Peter in two + one (originally posted May, 2020)

A favourite 

At my family home
about fifty years ago.
Click them to see images full size.

Duck has been one of my favourite foods for as long as I can remember. I grew up on a farm about 700 kms north of Sydney in Australia, and although ducks and chickens, later also turkeys, were not my family's main product, we always had them for eggs and delicious roast dinners. My mum was not a very traditional woman of the time. She hated housework, and much preferred working in the sugar cane fields or taking care of the cattle, but at least once a week, she made an effort and cooked us a duck dinner with homegrown, organic ducks and vegetables. My father did a lot of the regular cooking, and no one really did much housework, a trait I've inherited from my parents.

At my brother's home today

But there is also a dark side to duck, apart from it being much darker than boring chicken. In my study of philosophy, I realised long ago that there are strong arguments supporting the thesis that it is normally morally wrong to eat meat, which necessarily involves killing animals that can feel pleasure and pain, enjoy social bonds, and have at least some intelligence, although much less than most human beings. Fitting my love of duck and other tasty animal flesh into a moral system that is consistent and acceptable was a very practical application of my major in moral philosophy at university. It also has implications for other how we understand the morality of other aspects of human behaviour, from abortion to euthanasia.

I've written 251 words on the topic in this section, duck. If you aim for around 150 - 200 words, that will be fine. Please do not go over 300 words in any section. (Don't add these sorts of notes to your writing.) 

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A second favourite

Although mathematics was my favourite subject in high school, one that I continued studying at university, my favourite subject since the end of high school has been philosophy. That's what I ended up majoring in at university, and I still enjoy reading it among the other academic areas that interest me. In addition to reading new work in the subject, I also like to read old favourites, from Plato's dialogues, which are now almost 2,500 years old, to classic works by modern thinkers like logician Kurt Gödel, all rounder Robert Nozick and contemporary academics like Harvard University's Micheal Sandel—one of the world's few widely known professors of philosophy. (For many years, Sandel has given a famously packed series of lectures on justice.) 

A bit dusty

These days, I prefer to buy and read my books in Kindle, but over the years, I had collected thousand of books. My home in Bangkok used to be cluttered with shelves full of books, until a few years ago I got rid of most them. I sent the hard cover ones to my brother in Australia, who now displays them on his shelves, although he never reads most of them, and I gave away most of the paper backs, but I kept a few that have sentimental value to me, one of which is my copy of a set of dialogues by Plato that I read in my first year at university more than forty years ago. It's falling apart, and I now read these in digital versions as well, but I still keep my old copy of the discussions where Plato tells us the story of how the courts of law in democratic Athens killed Socrates because he had been teaching the young citizens to think critically. 
 
According to Google's Word count tool, these two paragraphs talking about philosophy are 292 words, which is almost the maximum limit. I'll try to keep the next sections to 150 words or less, and perhaps just one paragraph each. But I'm not promising. 

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Not a favourite

My first big city - Brisbane, 1970.
Silom 2020 is better. 

Most people seem to like it, but travelling is not one of my favourite things. It took me a long time to learn this about myself, which might seem odd. I think I tried to follow the popular belief that everyone loves to travel to exciting new places. Perhaps I liked travel when I was a child. I remember when one of my sisters broke her arm in a particularly bad way so that the local hospitals could not treat her. She had to go to Brisbane, which was a four hour drive from our home in the country. I did love Brisbane, which was the first big city I'd ever visited when I was ten or eleven years old. It had buildings with lifts and escalators, and Chinese restaurants, and lots of other exciting city things. But actually, I think I loved big cities, not the travel, although the drive through twisting mountain roads in rainforest was fun, if a bit long. 

For many years now, I've lived on Silom Road, and I don't even travel much in Bangkok. I visit Paragon about once a week, and that's it. My last real trip was to Chiang Mai a couple of years ago, but I only did that so that an old friend and his son could fly on a plane and experience a nice hotel for a few days. I would not have gone for myself. 

The two paragraphs on this topic, travelling, are 237 words, which is more than 150, but not too long. Actually, the first version was 312 words, which was definitely too long. The shorter revised version I've published is better. 

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Conclusion

Now that I've written about three different topics, two that I like and one I don't, I'm trying to think of something that connects the ideas to conclude this introduction. Perhaps what I've learned thinking about this (it's OK not to be sure in response writing) is that some of my favourite things, and my dislikes, make me a little unconventional, although I'm sure almost everyone loves duck, even if they didn't grow up eating it homegrown. I hope this helps you to understand me a bit better.