A Kick up the Coca

This week I have been very busy doing a full time job in town, right near Oxford Circus.

It's been quite pleasant, but mostly unremarkable.

Here are some things I will remark upon:

Lunchtimes have been alright. I have been going to Boots and doing the old 'meal deal' which consists of any sandwich/salad plus drink plus snack for £3.49. Aside from the fact that it is cheaper outside London - in Swansea it was £2.79 at one point but I think it's up to £2.99 now - it is an excellent lunch deal. What I also like about Boots' food is that they label the nutritional advice very clearly and the traffic light system (red = bad, green = great, yellow = ok, but don't go overboard) means you know exactly what you are putting in yourself each day. Every day I have got an Innocent smoothie as part of the deal (they cost nearly two quid by themselves) and a snack that I have munched on to pass the time in the afternoon.

Something that amused me:

There was a fire alarm in the building opposite so when I went out there were hundreds of business and fashion people just hanging around the street looking like fish out of water. Take away some people's desks and they don't know how to function.

Today I found a gift that my very good friend brought me from when she used to live in Columbia. Kokasana, which is coca tea, which is tea made with coca leaves, which are also used to make cocaine. There was a drive a few years ago in Columbia to de-demonize the coca leaf and reclaim it as an essential part of indigenous culture. And also they believed that every leaf they used for harmless, natural products was a leaf taken from the hands of the narcotics gangs.

If you've seen Bruce Parry's Amazon show you'll know indigenous peoples chew the leaves and drink coca tea to stave off hunger and to fight the effects of altitude sickness. As I've got 4 hours til lunchtime I thought I'd have one to start off the day. It was alright. What was good about it was I did some research about it and sadly discovered that the indigenous people's attempts have been totally overturned by the government's new ban on any coca products in the shops - just when an energy drink called Coca Sek was rushing off the shelves (and just as Coca Cola kicked off a law suit about the use of the word 'coca' - an indigenous word 1000's of years old).

It seems to me a sorry thing if the fights the indigenous people are trying to develop strength for against the cocaine industry's destruction of Columbia are undermined by the government. That's not a terrifically written sentence I'll grant you, but I'm just trying to express some concern and frustration towards the seemingly chaotic relationship between government and indigenous peoples.

So there you go. Lunch deals at Boots and concern over Columbia.