Ylliks

At the end of next week I’ll be off for a trip around the Yukatan in Mexico. I’m of course excited about the prospect of spending time there and seeing the Mayan cultural sites, but the fact that I don’t speak Spanish makes interacting with the locals a bit of a problem. That’s why I decided 3 weeks ago that it was time to learn the language as fast as I could. Or at least as much so I could converse with people.

To give you a bit of a background I now speak 3 languages well (my native Dutch, English and German) and a little bit of French. That knowledge has helped me on earlier travels, but since I’m now going to a part of the world where Spanish is the main language I do not have a real fallback when it comes to communicating. I looked at different courses, but the traditional ones don’t offer much because even with an increased learning speed it will take you several months to learn the language.

Then I remembered reading an article by Tim Ferriss on how he learns languages quickly. As he mentions in the article it’s not so much about mastering the language but knowing enough about it to put it to good use. So I put his methods to the test to find out if it would work for me.

Pretty soon I started to understand what was being written (Engadget Espanol helped me with that one). When it comes to actually understanding to what is said (I watched some football and basketball with Spanish commentary) it’s another matter. Maybe it’s because of the difference in phonetics or the fast speed with which they speak but I was able to understand maybe 5-10% of what was being said.

Despite that fact I’m pretty impressed with how his method worked. I’m sure that if I have time to put in a little more effort to perfecting my way of working it (which sadly will be after my holiday) I’ll be able to get the hang of it. For now I’m just happy with the way I understand some thing and I’ll just ask them to slow down a bit when they go to fast. And if all else fails: a friend who will join me is an interpreter so he can do the talking for me.

As I said in my last post I find it hard to find inspiration for a weekly blog post. One of the reasons why is the fact that I don’t have a real incentive to write every week. When I do have incentive (for instance when it’s work-related) I usually don’t have that much trouble. So in order to see if inspiration strikes when I have an incentive to write I will have a little experiment next week: I will write a post every day monday to friday of next week.

In order for this to be a bit of a challenge I’ve set up a few rules:

1. Articles have to be at least 300 words: This would stop me from writing a sort of tweet and consider it a post.
2. No writing on how hard this experiment is: So no post about “I have no inspiration today/I find it hard to write today” etc. etc. No, these posts should have a subject not related to the experiment.
3. No multi-parters: It would easier to find one subject and talk about it over a multi post spread. Nothing of the kind.

I know these are not the strictest of rules, but I think they well be quite a challenge for me as it is. If readers of this article have suggestions for other rules (open to interpretation from me of course) you’re welcome to add them in the comments.

I’m wondering how this experiment will work out. To be honest I have no idea. But I’ll soon find out.

About a month and a half ago I stumbled upon a video of Graham Hill and his thoughts on weekday vegetarianism and wrote about it. As mentioned in the post I was seriously considering following that regime for a month to see if it could work for me. So for the month of June I’ve been a weekday vegetarian but with some exceptions. Let me explain.

Of course the main outline was to go completely vegetarian during the week and having the opportunity to eat meat (which I have stated before I love to eat) during the weekends. I added a provision though: if I would find myself in a social setting where eating was involved (say eating out with friends or anything work-related) I would choose at the time. During the month I found myself to be in one of those situations about once each week. And I have to say that I chose the meat option on every one of those occasions (did I mention that I love meat). So all in all I was completely vegetarian for about 4 out of 5 weekdays (with 2 out of 3 meals on the other days being vegetarian as well).

So what did I eat? Well, same as in my first experiment with being a vegetarian I would eat soy based replacements. I also started to eat fruit in stead of bread in the morning. As for dinner I just experimented with vegetarian dishes (some came out better than others). I think this has helped to improve my eating habits towards an even healthier diet and I even lost a fair bit of weight (although, to be honest, that could also have to do with my increased exercise regime).

I have to admit that changing from just a Meatless Monday to weekday vegetarianism was an easy step. As stated before, I will never give up meat entirely (with this lifestyle though, it seems I enjoy eating meat even more) but with the apparent advantages it has I will keep on living the weekday vegetarian lifestyle for the foreseeable future.

I like to eat meat. Let me rephrase that: I love to eat meat. I haven’t met a piece of meat that when prepared well I won’t eat. So the decision I made to try and be a vegetarian for a week felt a little strange. It’s not that I suddenly hate the meat producing industry or refuse to eat meat. I decided to do this because I try to lower my carbon footprint (and producing meat does tax the environment quite a bit) and I was curious if there were ways of doing it without compromising my eating habits too much. So how did it go?

As for replacing the meat I have to tell you surprisingly well. All it really took was cutting the meat out of my daily eating habits and just replace it with something different (it helps if your eating habits are fairly healthy to begin with and not based on say fast food). For breakfast and lunch I would replace the meat on my sandwiches with cheese, jam or soy based meat replacements (which nowadays taste a whole lot better than the ones I tried a few years ago). For diner I just tried out a few vegetarian dishes (some I’d tried before) or again replaced the meat with soy based meat replacements.

And as stated the taste of the substitutes was surprisingly well. That didn’t take away the fact that for me the dishes would be better if it would’ve contained meat. It’s not that the spaghetti with soy based meatballs tasted bad; it’s just I think it’s better when the meatballs are really meatballs. And that’s all a matter of taste I’m sure.

It wasn’t difficult to change to an all vegetarian diet nor did it produce awful or tasteless food. It went well enough and because I also read more about the advantages of being a vegetarian and cutting down on my meat consumption, I’ve decided to join the Meatless Monday movement and from now on make my mondays meat-free. That way I’m helping to reduce my carbon footprint while I still can enjoy something I love to eat the rest of the week.