I decided to write a View From Earth, because I suddenly had an idea of what to write about and to my surprise, it was published!:

View From Earth: Perplex City Food and Lifestyle

By Sarah Hunt (aka silentlybroken)

In the last two years, we have learnt a lot about Perplex City, but we have never really learnt about the types of food Perplex City eat. It has always been in the back of my mind: “What is their regional food?”. Such as Stoke-on-Trent and neighbouring areas have “Chips and gravy” and Scotland have “haggis” and other such regional foods.

Earth, as a world, seems ridiculously addicted to this so-called “Fast food”, where we go to food chains and order food that is fast to cook and usually fried, such as burgers and chips. This is usually rather greasy and unhealthy food. Eating this stuff is more and more common and accepted as a regular meal. Instead of cooking your own food, why not head out to a McDonalds and pick up a Big Mac meal. It’s cheap, and quick! I hasten to add that I am not in agreement with this at all and am against it, as are many doctors as it is leading to an increase in heart disease and many other related diseases. It also has been linked to an increase in obesity, definitely found in children that eat these fast foods very commonly. It has led me to wonder if Perplexians have similar food chains, and whether they are finding similar problems to those that we on Earth are facing. I know Perplex City is eerily similar to Earth, as it has restaurants and bars, just like we do, but from what I can gather from the research I have done, Perplex City actually doesn’t seem to have these “fast food joints” to use a common term of slang that we on Earth use.

Moving on from this topic, onto another that is greatly debated on Earth. Earth is famous for the “fad diets” that we choose to have control over our eating and our weight. With the increase in the eating of fast food and obesity, more Earth people than ever turn to these fad diets to regain some control and their old figures. They even go as far as to abstain from eating meat, and calling themselves Vegetarians. There are even people that go further along these lines and abstain from eating meat, or dairy products as well. These people are generally known as vegans.

These are the more commonly accepted diets. There are many others, such as low carbohydrate diets and low fat diets. People spend their entire life stressing about their weight, and switching from one diet to another. It can even manifest itself in various mental disorders.

The mental disorders are very little known or talked about. They range from not eating; to eating and then purging your body of the food; to not being able to stop eating. They endanger people’s lives, because of the obsession with food and our bodies that has been caused by “celebritys”.

I cannot help but wonder if Perplexians have similar troubles to us, as Earth and Perplex City are very similar to each other. Are the mental disorders more widely accepted? Is fast food being phased out steadily, along with fad diets? With everything we know about Perplex City, and everything you know about Earth, there are still many things that we can learn from each other every day, both good and bad. It’s healthy to do so, and I believe that learning from other races is important to our everyday growth and expansion, whether we agree with the different views they may have, or not. I feel there is so much more that we can learn from each other, and I hope we can continue to expand each others views.

I also decided that with all the goings on lately, to write a letter into the Sentinel. Wasn’t posted, but I didn’t expect it to be!

Hello,

With the recent lockdown and firewall, I am unaware of whether this will pass through and be allowed to be put on the Sentinel. I wish simply to express that we are all working hard to find the cube, and hope to regain it soon, as we have made several breakthroughs. I sincerely hope that the next time we communicate with you, it is on better terms, and indeed, after the “firewall days”.

Thanks for reading,

Sarah Hunt

I doubted they’d be used, not the best written, but it passed the time and gave me something to do! So I was incredibly surprised (and pleased) to find my VFE was published!