Requirements of Living

In an online game I was playing, one player went by the moniker of "Life Demands Lysol." Now, I think that's fairly silly, because generally a bucket and soap is a fair substitute, but it had me thinking about what exactly I need to live. No, this is not some post where I end by saying "We need nothing! Goodbye material world, hello hermitage and a life spent alone in a cabin growing an impressive beard!" It's just a small list of things I require to continue functioning properly.

Some of these things are food, like breakfast. Recently I've been getting up after 12, in which case I'll usually eat "breakfast" at 3 pm, in which case it's hardly breakfast, but I still need toast, cereal, or something better than that on a daily basis. Oatmeal is also delicious. Under the food category there is also bread, usually brown bread. The white bread you get here is either cardboard or so processed that it's sweet, which is just weird. Other necessities are hot beverages like tea and coffee. The last item: chocolate, preferably dark.

Food is a fairly obvious prerequisite to survival. To actually live, I need trees. Trees, mountains, rivers and whatever other nature I can find. Animals are cool, too. I don't think I could live in a place that didn't have some of these things nearby. Part of why living at UBC is so cool is that we have a full forest next to campus on one side, an ocean on the other, and mountains looming to the north. It's not like I commune with nature on a regular basis. But I do love nature, and want to spend more time in it (therefore, the outdoors club.)

I'm not going to lie and leave something out here, but I need a computer as well. A digital camera is fairly awesome, but I can imagine living without one (seeing how rarely I use it.) But I currently maintain contact with most of my friends through the computer, entertain myself for hours with it, and occasionally do actual work on it. Obviously I could physically live without a computer, the question is only why I would want to.

So far, this list is missing one very important object, namely books. I haven't been reading very much recently, which makes me sad. I read No Logo when I first got here, honestly because I had nothing better to do, followed by The End of Faith, and am almost done Collapse (by the same author as Guns, Germs, and Steel, which is possibly one of my favourite books.) Considering that the first two were finished within the first few weeks of being at UBC, I think I could have done more reading. But I have read a fair bit, and I read a variety of books. The occasional fantasy book, for fun. A modern novel (I quite like Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity and About a Boy), for more serious literature. A non-fiction book, such as political or economic texts, or a polemic, for quite serious reading and for my education. There are more, but I think you get the point. Books are good.

Obviously this list is not complete, but I think it's dragged on enough.