Going Vegan.

Life seems to be anything but jumping lately.. In fact, I'm so bored there hasn't been a day that I didn't wish to be whisked away to some place more exciting. But my blog badly needs an update, so I thought I should write some of the stuff that's keeping me busy (Ok, I know that there are so many important issues that are far more worthy to put my two cents in, however, I want to keep this blog as personal as possible)..

Weeks back, I enrolled in a vegetarian cooking class. Before you start rolling your eyes on me (esp. those who know how much I love eating meat), let me say that I'm not a convert, and I still enjoy a big, fat, juicy steak without feeling any guilt whatsoever... So what the hell am I doing in a place that shuns those? Well, my mom was recently diagnosed to have type 2 diabetes, and part of managing her illness is becoming vegan. At age 57, she barely tips the scale at 93 lbs. But even with her reed thin figure, she has to go on a strict low-fat, low-sodium, low-cholesterol, and sugar-free diet, which basically means she can't eat anything besides vegetables and some fruits. Because of this inhumane, almost torture-like diet, her weight plummeted to 89 lbs. She has become dangerously thin that sometimes, I wanna force-feed her some cheeseburger and milk loaded with butterfat. So I asked her to enrol in a cooking class, so she could start whipping up things more edible than chopped raw veggies and stir-fried tofu to eat. Turns out she wasn't too psyched to go to class with her age, and so she asked me to fill in for her. I love to cook, and I love learning new things, so I thought it couldn't be that bad, besides I'm also trying to lose weight, and this might be the perfect chance to start eating healthy. The first day of the 4-week long class was a blast. I got to meet new people and stuff.. But as the lecture progressed to the theoretical part, it turned into a snoozefest. There's something about the teacher's raspy, almost humming voice that makes me yearn for a pillow more than anything. She probably recognizes me as the girl who keeps on yawning. I can't help it, as soon as I see her face, I start to yawn uncontrollably. Sometimes, it gets to a point where I get tempted to record her voice to help me sleep at night. Her class reminds me of "Ibong Adarna", and how the son of the King struggled to stay awake so he wouldn't turn into a stone figure. Instead of cutting my palm and pouring calamansi all over it, I take down notes so I wouldn't fall asleep by accident, it also keeps me from chatting with my seatmate who is really nice by the way. Her name is Nasha, a dietician, and a semi-vegan by choice (she still consumes eggs and dairy products, mostly from pastries and coffee)

Going to this vegan cooking class made me realize two things; one, I can't stand the smell/taste of Hoisin sauce (I'm more than surprised to know that there is a vegetarian counterpart for almost anything!), and two, soy milk gives me a bad case of stomach ache, which is weird cause I've never experienced getting a stomach ache from drinking milk, be it skim, whole, or half-and-half. But of course, it also resulted to good things which I'm really thankful for. I'm not sure if I should give it the entire credit for losing two inches off my waist (cause I've been religiously working out as well), but it surely helped a lot. More importantly, it brought me to meet and be friends with two wonderful, and very interesting people. One is Nasha (which I've mentioned quite a few times earlier), and the other is Renan. He's an advocate of PETA, and it's really interesting to hear his opinion as to why we shouldn't eat animals. He sounds like an over-zealous religious extremist whenever he does that, but I don't mind cause he's a genuinely nice guy (or operatively, a proud gay). Even he speaks of feminist theories and philosophies, he never bashed me when I gave negative comments on Katrina's well-orchestrated tears, and things that would normally trigger violent reactions from people who support her.

I owe it to these two people.. They take a couple of hours out of my incredibly boring week. And if not for their contagious sense of humor, wits, and interesting beliefs, I would've surely quit after the third class.