trash talking

i apologise profusely for the recent strew of posts which have come during a very depressing time in my life. it always seems that when i see that little spark of light at the end of the tunnel, it's only a freight train coming my way. but, that is no real excuse for being perpetually depressed. especially over another person! oh, how dreary!

in any case, today we visit some more detached things: trash.

something i've found quite interesting is the types of trash people throw out. they say you can tell a lot of things of a person from his/her trash, and that one man's trash is another man's treasure. i like to believe that most of this is true, but for most part, trash is simply a by-product of cultural upbringing. how is this even related, you may ask? well, let's see...

1. food. i've found this most prevalent (and thus best exemplified) by the way people prepare their food. most asians tend to prepare their food from scratch (although i notice a changing trend in this, now that instant foods are more abundant and cheap), and so a lot of their food waste is 'wet trash'. you know, eggshells, potato peel, fruit skins, cat tails. stuff like that. westerners are more likely to eat out (and even when they dine at home, they usually buy partially-prepared stuff, like insta-mash and 3-minute spaghetti and meatballs), and so a lot of their waste is 'dry trash'. more tin cans and cardboard boxes. milk cartons and plastic containers. of course, there's going to be a bit of both in everyone's bins, but if you observe trash collection day, you might find this to be true. it kinda blurs in multicultural areas so, i dunno.

2. quantity of trash i don't know why, but young people have way more trash than old people. maybe there's a slight bias in that the young people i observe do live in bachelor(ette) groups, whereas older people have families (which are smaller than the bachelor(ette) groups, and i assume kids don't really generate that much trash. but then, it still doesn't really fit for me. maybe teens to young adults eat more? and waste more? who knows.

3. tidiness of trash (bins). this is just something that boils down to how neat people are, i guess. and, by far, i've noticed that westerners keep their trash cans well in order. no spillage of liquids around the bins, no overflowing bins, and even then, the plastic bags are neatly put in a pile beside the trash bins. asian people just tend to chuck the bags wherever. i mean, it's not as clear-cut as that, especially if you live in an are where trash collection is frequent enough such that you don't need to worry about this becoming a piling problem (pun intended). and maybe the messiness and smell does relate to the contents of the trash, like we were talking about earlier e.g. 'wet trash' vs. 'dry trash'. but, eh, i don't think it's really that hard to keep things in order just for good practice. i don't think it really effects many people, and even the garbage collectors are not callous as to leave stuff in spite when you don't really keep your trash in order. it does prevent the wild ravens from becoming too-dependent on humans, though, and my eco-friendly cousin would like to talk to you about that.

hmm, writing on this new computer makes my ramblings seem so much shorter because the font is so small and screen is so huge! (btw, i have a 15' macbook pro now, yay!). so i guess i'll sign off for now, even though i have a few more points i wanted to 'breeze through'. again, i apologise that my recent posts are a bit out of the way, even for me (not that anyone would notice). i blame my muse (or, i guess now, lack thereof).