On October 1st, I started an experiment in which I would be a vegetarian for 100 days. I wanted to do it long enough that it would be a challenge and also long enough to see the effects. With the 100 days now over, I’m ready to share some mostly anecdotal, completely unreplicated personal findings.

- Physiological: I lost 7 pounds (about 5% of my weight) and feel generally awesome, but I don’t credit vegetarianism for this. The veggie diet coincided with a training program which I think is responsible for these positive changes. However, the experiment did show that one can easily engage in rigorous strength-training whilst avoiding meat, a concern that had previous kept me from adopting vegetarianism. Energy levels remained high, and got my 65g daily protein by including lots of legumes.

- Gastronomical : Armed with a few recipe books and some online research I found it easy to make vegetarian meals that both Jonathan and I enjoyed, and I made many new discoveries along the way. I’m now a bulgur master. At no time did I feel any general meat cravings, but did feel one specific craving early on when a crispy slice of bacon was staring up at me. Otherwise even when wonderful dishes were served (Blork’s turkey at thanksgiving, Mom’s tourtière at Xmas), I found honest satisfaction in the vegetarian side dishes. I was also able to take in a bit more of the yummy, healthy fats (from nuts and olive oil) because I was ingesting no unhealthy fats from meat. Oh, and Indian vegetarian takeout rawks.

- Financial: This was surprisingly the area of biggest impact. Every week I went to the checkout counter thinking, “okay, this one’s going to be costly” having bought so much, and every week I was stunned by the bill. Weekly groceries for two people, including Jonathan’s meat (exclusively smoked or canned fish), ran us 45-50$ for the duration. The previous typical bill was about 125-150$.

- Social: This is definitely the area where I felt the sacrifice most dearly. Being a vegetarian is most inconvenient when dining out or at other people’s houses. Even when you bring a veggie dish to someone’s dinner party, it feels like an imposition. Additionally, the special diet creates one more constraint when choosing restaurants, or the necessity to negociate with chefs who aren’t always pleased to alter the delicate balance of their dishes. That having been said, there is less social pressure to bend the rules when you’re a strict vegetarian than with anything that seems negociable such as being on a diet or being a loose vegetarian. People don’t question you on it. Except your dad, of course.

Conclusion

Overall, one of the most surprising things is how little difference being a vegetarian makes in one’s life. It was generally an extremely easy and positive transition for me to make. As a result, I have decided to remain vegetarian, but only at home. The only difficulty arose when dining out or at people’s houses, so when I’m out I’ll eat what’s there. Since about 80% of what I ingest is food I make, with this easy guideline I should remain mostly vegetarian.

I’ve said it a couple of times on this blog: a large part of my early life was spent feeling like I had something to say or create, but without really a medium to say or do it in. Something inside me was itching to get out, but I felt I was a terrible artist and no other medium than art ever occurred to me. So it never really did come out.

Then I started to blog, and for a while that was a huge if unexpected release. The more personal the blogging got, the more satisfying and liberating it was. Eventually, though, the mainstream did catch up with blogging, and it did get complicated; clients and employers were likely to read everything I would write, and somewhere along the line, fact-checking commenters started nitpicking on every shakespearian overgeneralization that I’d previously used for dramatic effect. So, for a couple of years now, I haven’t really blogged, not like I used to. Fair enough, it was great while it lasted.

Thing is, that drive is really starting to manifest again, that urge to create something, for lack of a better expression. And I’m still looking for the medium to do it in.

Should I simply learn an art? Given that I’m cerebral and love to tell stories, perhaps I should write non-fiction essays, or produce documentaries? Graphic novels? Photography? Return to videogame producing? Right now I’m thinking all of the above.

First insight: I need to invest in a cookbook.

Carrot sandwiches, though oddly tasty, don’t make for a nutritious lunch.

I’ve been thinking about whether to rent out my condo or sell it; I worry about the hassle of having to deal with a bad tenant, but real estate is probably a better investment than the stock market. At least in Montreal.

I was leaning very much towards holding on to it, and then I saw this.

About a month ago, Jonathan showed me a video about how badly the animals we eat are treated. There was no point in making myself sick watching it, I felt, if I was certain I wouldn’t consider taking action as a result. The logic was: I already know these animals suffer horribly, so I won’t be learning much. If watching it won’t change my behavior, then the sole result of watching will be to make me feel bad, which isn’t helpful to anyone. So I refused to watch it.

Oddly enough, I couldn’t put it out of my mind afterwards. Fair enough, I know about the mistreatment, the knowledge is already there, so the video wouldn’t make a difference in my behavior. But why isn’t the knowledge itself making a difference?

I started examining my reasons for discarding vegetarianism outright. Mostly, I like to train and need to keep my energy up. I find it easy to eat a protein-rich diet by including meat. I worry about missing nutrients. A little summary research easily dispelled these worries.

Also, when shopping for the new condo, I had a few arguments with my mother, baby-boomer with a vengeance, where she attacked my decision to live in the city so close to neighbors. I defended it on the ecological grounds that it would be untenable for everyone to live the suburban bungalow life, where a relatively large swath of land is taken up by relatively few people, and a car is required just to reach a decent video store. But meanwhile, I couldn’t escape the conclusion that a similar argument can be made against meat-eating. That is, since many more resources are used to produce 1000 calories of meat than of grain, it’s untenable for everyone to eat meat daily.

But most importantly, the more I thought about all this, the more bacon tasted like dead pig, and eggs like the forced output of unhappy, half-mad hens. And then fate dealt my inner carnivore a final blow by dropping me in Scotland and Sweden for two weeks, two weeks of non-stop meatballs, steak pies and huge slabs o’ deer. As tasty as steak pie is (and God knows, it is), my very cells were screaming for arugula by the time I reached Trudeau.

So here I am, out of arguments against being a vegetarian. There’s no question that it’s better ecologically and ethically. It’s also better for me, and being already very focused on what I eat, I should be able to easily make the small necessary adjustments to ensure I get all the nutrients I need, even to support serious fitness training. And finally, I’m kind of sick of the taste of meat right now anyway.

So I’m embarking on a little experiment, giving vegetarianism a trial run. I will eat a lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet for 100 days starting October 1st. It won’t be anal no-meat-must-touch-my-food vegetarianism, but rather loose pick-the-pepperoni-off-the-pizza vegetarianism. I might not have the thanksgiving turkey, but I’ll have the stuffing.

Another ground rule: no preaching. This post isn’t an attack on meat-eaters or bungalow-dwellers, but simply a clarification of my position. I expect my loved ones to respect this decision, and in my turn I won’t preach or moralize.

100 days should be long enough to feel the effects of the change in my lifestyle and habits as much as on my body, for better or worse. It’s long enough to find it challenging, and to work through the challenges. And maybe it’s even long enough to make a tiny difference.

Today, I became the proud owner of my second condo. We move into it Saturday.

Which means I have a nice condo for rent in the Village, if anyone is interested.

I’d also be interested in any advice/tips anyone would have about the short-term renting out of furnished apartments, and agencies who manage that sort of thing in Montreal.

You know that upcoming trip to Scotland I was talking about in my last post? It was with Zoom, the airline that went bankrupt yesterday.

What I didn’t say in my last post, is that we also have tickets (with another airline), going from Scotland to Sweden, paid and non-refundable. Accommodation and train passes in Sweden, paid and non-refundable. So not only do we lose our tickets to Scotland, but unless we buy another pair of tickets to Scotland at this late (and therefore expensive) hour, we lose the rest of the trip as well.

It’s okay, I said, I have a free ticket with Air Canada, I said. A quick call to Air Canada allowed me to find out that my free ticket would cost me over 600$ in of fuel surcharges and other fees. Jonathan, who had fewer points, would have to pay 1100$ for his reward ticket.

Zoom executives said they were “desperately sorry” for the inconvenience.

Last night I tossed and turned, desperately sorry that Jonathan was going to miss his best friend’s wedding, and miss seeing the family he hasn’t seen in a year, while he wrote our miserable apologies to his parents and the fiancés. It was a miserable night and morning as we scrambled and racked our brains for a way we could afford a new pair of tickets, but kept finding we just couldn’t.

This morning, however, I found out that American Express will be refunding all card members who booked Zoom tickets and now cannot use them, even if they aren’t stranded, even if they don’t have the AmEx travel insurance, even if AmEx never recoups the expense from Zoom in their turn. I called and spoke to several CSRs, including managers, to ask over and over again if they were SURE we would be refunded, and had it spelled out to me in 14 different ways that we would be.

AmEx, je t’aime.

And so it looks like I have to finish my dress after all.

Iron Man the movie hit the theaters yesterday, and the game hit stores. The PS2, PSP, PC and Wii are the ones I got to produce. The next gen SKUs were done by Sega’s own studio.

Last night we went to the movie, then home with the newly purchased game and I watched Jonathan play. The evening was a very cool ride, a happy culmination to 18 months of hard work.

When I produced Happy Feet, access to assets was complicated by the fact that the movie was being produced in Australia. Nevertheless, the whole team got to see the movie at various stages of its production. I had therefore seen it three times by the time it was released.

With Iron Man, the film crew was extremely open with assets, and we visited the set, witnessed some scenes being shot, met director, cast and crew, saw flight animation tests and the Iron Monger suit in the “flesh”, visited Stark mansion and saw Iron Man suit concept art, but I never read the script or actually saw the movie. Consequently, having been allowed access to some information, without seeing the finished product, just made the whole thing extremely tantalizing.

And last night was the biggest payoff a superhero fan could wish for. The movie is awesome, definitely up there with the first Spider-Man for superhero movies.

Go. And make sure you stay until the end of the credits

This has been brewing for many months, and today I can blog it. Late last week, I resigned from my post as Game Director. I won’t go into the specifics of my reasons for this move here, but suffice it to say I haven’t taken employment elsewhere as a videogames producer (or any other position for that matter). In my estimation, Artificial Mind and Movement is an employer of the highest integrity, humanity and professionalism, the best I’ve worked for. Nevertheless, I haven’t enjoyed being a game director there in a while.

Considering how highly I esteem A2M, I doubt things would be better elsewhere, so I haven’t traded this job for another one. Wanting more control and flexibility over my conditions, the manner in which my work is done, and consequently the final result, I’ve decided to just leave, trust the future and see what interesting doors open.

In the meantime, I’ll pursue two avenues: freelancing, and working on a special project. I’ll write more about each shortly.