Temporary Insanity

So I've been kicking it in this city for a month already now. And there's this constantly irritating aspect of this society that keeps eating at me (ironically). And it's this.

Nothing here seems to be permanent.

It's insane how temporary things are around here. You order from just about any tiny restaurant here -- where most people eat -- and they give it to you in disposable wares. Paper bowls, paper cups, disposable chopsticks, plastic spoons. And that's not just if you order take out; a lot of restaurants serve their sit-in customers with disposable things. And then all in a plastic bag.

Can you imagine the volume of trash generated by a single person eating two or three meals a day, each with a bowl, cup, and utensils? And then imagine that some 20+ million people live in this tiny little island alone?

It's all disposable, all made just for temporary use. It's all kind of sickening, really.

3 comments:

hougee said...

the goal is to create as much garbage as possible and use it for landfills to make the tiny island bigger.. :)

Mike said...

Here is a question though.. would you really trust their standard on dishwashing if it was not a disposible? I can tell you that in Korea, some restaurants went with the disposible everything because it appears cleaner.

Ben said...

I can understand it for Japanese restaurants, for instance, where there's that fear of leftover raw fish bacteria. Or maybe when eating steaks that are medium or rare (if you dare have that here). The state of sanitation (and my sanity) here is questionable.

It's just sickening, after I'm done dinner, to look at the table and see the mound of garbage I've created. And it won't help with settling in, either, because it just makes the whole experience feel that much more temporary. Like I'm not really living, just nomading around.