to be or not to be

The End

2007-03-08T23:30:00.000+01:00

I decided to discontinue this blog and start writing a new one in german:
www.alphaeus.ch
Maybe, if my time allows it, I will start another tech-blog, but for now check my brand new blog, where I will keep posting about my vegan experience.

Is thai curry vegan?

2007-02-23T20:40:00.000+01:00

My first dilemma.

I was in a hurry, was on the way to Bern with colleagues and we decided to go to the Thai take away. At first I thought that it was a good idea, asian always have something vegan.
After a pretty long queue, I reached the counter and there were four or five menus. Two of them vegetarian, one with egg, which I only saw after I ordered it. I gave it back. The other was thai vegetable curry. I knew that thai curry is done with coconut milk, but what if they added cow milk?
The question was, do I want to ask and risk not to have lunch, or do I prefer to just not ask and assume that there's no cow milk in it. I went for assuming that there's just coconut milk. Am I a hypocrite?

first week

2007-02-20T22:10:00.000+01:00

Well, it's already nearly a week that I'm totally vegan.
There were some difficulties:
I was at a kids carnival party with my son and his mother. We were the only vegans. There was plenty of food - hot dogs, cheesy bread and cakes. The only thing we could eat were potato chips, not really satisfying, but in such a situation ok. The hard thing about though was that our two year old son wanted some cake. His reaction was amazing. He stood in front of the cake knowing, that he shouldn't be eating it (don't ask me how he knew) and looked at us. When we told him, that he shouldn't eat it, he just went on playing with the other kids.
Today I had a difficult day. At the restaurant, the only meal which was vegan was salad. You can imagine yourself that this is not very filling and I was hungry all day. To crown it all I had to buy everything for my sons party this weekend in the grocery store with 1001 million delicious non vegan pastry, chocolate, biscuits, snacks and much more. I was starving, but the non-vegan food wasn't really attracting me much.

Two not so difficult difficulties in my first vegan week is not too bad. Except this two, I was enjoying the week a lot. All the food I ate was great, specially my breakfasts.

Second day

2007-02-16T21:37:00.000+01:00

It's my second vegan day.

My day starts with a rice-chocolate drink, which tastes amazingly well, vegan "croissants", which I get at the organic market. That's a real tasty and nutritive breakfast.
I miss milk-coffees, but I'll get used to it. Björn told me there's soja milk coffee at Starbucks. I definitely have to try one. What a luxury, vegan Starbucks coffee.

People were supportive, even though the most don't understand why I do this to myself. I don't want to start moralizing, that's why I say I just do it for ethical and ecological reasons.

Going vegan

2007-02-14T23:44:00.000+01:00

I decided myself to go vegan. It will be a pretty tough challenge. I already stopped milk (and because of that coffee), which is a first step. I still have some butter and cheese at home, which I will finish and then it will be done.

At workshops abroad I am afraid I can't stick to it (fast-lunch, little choice ...)

I'll keep you informed.

Passpack

2007-02-07T09:10:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Michael, who sent me the link to go2web20.com I found this wonderful tool:

You can save all your passwords in one place, encrypted and safe.

VegSpace

2007-02-03T21:11:00.000+01:00

I just found VegSpace, MySpace for vegans. I liked from the beginning that VegSpace doesn't try to hide that it is a straigth copy of myspace.
Folk looks like straight out of MySpace... but vegan. There's some activity and it will surely grow, as all in all it's really well done. It's easy to use and there's interesting people.

Btw, that's my profile: www.vegspace.com/alphaeus

Restaurants in Zurich

2007-01-25T21:07:00.000+01:00

Last tuesday I ate launch at the Café Zähringer. It's a cooperative which serves organic food and has an alternative touch. They had a vegan plate in the menu, what cheered me up. The food was good, the quality right, only the balsamico, a little bit too much of it. One big complaint though: the smoke! There's no real non-smokers tables, and the whole room is foggy (see yourself).

Some days before that I was at the restaurant SamSeS. I love the name!
A great non-smokers restaurant which serves vegetarian and vegan food. The food is incredibly tasty, a great experience and really vegan-friendly. The guy at the desk knew which plate was vegan, which not, which vegan desserts they had (there were no vegan muffins anymore, what a big pitty!) and was totally friendly.
Thumbs up!!

Holiday

2007-01-19T20:41:00.000+01:00

My holidays started, but I was busy writing a work for the certificate in management which I'm doing at the Open University Business School. The TMA (tutor marked assignement) was about Management Control. I found a circular on the whitehouse website written by Alice M. Rivlin that resumes the topic, applied for government agencies, in a good way (specially II. Establishing Management Controls).
Today I enjoyed my first "holi"day and decided to visit the Hamam What a relaxing experience! I felt new born when I walked out there.
Yoga on monday was also great. So far yoga relaxes my back and gives me a lot of strength. I felt my leg muscles aching the next two days, but I found the right activity for me.

Vegan parenting

2007-01-11T23:04:00.000+01:00

I found this movie on CurrentTV.
I am not really vegan (I am lacto-vegetarian), but I have to admit I was really impressed by this little movie. There's a big vegan restaurant and a vegan pastry chef. There's other families and kids .... Wooow, that's so great.
Somehow I always feel as being the only vegetarian and the only parent who raises his child vegetarian.

A life stripped bare

2007-01-10T13:38:00.000+01:00

I am reading Leo Hickman's "A life stripped bare". He's an english journalist for the guardian and he wrote a book based on his blog and his daily column about how to live an ethical live:
http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/experts/leohickman/0,,,00.html

I try to live an ethical live for some years now. I started being vegetarian, which for me is the most important step to an ethical live (and I disagree totally with Leo in this point, for me you cannot have an ethical live still eating meat).

Anyway, most people don't think about their impact on the ecology (maybe it's better not to think about it). I try to give my best being as ethical as I possibly can.
But there are things which I can't do:
1. Clothing: I can't change to ethical clothing, I like to have stylish clothes, so this wouldn't be feasable.
2. Cosmetics: I'm not able to stop using my deodorant, which might have chemicals and might be really bad for nature. Specially in winter with all the clothing-layers you have to wear, I start stinking and can't afford that in my environment. I tried natural deo-sticks, they really don't work well enough!
All other cosmetics I use are totally natural (and most of them even organic).
3. Traveling: I cannot get used to the idea of not flying anymore. I haven't got a car, I use public transports and my bycicle to go to work and walk a lot. But stop flying, stop enjoying exotic countries and their cultures, that will be really hard and I don't know if I will ever try it.

Other than this I am pretty ethical. I usually don't support multinationals (I don't take medicine, don't drink sodas, buy my food at the organic market ....), save as much water as I can (I don't keep the water on when I clean my teeth!), don't leave electronics on standby and so on.

At www.myfootprint.org you can check how big your ecological footprint is that you leave in this world. My ecological footprint is 4.1, which is also the average of my country (does everybody lie??) and that would mean that 2.3 worlds would be needed if every person in this world would live the same way I do.
How big is your ecological footprint? What could I do to improve?

Yoga

2007-01-09T16:20:00.000+01:00

It's my late birthday present - a yoga course at Sahana, six lessons altogether and yesterday was my first.
After having worked the whole year without holidays, with a tight schedule and nearly no spare time, after starting my Certificate in Management and trying to have a family live, you can imagine that yesterday's lesson alleviated my tension a lot.
It was incredible. I made a few strange positions, which made me feel my muscles and after walking out of the door I felt newly born. My back was totally relaxed and I felt as I would be flying.
I don't want to miss that anymore and I will keep you posted on my next lessons.

Revival

2007-01-09T10:43:00.000+01:00

I am proud to announce, that this is the official revival-day of this blog.

Thanks to Björn who found my long-forgotten blog, I decided to start writing again. Lots of different stories of my life will expect you the next weeks (months, years?).

I will write about my first yoga-course, the start of my business-school (certificate in management at the open university) and my daily experiences.

The Corporation

2006-03-29T21:43:00.000+01:00

I just saw the documentary The Corporation, a movie by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott.

It's an impressing movie, it shows clearly what monsters corporations are and how institutions like this develop.

The most dangerous developements for humanity though is the privatization and patentation of every possible (even living) thing.
Take the privatization of water in Bolivia, Cochabamba, as shown in the movie. They really privatized water, all water in whole Cochabamba. Can you imagine that? So all the water you would use (even rain-water) you would have to pay a tax to a company. This case got known because there was an uprising against it, which ended with a dead demonstrator and the abolition of the law. But there are lots of other countries which the same is happening and no one says anything.

Talking about patentation this movie also shows very clear what horrible actions are undertaken by corporations, which don't have any ethics other than maximizing their profits. Seeds where genetically altered, so that after the harvest, the new seeds can't be planted, because they won't grow. So the farmers have to buy for every sowing new seeds from the company. This is far too expensive for the average third world country farmer, who gets paid just a minimum wage for his crop.

It's very disturbing and alarming, what policies corporations follow to increment their profits. Sadly a culture is coming up, or already came up long time ago, that the only existing reason why companies exist is to gain profits, without visions, ethics and not even products. I also feel that myself in the company I am working in, it's just cost cutting and profits. No vision, no customer satisfaction, not even a long time strategy for retention, just straight, direct profits.

I am sure though that whole populations are getting conscious, that such policies harm us all and all together we will bring ethics and visions back to this corporations (which already is starting to happen!)

Food ... Ayurveda and more....

2006-03-27T14:44:00.000+01:00

It's four weeks ago I started eating ayurveda and fasting with lime-water and honey. I did the fasting when I felt I needed it or had any ache.

My experience couldn't be better. I had dandruff. As I started ayurveda I also put lemon and sesam oil on my head, before washing. I tell you, it worked, it really did. I already tried everything possible, nothing helped, and now, with watching the food, lemon and sesam oil, it worked. I was so glad.

But then as usual, I neglected it and had a very stressy time. So I started eating whatever I could (not ayurveda food) and drinking coffee (with sugar) and so the handruff came back. I reacted instantaneously and started fasting with lime-water and honey and started eating ayurveda only and drinking my dosha tea. It already got much better.

To sum up: ayurveda is really a very healthy way of living. Fasting from time to time is also very good and cleans your body (and mind) very well.

World Water Day

2006-03-24T15:17:00.000+01:00

Wednesday was the World Water day. Shortage, pollution, poor water quality, hygiene, and a lot more was discussed on that day.

I want to turn to another topic, the spiritual side of water.

A pioneer concerning this topic is Dr Masaru Emoto. He discovered a technique of taking images of water just before it's frozen. He then exposed the water to thoughts, words, images and music. Depending on whether the influence that water was exposed to was positive or negative, the cristal which water builds were very different. So when he exposed water to the words "Love and Appreciation" a beautiful cristal developed on the other hand, when he exposed the water to "I'll kill you" the water cristallized in a very ugly way, without even building a cristal.
See yourself: http://www.wellnessgoods.com/messages.asp

More than 50% of our body is water! So imagine how we react, knowing this, if we are exposed to ugly words or images or music. Won't it react the same way? I think it does.

I am trying to be conscious of that and treat myself the best I can. I also try to treat water consciously with love and I usually write on the bottle I am trinking "love and thanks" (even though it looks very strange for people which visit me).

I hope that a lot more people will realize how important water is and how easy it is to do something good for our water.

alphaeus

Mantras

2006-03-23T16:13:00.000+01:00

Mantra is described in wikipedia as a religious syllable or poem, typically from the Sanskrit language.
I differ a bit on this description. Mainly they're religious but they don't have to and it may be from the Sanskrit or in any other language. There are christian mantras (the rosary is a good example), there are muslim mantras (e.g. 99 names of god) there are a lot of jewish mantras and nearly every culture had mantras.

I use mantras to meditate. It helps me clean my mind to get in a state of relaxation and to find myself after a workday. I recite them very differently, depending on my mood. Sometimes I just whisper them, sometimes I sing them, sometimes I just say them loud. At day-time I recite them in my mind, so that I can stop the thinking for a moment.

If you never recited a mantra you can start reciting "Om mani padme hum". I started with this mantra too. It is a very powerfull mantra and you will soon feel the changes in your body if you recite it regularly.

At the moment I recite the gayatri mantra daily, 21 times in the morning and 108 times in the evening. To support the recitation I use a mala. A mala is a rosary with 108 beads. Every mantra you recite you go on one bead.

The list of mantras is nearly infinit. You can also invent your own mantra. The main thing about reciting a mantra is that you have to feel good doing it. Some mantras may suit you some won't. So it is your decision which mantra to take. Some people get the mantra from their guru, which is a very nice present, but you can make a mantra-meditation without having a guru. It's just about doing it and feeling connected to your higher-self.

Feel free to tell me your experiences or ask me a question.

I look forward my evening meditation and recitation of my mantra.

The Beginning

2006-03-21T18:26:00.000+01:00

Everyone knows Shakespeares sentence: To be or not to be that is the question. Did some of you already think about the meaning of it?
No? Well start now, it might really get interesting.
On Wikipedia you will find some explanations to it. A word on suicide? A word on death as a way of not being anymore?
hmmmm ....... is that all?
Supposedly we still exist after death, so we still are, in whatever form. So do you really think that this is meant? I don't.
What does he mean with "to be" then?
For me personally it means the choice of being what we want. So if we decide not to be we are just not conscious of what we are. If we decide to be we decide what we are. Too complicated? The moment you decide who you are, it will be your decision and you will act upon your decision. If you don't decide who you are, you just are influenced by whatever thought might come up or whatever inflence from outside will cause you to act. Got it?
It took me a while to understand that I have to start being what I am to start fullfilling my decisions and start being who I really am. Now I am starting it and try to define who I really am. Come with me on my way of defining me and knowing who I am. I will tell you about it.
alphaeus