Reflections on Commonwealth Games athletes' village

Why is the English language so confusing?

According to an Indian minister, the athletes' village is 'habitable'. As I have always used the word 'inhabitable' to mean 'liveable', I thought he made a mistake. So I checked the dictionary. As it turns out, both words - 'habitable' and 'inhabitable' mean the same thing! But I thought that usually the suffix 'in-' is used to transform a word to its opposite meaning. No, in this peculiar case, the antonym is 'uninhabitable'.

I can't help thinking, the minister made a strategic decision in his choice of word by avoiding the least hint of the negative suffix. Whether the athletes' village is actually 'uninhabitable' or 'inhabitable', he declares without ambiguity, it is 'habitable'.

PipSqueak

I finally managed to take some fairly clear pictures of PipSqueak. This is before she scuttles off into darkness and seclusion again. Poor little PipSqueak. Why does she live as if she's constantly in mortal danger? And her face is so thin and sharp that sometimes we wonder if she's actually a mouse and not a hamster. Compare her with the chubby BigSqueak. She's the one who has been nipping me though. Naughty naughty.

More of BigSqueak

It is not like we practise favouritism, but it is hard to get pictures of PipSqueak. She is just too reclusive and any sudden movement makes her scurry back into her house immediately. Sigh...but here are more pictures of BigSqueak. She's so different from PipSqueak, when she sees a camera pointing at her, she somehow wants to poke her nose into it, and this makes it easier for us to take close up shots.

Below: so funny, she looks like she's begging for treats

Above: an inquisitive nose quivering. Is it time to come out and play?

Sadly, BigSqueak is turning out to be a bully after all. In the animal world, no matter how cute they are to us, for them, life is all about the survival of the fittest. I realised that BigSqueak is always squashing PipSqueak deliberately, literally, throwing her weight around. As poor PipSqueak is much weaker, she can only squeak shrilly. Goodness me...the squeaking that goes on at night sometimes wakes us up. Oh no...are we going to have to separate them? But most of the time, they are the best of friends, and even when we bought them two houses, they like to squeeze into one, even if then they start quarrelling over it. Animals! Don't try to make sense of what they are doing.

Running

In the dark ages of my school years, we serfs had no human rights, and our PE teachers were the stuff legends were made of. I still remember clearly a cruel but effective tactic used to make us run faster: The whole group had to run a lap within a given time, and if one person failed, the entire group ran an extra round. If two were slow, we ran two more rounds...so on and so forth. You see, eventually, we did all we could to make the timing, even if we killed ourselves doing so. My heart pounded so furiously that if I were any older than 18, I think I would have dropped dead. but no, miraculously, I always survived. I guess, I was tougher than I thought, haha. In fact, these PE teachers pushed me from a Nil to a Gold in two years, so...*shrug*

Now that I've started jogging again, I'm slowly finding that it can actually be rather enjoyable, if there isn't a whip cracking after you. There is no one to make me run until I am collapsing, and I can listen to exciting music that pushes me on. Well...of course, there would be less obvious results, but never mind. I'm thinking about the long run. A sport has to be reasonably tolerable if I'm going to keep at it.

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I saw this new product launched by OTO, that promises that 5 mins a day is all you need to lose weight, as you do crunches, pushups and stretches on it. For just a moment, I was all ready to take out my credit card. Then a sudden thought occurred to me. Why don't I just do the crunches, pushups and stretches everyday...sans the machine? Why would I need to use a device to do something that I can do on my pilates mat? And I can do more variations on the mat too! Hm...

BigSqueak

BigSqueak had an unexpectedly docile moment, staying totally still as we took snapshots of her. These are the best photos we have of the Squeaks so far.

Suen asks, 'how can hamsters be cuter than (my) golden retriever?' They can, if you get to know them personally. Of course if one only looks at how cuddly the pet is, then it's hard for a hamster to be cuter than a golden retriever. But the more we get to know them, the more they grow on us. We know all their likes and dislikes, we understand when they are afraid or happy. Then you see, they look more lovable to us:P, because they belong to us, but (your) golden retriever doesn't.

Locked in or Keep Out?

This is to reassure all animal rights activists that our Squeaks are perfectly happy in captivity and have not the least desire for freedom. They don't see the cage as a prison, it is their home. And the proof of this observation is this:

V and I, ever the loving pet owners, wanted to give them more, well, exposure to the outside world, since they are always squeaking and squabbling. Maybe they need more space, we surmised. So we put them in our nice spacious toilet (it's very clean, no worries), and left the cage door wide, wide open. It is time for them to come out and play without adult supervision.

One hour later, we returned, and this is what we saw. Two Squeaks, squeezed side by side in their little house, happily snoozing. No inquisitive nose poking around, no investigation of their brave new world. No no no, they prefer to be snug and safe, near their beloved bedding, food and toys. The cage door is open, predators might come in. Better hide at home until the adults come back.

Very pragmatic little creatures. What is freedom without security? Now now, don't read too much allegorical meaning into what I'm writing here.

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I must admit. I totally spoil these two Squeaks. Yesterday I fed them some organic brown rice. I am sure that they need the extra vitamins and protein :P Besides, they like it very much.

BigSqueak close up

Nothing comes between BigSqueak and her sunflower seeds. See how intent she is. How she'd survive in the wild, I have no idea. Even if the predator comes, she'll refuse to stop gnawing. Luckily for Squeaks, they escape extinction by being cute.

This is their favourite cubby hole. Both Squeaks like nothing better than squeeze together inside. Unfortunately, they have greatly increased in size under our loving care, and Big Squeak alone fills up almost the whole tube now, as she curls up into a fur-covered ball of muscles. You can imagine the squeaking and squabbling when poor little PipSqueak tries to push her way in as well.

Only Black?

This isn't a new toy.

It is merely my new utilitarian travelling companion. I shall be honest here. If not for Audible audiobooks, which run on Creative devices, I wouldn't have bought another Creative mp3 player. As a serial customer of the company, I can't help noticing that there are some fatal weaknesses in the way the products are presented. It is very well to have technically sound models, but a company can fumble so easily on simple, superficial matters, and suffer unnecessarily for them

This is a Zen. It is very cheap, thank goodness. Notice that it is black, and there wasn't really a choice, only between different black patterns. So I closed my eyes and picked one. I asked for a case, and got the above. In this era of cool, jazzy iPhone skins, my poor country mouse of a Zen is wearing an ill-fitting black (again) case that slips off every now and then. It doesn't even close properly >:I

I understand of course that mp3 players are a waning industry, so less effort is invested in this department. But this nevertheless is a Creative product and I am a customer, even if I paid only $89 for this item. What sort of message is conveyed when design of such indifferent quality is allow to flaunt the Creative brand name?

Leverage

We invent new words all the time, and when we don't, we are busy using words in new ways. I have no idea why, but people love using nouns as verbs:

Let's journey together
Can you loan me a pen? and grrr...
This impacts our country.

Frankly, I think this betrays intellectual sloth (stone me if you will!) We just can't be bothered to think of the correct words, and why must 'lend' take on so many forms? Lend, lent, loan...who cares?

But today I am ranting about the abuse of a different word. Somewhere, the word 'lever' finds its way from the science textbook into financial jargon, in its noun form 'leverage', where it is used as a verb.

I leverage my capital to increase my income.

In this new disguise, it then slips into everyday use, thereby usurping the function of its mother verb 'lever'. But the worst offence is, people then develop the habit of tacking on an extra preposition to this (no!) verb

I leverage on my skills in cooking...NOoooooo, why have 'leverage on' if you only need 'leverage', and why use 'leverage' if you mean to say 'lever'?

If you insist on using the word wrongly, at least, use it wrongly in the right way! Arh, now even I am confused.

The Squeaks

Meet PipSqueak. Little Fish took an unexpectedly good shot of her, though sadly, the resolution is too low. Isn't she adorable? She looks so timid! The other picture below is her feeding.

This is BigSqueak. She's trying to come out and play, but we are teasing her by pushing her back into the cage. See how far she's stretching her neck! Eventually, we did let her come out in her ball, and it was as usual, difficult to persuade her to leave it after that.