Bye, Beloved Buddy

The unfortunate incident proved to be too much for Buddy, our most beloved hamster.

The Shock

On my way back from work today, just as I left the office after an eventful work day, my son called me over my cell phone to inform me that Buddy has died. His body was still warm.

My heart dropped upon hearing the news. My son just hung on to the phone, spoke nothing except whispers of sobbing if I am not wrong amid the buzzing of cars passing me by the road side.

The Denial

My mind was a blank... I just told him to hold-on to Buddy, to give him warmth, maybe he really needed companion in his fight to survive. I was deluding myself, I know, I was just hoping that Buddy was not dead yet.

I flagged a cab to return home quickly instead. I needed to be with Buddy as fast as possible, maybe... just maybe Buddy will know that we are there for him to fight on and live through this. Yes, I was deluding myself still.

When I reached home, my son had Buddy wrapped up in layers of tissue. His body stiff and cold. Both eyes still glistening from a little slit opening... as if looking at us.

My son was truly sad as he handed over Buddy to me.

I stroked Buddy's forehead like I always do for quite a long while. Maybe he would become alive again, a miracle was what I was waiting for, as I sat at the sofa looking at his face.

The Grieving

My son left me alone with Buddy and retreated to his room. I hate to admit it, but I stole a cry quietly as I sat stroking lifeless Buddy. Was not a manly reaction to expect from me, I would not know what I will do if my son saw me crying over a small creature... but Buddy was my personal favourite.

He was the one from the first time I pointed to in the glass enclosure, amongst so many in a group in Sam's Pet Shop at Marine Parade Promenade.

He was the one Puffy did not reject and the one who did not attacked Puffy when the shop keeper tried to pair them together. In fact, Buddy regurgitated food from his pouch in his mouth and Puffy accepted him by eating it up. Sweet!

It was totally amazing to see such selfless act from a selected companion, a buddy for life. Thus his name.

After my secret grieving alone, I placed Buddy, wrapped with tissue paper on my PC desk to wait for Wifey to come home and see Buddy for the last time. Bid him farewell.

We will bury him beside Chubby under the tree in front of our bedroom window tomorrow.

The Anger!

I just do not get it!

Although Buddy was wounded with a gaping wound, there was no sign of infection during my daily checks on him.

He was understandably weak for the whole day after the attack, but he began to be himself again... dotting about, responding to our calls by coming towards the side of the cage to us.

He was out and about, eating and drinking and lively as the wound was clearly drying up. It was this morning that my son who is on medical leave for two days himself, noticed that Buddy was not moving and could barely walk.

After asking for my permission, he brought Buddy to Pet Safari's Animal Recovery Centre at 3:30pm this afternoon all by himself. With an emergency money kept at home, he took about $150.00 with him for the vet to save Buddy. I admire him for being brave and independent to save a life.

The vet said that Buddy was a little dehydrated, but should recover if he responded to the antibiotics and vitamins that were administered to him. It cost only S$36.00 for consultation and medicines... but no guarantees, she said.

Last checked with my son at about 5:00pm, Buddy was more alert and moving around in his cage. He was grooming, my son told me. I was relieved, but I know I did not want to keep my hopes too high.

The condition was just like the late Chubby then, after coming back from the vet. Chubby was alert but died a day later.

Letting Go...

I know all three of us will need a little time to get over this loss. That empty cage is how we feel. Our son's favorite buddy is no longer with us... after over a year and a half.

Oh, Buddy! We love you so much boy. No pain now, Buddy... no pain. Beautiful soul returned to his Creator.

Good bye, our most beloved pet.

OneCare 4 Three

I do hope that after today, I can put my worries to rest that my home PCs will not go bonkers on me and risk loosing precious personal data.

Like the slow recovery of my recent office PC fiasco, loosing all my email data was a heavy price to pay. I have become pro-active in prevention even at home.

So when Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare email came to my inbox offering their Beta Testers a fully functional released version that are now available in Singapore, I accepted the offer with wide-open arms!

I have to arm all 3 of my home PCs - Wifey's, my son's and mine that are wirelessly networked together with broadband access, a fighting chance against viruses, spyware and malwares from the net... and also the ability to repair Windows systems files with its built-in tune-up feature amongst others.

For a small on-line subscription fee of S$29.90 covering a maximum of 3 PCs, the cost is extremely negligible to have a restful mind that your PC health is taken care of.

Now, all 3 home PCs are under OneCare! Peace be upon me. Yes!

I am however very grateful to the following free softwares that have kept all my PCs in good health so far:

• Grifsoft's AVG Antivirus Free Edition
• Ad-Aware Personal anti-spyware Special Edition
• Toni Arts' EasyClean Windows Tune-up

These are well recommended free programs that do wonders for me personally, but with the all-in-one program of OneCare! with auto-update is the convenience I have settled for.

Mauled Me Over

If you have to choose between a cat and hamsters.... what will it be?

Had a terrible thing happened in our household last night. Sigh....

Our newly adopted stray cat, Wednesday has been so endearing, giving cat massages to all, especially me... on my belly! She has been the focal point of our attention these past weeks with her antics. Wifey's heart has obviously already melted for her... and then she had to pull a stunt like this one!

She has been observing the citizens of HamsterVille for some time now... but nothing serious, she just looked amazed at the restless little critters in their condos with a little "paw" here and there... startled at any sudden moves by the hamsters.

I view it cautiously, though it looked harmless from my observations. I began to become complacent against the order of nature.

Just when I was ready to retire to bed after Wifey came home from the shop, Wednesday toppled one of the cages that were stacked on top of each other. The cage door was released open upon impact.

Our most favourite hammy, Buddy was thrown out of the cage and as nature would have it, Wednesday mauled him instinctively. I guess that was what she intended anyway.

As soon as I heard the sound of the cage crashing down onto the service balcony floor, I knew what Wednesday was up to.

I rushed to the kitchen to find Buddy mauled tightly in Wednesday's mouth and she was trying to get away with her "catch."

As sweet as Wednesday is, she stopped on her tracks and yielded in front of me. She released Buddy when I shouted her name in shock.

Wifey came running after me and quickly took Wednesday away and put her out of the house. Wednesday was meowing loudly, wanting to be let in for several hours. We ignored her while nursing Buddy.

Buddy has a deep gash on the right-side of his back. A punctured wound that tore his skin off to reveal a pinkish dermis layer. Buddy was bleeding.

With layers of tissue paper, I pressed the wound for several minutes to stop the bleeding while comforting Buddy... calling our his name. Buddy did not struggle, but just laid still with his eyes all watery. The pain was definitely excruciating for him. Poor Buddy...

After about 10 minutes, Buddy began to move again and started to lick the palm of my hand like he normally does. That is the peculiar thing about Buddy. He is the only hamster that does that. He will lick our noses too if we put our faces near to him.

He is the "pioneer" and founder of HamsterVille... together with Puffy who escaped from her cage after their first born and never to be found again... like going out to buy cigarettes and never returned.

This morning, I told my son of what had happened. He was devastated to learn about Buddy and what has become of Wednesday. A double whammy for him.


Wifey has made-up her mind about Wednesday... she is staying out of our house. While I am still in a dilemma. Maybe they both can co-exist under one roof. All we need to do is to secure the cages doors and teach Wednesday to stay away from the cages.

The latter is tougher as I have no idea how this should be done. It will be even tougher to instill this to Wednesday when no one is at home. Dang it!

It is like a cat and mouse game... the order of nature that I am trying to change?

Until I can figure something out and able to convince Wifey, Wednesday is banned from our home. Sigh.

Malaise, Movies, Market...

As she went down and disappeared into the stairway, the house was quiet and boring again.

Wifey as always, will be full of hope for a good business on Saturdays. She left for the shop. I wish to go help her out, but this light irritating headache will do anyone any good at the shop.

My son has already recovered from a bout of flu, but he too has this lingering headache from time to time just like me.

I guess I had it better than him as I can now rest at home while he still has his Malay language tuition class in the afternoon. Sunday will be his free day. Poor boy.

So... what was I to do after I could not sleep anymore?

I started to blog-surf for awhile until I started to get the headache again... attributed to too much focusing on little letters on my 19-inch LCD monitor. The whole week at work staring at the monitor is quite enough for me.

I had to switch off my PC and do something else...

The obvious, not physical almost morbid activity would be watching a movie or two on DVDs.

I picked two movies that I have yet to watch after buying the DVD. One was Sinking Of Japan and the other, Apocalypto.

The first one was especially interesting to me because I really wanted to see how the Japanese conjure-up the devastation as realistically as the Hollywood counterpart.

It was impressive, no doubt. I especially like the cracking-ground and rising... brittle like biscuits. The huge wall of tsunami coming into the Japanese islands wiping out the entire town was thrilling. Awesome because I had always wanted to be a computer graphics artist when I was still studying computers then.

The most impressive is the satellite view of the devastation. Awesome. Realistic scenes.

Unfortunately, the worst part for me was the storyline... the falling in love bit between characters. The movie came to a slow crawl that I dozed off several times, only waking-up to the loud theater sound blasts when the earthquakes came.

Wifey would love this lovey-dovy scenes as she is a big fan of the Korean TV series.

The second movie was more to my liking... storyline-wise, not so much CGI, but thrilling all the same. Mel Gibson's Apocalypto was very believable, but I was a little uncomfortable with its subtle hints of western humor and thinking amongst the Incas.

Maybe it will be more palatable and easily understood to cater to the western audiences... amongst the many gory scenes Hollywood is famous for.

The actors and costumes are believably authentic to me; tough, muscular warriors that did not look like they came out from Planet Fitness. How much accurate of Inca culture was in the movie is another debatable story altogether.

Overall, I like that movie very much.

The tough life as humans make the world closer to each other over vast body of water, consuming the unquenchable desire to explore and exploit the weak.

You know what? I suddenly realized that both movies were foreign language and I actually had to switch on the subtitles to understand the movie. So much for reading on a monitor.

Enough movie watching for one day, it was time to do some groceries shopping armed with Wifey's grocery list. This time, it is wonderfully convenient since NTUC Fairprice Supermarket is just a 5 minutes walk from our home.

It has taken-over the more expensive Cold-Storage and the Seven-Eleven convenient store shop space at the ground floor of Tampines Central Community Club.

Never saw so many people at that place than today. I even met my Customer doing his marketing at the new place. All this time he was he was staying a few blocks away from me. Wow!

This slow Saturday... of malaise, movies and markets. Bring sick sucks, the weather sucks too... wonder Sunday will be a sunny day. Laying on the beach with a light throbbing headache is not too bad...