I've spent all morning at the societies fair telling groups to 'check out my blog for more info'...so I should probably actually put some more info up.
Basically I want to organise a week of events surrounding international women's day on 8th March. Each day I want to fundraise for a different related charity and raise awareness of gender inequality issues from across the globe. I'm already starting to contact external organisations and charities to try and get a mix of folks to come in, offer workshops and hand out leaflets etc.
The 8th March itself will be devoted to championing the great work that women do around the world, and the amazing leaps and bounds forwards in gender equality we've seen over the past century. I've already started chatting to some prominent business women about getting involved and am going to start contacting various authors, politicians, charitable campaigners and all sorts of people too.
So where do University Societies come in?
I want University Societies to help out by running an event or events of their own during International Women's Week to raise awareness of/money for fighting the issues we're going to highlight. Or if they can't/don't want to get that involved just raise awareness of the event and promote it to their members.
I want all sorts of people from different social, cultural, ethnic, departmental, whatever, backgrounds involved. I believe these issues affect people across the board and the best way to get individuals interested is through first person contact. I can send a million emails about this, but nothing will persuade people to come and get involved more than word of mouth.
So you've decided your group might quite like to run a pub quiz/bake sale/sponsored something/play/performance/bar crawl/lecture/unusual fundraiser, what then?
We will put all of the information about your event in a nice shiney booklet detailing the programme for the week and short profiles on involved societies. These booklets will be distributed around campus and the info will also be readily available online so it's a lot of great publicity for your group! We will be asking for a donation (amount tbc) to go towards printing costs, and a minimum of 50% of your event's profits to go to selected charities but you get to keep up to 50% of the profits to put back into your groups own events. So it's a pretty good deal really!
The kind of issues I want to highlight are things like domestic abuse, the wage gap, the gendercide in China and India, sex trafficking and FGM...I don't think you just have to be a woman or a feminist to care about stuff like this and think it's wrong. That's why I want to work with as many different kinds of societies and people as possible.
The charities we are fund-raising for and the issues we're highlighting haven't been decided yet and will be voted on in a meeting with interested groups, so if you've got a particular issue or charity you want us to focus on, let us know!
So I hope you fancy getting involved! If you've got any questions, want to help out or anything at all email me at HXB916@bham.ac.uk and I'll get back to you asap!
Today I met Nick Clegg. I'm not joking. Thanks to the amazing UpRising programme I was invited to take part in a presentation on said programme to the Deputy Prime Minister.
When I was told I was going to be doing this I assumed that the venue would be some massive conference hall and the UpRising Alumni Advisory Board would just shuffle on stage, say our bit, be vaguely acknowledged, get a brief round of applause and shuffle off again before a representative from another programme took the floor and the discourse moved on. I couldn't have been more wrong.
The event took place in the intimately small Nomad Room at the Custard factory and a relatively entourage free Nick Clegg sat front and centre, mere feet from those presenting. On top of this Nick, who has been a patron of the UpRising programme for the last three years, revealed that not only was this the first event he's attended in Birmingham this visit (before even his own party conference) but in fact the only non party related event he's going to be going to. And that's not for want of invitations. It was also being filmed and beamed out live to BBC and Sky News 24.
There was a brief introduction from Zehra Zaidi, the brilliant Birmingham UpRising co-ordinator followed by the UAAB presentations in which I took part (and sneakily managed to promote the gender equality project I'm working on). At this point I should probably explain what the UAAB is: it's the UpRising Alumni Advisory Board: the board is made up of committed UpRisers who were selected out of a range of applicants for their dedication to the programme, we now work with the organisers to act as a sounding board for the programme and represent UpRisers at amazing events like this.
The UAAB presentations took the form of each of us talking for 2minutes about what the programme means to us and what our best moments from it were. Each did ourselves proud (if I do say so myself) but the highlights for me were Michael Olajide talking about his journey from Nigeria, to innercity London to Birmingham and the UpRising programme, Jessica Woodley talking about the programmes dedication to diversity and how coming from a mixed race, working class, innercity background it's helped her believe in herself and her own potential and Daniel Bridgewater talking about how its helped him gain the confidence, know-how and networks to set up his own company/social enterprise: the North Wall Theatre Company before he's even started uni. Their stories really summed up what UpRising is all about.
Then it was Nick's turn; he offered his response to the programme and, after a couple of pre-selected questions from chair and UAAB member Mobeen Amin, he opened the Q&A session up to the floor. Prior to the event we'd been told that all questions had to be cleared by his office first. In fact just before he arrived we were given a sheet of paper with said questions on and told to hand them out to other non-UAAB UpRisers to ask. So you can imagine my surprise when, instead of merely taking questions from the designated people he just picked whoever had their hand up, including me. I wont bore you with the details of all that was asked and said (I believe the event went out live on BBC and Sky News 24 so if you're interested I'm sure you can dig out the whole thing somewhere) but I will give you some edited highlights:
In response to my question of 'the latest statistics show 3/4 of those convicted in the recent riots already had numerous criminal convictions, what do you think the government can do to identify wayward individuals, preferably after their first offence, and educate them and help get them out of that lifestyle and involved in their communities before they become habitual offenders?' (originally even more poorly phrased and in a nervous manner of course) Nick told us about his views, some of which are already being made into policy:
- He agreed with the need to educate, not just condemn and abandon convicts calling the current prison system 'university for criminals...all it does is churn out better more hardened criminals'
- Stated that 'all prisoners are now met on release by someone whose job it is to keep them on the straight and narrow, the coalition government pays for them'
- And talked about wanting to implement 'restorative justice' whereby criminals are forced to meet their victims, apologise and help rebuild their lives. He also talked about putting criminals to work, paying them a wage and teaching them skills but having a portion of their wage go into a 'victims fund'
- He stated that whilst it is important to help criminals so they don't repeat offend, you can't overlook the fact that they have committed a crime and should be punished accordingly, and you can't ignore those who come from tough backgrounds and don't commit crimes; they should get just as much, if not more extra help.
In response to questions about how to improve the diversity of political parties, both ethnically and in gender terms, he stated:
- He couldn't agree more, the major political parties are too much like him 'pale and male' and he's implementing programmes within the Lib Dems to try and address this issue within his own party
And of course there were the inevitable questions about education and tuition fees:
-Whilst he didn't necessarily defend the obscene hike in tuition fees he did say that he hoped it would do some good to the country; he believes that we place far too much importance on academic qualifications and we should also be focusing on sorting out vocational qualifications which he referred to as currently being a 'spaghetti' like 'mess' and 'mistrusted by employers'.
- He brought up a new coalition policy which provides all very young children 15 hours free pre-schooling a week to help take some of the strain off working parents and give them a better start in life. (In my opinion it's a damn good policy and, bless him, he clearly thought so too saying 'I wish the people would talk about some of our other policies like this one sometimes')
Overall Nick Clegg came across as a really nice guy. During the speeches he was attentive and I know that during mine whenever I made eye-contact with him he smiled encouragingly, which was much appreciated given the pre-presentation nerves I'd been suffering from! He even made jokes about his own and the lib dem's reputation commenting 'Up Rising would a be good slogan for my party given what's happening to us at the moment!'. And even without all that, he took an hour out of his obscenely busy schedule just to come and talk to us. After the event he made no attempt to network with prominent individuals, promote his own policies or anything like that he just posed for some photos with us UpRisers and left. Admittedly, having some nice soft press about how Nick cares about young people may of been part of his motive for coming, but it certainly didn't come across like that. He seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself and eager to meet and help inspire young people, as well as support the UpRising programme as a whole.
So in short, whatever his successes and failures in parliament, when it comes to personality I like Nick Clegg. And regardless of his motives, the media coverage he's afforded the UpRising programme just by meeting with us will do a heck of a lot of good when it comes to recruitment and finding funding. Ta Nick!
H.B.
x
Oh for a brief bit of news footage covering the event check this out:
Yesterday I was fortunate enough to meet Lord Digby Jones for coffee with a few of my fellow UpRisers.
I was very excited about this event. I've been organising it for months. So you can imagine my self-directed annoyance when I managed to cock up the time of the meeting, telling two of my fellow UpRisers that the meeting was to begin at 3pm...when actually it was 2pm (with the relative chaos I returned to from Europe at home and uni I suppose something had to give, but that was a pretty big mistake to make :s ). Fortunately I like to be early, a whole hour early in fact so I managed to contact everyone and disaster was averted.
From that less then promising start the meeting turned out to be a total success. For those who don't know Lord Digby Jones is a very successful businessman, originally hailing from Alvechurch just outside of Birmingham. He's proven his mettle, and business know how, in a variety of fields starting in law with Edge&Ellison (1980-2000), moving on to public affairs as Director General of CBI (2000-2006) and leaping into politics as Minister of State for UK Trade & Investment (2007-2008). He was knighted for services to business in 2005 and made a life peer in 2007. He's also a surprisingly down to earth and friendly guy with a passion for socially inclusive business and a palpable love for his country and its business sector.
The conversation flowed easily and after giving a brief introduction to what the UpRising programme is, does and what it aims to achieve we moved on to a general chat about how to set up a business before a question and answer session on a wide range of topics. So much was discussed, in fact, that picking out a few key points and interesting responses is pretty tough, but for me the most memorable moments were:
1) Fellow UpRiser Brook Simons-Akwah is in the process of setting up a brand new business/social enterprise aimed at helping young entrepreneurs set up their own businesses by working with the council to utilise empty shops and offices. UpRiser Daniel Blyden also runs his own business (YEP Media http://yepmedia.co.uk/). They wanted advice on what it takes to make a start-up business a success. Over the course of the discussion Lord Jones provided some very clear and to the point advice:
-'It takes bloody hard work. I've worked my balls off every day of my life and I still do’
-‘The people who make things look easy work harder, prepare more, and leave nothing to chance'
-‘You’ve got to have confidence …every day I look in the mirror and think “my god I love you” …the inappropriately named ‘soft’ skills are important, nobody likes a limp handshake’
2) Given Lord Jones's experience as a leader in a variety of fields I was interested in what he thought about free leadership programmes, such as UpRising and what skills he thought they should be teaching. His response was very interesting, not least because of the very precise and technical nature of the skills he thought were important:
- ‘[programmes like UpRising are] extremely worthwhile, but they are only worthwhile if they operate on three levels: the first is if they get young people talking and understanding risk in business, the second is that they bring bright minds together and the third is if they have clearly stated aims and know what they want to achieve’
- ‘[they need to teach young people] how to write a business plan, get them understanding capital and cash flow…they need to understand that they have to deliver and have discipline’
3) Earlier this year Lord Jones published a book entitled ‘Fixing Britain’ detailing his views on what Britain needs to do to improve its economy and skill up its work force (I recommend giving it a read, it’s surprisingly interesting and easy to absorb). Whilst certain sections talk a lot of sense I had to query a few – namely one section where he proposes increasing the number of male primary school teachers by offering them higher wages than women and another where he proposes freely encouraging trade with countries that, shall we say, don’t exactly have the best human rights track records – so I asked: how far should businesses take into account moral and social problems in their actions? And I again received a typically candid response:
-‘I believe in social inclusive wealth creation…Businesses can take all of society with them’
-‘Business is the most important part of our society…Only businesses create revenue for the government in the form of taxes paid on their profits and employees’ wages…the taxes they pay pays for the NHS and the public sector. But business has a responsibility to train its people…The bankers had it wrong, business has got to take those at the bottom with them’
-‘23% of single mothers have never lived with a man…85% of primary school teachers are female…boys need strong male role models because if they don’t when an older boy asks them to join his gang he becomes the role model, you may disagree with it but we need more men in teaching and one incentive that works is money.’
-‘Business encourages human rights…if the Western World hadn’t been trading with China, if we hadn’t let them host the Olympics its citizens would have even less freedom…It’s different for different nations: where they need us more than we need them we can impose sanctions but if we need them as much if not more, realistically we can’t limit trade’
4) Lord Jones also had some strong views on what was the primary cause of the August riots:
- ‘Enhanced, disgusting criminality…look at the locations; in London it was organised and planned to stretch the metropolitan police to their limits.’
What to do about the illiteracy problem amongst Britain’s youth:
-‘Fire teachers if too many of their mentally and physically healthy pupils over 11 can’t read, write, count and use a computer…[and] stop parents benefits and replace them with food stamps if their kids can’t read, write, count and use a computer’
And a whole host of other interesting issues (many of which appear in his book if you fancy finding out more).
We then rounded up the discussion, said our thank-yous and left Lord Jones in the company of UpRising Director Alveena Malik, who was delighted to inform us that he had agreed to become an UpRising ambassador. So I’m guessing the programme organisers and us UpRisers impressed him almost as much as he impressed us.
In short, whilst some of Lord Jones’s personal views may be, shall we say, somewhat divisive, there is no denying his belief in the potential of the youth of today and his social conscience. Here’s a final quote from the discussion which, I think, aptly illustrates this dedication to practising the socially inclusive attitude he preaches:
-‘Young people are the future – that’s why I’m here on my lunch break giving you pointers…I can’t afford to just give young entrepreneurs money, but I can try and give my time’
He may be blunt and opinionated but he certainly believes in the future of our nation’s business. And his positive attitude is very infectious.
Last night I attended the Radio 4 Riots debate, run by the today programme. Fortunately when the riots kicked off in Birmingham I was in London staying at my friends house getting ready to take the Eurostar to Brussels the next morning (lucky I was! Had we gone with our original plan of getting the train up late that night we wouldn't have made it!). I watched it avidly on the news, amazed by sights of a predominantly male crowd throwing petrol bombs at buildings, smashing in windows and attacking businesses.
The next morning our initially pleasant, but distinctly racist taxi driver of unspecified Eastern European origin, took great delight in telling us that the problem was black people and we should treat them like they treat their gypsy population (i.e. badly). We took equal delight in telling him that from what we'd seen on the news this wasn't a race issue: the live reports clearly showed Blacks, Whites, Asians and pretty much every community in-between was represented amongst the thieves, vandals and aggressors. It was a closed minded attitude to blame one racial group. This was not an old school race riot, and this was the major issue I had with the R4Riots debate.
It seemed to me that a fair few questioners and a few of the panellists were blaming race, calling it a race riot, insinuating that it was just young black men rising up against an institutionally racist establishment. Given that less then half of the 600 people arrested during the riots were black and the primary targets were places like primark and corner shops this sounded, quite frankly, ridiculous to me (at this point I, somewhat nervously, posed a question about why if the issue was frustration with the establishment the rioters were attacking their own communities: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9581000/9581914.stm listen in at about 2min 25 ;) ). I'm not ignoring the fact that these riots started because of the death of Mark Duggen and strained relations between the community and the police in Tottenham. Race may play a part but the issues, and the composition of the rioters, are far more complicated then this. The BBC really need to stop rolling out this old chestnut and, if they must, at least include speakers from Asian and White working class backgrounds too. Times have changed.
Aside from that there were a lot of lefties chatting about how it was all environmental factors and poverty to blame, if we, the wider community, solve that we'll solve criminality and antisocial behaviour (completely ignoring the fact that only a minority of the 'working class' was involved and some rioters were from more privileged backgrounds) one recorded righty blaming the breakdown of morals and respect culture started in the 1960's and a whole host of people simply viewing the whole thing as confirmation of their already firmly held beliefs, picking and choosing the evidence they cited and generally talking pointless nonsense.
Then there was, of course, the expected nonsensical, illogical rant about how it's all the banks and the politicians fault. No other reason. If just one of the (very vocal) audience members and panellists who maintained this belief had proposed a single reasonable argument other then 'all of the rich are immoral! Bankers greed made people steal televisions! Down with rich people!' I'd be inclined to give this view a chance...but unfortunately I didn't find a sea of unspecifically directed anger and resentment convincing.
Having said that it was very interesting listening to the different opinions and there were some nuggets of insight that seemed to resonate with both the present audience and those on the twitter-sphere. My favourites were:
1) Shaun Bailey suggesting that part of the problem is that we've redefined what government is for in recent years, we've become too dependent on it and those that have the least to do with it (i.e. aren't dependant on benefits/government programmes) are the happiest, stating: "The welfare state started as a safety net, became a hammock and is now a noose". 2) Shaun Bailey promoting the idea that young people need to be educated in how to raise children before they become parents and it's too late, and stating that young people in prisons are a 'captive audience, lets educate them' 3) Shaun Bailey (yes Shaun Bailey again, that man talked a lot of sense!) stating that parents in this day and age have an incredible tough job fighting against the negative gender stereotypes presented in such places as 'Nuts Magazine' and MTV. 4) Dr Les Henry imploring the audience to recognise that grassroots organisations do a lot of good getting people out of gangs and helping young people turn their lives around before they reach a point where they think it's perfectly normal to engage in a riot, and to help them find the funding they need. 5) Javed Khan quite rightly asking people to stop bashing the police, stop focusing on the rioters and whether they need sympathy or a slap round the face (my words, not his to be clear!) and focus on helping the victims, some of whom have had their whole livelihoods destroyed and been shaken to the core.
...I could go on about how I was unimpressed that the issue of whether the glamorisation of gang violence and violently disrespectful attitude towards the police vocalised in certain popular genres of music (i.e. 'gansta rap') and certain hyper realistic video games could have played a part in bluring the line between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, or the idea that maybe the police were underinformed because people warn eachother but not them (even I got a txt about trouble in my area and I wasn't in the country) weren't mentioned but I suppose there's only so much you can fit into three hours...and this blog post is already excessively long. (Btw if you're interested in other short quotes, views and reviews of the debate check out the #r4riots stream on twitter).
There are a lot of complicated issues surrounding why these riots started. I don't pretend to have a simple answer. All I do know is that with the destruction of the local economy in certain areas, destruction of recently renovated low income areas, the massive cost of police operations, court proceedings, the inevitable appeals and the clean up, any idiot who joined in the riots based on the fact that 'they can't get and job and the economy sucks' has shot themselves in the foot: now there's even less money to go round and the chances of those actually deserving groups who desperately need help (and weren't involved in the riots) getting it are even slimmer. Well done.
Another big part of my life is campaigning for human rights and against gender based on discrimination. I am also part of the rather fantastic UpRising Leadership programme (expect a massively nerdy blog post about how awesome it is in the next few days, but until then for more info check out: http://www.uprising.org.uk/). So I am currently combining these parts of life to create a Social Action Project with fellow UpRiser Dominica Kaczkowska. We want to work on rebranding 'feminism', defeating the negative stereotypes associated with the word and raise awareness of gender inequality issues across the world. And this is step one of the our plan: to create an 'International Women's Week' at the University of Birmingham surrounding International Women's Day on the 8th March 2012.
I am a feminist. But contrary to the negative and unrepresentative stereotype I don't hate men and, to be honest, if women actively choose to stay home, not work and raise kids or whatever good for them, all I have a problem with are the statistics:
- Female genital mutilation is practised in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia. Worldwide an estimated 135million girls experience genital cutting. Predominantly it is not a religious but a cultural practice to sublimate female sexuality. Girls generally undergo the procedure between the age of 7-12. Many develop uncontrollable bleeding and some do not survive. It is often women who perform the procedures and perpetuate the cycle. http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-female-genital-mutilation
- .Gender-based violence is one of the biggest causes of injury and death to women across the world causing more deaths and disability among women aged 15 to 44 than cancer, malaria, traffic accident, and war.
- In China and India parents often use sex determination tests to find out if their foetus is a girl. Of 8,000 fetuses aborted at one Bombay clinic, 7,999 were female.There is also rising concern about mass infanticide of new born and baby girls across the two nations. (http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-poignant-facts-about-women-around-world ) (For a particularly harrowing description of how apparently common the murder of newborn baby girls is in modern rural China, and some to the point facts check out: http://www.economist.com/node/15636231?story_id=15636231)
Many people think Women's Rights is a dead and irrelevant issue. Plenty also assume that to be a feminist is to be a man-hating, boot wearing, bra burning nutter. Dominika and I plan on doing everything we can to change these two entirely erroneous assumptions, starting with students at the University of Birmingham.
Our Plan:
We are going to start by organising a week of events surrounding International Women’s Day on the 8th March 2012. Each day we will be raising money for different charities (to be decided in a meeting with interested groups) and highlighting a different issue. We will also be inviting in external organisations and charities to provide workshops and information on issues relevant to that particular day's theme. We also want to work with University of Birmingham societies to put on an array of student friendly events and get as many different sections of uni society involved as possible. We'd love to work with as many different groups as possible, men, women, transgender and everyone inbetween, I know it's not only women who think arbitrary discrimination based on gender is wrong.
We also plan on reserving International Women's Day (8th March) itself for celebrating just how far we have come down the road to securing gender equality and raising awareness of the amazing work individual women and women's organisations do world wide.
It will be University of Birmingham based this coming year but we are already starting to forge contacts with women’s groups across Birmingham to bring in outside speakers and find local charities to fundraise for. We want to make International Women’s Week an annual event and to, eventually, help extend it to a Birmingham wide event by working with existing groups with similar aims.
What do societies have to do to get involved?
We will ask all interested groups to fundraise a small amount (amount to be determined later) each in preparation for International Women's Week then donate at least 50% of the profits from their individual events to their selected charity.
Why would societies get involved?
If the facts aren't enough to tempt you to help create change this might: the amount per group raised in advance will go towards printing brochures for the week containing a listing of 'International Women's Week' associated events combined with selected short facts and statistics about gender discrimination. We plan on handing out these brochures in the weeks prior to the event, promoting it online and running an info stall and bake sale outside the library every day of International Women's Week. In short it's excellent publicity for the society and event in question and since only 50% of the profits are required to go to the selected charities the society will earn some money too.
We want to get as many societies involved as possible. So I'm starting recruiting and advertising as soon as term starts. If you're a University of Birmingham society council member you will probably hear from me via email or at guild forums in a month or so but if you're interested and you'd like to contact me before then comment on this post and I'll send you my email address :)
Contrary to what too many believe gender inequality is still an issue. The world needs modern feminists. In this mass information age ignorance is no excuse. And you don’t even have to be a woman to think that getting paid 10grand less than a colleague simply for having a pair of tits, or the systematic destruction of babies purely for having the audacity to be born a particular gender is wrong.
I believe fighting gender discrimination world wide is an important issue. I hope that, even if you'd never thought about it before, after reading this you do too.
I am a student and thus, by definition, am constantly broke. As a result I've spent the last few years developing some awesome bargain hunting skills and some strong views about the nature of vintage fashion (i.e. that it's about looking affordably fashionable and unique, not some pretentious 'It's vintage therefore it's cool/horrendously overpriced wank' mentality). So I figured I might as well sell on some of the wonderful things I find that are the wrong size/shape for me but would look awesome on other people for a little profit, and here's a couple of pieces currently in stock:
This lovely item is a vintage 70's, size UK 6-8, silk crepe, Jaeger dress. It is top quality, delightfully on trend and flattering in all the right ways...well to everyone whose over 5'1" anyway (midcalf length on someone of petite stature - personally I'm not a fan...which is a shame because I really need some actually interesting office/meeting appropriate clothing). But on those that can pull it off this dress is an instant must have this Autumn. And it's only £30.
The warm (well, warmish, this is England after all) days of summer may be coming to an end but this gorgeous fit and flare, late 80's/early 90's, cotton, size 12, summer dress will happily see you into the autumn with a pair of tights and some boots. Just £16.
80's cotton, size 10-12, high-waisted floral midi skirt. It's gorgeous, but unfortunately that same midi length that I just can't quite pull off. But it could be yours for a mere £9.
Lovely shoes! These 80's Bally court heels are good quality, a little bit different and a little bit nice, size 3, £13.
If you like the look of anything, want to see the rest or think it's hilariously ridiculous and wish to mock some more (item views are item views ;) ) check out the rest of my stock at http://www.etsy.com/shop/sowhatitsvintage
My second article on the phenomena of viewing deep fried tarantulas as a delicious delicacy in Cambodia:
Deep fried bugs. To most Westerners this is the stuff of a food hygiene nightmare but in many far Eastern countries they are something of a delicacy. I first encountered them whilst traveling around Cambodia in 2009 and I was horrified. Of course I had heard that deep fried insects were perfectly normal out there but it hadn’t quite prepared me for the sight of large groups of locals hanging out on street corners, casually chomping on locusts.
Most of us have probably seen that HSBC advert where the Cambodian farmer catches the flying insects to keep them off his crops, then cooks them and sells them (as you do), but the bugs that Cambodia is actually most famous for are its edible spiders. About 47 miles North of Cambodia’s capital city Phnom Penh lies the market town Skuon or, as it’s more commonly known by tourists, Spiderville. As I was told it, in this part of Cambodia locals have long used huge tarantulas in traditional medicine but during the horrors of Pol Pot’s regime they were forced to eat them in order to avoid starvation. Out of this many locals discovered a new found love of this curious snack and they are now considered a regional delicacy.
Most commonly found fried whole in garlic and sold by street vendors these spiders look ferocious. Unfortunately I can’t tell you what they taste like from personal experience. During a rest stop in Skuon I did have the opportunity to try some spider, or ‘a-ping’ as the locals call it, but I chickened out…mostly because the giggling Cambodian man behind me in the queue told my friend and I that ‘yeah they taste nice, but sometimes you get a bad poisonous one and ooo you don’t want to know happens’. I’m 99% sure he was having a laugh but that, combined with the sight of kids eating hairy spider legs, was enough to put me off. However one of our group was brave enough to give it a try and he summed up the taste of the surprisingly meaty on the inside arachnid as ‘kind of bland’ with a texture ‘somewhere between that of chicken and fish’. I think I’ll stick to chicken and fish, but in the spirit of this month’s focus on East Asian food if you would like to try this at home check out this delicious sounding recipe:
Ingredients:
Whole A-Ping Spiders (Haplopelma albostriatum)
Garlic (Crushed)
A Heap of Salt
A Heap of Sugar
Vegetable Oil
Preparation Method:
1. Dribble some oil over the spiders and toss them in the salt and sugar
2. Fry the garlic in the remaining oil until fragrant
3. Fry the spiders in the oil until the legs are completely stiff
To keep all of my writing together in one easily accessible online archive I've decided to post my Exploration articles here too :) Here is my first one on the subject of the Aromatherapy industry and how it's reversing the trend of Chinese production-UK consumption in unexpected ways...
Everyone knows that China exports to the world. They make everything. From cheap to top of the range electrical goods, clothes and even food, ‘Made in China’ products feature prominently on our shop shelves, homes and everywhere in between.Everyone also knows that the UK is in economic trouble, partly due to how much we import and how little we produce and export. So it seems unlikely that China would be importing en-masse from the UK, right? Wrong. Well, in the aromatherapy market that is.
Case Study:
Shirley Price Aromatherapy Ltd seems an unlikely candidate for exporting mass produced goods to China. It’s a tiny firm consisting of five employees based in an old warehouse in Hinckley (hardly a town with a reputation for being at the forefront of British innovation). Yet this small business exports tens of thousands of its products to China and the Far East every year, and demand is growing.
Why then, if these products would be much cheaper to produce and purchase in the Far East, do Chinese consumers turn to UK produced goods? Especially in a market (complementary medicine) that they themselves have an international reputation for? According the Shirley Price’s Managing Director (and, as it happens, my Dad) Ian Brealey it’s all about quality control.
When it comes to domestic production and sales the Chinese cosmetics industry has distinctly lax regulations. When dealing with natural chemicals like essential oils, wealthier Chinese consumers don’t want to risk potentially harming themselves by applying domestically produced products to their skin and would rather turn to far more rigorously regulated foreign imports. As Mr Brealey says of Shirley Price Aromatherapy’s best selling Organic Camomile Eye-Drops ‘if you are going to put something in your eyes, you want to know it’s 100% safe!’.
Another key factor in Shirley Price Aromatherapy’s success in China is the well recognised brand name. The company has been around since the 1970’s and has a wide variety of well regarded publications and how-to guides associated with it. However, one of the results of this is that they sometimes encounter Chinese retailers selling fake Shirley Price products. Knowing the miniscule size of the company as I do it is almost amusing to think that someone somewhere in the Far East thinks it’s as worth while creating knock-off versions of S.P. Aromatherapy products as fake Versace jeans. However for residents fake cosmetic and complementary medicinal products can be a genuine issue.
This phenomenon isn’t just associated with Shirley Price Aromatherapy; savvy aromatherapy and cosmetics retailers across the UK are cashing in on the Far Eastern demand for quality assured products. It’s a dramatically expanding market and one that British retailers are beginning to take advantage of in expanding numbers.
By the way, for those who I’ve now put off buying ‘Made in China’ cosmetic products sold in the UK, don’t worry, Chinese exports are thoroughly tested, it’s only those made and sold in the Far East that can be a little bit dodgy.
This is Exploration: http://www.eruditiononline.co.uk/exploration/profile.php?profile=3
It's an online travel magazine featuring some witty, interesting, fantastically well written articles about people's experiences of travelling around the world, thoughts and feelings on international topics and various other interesting anecdotes and facts. I think it's brilliant...although the fact that I happen to be a regular contributor to the Asia section might make me a little bit biased of course :p
I have too many blogs. There's my social action project blog (I'm organising a week of events surrounding international women's day on the 8th March highlighting gender inequality issues across the world), my etsy shop blog (SoWhatIt'sVintage - selling good quality vintage clothing with a no nonsense, reasonable prices approach http://www.etsy.com/shop/sowhatitsvintage) and my travel blog (I've just got back from 24 days interrailing round Eastern Europe and am deluded enough to think someone might be interested in my experiences) and on top of that there's all the other stuff I do, influential people I meet and articles I write that don't fit into any of the aforementioned sections. So I'm amalgamating all of them into one great big mighty blog of experience. I find it interesting, and I like to think some other people killing time on the world wide web do too....maybe...meh enjoy!
