Pictures and Words

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and for the month of February, I am only eating twenty-eight dollars worth of food. I hope I do not die!

3 days worth of rice.

My original plan was to split the sack of rice evenly 28 ways, and dole it out accordingly. It wasn’t until I was actually in the kitchen with the sack that I realised I had absolutely no way of storing 28 different batches of rice. So instead, I weighed the sack of rice (5.1 kg), divided that by 27 (0.18889kg) and took rice out until the difference was one day.

Turns out that cheap, dodgy scales don’t actually change unless it’s quite a large change, so I took .6kg (for the sake of our American readers, 0.6kg = 8 pounds) out and declared it three day’s worth of rice.

Around noon, hunger started to strike, and I had my first bowl:

It's so white, it could almost be a Cullen.

It was bland, as you’d expect, but really rather filling. I’d give it 6/10, but as the month goes on, I expect that score will get progressively lower.

About 6 hours later, I was really, really hungry. This shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Cannibal Kate suggested I cook up another of those “Yum Yum” packets of noodles. I’d still be well under $1 for the day, and it would prevent me from, you know, dying.

More like "yuck yuck".

I was surprised by how much I disliked them. Perhaps it was because I didn’t use the “Flavoured oil” (I thought I’d save it for when I was really, really sick of rice, combine it with water and use it as a sauce.) or perhaps my stomach just wasn’t prepared, but I thought that they were really unpleasant. I cooked them up with the herbs, and the meal was greasy, unappealing, while at the same time being more bland than the rice. 1/10.

Once I’d finished all the noodles, I couldn’t bring myself to drink the broth. It was like greasy water. It will probably be the only meal I am unable to finish all month!

Em, my shopping assistant from yesterday, has amused herself today by emailing me information about the Changi prison camp:

The Japanese began to deliver rations regularly: a pound or so of rice a man, some green vegetables, and very small quantities of salt, sugar, tea, cooking fats, jams, and occasionally dried fish. One man described the rations at the beginning as ‘ample’ though short of fish and meat; but others found a diet composed mainly of rice hard to get used to. To make matters worse, the quantity of rice soon considerably decreased, and the lack of protein and certain vitamins in the diet, combined with its overall insufficiency, led to general loss of weight among the prisoners and later to deficiency diseases.

One New Zealand officer’s weight fell from 10st. 8lb. to 9 stone in the first three months, and remained at the latter figure until he left the camp. Coconuts, occasional tinned fish, toffee, and gula malacca (sugar substitute) from the canteen, once it had been established, provided some small supplement. Apart from this, green vegetables such as spinach and even tapioca were grown inside the camp area. But attempts to supply additional protein by keeping pigs had to be abandoned owing to ‘lack of fattening material’; and a similar project for keeping poultry was able to provide only sufficient birds for the hospital.

-Source

Before anyone gets too worried, I’ll point out that I’m not going to be doing this for more than 28 days, so I’m unlikely to get the dreaded Gula Malacca (fatal in 8 out of 10 cases.)

She also sent this lovely piece – a first-hand account of vitamin deficiencies, also from Changi.

We eked out our tinned food but gradually it dwindled until eventually we were completely on Asiatic diet. This reduction in our diet showed in many ways. Dysentery, beri-beri, skin sores and general debility. I went down with my first attack of dysentery and was put on a diet of rice water, and dosed with Mag. Sulph. Sick parades had become a daily factor in every man’s life. The universal complaint was lack of vitamins – the universal symptoms, were “Happy Feet “ and “Rice Balls”. “Rice Balls” is not an elegant term. It was not, however, an elegant complaint, and no picture of the life we had is complete without its description. “Rice Balls” to us, meant not one of the favourite dishes of the Japanese, but the ripping raw of a man’s scrotum and genitals (by the denial of even a tiny quantity of Vitamin B2). There was first a faint discomfort, then the skin split and peeled off an area which might spread from the genitals right down the inner thighs. This entire surface then became raw and sticky and painful. By refusing us a spoonful each day of this worthless polishing taken off rice (and they could easily have given us sacks full) the Japs condemned us to years of living with a scrotum that was red weeping flesh .

We ate rice. We ate rice only. Consequently we had “Rice Balls”. “Happy Feet” was another symptom of the same thing – the lack of vitamins. This scourge struck only about half the prisoners, but made up the balance by striking them with a pain twice as severe as anything any of us had ever seen. It inflicted them with persistent series of searing stabs in the soles of their feet. The pain was like fire. But when they put their feet in water, the coolness immediately tore at them like ice. So that once again they moaned for warmth. You could almost see the flesh drop from their bones and the life from their faces. Boys of twenty became suddenly old men – shrunken and desperate. As you looked at them, and from them to the Japs, you were filled with the deepest pity for them and a hatred for the Japs that nothing would ever eradicate. 

-Source

This one scared me a bit. “Rice Balls” sounds particularly undesirable. Tomorrow, I think I’ll go shopping for something that has Vitamin B2 in it – Wikipedia tells me that it can be found in “asparagus, bananas, okra, chard, cottage cheese, milk, yogurt, meat, eggs and fish”, so I’ll see which of those fits my budget best. I also learned that another name for Vitamin B2 is “riboglavin”, which sounds like something Professor Frink would say.

From the comments!

Dan Beeston:

My predictions are that you’re not going to have a good month. You love being creative and having your brain running at full speed. But you’re now going to be depriving it of necessities. Expect mood changes and bouts of apathy.

I predict the quality of writing will decline across the 28 days too. I’ll be interested to see. It’s important that you post when and if you burst into tears for no adequetly explained reason.

I assure you, I’ll be keeping everyone updated on my mental status for the entire month. If there was a way to measure and graph creativity, you can bet I’d be doing that as well, but the quality of my blog posts will have to suffice.

Tomorrow: Daily weigh-in!

(total money spent so far - $12.20)

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and during the month of January, I conducted a number of experiments involving meat. Most recently, I put some meat into a pot, poured soft drink into the pot, and let it sit for a week.

The Pot of Rot: Doesn't it look appealing?

The Poking Stick, drowning in Boca Bola.

A closeup of the Maggot Roofing. I couldn't work out what that yellow thing was for a while; it's the Poking Stick! (not a random lemon)

Today, I emptied the pot:

So it looks like the experiment has come full circle; we’re back to where we started, a plate of meat, sitting in my back yard, looking kinda gross:

I might check back on it now and then, but for now, the experiment is officially over.

So what’s next for Pictures and Words? Well, we’re actually at the end of the second day of my new experiment: 28 Days, 28 Dollars, I just haven’t had a chance to blog about it yet. I’ll also be posting graphs and charts from StinkyPete 1.0 and StinkyPete 1.5 later tonight, and backdating everything so that it looks like I was punctual. Stay tuned!

Up next: StinkyPete 1.0 – graphs and charts!

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and for the month of February, I am only eating twenty-eight dollars worth of food. I hope I do not die!

Either the scales are faulty, the bag weighs 100 grams, or...bonus rice!!

Remember how last night I promised another update? Well, I got home, fell straight into bed, and slept for 14 hours instead. That is a lot of sleep. The original plan was to nap briefly, then get up and update the site, but apparently I was really tired. You can blame it on the 28 Days Diet, but I’m more inclined to link it tobeing out until 2am at the Pancake Manor the night before, and then waking up early to go shopping for rice.

I’m awake now, and ready to weigh myself. On the charts, the “starting weight” will be from Day 2, but it can’t be helped.

All through high school, every science teacher I had always made disparaging remarks about people in general referring to their body-size as “Weight”, such as ”Weight Watchers”.

“Weight,” they would explain, “is a force. Weight is the force of your body being pulled towards the ground by gravity. Mass refers to size. When people say ‘I want to lose weight,’ what they really should be saying is ‘I want to lose mass’. If Weight Watchers took everyone to Antarctica, then everyone would technically have lose weight, because it’s further away from the centre of the earth.”

Without getting into words being defined by how people use them (prescription vs description) I always thought that my science teachers were full of shit. When you lose mass, you’re are losing weight – and since we measure it using scales, and are unlikely to travel into space any time soon, mass is irrelevant, and it may as well be referred to as “losing weight”. It’s just as accurate.

That’s not at all relevant to the experiment, it’s just always bugged me.

While we were out shopping yesterday, Em and I bought a set of scales. It cost $29.95, which amused me greatly – I spent more on the scale than I will be spending on food for the entire month.

We bought it from a cheap shop, and the instructions all came in Italian. It took us a while to get it working.

As well as weighing myself each day, I’ll be taking a photo of myself in my boxers, both from the side and from the front. 

It’s for science.

People, please! Stop trying to have sex with the screen!

I don’t normally look that grumpy, but I’d just woken up from 14 hours of sleep.  Knowing that I’d be doing this experiment during February, I’d really been letting myself eat whatever I liked for a week or two, so I don’t think I normally have that much of a belly. I have no excuse for the bad posture.

Also: I didn’t have anyone to take the photos, so this was done using the auto-timer. Future photos will be taken by Cannibal Kate, and will be a little less shit.

Starting weight:

73.3kg! I didn't even notice that I had odd socks on until I uploaded the photo.

For the sake of our American readers: 73.3kg = 81 pounds.

I’ll continue to weigh myself each day, to see if my weight goes up or down. (I suspect that it will go down.) If I start losing weight at a dangerous rate, I’ll probably go and see a doctor. Does anyone know what counts as a dangerous rate of weight loss?

Dream:

Last night, I dreamt about the project, so I’ve decided to post relevant dreams to the blog as well. I was in a supermarket, and there was a lot of food-testing going on. I had already tried a mandarine and a mushroom before I remembered that I wasn’t meant to be eating, and by then it was too late and I’d swallowed them. I was really worried about whether I should abandon the project, or change the rules to allow food tasting.

I don’t dream every night, and I won’t subject you to non-food-related dreams, but I’ll be interested to see how much this project affects my subconscious. StinkyPete only caused me to have one meat-related dream, but it was pretty unpleasant, and this project is much more likely to affect my mental state.

There will be two updates a day – one in the morning with weight, dreams and body-shots, and one in the evening with the food diary, any new purchases made, and anything else that needs addressing. Stay tuned!

Up next: Daily food update! (with photos)

(total money spent so far - $12.20)