a magical moment. My mind drew a blank and I started to panic. Perhaps it’s true, I lost my sense of enchantment and what’s worse I hadn’t even noticed.

Certainly as we gain experience in life we tend to trust our own instincts more and develop a certain level of scepticism. It isn’t that we tend to question the world around us more as we age, if anything as an adult I think we often fail to question things as much as when we were children. (Great blog about the difficult questions children ask)

Have you ever played a game of ‘but why’ with a child where you try to explain something and everything you say results in another ‘but why?’ response? After an hour or so of going round and round you realise you no longer know the answer you were sure of when you started.

I was that child with the endless ‘but why?’ and I still have an annoying tendency to question much around me. A few years ago I visited a friend who’d built a kitchen table with her partner. It was a fine table but I wasn’t content to sit-back and admire their handiwork, no, I had to get on the floor and look underneath the table to figure out the how.

I now question those blatant untruths I once accepted so readily. I no longer believe my uncle has a tiny invisible horse called Dobby. I will question the reality of Derren Brown’s latest antics, although that won’t necessarily detract from my amazement. If I’m interested in something curiosity overcomes me and I like to know how it has been achieved, but that doesn’t mean I’ve lost sight of the magical.

Screen Shot 2015-01-15 at 12.01.44 PMAs part of my 2015 resolutions, I’ve started ice-skating on a regular basis and every time I skate it’s the same story. At first I start off very tentatively, unsteady and unsure on my feet. After a time I gain my confidence, pick up speed and my fear of falling over and having someone sever my fingers with their skates wanes (although I always wear leather gloves as a precaution).

Once I’ve let go of my fears and start to enjoy myself I experience what I can best describe as pure freedom, which is magical, and I’m not sure can be expounded upon better than that. Gliding along the ice is inexplicably wonderful to me and perhaps that is so because I allow it to be. I don’t eagerly anticipate those magnificent moments and I don’t try to hold onto the unique sensation beyond it’s natural duration.

Ice-skating regularly brings a bit of magic into my life although I recognise on the surface it is essentially a rather meaningless act that cannot be transcribed and shared with others.

Frequent walks through the beautiful countryside around Geneva and experiencing the light hitting the canopy above, illuminating the woods in a certain way, have also brought about that same sense of unadulterated joy. I try to savour the uniqueness of such moments that cannot be recorded for posterity (no matter how hard I might try with the camera) and will never be exactly the same again for myself or anyone else. If that isn’t magic then I don’t know what is.Those are just a couple of examples.

I know that what I find magical may be mundane to others and what is wonderful to you may seem woeful to me. But I think the trick to maintaining a sense of wonderment, whatever this means to you, is just to be open to it and to appreciate it when it arrives, without drowning it in over-analysis or crushing it in a too-tight embrace.

If in twelve months I write a post about wonder being dead then we’ll know those other authors were right, but in the meantime I’ll press on in the belief that magic is and always will be all around me. Maybe that makes me a fool, but I’ll take a pinch of naivety over a bucket of cynicism any day.

The fight against fear

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In the light of the atrocious attack at the office of Parisian satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on 7 January, where twelve died and others were seriously injured, I have been thinking about fear quite a lot.

All of us have different things we are afraid of, though I acknowledge that I have the luxury to be afraid of lesser things, like falling off my bike or not having enough money to buy lunch as often as I might like. My fears are a world apart from those of someone living in a war zone or receiving death threats for their work.

The journalists at Charlie Hebdo knew their lives were in danger but didn’t let fear of this prevent them from continuing their work and expressing their commitment to freedom of expression. Tragically these fears were realised when armed gunmen stormed their building and took the lives of so many, devastating the lives of even more.

I have been thinking about what it was these violent fundamentalists feared so much about that magazine that they felt compelled to carry out this attack. Yes, the magazine was well known for its frequent displays of irreverence, irreligiousness and indecency but if those killers were so sure of their faith why should something they found offensive frighten them so much?

I have also thought about the fear that those who lost their lives and those who survived must have felt as the attack took place. I thought of Stephane Charbonnier, editor of Charlie Hebdo, and the interview he gave to Le Monde in 2012 where, when questioned about death threats he’d received, said ‘I am not afraid of retaliation, I have no kids, no wife, no car, no credit. It perhaps sounds a bit pompous, but I prefer to die standing than living on my knees.’

Whilst it isn’t necessarily the case that these murders were orchestrated by a well-known terrorist outfit this was an act of terrorism, designed to bring people to their knees by instilling an overwhelming sense of fear.

Of course people are frightened by what happened, that’s a perfectly natural and shameless response. Yet in spite of this, support for the murdered cartoonists and others has been overwhelming. Yesterday evening, even though the fanatics who perpetrated this act were still at large with their deadly weapons and deadlier mindsets, thousands of people did not let fear prevent them from coming together to express their solidarity with those killed at Charlie Hebdo and affirm their commitment to the principles that publication upheld.

What frightens me most about acts such as these is that some noxious groups and individuals would take the seed of fear sown by these unwarranted attacks and intensify this into a frenzy of terror that would enable political parties to increase racial and religious prejudice and to curb the rights of their citizens*. Whether deliberately or not, they try to achieve what the terrorists have yet failed to do and bring us to our knees.

And recently, across Europe, there has been a large swing of voters to far-right-wing parties and increasing evidence of intolerance to others. There has been an increase in active support for anti-Islam groups in Europe for those too lazy to take the time to acknowledge that not all Muslims are terrorists. However there are also people, like those at Charlie Hebdo, who wont give into this acceptance of intolerance and hatred. For every anti-Islam or National Front march there are usually a sizable bunch of counter-protestors.

It is easy to look at the world around us and despair at the acts of violence and evil that are committed across the globe, to smaller and larger scales, on a daily basis. It is easy to look at the faces of strangers and find ourselves questioning whether or not they pose a threat to us. It is easy to give in to the fear that these acts of hate strive to generate and scaremongers muster for their own ends.

What is remarkable is that most of us chose not to. That in times of tragedy people gather together to share their candles and overcome the darkness. The global reaction to what happened has, on the whole, been a wonderful show of resilience and love in the face of evil. It has been a positive reinforcement that people are essentially decent and will not stand for such acts of violence against individuals and against principles that they hold dear.

Hate is ugly but rather than allowing the fear it engenders to breed it into something insurmountable it’s much more effectively held at bay with love and with laughter.

“I love you so, I have no time to hate
Even those wolves without. The great winds move
All their dark batteries to our fragile gate:
The world is very strong, but love is stronger.”

To Olive V – Lord Alfred Douglas

*UK Conservative David Davies MP has claimed that the Paris attacks call for repealing the Human Rights Act

Resolving on a great 2015

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“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.” – Abraham Lincoln

So 2014 has drawn to a close and 2015 has begun! With the marking of another year’s passing there is a medley of resolutions to be made.

Generally, I want to improve my health. Specifically, I’d like to run a half marathon this year, not really because I think I’d enjoy running 22km but more because I think I’d enjoy telling people I’ve done this and because my best friend did one last year and I don’t want to be outdone! I also want to commit to ice-skating on a weekly basis (whilst the rink is open), to be able to stop without crashing into the sides and to be able to skate backwards.

This year I’m also going to work on the long-standing goal of being able to converse easily in another language, an aspiration that has become a tad more pressing since moving to a predominantly French speaking part of the world and realising my existing language skills are really sub-standard. By the end of 2015 I hope to be confident chatting to strangers in the language.

Finally I am resolved to start actually working on one of those books I’ve always wanted to write, to start undertaking some research, come up with character briefs and a developed plot outline and maybe even start writing it.

So there we go, my resolutions for 2015. As I’ve publicly shared them with you all do feel free to give me a nudge every now and then to remind me about these.

I love making New Year’s resolutions because I think it’s good to put a bit of pressure on myself at the start of each year to strive to do just a little bit better. I make resolutions every year, some I’ve kept and some I haven’t, a lot of them I can’t even remember.

From experience I’ve learnt that the more general the resolution (i.e. be healthy) the less likely I am to achieve that so I hope the specific goals I’ve set will be enough of a challenge to push myself a bit harder in certain areas but not so unobtainable as to be doomed to failure. If I tried to simply cut out a bad habit completely, i.e. consumption of chocolate, the chances are I’d smugly manage one or two days and then thoughts of the chocolate I’ve banned myself from ever having again will infiltrate every waking moment until I cannot take anymore and give in to a chocolate binge of Peter Jacksonesque epic proportions! Approaching my resolutions as goals to be achieved by the end of the year rather than behaviours to be instantly changed from 00:01, 1 January takes the pressure off a bit.

A lot of people are dismissive of New Year’s resolutions and I can understand why when we tend to make and break the same resolutions every year but nonetheless I think there’s something admirable in the whole process.

Whilst I think you can make life-changing decisions at any time of the year I think that New Year’s resolutions provide a natural kick-start to the process of self-improvement. There is something fresh and optimistic about the start of a new year, the closing of one year and looming blank canvas of the next. It’s the perfect time to take stock of where we are, to identify any aspects of our lives we might like to see changes in and to think about how we can attain these.

This year was a pretty eventful one for me. In trying to realise my career ambitions I moved country to start a new job and life abroad, away from family and friends. Thankfully my fiancé and cats have been able to share in the adventure with me, although granted the cats didn’t have much of a say in the matter. I’ve tried a number of new things (shooting, rope climbing, running 10km, book-club and ice-skating to name a few) and I’ve met a staggering number of amazing people. Was I expecting any of that at the start of 2014? Not at all. So it’s exciting to think what sort of things 2015 might have in store for me that I can’t even imagine yet.

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This year I had a really great Christmas with friends I didn’t even know last year and rounded 2014 off with a memorable night out on New Year’s Eve which was everything I could have hoped for and really ended the year with a bang (and not just from the fireworks).

Sadly the first day of 2015 wasn’t the optimistic start that I’d hoped for as we received the sad news that my fiancé’s grandfather had died. Whilst his passing wasn’t wholly unexpected, given his age and several underlying health problems, that didn’t make the news any less shocking or upsetting. The loss of this lovable rogue, who I will always remember with a smile on his lips and mischievous twinkle in his eye, has certainly taken the edge off my unbridled hopefulness for 2015 but it has also caused me to take stock of what, and who, really matters.

I remain optimistic for the year ahead and committed to my resolutions but I am more grateful than ever to have the love and support of a number of wonderful people in my life, who I know will make the realising of my personal aspirations that much easier. Whilst it feels good to be able to reel off a list of achievements each year my greatest ongoing resolution is to be the kind of person that can provide similar levels of love and encouragement to those I care about. Although if I can become a proficient skater in the process then so much the better.