The dog and the clock

Over ten years ago I bought a clock from Ikea. It is a fashionable clock with a pendulum, a combination of modern and ancient and I loved it. Since then, we have moved several times and at one time, I thought the clock was lost but later recovered from one of our boxes. I wasn’t ready to part with it just yet and I was glad to find it. Then at a later stage the clock started to go slow and I thought perhaps it has run its course. No, one new battery made it all alive again.

Years gone and I thought it was about time to change a new look on the wall. I got another clock but the ticking noise was far too loud for me to bear. It was like living with a time bomb 24/7. I took it down and put the old Ikea clock back on the wall.

Since then, I have almost forgotten the idea of a new clock when yesterday I passed by a street seller and he got something which I loved at first sight. It was a clock with the picture of two plush bears sitting together, very cute and loving. I bought it with no second thought.

When I got home, I placed it on the wall, replaced the old clock (with some nostalgic feelings of parting but still!) and it was great. The colour of the clock matched our wall paint and the pair of cute little bears warmed our sitting room. I went into my bedroom happily and that’s when the trouble began.

My dog went back into the sitting room, barking non stop at the clock. Apparently he thought those two bears were enemies! I went out to fetch him, took him back into my room but within half a minute, he was out in the sitting room, barking at the clock again. I could not stop him! So I took a chair, carrying him and stepping on the high chair with him to face the two bears, and said, ‘hello, see these two bears, they are friends, they don’t bark at you, do they?’ He seemed o.k. then and got quiet, so I took him down and we went back into our bedroom. No luck, the next minute, he was back to the sitting room, barking at the bears again!

By then I was getting impatient, I took the clock down to show him that they were unreal, they weren’t alive, and they weren’t even real bears! They were toy bears! But he behaved as if he seen a ghost! When the clock was getting near him, he ran from kitchen to bedroom, as though there was an earthquake. So at the end, I have to give in! I picked up the old clock, which was just about to go to the bin, and put it back on the wall. There it was ticking its way as if it was laughing at me saying, ‘hey, you can never get rid of me, this is my territory, even you dog knew that, you silly old fool!’

Yes, I think my dog wants the old clock back, what can I do? Now when I get some new furniture, do I have to get permission from this dog?

Do your plastic surgery through internet

It has been a while since our company monitors our usage on the internet, and which sites we went into. I tried to refrain myself from using the internet at work, but I simply cannot forfeit using the stock market brokerage through the internet which is part of my livelihood, you see! Well this is not about me, at least not just yet because I don’t get onto the stock market all day, but this colleague who looks exactly like Garfield with half closed eyes gets into the internet chatroom over 1,500 times in a week, according to our IT report. Garfield does not speak to anybody at work. What she does every day is to stock up enough snack from our free snack bar, and goes back to her internet chatroom. That’s how she spends her day.

Various warnings from her supervisor have no effect on the issue, not until when she was told that her net connection could be severed. When she heard this, she broke down and cried! It’s like our company is going to disconnect her life-support machine! It’s only the bloody internet!

But this leads me to think that nowadays why so many people addicted to the internet world. Perhaps inside this internet world, they can be a totally different person. For some, they created an entirely different image for themselves, an ideal image which in reality they can never fulfilled, e.g. pretty, witty, learned and capable, just everything missing in them. They tell lots of lies which are far from the truth, e.g. the most common lie is how capable they are at work but as a matter of fact, they usually are the kind of people other colleagues have neglected their existence. Some never show their photos (that’s me) so as to open to imagination how nice looking they are! (that’s not me, I like to describe myself as an old hag).

I mean there is no harm that every now and again, we do something to boost our ego. But the internet saga is more serious than that. Instead of helping us to accept who we really are, it provides a temporary shelter for us to escape from our shortcoming, like performing a plastic surgery inside this system, coming out with a perfect nose, and lots of fans, and then the nose sank or the breast implants burst after a while, bringing people back to reality in despair.

This may be perfectly o.k. for some. But to me, I cannot help to think that the world’s scenario has changed from bad to worse. No one would make an effort to improve themselves or communication with one other in their actual life. They simply resort to this mirror mirror on the wall, who is the smartest among all, and see themselves as the smartest through the internet illusion. How pathetic can you get!

An old man's tale

Yesterday, my dog and I went to an elderly home for his Dr Dog’s duty. It was around the New Year and so we had a special performance. From the community centre, ten kids joined us too, and each was assigned with a dog. And we taught the kids to do some tricks with our dogs and then showed them to the elderly. It was great fun to watch them.

After the performance, an old man was talking to me. He said he does not like Pekingese in particular. It’s far too clingy. In fact, he had a Pekingese before, the dog cling on to him too much, had to lie on his arm before it could get to sleep. Then after a few years, the dog got an incurable illness, and he had to watch him being put to sleep. Tears were flooded from his eyes when he was holding its dead body. He was so sad that he could not eat for days and days, and only got himself drunk. That was far too painful for him. So his advice for people is, never keep any dog. I said to him that he had his happy days with the dog but he thought the pain of loss was unbearable. Even up to the very moment when he spoke to me, he still got tears in his eyes.

I know some people who do not fall in love because they do not want to experience the loss when a relationship does not last. Some people don’t keep pets because they know those pets will definitely die before them.

But I guess that’s the fair deal in life. When you love someone/something that much, the pain, if not more, will definitely be as much as the happiness one gave you when you were together. Some people will choose never to experience any. While I would, in no uncertainty, choose to experience them all. Infact, I would want to see to my dog until it dies, as I don’t think he can make some important decisions himself. I would want to see him through his life first, and probably in return, he would check if the coast is clear to Heaven, and show me how to sneak through the side entrance if I were not allowed an immediate entry!

Goodbye 2008

I am not sure about the others, but all the Eves e.g. Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve like today used to make me feel nostalgic. You recalled the events happened in the past one year, how dramatic they seemed, how unexpected they had been. Unfulfilled promises, broken dreams, gain some friendship and lose some, and life is passing us by.

But apart of all that, let's be thankful that we are still alive. Let's tell people we care, and we are grateful for their kindness. I really want to do that, before 2008's stage curtain is being closed, and before I tell myself let bygones be bygones.

A Mrs Scrooge in the Christmas Carol

I know love is not only applicable over Christmas, and should be all year round. But this special time is a good reminder of love. However, let me tell you a little incident which was the very opposite to me.

On the night of the 23^rd, our company was having an annual Christmas Dinner. In the recent years, I do not even attend because I am a bit tired of this kind of show time. I bumped into my colleague the next day, which was Christmas Eve and saw that he was still wearing yesterday's outfit for the Christmas dinner. Did he enjoy himself so much that he has forgotten to change his clothes for work the next day? Or if people got a dirty mind, they would have thought that he did not go home that night, ending in someone else’s bed.

But as always, what we saw or what we thought is always far from the truth. That’s what made gossip so interesting! It would be boring if we do not apply our own imagination of facts into the truth to fuck it all up, you see!

He told me that it was slightly over an hour after the party started, around seven o’clock in the evening, that he got this very scary phone call. When he answered it, it was his daughter’s image on the screen, crying badly and unable to speak. Then he heard a strange voice next to the child, saying ‘you tell him, you tell him!’ The child just kept crying and could not/did not want to say anything. He started to panic, left the party at once, and called the police to go into the apartment with him. He rather worried that it could be kidnapped, murdered or just anything tragic had happened to his wife and daughter at home.

But when he got home, he bumped into his wife and daughter who were just about to go out for dinner. So what’s wrong there? Apparently, his wife was upset that my colleague was having such a good time himself, leaving them at home, so tormented the child into tears, and forced her to call her dad to make him come home. The strange voice on the phone before was in fact his wife!

I did not ask him what happen next. They must be having such a big row afterwards that my colleague did not get the chance to use the bedroom to get change for work the next day.

I feel sorry for my colleague, having such a wife. Perhaps he may not be the perfect husband, but that’s not the point. The point is, I don’t believe one should use all possible means (even horrible means) to keep someone with you. If you cannot keep someone’s heart, I rather set him free! Or if you really love someone, why wouldn’t you want him to have a good time, even he was not with you? Perhaps people are always confused between love and possession. Love means possessing that someone physically at the same time. No, it isn’t true. Love is in union with someone’s soul, which is beyond every boundary, even across the miles.