Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Recently I have been accused of making too big of a deal out of recycling. I wanted to turn this into an opportunity to give you some facts about what my cause as a team member at work as well as a human being is.

• The U.S. recycles approximately 32 percent of its waste which saves an equivalent amount of greenhouse gases to removing 39,618 cars from the road. 
• Increasing the recycling rate to 35 percent would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an additional 5.2 Million Metric Tons of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent.
• Net carbon emissions are four to five times lower when materials are produced from recycled steel, copper, glass, and paper. They are 40 times lower for aluminum.
• Just one person recycling their newspaper, magazines, plastic, glass, and metal for one year is enough to save 471 pounds of carbon dioxide from going into the atmosphere. One person does matter.
• Overall recycling rate for Michigan is a sad 20%, falling after years of being country's leader in recycling. Thanks to the high deposit campaign, can and bottle recycling rate once was almost 100%. Due to budget cuts in the recent years affected recycling programs statewide, we are facing a fall in recycling. 
• Apart from the obvious benefits, recycling also creates more jobs than disposal does, uses less energy than mining, harvesting, importing and otherwise processing raw materials, and creates less greenhouse gas than landfilling does.
• In a recent Adopt-a-Highway event, volunteers combed a 46-mile stretch of country roads in Kent county. It was sorted and weighed. It included:
• 514.1 pounds of newspapers, magazines, paper, plastic and fast food wrappers/containers
• 227.7 pounds of carpet, clothing, furniture and building materials
• 204.2 pounds of auto parts
• 34.8 pounds of beverage containers covered by the bottle deposit law
• 29.4 pounds of water, tea and juice containers
• 23.6 pounds of milk, liquor and wine containers

Imagine.

My cause is not recycling. My cause is, being as environmentally friendly as I can be, in balance with a normal lifestyle. Recycling is only a means. It is actually the 3rd and last R of being green. We first Reduce, then if possible Reuse, and Recycle.

Being environmentally friendly does not mean you need to fit into the hipster stereotype of only wearing cotton, belonging to a food-coop, composting your waste, always riding a bike or a hybrid car, or being politically active about it (although none of these hurt)... It is just doing what we can. And I believe we are all capable of caring and helping our homes and workplaces be environmentally conscious. The least we can do in our workplace is reusing and recycling paper products.

Buzz...

The weather mellows slightly in Ann Arbor accompanied by mild winds now and then. And if you live in an apartment complex that uses central heating and does not care much about the general maintenance of things, you know that this is the time of the year when newly emerging bugs, searching for a warm place and aided by the wind,  start crawling into your apartment.

I remember, in my old apartment complex, I woke up in the middle of the night to drink some water. Only half awake and not being able to open my eyes fully, I turned on the lamp on my night stand. This huge thing started buzzing loudly a millisecond later. I was so scared, I didn't know what it was, and it was so huge, trapped in the shade of my night lamp, I couldn't stay at home and left home until the morning, crashed at my neighbor's place. When I came home, there was no sign of the huge disgusting bug. False hope. The "thing" came back at night, hitting on windows and lamps, buzzing loudly, falling and flying. Finally I could catch a glimpse of it, it was just a fly. AS BIG AS MY THUMB! Eew. I finally got rid of it but it was very gross, I'm going to spare you the details.

A few nights ago, I woke up again in the middle of the night, this time to the familiar sound of buzzing. Another bug is trying to get out to the light through the closed window. First I thought it was trapped between the insulation wrap and the window. So I didn't care and tried to go back to sleep. Then I saw my 11 year old cat, watching it carefully, whiskers all alarmed. I let her entertain herself and slept.

This parade continued another couple of nights. The stupid bug, although not trapped, failed to get out of my bedroom. On the third day, my cat watched, watched, watched... and SMACK! the bug is down at the window sill. Another paw and it is now on the floor. It tries to buzz and fly away, but all it is capable of doing is jumping around. So my cat plays with it for a while, before chowing it down.

Watching her through the action, I decide I won't be kissing her cute little nose anytime soon.

After only a couple of days, now she is playing with another little bugger buzzer on the window. Who knew my 11 year old indoors kitty had an inner hunterress. At least I'm luckier than Simon:

Gunshot at 3am

Yesterday, a laid-back Saturday, the day I should have been studying for my exam this Monday, started with me volunteering at the Humane Society as a greeter. In busy days it's a delight to volunteer as a greeter, and you don't realize how time passes. Yesterday's shift was a classic rush and lull repeats. It was decent but still a tad boring.

I come home, a friend drops by to collect some books, I get lazy. Just around the time I heat up some soup as dinner, determined to sit and read my class notes afterwards, I receive a voicemail. See, the reception at my place is questionable. My friend tells me he had a minor accident, he is fine but the car is not, so he's getting it towed and could I give him a ride back home from the shop. It's another snowy day, you see, where everything gets white in an hour or less. So I dress up and get out to pick him up.

He repeatedly says thank you when I'm dropping him at his place. Isn't it funny? It's not like I'm doing him a favor. It's what friends are for. This has been a significantly noticeable difference from my culture and the one here in US. Of course, I will give you a ride. You've been in an accident on a snowy day, what kind of a friend would not? It's like thanking a family member after being there for you after an accident. It's not a favor, it's why we are there for. We don't expect thanks. If that happened to me, I would call him the same way and he would show up. It's our responsibility as friends, no? But I digress.

After carefully driving home and seeing many police cars helping other minor skidding accidents, I am already out of the studying mode. There's nothing on TV, so I log on to my latest addiction and watch Law and Order, SVU on Netflix. I started to watch the series from the very beginning, when I first got Netflix, at work when I'm doing mind-numbing work. I'm close to the end of season 1.

Of course L&O SVU is another addictive TV show, especially because I don't remember any of these old episodes, so I get sucked into it. I am a mild insomniac in the sense that I can't fall asleep (but once asleep can't wake up either, ha!). So I keep watching the shows in my bedroom TV,  and around 2:30 I finally feel like I might fall asleep soon.

Then bam! a gunshot.

You know those witnesses in criminal tv shows who say "I heard a gunshot." just like that? They are liars. You don't understand what it is first. I have gone hunting with my family, so I am used to hearing at least what kind of sound rifles make. And all those sound effects in movies etc are so generic. What I heard was nothing like that. I couldn't make sense of it for some time. I actually thought initially something really big fell from a building or something. So I get up in horror and look at the street to see if anything was around, trying to make sense of the sound. I peek through my blinds and see nothing. It was so loud, it had to be something. I say, it can't be a gunshot. It's because I've been watching Law and Order too much that I react to that sound as a gunshot. But it can't be, right?

I go back to bed, my eyes wide open. It's 2:45am. (This is one of the things I got from criminal TV shows, actually. I always check the time when something weird happens in the middle of night, to be sure, if at all I'm asked - I know, funny, right?) Shortly after, I hear screams and cussing and more yelling. I realize it's my neighbors, and it was indeed a gunshot.

This is not the first time I heard them in the middle of the night. They are from another building across the street, and I had been warned before I moved in this apartment complex, that there were these trouble residents in that building. Rumor is that the guy deals guns or something, and beats his wife. I had heard them fighting before a couple of times, by fighting I mean the guy screaming and swearing like crazy and a woman's undecipherable responses. They always end one way or another, but I had never seen police coming or something big happening.

I take that back. One night I came home after bars closed up, and saw ambulances and police cars leaving from in front of that building. I still don't know if it was them, but now it seems very likely.

Hearing them yell, I realize that I did hear similar gunshot-like sounds before, too. I just never knew what it was until now. They were gunshots. I was not making it up because I watched too many criminal shows.

In the first few minutes, I am pinned in my bed. I'm trying to hear everything. The guy just yells and cusses, nothing understandable except for an occasional "Get off!". Scared of being seen at the window, I stick my ear on the wall and try to listen. The fight continues. Not knowing what to do I sit on my bed.

Then I hear the woman screaming for help.

There, I panic. Should I call for the police? I did peek through the window, and although I couldn't see anything, what if that guy saw me peeking? What if he knows I called the police and does something to me or throws something through my windows or slashes my car's tires or something later one day? F*ck.  Why did I ever show my face through the window?

Although now, I am really worried and curious. I try to minimally move the blinds and peek again. I can't see a thing. I hear them, but I don't know where they are. The woman doesn't scream for help anymore, but I can hear her talking. I'm relieved to hear her voice. But I'm still restless. I take my phone and go back and forth about the decision to call 911.


It's not like I'm a stranger to calling the police.


Christmas 2009, I think. I live in a different apartment back then. Pretty decent place. As usual, my downstairs neighbor is not as decent. I remember waking up on Thanksgiving morning at 8am that year to reggae music blasting through the entire building coming from his apartment. They also smoked pot all the time, and living at the top floor of a building that shared central heating/cooling, the smell was always in my apartment. Once, their music was so loud, whole neighborhood was trembling, and someone must have called the police. When they showed up, I ended up listening to their doorway conversations from my door, and I heard him, calling me, "the bi*ch upstairs". He thought it was me who called the police, and although it wasn't me, I wouldn't feel one bit bad if it was. (Of course I opened my door and set him straight, and the gentle policeman sorted out the situation.)

That Christmas night was the peak of disturbances, though.

I came home very late, after having dinner at my date's place. I wasn't drunk, but I had a lot of wine, so I wanted to go to bed asap. One minute after I laid down on my couch, I heard the smoke alarm going. Nope, it wasn't my apartment. Our smoke alarms went off now and then whenever they feel like. So I figured, someone else's alarm was going off by mistake, and they would shut it off soon. And I was so sleepy, it didn't even annoy me for a while.

After 15 minutes of the pitching noise (the alarms in those buildings were extremely loud and high pitch, no one could stand that noise on purpose), I made myself get up, put on something decent to wear and got on the hallway. I found that it's coming from the same downstairs neighbor. Just when I was about to knock on their door, the alarm stopped. I sighed, went back up, and passed out on the couch.

Mere few minutes later the alarm was back on, but with the alcohol and everything, I fell back asleep again not being able to get up or even be alarmed about what's happening.

I woke up again around 4am. The alarm was as loud as it could be. I was so pissed. I got up to go downstairs. As soon as I opened my door, I smelled smoke. There wans't any visible smoke in the building, and I could barely smell it, but it was there. Also pissed at my other neighbors for being p*ssyfoots about this situation and not doing anything, I went downstairs. I knocked on the alarming neighbor's door heavily for 5 minutes. No one answered, no noise came from the inside. I got scared thinking, maybe, no one was at home in the holidays and something caught fire inside. I knocked on the next door. No one answered. They were away for holidays I realized. I went down one more floor. Another neighbor was away as well, but the last one opened the door. He was as worried as I am, and he told me he already called the emergency number the leasing company gave us, but no one got back to him yet. We considered calling 911, but we decided that we'd keep calling the apartment complex's emergency number. Though when I climbed up the stairs, that barely noticeable smell of smoke hit me again. I opened my own apartment's door and the smell was in my apartment now already. So I called the after hours emergency number, left a message, then I called the police.

As I put the phone down, the after hours emergency guy called back. I felt for him, I mean, after all, it was Christmas night. I explained the situation and told him that the police and the fire department were on their way. Then he changed tones and scared me, he said, if it was nothing in there, no fire etc., the city would fine me for calling them and making a false report. I was wide awake and pissed of as hell at this point. I told him to bring his late butt over here and check it out for himself then.

Before I could do anything else I saw the police coming. I got out to the hallway to meet the officer. He pounded on the door. No one was answering. I told him that someone with the key was on his way. After 5 minutes of pounding the door and aware of the slight smoke smell, he decided not to wait for the key. Just about then the fire trucks arrived. As they were about to smash the door, this dude, totally stoned and wasted, opened the door. I saw inside, from the stairs. It was WHITE. You could barely see the guy. It was pure white in there with smoke. The alarm, once the door was opened, was louder than ever. The dumb resident and his friends apparently had passed out because of whatever they took, and slept through the freaking alarm and white smoke. The police took the guy out, asked us to step away, the firemen came in and checked it out. Luckily there was no big fire. It turned out the idiots forgot the stove on, with a pot on it, and it slowly burned through the night, finally ending up with a small fire.

The firemen put it off in a swift and brought in big-ass fans to fan out the white smoke. By this time, all that released smoke, of course, was in my apartment. I opened all the doors and windows to let it out. After about half an hour, the police and the fire trucks left. I don't know what they did with my idiot neighbor. I ended up with a f*cked up night, no sleep, and an apartment that smelled like smoke for a few days.


But I digress again. Back to last night.


So I try to decide whether I should call the police. To my relief, as I'm trying to peek through the blinds, I see they have already been called. I see police cars and I sigh. I open the blinds and watch what's happening. There are 5 police cars and a police van outside, maybe more, but no one is in sight. Apparently they are inside, I can still hear a chaos. It must be one of the apartments looking the other way, not to the street. At one point, I distinctly hear a woman, not one of the police, screaming, "Now let's just calm down, OK?" in a street accent. Then nothing happens. I check out the other apartments to see if someone else is peeking through their blinds as well. Some blinds are cracked, but nothing seems to move. Man, how can a person sleep through this? Especially if it's happening in your apartment? I don't know.

Determined to watch the whole show, I grab my robe to get warm in front of the window. Every once in a while a policeman or policewoman comes out, checks out some stuff outside with a flashlight, especially this one parked car they are interested in, then goes to a police car and does something. Then they go back inside. I fight the urge to go out and ask them what's happening. I leave the window for a little while and when I come back, I see someone is put at the back seat of the police van. An ambulance arrives. I see the paramedics going in, and shortly after one of them comes back to take the stretcher. Another 10 minutes later, a hysterical woman, still yelling, comes out on the stretcher with paramedics and police.

The police van with the blackened back windows leaves shortly after an exhausted and frustrated policeman finishes his cigarette. The ambulance follows, and I see the other police cars getting ready to leave. Some of them double check this one car of interest with flashlights before leaving.

I go back to bed, exhausted myself.

Man, what a day and what an ending. It started almost boring, sped up quickly with a friend's minor accident and peaked at 3am.

So naturally I wake up at 1pm today after many weird and suspenseful dreams. Who can blame me?

Dream 6 - the Bridesmaid

I had a few drinks yesterday therefore I woke up after 4 hours of sleep for water. I was still sleepy but yet couldn't go back to sleep easily. Which means, I forgot most parts of what I dreamed. I do remember thinking how interesting and movie-like (with a perfect plot) it was again, though. It took quite a bit of concentration to remember the bits and parts after I woke up at noon. Here is what I rescued:

The first dream is much of a blur, actually. I seem to be going on a 3-4 day vacation with some friends. I pack this huge bag full with shoes. Then I see myself being shocked at how big a bag I packed for only a few days. There were some cute shoes in that bag, though.

I don't know how it transitions, but in the next dream, a friend of mine is getting married. Another friend (or was she my cousin?) and I are what you would call the bridesmaids, but my cousin is the one closer to the friend, and she is supposed to handle the bride's make-up and all. But close to the wedding she ditches us, so it is left to me to deal with the bride. I take her to the bridal suite to get her dressed and do her make-up. After her eyes are done, she is ready to wear her gown. But after putting the corset on, she feels frustrated, restless: she has cold feet. Before I can do anything, she goes down to the lobby-like area downstairs, and starts talking to this one creepy guy who followed us around that day. To my surprise, they really fall in love, and she doesn't go through with the wedding, and goes with this creepy guy, who I think also has two kids. I remember myself having to bear the bad news in the celebration party, and the father of the bride doesn't know what to do.

At some point during my sleep, I also saw myself looking for an apartment. I kept going to the same apartment every time they re-posted it, and after quite a few times I tell them that I think this is the same apartment (to my smarts!) and I will not be coming again. Before I woke up, I remember driving in my car, and taking a right turn. I don't know why this is too distinct to remember, but it was very vivid.

I wonder what all this absurdness means.

Turkey bans Blogger

I am speechless...

Oh wait - ironically that's what they were going for, but in another sense.

Here, read the story of shame.