I know the date. Monday 2nd of August 2010 was the last day I consumed a piece of flesh (Sunday 10th October 2010 when I went vegan). Two years and 9 months later I found myself at the beginning of May 2013 discussing food with my wife. She is pregnant. And she was craving for eggs and sour cream (hapukoor in Estonian). We discussed cravings and I reiterated that I had, since going vegetarian for good, a craving for pudding (black; also known as blood sausage). Since it is strange to have a craving a few months shy of 3 years! (tastebuds change after 20-30 days of a change in diet) she suggested that I get myself some pudding. I was a little unsure but in the end I did.
In Estonia they have a sausage known as verivorst 'blood sausage' (veri gen. of vere 'blood' and vorst 'sausage' [cf. Ger. Wurst]) but that normally contains a relatively high percentage of pork, which is not common for Irish black pudding, which is mostly made of blood and oatmeal. I certainly wasn't going to buy a pork-based product. But I also stumbled across the product of verikäkk (käkk 'large dumpling'; the verb käkkima 'to make into a dumpling/ball, to ball' exists in Eastern dialects.). It was both a new product and a new word for me. I had never heard the word käkk before. So I bought it, with a mixture of reluctance and curiosity, after I found out it was just blood and flour.
On getting home and frying a few pieces for a sandwich my wife informed me that I wouldn't like it after over two and a half years on a vegan diet I would have lost the liking for blood. I don't know what was more upsetting, the fact that I was eating black pudding sandwiches as a vegan or that I LIKED it. Yes, I actually was enjoyed the taste, savouring every bite (though that shouldn't be that surprising really as I didn't go vegan because I didn't like the taste or the feel of flesh - I went for health reasons and stayed for ethical and environmental reasons).
My enjoyment of the verikäkk began a 5-day period in which I ate pudding, 3 milk chocolate bars (one each of Tupla, Snickers and Milka) and an omelette.
I felt shame, deep upset, disgust. But I also enjoyed the taste of the blood and eggs. To be honest the milk chocolate was too sweet for me, though I loved the mouthfeel that the eggs, Tupla and the Snickers gave.
Now we buy two bags of hapukoor a week and 10 eco-eggs a fortnight, the sour cream for the wife and the eggs for both of us. Boiled egg sandwiches were amazing to have after such a long hiatus.
I guess eating eggs, even if they are eco eggs, makes me no longer a vegan. I don't know how I should feel about this. I want to support my wife when she is pregnant by buying her eco eggs and hapukoor. I also feel like eating those eco eggs when they are there. The label of vegan was very important to me in my first year of being a vegan. However, as time passed and eating vegan became totally natural for me, an act I no longer had to think about, the label held less and less meaning. I got tired of the animal activism (though I still support much of it) and disillusioned with society in all its nonveganism. I got tired of the fighting just to get a bite to eat and a sup to drink (cafés with only salads with flesh and/or cheese, Starbucks charging 60c extra for soya milk in Ireland, not being able to easily get a soya latte in Tallinn, vegetarian restaurants saying they don't offer vegan dishes.....)
Now I am not saying I am going back to eating flesh and dairy. What I am saying however is that on balance I think it's okay for me to have a few eco eggs a week (eggs that come from an actual family farm in Harjumaa on which the handful of hens live in wooden coops in open pens and are fed meal organically grown on the farm itself) and still maintain the shorthand (if not the label) vegan.
Maybe I am weak. Or maybe I am just practical. That might be for others to decide, whether I am too hard on myself or not hard enough. Estonia is so backward when it comes to vegan options. I could only wonder how I would have acted if I were in Helsinki, never mind in Sydney, New York or California, where there are even vegetarian supermarkets and raw-vegan restaurants.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Saturday, March 30, 2013
shokolaad ei ole toit
In line at Rimi, paying for two bottles of Saku Radler (2% Saku with lemon juice), a bar of Kalev chocolate and a pack of chewing gum and this homeless man (matted hair, muddy clothes, paying for 2 lt. bottle of cheapest beer with coupons) turns to me having looked at my purchases and says:
Šokolaad ei ole toit.
Chocolate is not food.
With my wife on the number 24 heading home from Kristiine Keskus, somewhere around Lepistiku stop and this woman in her mid to late 60s starts laughing.
Eva and I had been out getting flowers to gift to her mother for her birthday and also a voucher for M&S, and before we left the centre we picked up some shopping including toilet paper.
The woman points to us and is like Heheh! lilled ja vetsu paber, väga praktiline!, lilled ja heh heh! vetsu paber, kingitusiks! heh heh!
Haha! flowers and toilet paper, very practical!, flowers and haha! toilet paper, as presents! haha!
WC (pronounced veetsee [vaytsay] in Estonian) is the common way to mark a toilet door in Estonia; Käis vetsus 's/he went to the toilet'.
What is with all the crazies?
Šokolaad ei ole toit.
Chocolate is not food.
With my wife on the number 24 heading home from Kristiine Keskus, somewhere around Lepistiku stop and this woman in her mid to late 60s starts laughing.
Eva and I had been out getting flowers to gift to her mother for her birthday and also a voucher for M&S, and before we left the centre we picked up some shopping including toilet paper.
The woman points to us and is like Heheh! lilled ja vetsu paber, väga praktiline!, lilled ja heh heh! vetsu paber, kingitusiks! heh heh!
Haha! flowers and toilet paper, very practical!, flowers and haha! toilet paper, as presents! haha!
WC (pronounced veetsee [vaytsay] in Estonian) is the common way to mark a toilet door in Estonia; Käis vetsus 's/he went to the toilet'.
What is with all the crazies?
Monday, March 25, 2013
B1 Estonian exam
I passed!
My result? I got 90% overall: 23/25 for writing, 23/25 for listening, 25/25 for reading and 19/25 for speaking. I was hoping to get 80% overall but I am delighted with 90%, especially to score so high in writing, reading and listening. However, my speaking is a sad state of affairs in comparison. It would have been nice to get at least 21 pts. out of 25, but oh well...
More speaking practice me thinks!
Detailed discussion of the exam here.
My result? I got 90% overall: 23/25 for writing, 23/25 for listening, 25/25 for reading and 19/25 for speaking. I was hoping to get 80% overall but I am delighted with 90%, especially to score so high in writing, reading and listening. However, my speaking is a sad state of affairs in comparison. It would have been nice to get at least 21 pts. out of 25, but oh well...
More speaking practice me thinks!
Detailed discussion of the exam here.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
genki
My wife is constantly telling me that she needs to improve her Estonian, that she feels she has lost native-Estonian idiomaticity in her writing in Estonian. She's a scientist and has often to write posters, papers and give presentations. Now she is starting to give lecturers to undergrads. We have lived together for over four years and she has spoken English to me nearly every day for over 7. Her English has remarkedly improved during that time. It was excellent before but the last few years have given it that extra polish, which combined with an Irish-ish accent fools many Irish people into asking 'Where is it in Ireland that you are from?'
But her Estonian...her chemistry mentors have commented that her written technical Estonian is too Englishy. Her mother comments that she does not read enough in Estonian. A not unusual present is a big thick book in puhas eesti keel *.
I have written before on the topic of my native language and whether I felt/ thought I had one. The truth of the matter really is though that I am having difficulty writing in a style that would be considered native. After 4 years of teaching and proofreading the work of others I have become influenced by Estonianized English - over and over again seeing the same mistakes (a hearing them too in the speech of others) has normalized them. I used to be able to express complex concepts in an equally complex way. Now I find myself writing bland short sentences that over-utilise basic vocabulary. Maybe it is also a consequence of writing for a scientific/ academic audience who speaks English as a foreign language - I was constantly being told by editors that my sentences were too long and, therefore, confusing.
In an admission of shame, just a couple of weeks I found, to my horror, producing buyed as the past simple of buy in I can't remember where I buyed it. A while back I told my wife Don't hang up it in response to her hanging up some clothes on a door.
I feel like my English is threadbare and tired, shabby and sad like an flag hung out for far too long, its ends unravelling.
Why genki as the title of this post? Such was the answer recently to wife asking 'How'r things?' Seriously? My wife is prone to peppering her speech with Japanese, particularly in the evening when she is making vegan sushi or okonomiyaki whilst watching anime. I have used Japanese in the past in a joke-y way, a na ni?! here and an ohaiyou there (in the afternoon when it's not appropriate) but it has never been automatic and never accompanied with a serious tone of voice. What surprised me was that it just slipped out without me consciously wanting it to do so.
Maybe I need to read more quality English, not just the professional blogging that qualifies as journalism these days - real, quality English. A novel, a classic. I am trying to remember the last book I loved and read from cover to cover, not just skipped in and out in the first chapter, my thoughts stolen away to the book of Japanese morphosyntax on my nightstand or Estonian textbook on my desk (presently the living room/ kitchen table as the spare room is a mess). They say the key to being a decent riter is to be an avid wreader. Perhaps it's time to get my nose into a good book.
* 'pure Estonian' (evidently (?) used here ironically)
But her Estonian...her chemistry mentors have commented that her written technical Estonian is too Englishy. Her mother comments that she does not read enough in Estonian. A not unusual present is a big thick book in puhas eesti keel *.
I have written before on the topic of my native language and whether I felt/ thought I had one. The truth of the matter really is though that I am having difficulty writing in a style that would be considered native. After 4 years of teaching and proofreading the work of others I have become influenced by Estonianized English - over and over again seeing the same mistakes (a hearing them too in the speech of others) has normalized them. I used to be able to express complex concepts in an equally complex way. Now I find myself writing bland short sentences that over-utilise basic vocabulary. Maybe it is also a consequence of writing for a scientific/ academic audience who speaks English as a foreign language - I was constantly being told by editors that my sentences were too long and, therefore, confusing.
In an admission of shame, just a couple of weeks I found, to my horror, producing buyed as the past simple of buy in I can't remember where I buyed it. A while back I told my wife Don't hang up it in response to her hanging up some clothes on a door.
I feel like my English is threadbare and tired, shabby and sad like an flag hung out for far too long, its ends unravelling.
Why genki as the title of this post? Such was the answer recently to wife asking 'How'r things?' Seriously? My wife is prone to peppering her speech with Japanese, particularly in the evening when she is making vegan sushi or okonomiyaki whilst watching anime. I have used Japanese in the past in a joke-y way, a na ni?! here and an ohaiyou there (in the afternoon when it's not appropriate) but it has never been automatic and never accompanied with a serious tone of voice. What surprised me was that it just slipped out without me consciously wanting it to do so.
Maybe I need to read more quality English, not just the professional blogging that qualifies as journalism these days - real, quality English. A novel, a classic. I am trying to remember the last book I loved and read from cover to cover, not just skipped in and out in the first chapter, my thoughts stolen away to the book of Japanese morphosyntax on my nightstand or Estonian textbook on my desk (presently the living room/ kitchen table as the spare room is a mess). They say the key to being a decent riter is to be an avid wreader. Perhaps it's time to get my nose into a good book.
* 'pure Estonian' (evidently (?) used here ironically)
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
exams and other news
So on Monday I had my Lithuanian exam for my beginner's A1 class. Some sections were tough, especially the oral and writing sections. It was easy to understand the teacher's questions in the oral but I found it very difficult to get my thoughts out and use all the correct cases without the luxury of time to think. The problem I had with the written section was that much of what I would have liked to have said (we had to write a reply to a letter) was already written in the original text.
That said, I managed a score of 90/100! So I am very happy with that :-).
I think I will continue with the Lithuanian, taking Lithuanian A2.1. However I have signed up for Estonian B1.2. in the university and I take the B1 state exam on the 17th of February.
I of course also have my teaching and my research with doctoral seminar, a class in cognitive linguistics, my book chapter coming out and an applied linguistics conference in Tallinn in April and one in Vilnius in October. It will be a busy start to 2013.
That said, I managed a score of 90/100! So I am very happy with that :-).
I think I will continue with the Lithuanian, taking Lithuanian A2.1. However I have signed up for Estonian B1.2. in the university and I take the B1 state exam on the 17th of February.
I of course also have my teaching and my research with doctoral seminar, a class in cognitive linguistics, my book chapter coming out and an applied linguistics conference in Tallinn in April and one in Vilnius in October. It will be a busy start to 2013.