The Battle Against "Supersize Me"

It's been a month since my last entry. By now, Andy and Alex both are back home from their 2-months journey in China. This is officially the end of our China trip and life resumes back home in S.F. Their trip did not end in Shanghai like mine. They visited their ancestry home near Shan Tou in the second half of November before their return to SF. I wish I could have been there with them. And I would if it wasn't because of limited vacation days from work. I don't think I will attempt to write up their part of the journey though.

What prompted me to write this entry is actually more relevant to a couple of new things Alex has learned since his return. The brief month of bachelette life in Nov. got me back on my movie watching trend. I went through quite a few latest movie releases as well as the popular documentaries such as Fahrenheit 911 and Supersize Me. On Alex's 3rd day back, we watched Supersize Me together. Now he learned the truth behind the Big Macs and Happy Meals sold at the golden archies, he has agreed that he will not eat at McDonalds any more... :) It is amazing how easy it is to influence a 3-year old either to love something or to hate something. I know some of you may think this type of documentary is not suitable for kids, but what about the hundreds of TV ads aimed at your kids everyday, selling them on fast foods and snacks? Is that fair? I only hope that I can influence my kids at an early enough age where they would always get the message on both sides of the fence. So they will always learn to think twice about what they see on T.V.

Today, Alex helped me to thread many of our junk mails, under my supervision of course. They're mostly credit card offer letters and some are blank checks sent from our existing credit card companies for us to use as cash advances. We never use those checks. It got me to think how when I was a kid, any such type of letters at home would be kept away from us. Even papers used in our notebooks for homework are reused at home for other things. But my kids are learning a whole new aspect toward these documents. They will have no respect for them, no matter how pretty they're printed or packaged. Alex will learn how to filter out the real important mail from the junk ones. Material things, wehther toys or pretty picture books are so abundant in his little life, he will learn at this early age that you just can't keep or save everything just because they're nice or pretty things. You have to throw away or give away what you cannot use and don't need.

Because of my Chineses upbringing in an age of shortage on everything from food to clothes, not to mention toys, till this day, I still struggle with every decision I make to throw away something I don't use or need. I do realize now that I must change my mentality in order to keep my life and household lean and organized. The new shows on TLC such as, "Clean Sweep" really openned my eyes on how others suffer from the over abundance of material things and allow their homes to be clogged with junk they don't need. The battle against the big commercial interests in making profits by supersizing us and our lives has just begun. As conscious and responsible consumers, we must learn how to differentiate the psuedo demands advertisements create in our minds and teach our next generation to do the same just as how they need to identify friends from faux.