MWP: 2

Quote of the day: There is no poverty that can overtake diligence.
-Japanese Proverb
Today was a great and not so great day. The great part was that I got to visit our new house. (Which is still renovating, it’ll be done at about June next year, hopefully.) It’s a 4 level house including a basement, used as our entertainment room. My room is on the 4th and highest floor, which it perfect, for me at least. I saw the computerized images made by our house’s designer. It was great, a view of blue. And the best part, it’s a LOT bigger than my room back in Singapore. Instead, it’s about 3 times the size! Now the bad part… After sightseeing at the house, we went to the supermarket. Supermarkets in China are a lot bigger than the ones back in Singapore. Compared to our 1-storeyed FairPrice NTUC, this supermarket is double the size, which makes it 2 stores. (Kinda like Mega Carrefour or Mega Giants.) I know this is not exactly the bad part, but, trust me; the bad part is coming up. On the second floor of the supermarket, we went to the seafood department. My mum brought a fish-not sure of the name-and in China, they provide a “scaling” service. The lady will basically scrap the scales out of the fish and remove the intestines. We bought a dead fish, you know, the kind that you buy at wet markets. And my mum queued up for the service. What I didn’t mention was that they provided living fishes as well. So they take a fish out of its tank, alive and the lady puts the fish in a plastic bag and uses a rolling pin to hit it on the head. This action is supposed to knock the fish unconscious, but my dad told me that the action DOES NOT make the fish unconscious; instead it leaves the fish semi-conscious. It can still feel pain, but it’ll feel kinda drunk. Imagine yourself being knocked out, and then stabbed in the gut, you’re still feeling the pain, but you’re drowsy. This is exactly how the fish is feeling. The lady then takes a knife and slid the throat of the fish. (A.K.A: the gills.) But she does not kill it. Come on, I can still see the mouth moving when she cuts the body of the fish. It is cruel, inhumane and not to mention bloody. And you know why they don’t just cut of the head in one swift motion, because the customers want the head of the fish too and doing that, will make it harder for the customer to handle it. (For soup or something. I don’t know.) And then I walk to the back to the station, where I saw 4 tanks of different fishes, swimming pleasantly. Do they know that they are raised to be killed? Aren’t they sad that they are cooped up in a small cage like this while their other luckier fellow-mates roam the seas freely? I know, I know, I eat fish too. Why get so upset over an animal. But that’s the point. Animals are living beings too, they have blood and flesh just like us, and they have parents, just like us. What difference shapes them from us are only the physical appearances. At some point we are animals too. Didn’t we all start out as monkeys? (Don’t blame me on the Science part.) Don’t we share the same characteristic that they have too? At least we brought a dead fish, which the body is intact, evidence that it have not been touched by a knife. (Most probably died when it was taken out of the water for too long.) Yes, both fishes died in the end. But if you were to make a choice, which will you choose? Let me put this in human words. Imagine you are walking home and someone comes up to you and puts a towel on your mouth, you can’t breath and will die. Compare this to being cut at the throat many times (but you’re not dead yet, you just feel great pain) and then leaving you on the streets to bleed to death. Choose and you tell me which death the fish will prefer if it had to die and had a choice.