Our neighbour is our window into the rich men's world. Their home cooked food is our restaurant fare, their parties our Food Fest. I finally undestand why one of my girlfriends can go around declaring she's a taitai wannabe. She's one with foresight. Can you be faulted for wanting to live a life like that? Or put another way, can your be faulted for not wanting to live a life of complaining about rising food prices, haggling over the price of fish, eating leftovers three meals a day, walking a few km to buy that one item on sale at Shop&Save because it's a few cents more expensive at ntuc?
I thought of how commonly people will bring up the plight of the African kids and go into diatribe about food wasting, lavish living etc. Sour grapes argument aside, I feel that it's natural for human beings to want better for themselves. If you are rich and successful, why would you want to scrimp and be hard on yourself. Remember the story of Scrooge?
Recently I started working and I realised that it's actually essential and beneficial to reward oneself. You need not eat lavishly for all three meals a day, but neither need you eat poorly for all three meals. Out of three meals, one hearty meal will give you enough oomph for the day. It's a little like the Joy Luck Club where the ladies celebrate with their "luxurious" food items during the war. I want to feel that I'm lucky too. S. Levitt rightly identified in Freakonomics that everyone is driven by incentives and perks. I'm not wasting food, I'm just incentivising myself so that I can go further.
You can be symphathatic towards the Third World plight too if you're rich. In fact, you can be more symphathatic because you're in a better person to help them. See those rich taitai clubs? You can still live a relatively good life after approportioning a part of your wealth to help others. Of course you can always do more, if you give up that buffet at Meritus Mandarin you can feed 100 more kids, but I don't have the aptitude or inclination to become a missionary. From the bottom of my heart, I want to better the lives of a few others, but I'm not looking to be Father/Mother of Africa. There's just so much that you can do.
Besides reinstilling in me the motivation to work hard, my neighbours' galavanting ways have also put me back in perspective about my cooking skills. I always thought being able to cook homemade dishes put me a teeny-weeny notch higher than my peers who cannot. But when I saw my neighbours homemade dishes, my first instinct was to take out my camera and snap away. Only then did I realise how "country" I was =/
To my neighbours for their 'enlightening' meal.~
I thought of how commonly people will bring up the plight of the African kids and go into diatribe about food wasting, lavish living etc. Sour grapes argument aside, I feel that it's natural for human beings to want better for themselves. If you are rich and successful, why would you want to scrimp and be hard on yourself. Remember the story of Scrooge?
Recently I started working and I realised that it's actually essential and beneficial to reward oneself. You need not eat lavishly for all three meals a day, but neither need you eat poorly for all three meals. Out of three meals, one hearty meal will give you enough oomph for the day. It's a little like the Joy Luck Club where the ladies celebrate with their "luxurious" food items during the war. I want to feel that I'm lucky too. S. Levitt rightly identified in Freakonomics that everyone is driven by incentives and perks. I'm not wasting food, I'm just incentivising myself so that I can go further.
You can be symphathatic towards the Third World plight too if you're rich. In fact, you can be more symphathatic because you're in a better person to help them. See those rich taitai clubs? You can still live a relatively good life after approportioning a part of your wealth to help others. Of course you can always do more, if you give up that buffet at Meritus Mandarin you can feed 100 more kids, but I don't have the aptitude or inclination to become a missionary. From the bottom of my heart, I want to better the lives of a few others, but I'm not looking to be Father/Mother of Africa. There's just so much that you can do.
Besides reinstilling in me the motivation to work hard, my neighbours' galavanting ways have also put me back in perspective about my cooking skills. I always thought being able to cook homemade dishes put me a teeny-weeny notch higher than my peers who cannot. But when I saw my neighbours homemade dishes, my first instinct was to take out my camera and snap away. Only then did I realise how "country" I was =/
To my neighbours for their 'enlightening' meal.~
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