{"@context":{"rdf":"http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#","rdfs":"http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#","owl":"http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#","foaf":"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/","dc":"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/","dct":"http://purl.org/dc/terms/","sioc":"http://rdfs.org/sioc/types#","blog":"http://vocab.amy.so/blog#","as":"https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#","mf2":"http://microformats.org/profile/","ldp":"http://www.w3.org/ns/ldp#","solid":"http://www.w3.org/ns/solid#","view":"https://terms.rhiaro.co.uk/view#","asext":"https://terms.rhiaro.co.uk/as#","dbp":"http://dbpedia.org/property/","geo":"http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#","doap":"http://usefulinc.com/ns/doap#","time":"http://www.w3.org/2006/time#"},"@graph":[{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2018/12/sarajevo","@type":"as:Note","as:content":"
Cold, but would have been a beautiful day for a walk by the river in Sarajevo today. BUT THE SMOG.
I walked an hour by the river anyway, to go to the new vegan cafe. It was closed.
*splutters and dies*
","as:published":{"@type":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime","@value":"2018-11-27T17:44:00+01:00"},"as:tag":[{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/life"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/travel"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/sarajevo"}]},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2018/12/week-in-review","@type":"as:Article","as:content":"Rarely do I see a tweet so relevant to my interests. In my professional opinion, the Tesco Yeast Extract is the *perfect* middle ground between Vegemite and Marmite, I was very impressed. And it's cheaper. Vegemite is better than Marmite.
","as:inReplyTo":{"@id":"https://mobile.twitter.com/karenblakeman/status/1069914714275221504"},"as:published":{"@type":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime","@value":"2018-12-04T12:41:00+01:00"},"as:tag":[{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/food"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegemite"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/marmite"}]},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/02/ferry","@type":"as:Note","as:content":"Bought dinner and breakfast on this ferry. Living the INDULGENT life.
(by which I mean, I didn't bring enough food and paid a lot of money for some slightly aged fruit this morning.. but still, the coffee is good)
","as:published":{"@type":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime","@value":"2019-02-25T09:15:00+01:00"},"as:tag":[{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/travel"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/food"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/ferry"}]},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/05/harare","@type":"as:Article","as:content":"My travel plans and no-fly rule took an unexpected turn this month when I decided to visit Elizabeth in Zimbabwe. Having spent the last two years begging friends and family to take advantage of my various temporary residences in Europe, I was sympathetic to her plight of struggling to persuade people to visit in Southern Africa. I try to put into the world the energy I'd like out, so I tracked down return flights from Vienna for less than $500 with Ethiopian Airlines. I also really wanted to hug Elizabeth.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIn Zimbabwe, it is sunny every day. I was there at the start of winter. The sky was consistently brilliant blue, and the temperature was mostly in the late 20s Celsius. The climate is basically vacation-perfect. Never raining does not bode well for the crops though, and even though the temperature was good on paper the sun felt hotter and closer and more vicious than I've ever felt it anywhere before.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nHarare is a super green city, with lots of trees, bushes and maize or millet fields filling the wide open spaces between roads and blocks of buildings. Often the maize was looking dead and dried up, while decorative plants in public spaces or peoples' gardens are alive and well. Roads are concrete or dirt, scattered with enormous potholes in both cases. I was frequently a passenger in cars that needed to steer all the way around a hole rather than dipping into it or going over. The CBD is fairly built up, with some tall office buildings and malls, although I only passed through in the car a couple of times. Most of my time was spent taxiing between little pockets of reasonably well maintained commercial areas in the various suburbs. The self-enclosed bubbles of shops and cafes, supermarkets and cinemas, which depend on cars to travel between reminded me a lot of the US.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\nIt seemed like the other form restaurants and bars took were as stand alone properties in what felt like residential buildings in the more upscale residential areas. Many have lots of outside seating, surrounded by trees and statues and generally pleasant environs. In the northern half of the city houses are pretty big, with gardens, balconies, sometimes pools; massive driveways and huge security gates, often with guardhouses. I dropped by the homes of a few of Elizabeth's friends while I was there, and whether local or expat they were all preeeetty fancy.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOn the other hand, there's an ongoing energy crisis which affects all areas of the city. Whole neighbourhoods have scheduled power outages for load-shedding, which is documented on a website but not always reliably. While I was there, Elizabeth's power went out for three days straight, unscheduled. When visiting a friend's to charge my laptop, their power went out too one day. Fortunately they had a generator. The lack of electricity is, I believe, due to a combination of fuel imports being from Mozambique (recently hit by a devastating cyclone), lack of money and corruption and inefficiencies in the government.
\r\n\r\nEveryone is similarly affected by the fuel crisis. Fuel queues were pointed out to me often; people line up in their cars for hours at a petrol station when they hear it has fuel. One friend queued for 3 hours only to find they'd ran out by the time she got to the front of the line. There are some stations which only accept payment in USD (not Ecocash) so if you have enough of that you have a better chance of filling up, with less of a wait. Obviously this benefits foreigners, people who work for embassies, and those recently arrived with a fresh batch of cash. One day on the radio I heard that the country had petrol for a month and diesel for 23 days.
\r\n\r\nGroceries and household goods are not cheap. Things like cosmetics and furnishings are particularly expensive.
\r\n\r\nThere's relatively little light pollution at night - especially if you're in a neighbourhood with a power outage. So there were plenty of stars and an often brilliant moon to gaze at.
\r\n\r\nOn both Sundays I joined Elizabeth, Sarah and Andrew at church. It was a totally different church experience to the cold, formal, boring CofE affairs that had been imposed upon me by my schools as a child. There was lots of singing and dancing, but also a slightly unnerving occasion of laying of hands, and the messages conveyed by the sermons were definitely at odds with things that make sense to me from Buddhist philosophy. The theme of the month had been fathers, and some members of the congregation across a range of ages gave very moving, funny, and heartfelt stories of the ups and downs of their paternal relationships.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nZimbabwean food mostly consists of sadza, an enormously filling cereal (maize) mush that definitely expands in your stomach after you've already eaten too much, with greens (rape/canola) and beans, usually accompanied with a meat stew, chicken or fish.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nYou can read about all the vegan food I found here.
\r\n\r\nHarare is not particularly solo-non-driving-traveler friendly. For the first few days I felt pretty trapped by my inability to move around independently. The city is very spread out in itself, and natural sights and hiking trails are really far away. Places are linked by wide, poorly maintained dusty roads that mostly don't seem very pedestrian friendly even if it was safe to walk around alone. I was told repeatedly that public transport is not safe for different reasons (dangerous drivers, dangerous passengers, ..) and even if it wasn't I don't know how I'd have figured out how to navigate the fustercluck of marshrutka-style packed private minibuses with no signs or numbers. Fortunately E already had some trusted taxi drivers on hand, plus a few very hospitable friends with cars. Still, not even feeling comfortable to walk to a shop or a cafe by myself from the house is not my favourite. Advice I got about which neighbourhoods and distances were safe to walk varied drastically between people I talked to.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAnother thing I don't love a ton is dependence on a mobile phone. Fortunately I have a moderately functional HTC One to use while my Fairphone is still out of action, otherwise I'd be pretty helpless. ATMs and credit cards basically don't work here, and it's illegal to change money. The official currency was changed to USD a few years ago, but also in circulation are Bond notes, aka RTGs, at a variable rate from 3.5 to 4.7. Most places accept USD, but with poor conversion so the price is higher than paying with Bond. The best option, used universally, is to set up an EcoCash account and find someone who will send you EcoCash in exchange for a fistful of USD (also illegal). Setting up EcoCash required purchasing a SIM (2 bond) and filling in a form with a local address (I used E's) and providing ID. They photocopied my passport, didn't need most of my info in the form, and misspelled my name when setting up the account (henceforth, Amy Huy). I topped up 100 USD, and bought some mobile data too (350mb for 1 week for 10 bond).
\r\n\r\nAfter that I could pay anywhere, from streetside fruit vendors to the farmers market to chain supermarkets and restaurants with EcoCash using USSD codes. Market stalls have their numbers scrawled on pieces of paper on their tables. That is, typing *151*1*1*{mobile number or merchant code}*{amount}#
, followed by a prompt for a confirmation PIN which I set when I made the account (in plaintext). It displays the name of the recipient so you can increase your chance of not sending it to the wrong number before you commit. The recipient's phone goes bloop, and I immediately receive an SMS confirmation of the transaction, plus my new balance. This is horrifyingly insecure, but also a bit cool. There are small fees for each transaction depending on the amount you send. It's not a percentage, there are brackets of fees.
Another thing that was kind of cool while I was there was that Ecocash were running a promotion; for every 20 bond I spent I earned a point, and every 5 points gets me entered into a monthly prizedraw. The top prizes were a house and a river cruise in South Africa; but the better ones were goats, cows, generators, and school fees. I was checking the t&c to find out when the prize draws happened, but made the even better discovery that goats and cows may be requested live or dead; if dead, you have to pick them up from an abattoir of your choosing. If alive, you must pay the necessary transport fees. I'll find out if I was a lucky winner in the first week of June and I'm psyched to make Elizabeth take care of a goat in her yard for me.
\r\n\r\nIf you're gonna be here a while, you can also hook your mobile EcoCash up to a bank account, and get a swipe card to pay with too. At one point, the network glitched out and Elizabeth was a victim; her EcoCash stopped working for sending money, claiming she had reached her daily or monthly limit when she clearly had not. This was a mahoosive inconvenience; we went to the Econet store to try to troubleshoot, and they did not solve the problem at all and there were a ton of other people in line experiencing similar issues. Centralisation at at its finest.
\r\n\r\nBy the end of my visit, the exchange rate had fluctuated so much that it was now cheaper to pay for things in USD. I naturally had just topped up my Ecocash right before the surge; the digital currency I held lost significant value overnight in terms of what I could trade it for. What a nightmare to live like this every day. Many (most?) local people are paid in bond, hold their savings in bond, and as the exchange rate changes their salaries do not.
\r\n\r\nI was fortunate to meet Peter and Alana from the Sprout Coding project at a party one night. Their organisation, based in 'high density suburbs' of Harare, teaches locals to code and to teach, and then the locals go into schools to teach kids to code in turn. They invited me to visit and talk with their tutors. I spent one morning at their premises in Dzivarasekwa, sitting in on an informal meeting where the tutors had some forms to sign and got their final pep talk before classes with kids began the following week. I heard amazing stories of how each of them had got into code, including from some who learned with paper and solar panels, without access to electricity or internet for the most part. I spent some time with one of their earliest recruits, de-mystifying git. I asked as many as I could whether they were in it for the teaching or the coding, and everyone I asked said they just loved teaching.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe next day I joined them in Kuwadzana for a braai. This was super fun, and I spent time with the group talking about privacy, surveillance, encryption, and hacking, while we ate sadza and greens.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nDzivarasekwa and Kuwadzana are a far cry from the residential parts of Harare in the north. The roads are still wide and dusty, but there are no more security fences, gardens or driveways. The houses are single storey unpainted brick and breezeblock, often with small vegetable patches in whatever area around them is available. There are many makeshift food stalls, 'tuck shops' and the like, with hand painted signs, or just a table at the side of the road staffed by an entire family. The braai in Kuwadzana was under a tattered awning beside what appeared to be a large shed or market-type building that contained a bar (and pool tables). Besides the bar, the building also hosted meat and vegetable stalls, as well as the people who would prepare the produce you just bought for immediate consumption, and a sink with soap that we could all use to wash our hands before we ate.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMy first grand adventure was with E's Finnish friend and his Russian guests. We drove to Lake Chivero nature reserve, less than an hour west of the city. In a totally inappropriate small car, we crawled through the trails spotting zebra, impala, wildebeest and even a giraffe. Periodically we had to get out of the car so it was light enough to take a particularly jagged bump or canyon in the road. We took one trail that dwindled into nothing, and got out and walked to the lake where we saw lots of monkeys and interesting birds.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nLater we found our way to the park headquarters and talked with the rangers. They offered to take us on a little walk to see some more animals. The ranger Gladys guided us, and after five minutes we practically tripped over a rhino. He stayed snoozing in the undergrowth, and we moved on. A few minutes later he changed his mind, and charged us. I fell over, thought I was going to die, and Gladys rescued me. I posted more detail about the rhino story closer to the time. Later we saw more chill rhinos, and ostriches by the lake.
\r\n\r\nOne evening I joined the Fin and the Russians in climbing a small hill in the south of the city. I'm not sure what it was called. It was a reasonably well maintained public space, with trees and walls and a small sculpture like thing at the peak. From there we watched the sun set. In the distance, Harare looks like any other city, with high rises in the center flattening out to residential suburbs around the edges.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe Harare Botanical Gardens are somewhat in a state of disrepair, but they contain many interesting trees and not much signage about them. Still, nice to wander through for a couple of hours for the low entry fee of 3 bond. We considered taking a nap, but the ground-level insect life deterred us.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\nJust outside the city are balancing rocks. We got there and they wouldn't accept our ecocash, and we didn't have enough USD between us. Not to mention the USD price was more than 10x that day's bond price, according to that day's exchange rate. Harumph. So we took some pictures of the ones we could see from the carpark and the road, and left.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI spent an absolutely beautiful evening with Elizabeth and Andrew at Domboshava, a granite hill formation about a 45 minute drive north of Harare. The perfect time to go is in the hour or so before sunset. There are incredible views in every direction of the surrounding countryside, as well as balancing rocks and other geographical phenomena, and cave paintings. It is an incredibly peaceful place, even despite all the other tourists who were around.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\nLonger trips I considered but failed to arrange were Great Zimbabwe, Paradise Pools, and Victoria Falls. Great Zim is an ancient abandoned city that looks way cool. I was pretty disappointed not to be able to make it happen, but the fuel crisis meant none of E's friends were up for driving that distance (about 4 hours) and I couldn't put together enough people at the last minute to make a guided tour good value. Paradise Pools was also a victim of the fuel crisis, after a friend sat in line for hours and wasn't even able to refill. Vic Falls would have been great but required some planning ahead on my part. It's at least a four day trip - one full day on trains and buses to get there, two days to appreciate the city, and a full day back. I could have done it when E was at work (might have been a good use of those days without power at home) but visiting Elizabeth was really the point of the trip and our time hanging out in the evenings was way more important.
\r\n\r\nPhotos and more notes are as follows:
\r\nThere was only one vegan place listed on happycow (V Delights), and I went there and it did not exist. The sign was up, and their website says \"Restaurant is currently closed however you can still enjoy these meals by enroling to our Vegan or Gluten free Cooking classes as an individual or group!\". Maybe it'll be back in the summer, who knows.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe next best place for intentional vegan food (with a well-labelled menu) is Avocado Cafe in Sam Levy's Village. They have several dishes that are or can be made vegan, and plant milks for their variety of fancy coffees and latte drinks. They have energy balls which are vegan too.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMaasdorp farmer's market is every Wednesday and Saturday, and I ended up going three times. It's a great place for handmade souvenirs and local produce. A nice lady sells homemade cashew cheese in blocks for 14 bond under the name BConscious. I bought one with jalapenos and one with olives and it was so good. Some of the best I've had. She told me about her imminent store opening (Vegan Vibes), the day after I was due to leave of course.
\r\n\r\nAcross the road from the Maasdorp farmer's market is another market and a Chinese grocery store. At the grocery store I found all kinds of tofu, fresh in big blocks as well as dried and flavoured. It's super cheap. At the market outside are freshly fried noodles and vegetables. You can choose your fillings, and there's even a bowl of seitan, and watch it get mixed up in front of you, then eat it on one of the benches in the market. They had vegetable bao, too.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nEthiopian food is always a safe bet for vegans; I ate at Queen Makeda twice and it was delicious. The vegetarian menu is distinct and varied. The Ethopian coffee pot seems to be bottomless.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThai and Indian food are usually good options too; I ate Thai food at Chang Thai, which has many obviously-vegan vegetarian dishes, and was pretty good. On my last night, really amazing Indian food at Spice Lounge. Especially the milkless masala chai, which was properly spicy.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAnd towards scraping the bottom of the barrel.. I got a pizza without cheese no trouble at Elmo's (a chain that can be found all over) and the toppings for the vegetarian one were pretty good and dense. At Little Eataly the only option was pasta with tomato; to be fair, it was really good. Amanzi is a restaurant and bar with a really nice outdoor area; we went to the Wednesday quiz, which has a constrained menu (the only vegan option being tomato soup, requested without cream). We did convince them to let us look at the regular menu, and there is one vegan option on there - a very expensive broccoli steak, which sounds good but I wasn't 16 USD hungry. The fries there are great too. At Cafe Veldemeer near the UN offices there were a couple of vegan-isable salads, but I went for butternut and leak soup. It was pretty expensive.
\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\nBest of all is always local food thought. Zimbabwean cuisine is heavy on the meat stews, fish and chicken. But they always come with a side of greens (canola/rape), beans, and sadza. This can be ordered on its own for a mere 10 bond (depending on the day's exchange rate, 2-4USD) at Gava's, and is enormously filling by itself. Sadza is made from ground maize, and is a mushy ball that you grab a piece of between your fingers and use to scoop up the beans and greens to shovel into your mouth. At Gava's you can substitute regular sadza for sourghum (which is grey and gritty, super delicious and more nutritious) or peanut rice (which is obviously epic).
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nSadza is a staple food, so at the very least if you go to any local restaurant or a communal food gathering like a braai (bbq) in Zimbabwe you'll be able to get sadza and greens or other veggies. Just be careful at a braai where someone else is preparing the food that you can get the green separate before any meat gets mixed in and cooked together with them.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nWhat else I did in Harare other than eat.
","as:name":"Vegan in Harare, Zimbabwe","as:published":{"@type":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime","@value":"2019-05-31T22:00:00+02:00"},"as:tag":["https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/zimbabwe",{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/harare"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/food"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/travel"}]},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/08/vegan-cheese-skopje","@type":"as:Note","as:content":"As my very last week in Skopje commences, I discovered (from the nice people at Vegan 365 Kitchen) that Violife is sold at Ramstore supermarkets in the 3 big malls (Skopje City Mall, Ramstore Mall, and another I forgot). Just in time for it to be too late for me to buy cheese, especially as I picked some up in Croatia last week.
","as:published":{"@type":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime","@value":"2019-08-17T11:35:00+02:00"},"as:tag":[{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/balkans"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/skopje"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/food"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/travel"}]},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/09/peanutbuttermarmite","@type":"as:Note","as:content":"I obtained and tested peanut butter marmite (or is it marmite peanut butter?) as quickly as possible. Approved!
\r\n\r\n\r\nIt's like slightly bitter peanut butter. Would make an excellent base for sauces.
\r\n\r\nI do agree you could get the same results for less money by combining marmite and peanut butter by hand though, and honestly I'm astonished I hadn't thought of this before.
","as:published":{"@type":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime","@value":"2019-09-29T17:13:00+01:00"},"as:tag":[{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/marmite"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/food"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/life"}]},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/09/reflections-climate","@type":"as:Article","as:content":"Since my day job is part of a workers' co-op, it doesn't make sense to strike against ourselves.
\r\n\r\nInstead, we're spending time conducting a thorough review of our internal policies (travel and equipment expenses mostly, but also what powers our servers etc) to find and act on areas where we can minimise our environmental impact. We're also looking for ways the co-op as an organisation can take some of the burden from individuals to help make environmentally friendly decisions in day-to-day work and home life. Because it's no one person's individual responsibility* and it is at best unfair, at worst impossible, to expect people to take the weight of the world on top of their immediate concerns; any real change will only happen at organisation, collective, corporate levels. We're a small organisation, but the least we can do are things like:
\r\nAnd besides that, we're a remote organisation, so homeworking or local coworking spaces mean none of us are required to commute, and we don't have to power an office space. We also consider carefully the work we do (things for public good) and who we take money from, and every member of the co-op has equal input in this. Not to mention - we are a co-operative. We provide an alternative to power-hungry, profit-driven, top-down companies beholden to greedy shareholders; our existence is a protest in itself as best we can muster given we still need to function in a capitalist society.
\r\n\r\nThis afternoon we had a meeting, optional, to share our collective trauma over the current state of the world**. Some of us will go out and find our local #ClimateStrike protests to join.
\r\n\r\nIt's small, and seems kind of futile in the grand scheme of things. Why even bother? What difference are fewer than 20 people going to make? It seems like most people are in a complete state of cognitive dissonance, and who can blame them? The best we've got is to scrape together our collective energy - make space for our colleagues to breath and take stock - and do the small things. Nobody is under the illusion that this is going to fix the problem overnight. But at the very least we can spread the message, the intent, the energy to our friends, family, and possibly our clients, who might spread it onwards. I'm trying to write this from a position of hopefulness, rather than my usual semi-apathetic nihilism, and honestly, it's a struggle.
\r\n\r\nI count myself lucky to have co-workers who are open to talking frankly about these issues and making changes at an organisational level, when many people can't or won't even do that. It's reassuring and even delightful to be able to bring my personal ethical stances to a group without feeling like an annoying nag. For example:
\r\n\r\nI mostly do these things quietly, for myself. But if it comes up, I can use myself as evidence that living this way is possible, and to encourage other people to try it out even just occasionally to start with. And to offer my now years of experience with inconvenient land travel planning and finding vegan food in veg-hostile places to anyone who needs help.
\r\n\r\nI'm aware that the fact I travel has a negative environmental impact in itself. In order to be able to do that, I make more extreme tradeoffs for a lot of things to try to offset that. Things I should be doing better:
\r\nWhen I fall short I try not to make excuses for myself, but I do sometimes. When I have energy to be, I'm angry at people with privilege and power who make excuses to not even make the smallest of changes to their own lives. I'm angry at people who use other peoples' disadvantages and circumstances as an excuse to not change their own behaviour, or scapegoat those less fortunate than themselves (see: disabled people and plastic straws; food deserts or poverty and particular diets). I'm angry at the society and power structures that make this happen.
\r\n\r\nBut mostly I'm not angry, just dead inside.
\r\n\r\nAnyway.. counting my blessings, noting my privileges, trying not to bury my head; acknowledging the futility without giving up hope entirely, supporting and being supported by people who feel the same.
\r\n\r\n* Though there are a few powerful individuals who could make a big difference if they weren't such greedy and/or oblivious assholes, of course.
\r\n\r\n** In the last minutes of the meeting, it was proposed to make a time-tracker job for \"existential crisis\" and log hours against that where necessary to see how much it's really costing our business.
","as:name":"Reflections prompted by #ClimateStrike","as:published":{"@type":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime","@value":"2019-09-20T16:58:00+02:00"},"as:tag":[{"@id":"http://opendataservices.coop"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/apocalypse"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/travel"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/climatestrike"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/coop"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/life"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/environment"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/ods"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/work"}]},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/09/rwot9","@type":"as:Note","as:content":"RWOT9 veg*ns: I will be going for alternative vegan-friendly dinners every night this week. Anyone who wants to be looped in, send me a message!
","as:published":{"@type":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime","@value":"2019-09-03T09:16:00+02:00"},"as:tag":[{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/food"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/rwot9"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/event"}]},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/09/vegan-donut","@type":"as:Note","as:content":"There's a vegan donut shop in Prague less than ten minute walk from where I'm staying. Indecisive, I entered, and asked the guy working there which was his favourite. He said salted caramel, so I asked for that and a matcha one (because who buys one donut at a time anyway?). The pb&j was really calling to me though so I figured what the heck. Then he offered me a wild berry and vanilla for free.
Anyway the thing I love about being a grownup is that nobody can stop me from having donuts for dinner.
\r\n","as:published":{"@type":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime","@value":"2019-09-11T17:40:00+02:00"},"as:tag":[{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/cake"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/prague"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/food"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/travel"}]},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/10/week-in-review-2","@type":"as:Article","as:content":"I love love love to see the nice cafes I visited in Sofia not only still around but progressing! Edgy Veggy was a tiny hole in the wall when I was here a year and a half ago, and now it's a full sized cafe with comfy seats, wifi, and vegan groceries to boot.
\r\nVeda House is as a tranquil and cosy as it ever was, and I tried a new place for breakfast - KIND - which wasn't here on my last visit but has a fantastic hearty budget all-vegan daily menu. I went to Kring yesterday too, which was here last time and I just didn't have time for - pay by weight vegetarian, super delicious and calm ayurvedic vibes.
","as:published":{"@type":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime","@value":"2019-11-01T15:21:00+02:00"},"as:tag":[{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/travel"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/food"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/sofia"}]},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/12/future","@type":"as:Note","as:content":"Given that my ultimate future goal is to open a nice cosy welcoming vegan cafe, whenever I spend a lot of time (and money) in ones I find with the vibe I want, that counts as market research and thus a business expense right?
","as:published":{"@type":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime","@value":"2019-12-26T13:17:00+03:00"},"as:tag":[{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/future"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/life"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/travel"}]},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2020/03/breakfast","@type":"as:Note","as:content":"Sometimes you just need spicy rice for breakfast.
\r\n\r\n(Sticky rice cooked with vegetable stock and tumeric. Tofu fried in olive oil with garlic, paprika and black pepper, then veggies thrown in: mushrooms, red peppers, peas, sweetcorn, green beans (last 3 from the freezer). When the water has reduced from the rice, mixed all the veggies in to cook together for a couple more minutes. Drizzled soy sauce and hot sauce. Coffee is balkan/turkish style.)
","as:published":{"@type":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime","@value":"2020-03-23T10:40:10+01:00"},"as:tag":[{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/fedikitchen"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/food"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/life"}]},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan","@type":"as:Collection","as:totalItems":{"@type":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#nonNegativeInteger","@value":"532"}},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan?before=https://rhiaro.co.uk/2020/03/breakfast&limit=16","@type":"as:CollectionPage","as:items":[{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2020/03/breakfast"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/12/future"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/11/fave-sofia"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/10/week-in-review-2"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/09/peanutbuttermarmite"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/09/reflections-climate"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/09/vegan-donut"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/09/rwot9"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/08/vegan-cheese-skopje"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/05/vegan-in-harare"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/05/harare"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2019/02/ferry"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2018/12/week-in-review-4"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2018/12/yeast"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2018/12/week-in-review"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2018/12/sarajevo"}],"as:name":"vegan","as:next":{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan?before=https://rhiaro.co.uk/2020/07/ill-advisedly&limit=16"},"as:partOf":{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan"},"as:prev":{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/vegan?before=https://rhiaro.co.uk/2018/11/best&limit=16"}}]}