Chat About Vegetarianism

Interviewer (AJ): I just did a podcast about vegetarianism. On the forums there’s this super, super cool learner/member named Sri. She’s actually Indonesian.

Interviewee (Kristin): Um hm.

Interviewer: Anyway, she comments on my blog a lot, she’s really active on the forum, she helps other people out and answers their questions. She’s like the über-super-learner, you know?

Interviewee: Um hm.

Interviewer: It’s like I wish I could be like her with Spanish. I’d be fluent in a month. But anyway, she’s kind of – she’s not vegetarian, but it sounds like she eats sort of quasi-vegetarian.

Interviewee: Um hm.

Interviewer: Like she eats lots of vegetables, eats really well. Well, she started, like scheduled this whole Skype discussion with other members on the topic of vegetarianism.

Interviewee: Hm.

Interviewer: Yeah, it was kind of cool, and so that inspired me to, you know, maybe write a little, do a little podcast about being vegetarian. Maybe I should – I can interview you some time about – because I talked about my story, why I’m vegetarian, but yeah, maybe we could chat about that sometime and record it.

Interviewee: Okay.

Interviewer: Would you be interested in doing that? When did you become vegetarian?

Interviewee: Well, you know, honestly not strictly until some point in Thailand, because I was still occasionally eating fish.

Interviewer: So you were kind of mostly vegetarian, though, before that, right?

Interviewee: Well, yeah. Everything was cut out except for occasional fish when I was 22.

Interviewer: Wow. That’s quite a while.

Interviewee: Yeah.

Interviewer: Because I don’t remember you eating that much fish.

Interviewee: I did in the beginning, and it was more of a rebellious thing because I felt like Todd is the one that pressured me into quitting eating meat, and I wasn’t comfortable with that. And I was like, “Well, you know, I’ve already been thinking of moving along these lines.”

Interviewer: Yeah, but you don’t want somebody –

Interviewee: I was hesitant about giving up fish, and so therefore I’m not going to.

Interviewer: Well, of course you don’t want somebody pushing you. That’s not good.

Interviewee: Right. So in the beginning it was more, and it generally became less and less. But I think I still – you know, I honestly don’t remember ever eating it in Thailand, but I must have because it seemed like there was this turning point when I – when Wat and I went with Gene and Brandy down to Phuket and went out on the boat when they went deep sea fishing. And one of them reeled in this fish, and it’s a big fish and it’s flopping around, and somebody picked up this mallet type thing and hit it, and just knocked it, killed it, instantly. And when I saw that, I was like, “I’m done. I’m not even eating fish any more.”

Interviewer: Yeah, you sort of realize, “Oh, they are alive and sentient.”

Interviewee: Right. Yeah.

Interviewer: You know, they’re aware and they suffer.

Interviewee: Yeah.

Interviewer: Yeah. I kind of get that a little bit when I scuba dive. You realize how like fascinating and intelligent they are.

Interviewee: Um hm.

Interviewer: And it’s – it’s like, “You know, they’re not plants.”

Interviewee: I started realizing, I think, when I had my 75-gallon tank, actually.

Interviewer: Um hm, um hm. I think that’s always been for me, that, you know, the main thing. It’s like if they’re sentient beings with some sort of nervous system that’s capable of suffering, it’s like, yeah, don’t wanna cause that.

Interviewee: Yeah.


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