An Attempted Environment-Friendly Weekend

The weekend reports here are inspired by Hob, who writes similar weekend updates. Friday night was fairly ordinary. I realized that very frequently I tend to not do things in ways that I know best. So for starters I decided to become very environment-friendly and reduce my personal carbon footprint. Friday night I went grocery shopping with a cloth bag and walked to the store about a half mile away rather than driving. I shopped for really healthy things, such as whole wheat pitas, hummus, organic milk, sundried tomatoes, walnuts and olive oil/balsamic vinegar. Unfortunately at the checkout line I forgot to hand my cloth bag to the person packing the bags, so I ended up using some plastic bags inside my cloth bag. Lessson learned and now I know another way "a bulb cannot be made" (Quoting Edison on optimism). And I came back home and enjoyed all the healthy goodies. I highly recommend the Athenos Hummus, if you are in the market for some Mediterranean food.

On Saturday morning I went to watch Spiderman 3 with Alok, Mani, Atul, Sathish and Raj. The movie was decent, but lacked a cohesive storyline. (It seems to have broken records of the highest opening weekend numbers.)We went for Indian food at Spice Hut in Sunnyvale thereafter. I turned vegetarian two weeks ago and I was feeling pretty happy about it. Also given the news that chicken feed containing the melamine (that killed many pets) has entered the food-chain, it seems like a good move already.

The other big way to reduce my carbon footprint would be to start biking to work. So I decided to shop for bikes at Walmart. I got completely confused by all the options and eventually ended up not getting one. But I bought an energy-efficient bulb for about $2 from GE. The lamp is subsidized by PG&E and also uses 13 watts to emit the same amount of light as a 60 watt bulb. (1/4th the electricity consumption is quite something!) Usually I hate the light from these substitutes because it tends to be ugly white, but surprisingly these ee-bulbs give out light with the warm yellow hue that I love. It seems pretty ironic to me that things that we usually assume as signs of progress are actually very short-sighted. For instance, cars, bulbs, electricity, medicine. All things that define progress of technology, but all things that actually cause more serious problems such as global warming, overpopulation... Frankensteins that were conceived many years ago and now taking birth. A lot of organizations have started demanding manufacturers to do a life-cycle analysis of their products, which is a step in the right direction.

I had read a review for Mohammed Yunus's "Banker to the Poor" by Hirak on Friday, so I picked up the book at Borders on the way back home. I couldn't let go off the book for the remainder of the night. I was already impressed with Yunus's micro-lending concept when I heard about it a few years ago. Reading about the other challenges Grameen Bank faced and how they solved them, inspired me even further. All in all a weekend that made me happy! :)