of Mice and Men

Those two Squeaks.

Of course I never had any illusions that my love for them is reciprocated, but even then, their pragmatism is too blatant. Now that they live in the playpen with all the toys and food and bedding they like, they have gone wild completely. Even BigSqueak, who used to climb happily into my hand, has taken to hiding, ninja-like, in dark corners. They are having the time of their lives of course. Which other hamsters in Singapore live in such luxury?

And hence they now completely ignore us, not realising that all these good things come from us. They don't want to play with us anymore. 'Don't bother me when I'm gnawing my sunflower seeds', 'I'm digging a hole in my favourite box, I shall dig all the way to Australia. I'm too busy to play with you!' To think that in the past, when they were confined to their cage, they used to wait eagerly at its door whenever we walk pass the cage, for food and to be allowed to come out for a few minutes of freedom.

Oh the perverse nature of fallen creation! I half wonder if in God's eyes, the Israelites of the Old Testament had not behaved in exactly the same way. They prayed and cried when the enemies were at the city gates, and then forgot all about God's law when they had victory. In fact, we aren't much better either. While enjoying the liberality of God's hand, we quite take for granted or even forget the giver's love. We get too busy to serve God, too busy to care about the Great Commission, well...too busy to worship God. 

V is sure that if we remove everything from them, they would be sweet and cuddly again. But I would rather not. Since they are only hamsters, they shall be allowed to indulge in their wayward little free wills.

God, of course, has rather different expectations of us.

Standard Singlish

The mistake is probably excusable, since it is made by goodenglish.org. One can hardly expect it to get its Singlish right.

On one of its posters, in imitation of typical Singapore English, there is an expression 'You got eat already or not?' I have to protest that this expression is an unflattering and inaccurate caricature of Singlish.

The problem with this sentence is the expression of its perfective aspect. In standard English, it is expressed as 'Have you eaten...?', with the compound verb 'have eaten' carrying present perfective meaning.

In Singlish, the perfective aspect is carrried in 'already', as in, for example, 'the bus come already' (the bus has come). On the other hand, 'got' is sometimes used to indicate past tense, as in 'the bus got come' (the bus came).

I think that the sentence in the goodenglish.org poster is simply carrying too much, and redundant information. The expression should simply be 'you got eat or not', or 'you eat already or not', but not 'you got eat already or not?' Excuse my purist streak, but not every mangled expression is Singlish. Singaporeans who do speak Singlish intuitively follow systematic rules too. We may speak wrongly, but we don't speak like idiots.

Maybe it is the first sign of creolisation - when the users of the pidgin forms begin to recognize new language structures, and can identify whether an expression is correctly incorrect, or incorrectly incorrect. Hm...maybe we don't want to get there, of course. This brickbat aside, I support the Speak Good English movement.

His/Hers

His

 Hers

I admit, I'm a beauty product junkie. Hey, which woman isn't? Ruefully, I took stock the other day, and conclude...I just have to throw some away. They are taking too much space, and deep in my heart, I know that I'm never going to use them again. Why did I buy them? Because...because...they seem like such good ideas! Like the FaceShop paste that promises to pull out all your blackheads (didn't work), or the mask that envelops my face in oxygen foam...(I see no difference after that).

Sigh...if all these products only do half of what they claim, (like the 'miracle broth' space age cream), I should look about 12 years old, because they are supposed to 'reverse ageing at the DNA level'. (HAH!) But there are still fine lines around my eyes, so I'm obviously a s*cker prone to wishful thinking and vulnerable to hyperbolic marketing :(

This is merely half of the damage. You guys haven't seen my vanity table yet. 

Who's there?

BigSqueak looking out inquiringly when we knock on her door. If there is food, she'll come out. If not, she goes back to sleep, ay, and closes the door with tissue paper too.



Waiting is the Hardest Work of Faith

The hardest part about waiting is not knowing when it would end.

Sometimes God answers prayers almost instantaneously, but occasionally, He allows the trial of waiting - of waiting for circumstances to move, of waiting for emotions to change, and of waiting for explanation to emerge. And dear Lord, times like that, it feels like the prayer hasn't been heard. Is there someone else at the other end of the telephone line?

As Christians, we are impressed by stories of how God parted the Red Sea, or even made the sun stand still, but honestly, I suspect that these miracles aren't as difficult as molding the human heart. Whatever involves only strength and power is probably easy for God. He can even call the world into existence in 6 days. But to guide the course of our thoughts and feelings, that is a delicate operation because God gave us free will. After molding us to be the best that we can be, He wants us to be recognizably and uniquely us. And that is why waiting is inevitably part of the Christian experience.

We wait because others take time to respond to God, we wait because our minds take time to renew, and we wait because God somehow has in mind a greater plan which we are not aware of. And in the meantime? How do we lessen the weariness of waiting?

I rather like the reflections in this article: Dogged Devotion
While faced with the unknown, we should focus on what is known i.e. God's unfailing love. Even if God's ways are inexplicable, some things He makes unquestionably clear - His love on the Cross, and the power of resurrection.

We can bear with the wait, because we have hope.

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.

*** ***
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.