Name

What's in a name?

A rose by any name still smells as sweet.

A common phrase usually heard.

With your coat a beautiful reddish brown,

Like the colour of autumn leaves,

Aki (秋), was the name I hoped for you,


But you ended up with the name of your fellow companion,

From non other than a comic strip. 

-サヤカ-

--

I remember when we knew that we were supposed to get you, brother and I decided to think of names which would be appropriate for you. The initial plan was that you were going to be brother's dog though, although as we all know fate decided things differently for us, but I digress. 

Back to your name. I admittedly do not have the best naming sense in the world. My favourite teddy's name was "pop pop". 

I mean, like wherever did that name come from?!! What possessed me??!! Maybe that name came from that little firework thing we usually play during Chinese new year? @_@'

My first laptop which was a white ibook, was called shiro chan (i.e. 'little white' in English), my blue flip phone was Aoi chan (i.e. little blue). You get my drift.

But you had a beautiful coat of fur, the colour of autumn leaves, reddish brown, so I thought to call you Aki, which means autumn, 秋 in Japanese. (A huge improvement? At least I didn't think to call you brownie or little brown or something, lol)

Your colour was different than the local breeds of your kind since your parents hailed from the Americas. 

Look! Such a brilliant colour!

Look at the colour of that fur!

Brother disagreed though, afraid that your name would become Chinese-fied and that relatives would call you "Ah Kit" instead of "Aki". I couldn't disagree with him.

Then somehow, brother settled on your name Roscoe, from the comic strip Pickles.

Well, the name rang well, so we decided to use "Roscoe", and there you have it. 

Brother named you, just as I had a hand in naming his son later on. The world is round. (lol)

But getting named Roscoe... That was merely the beginning of your names.

Of course being part of the family, you had to carry the family name. So your proper name?

Roscoe Cheong

But we all had Chinese names, what was yours? 

We couldn't think of one appropriate for you, but we always jokingly called you Cheong Bat Gau (Cantonese for 張八狗). 

Since you were always so curious and tended to poke your nose into everything, literally. Basically it was a play on words that you were a  "busybody dog", lol. 

We rarely used this so called chinese name of yours though. Then one day, something amusing happened. 

This was a popular song in 2004:

Artist: 王力宏/Wang Lee Hom's Song

Song title: 唯一 / Wei Yi, which roughly translates to "My one and only".

Now sister and I aren't Chinese educated, and we aren't very good with Chinese (At least I'm not). And to be frank, the only line in the song that I knew was "Baby, 你就是我的唯一" in pin yin it reads as "Baby, ni jiu shi wo de wei yi" i.e. "Baby you are my only one".

We used to only sing this one line out loud with the music when it played, and sometimes we just sang that one line randomly without any music.

I think a number of times, we looked at you when singing this. 

One day when I was singing that one line:

Baby~~ ni jiu.....

(I think because "baby" is the only English word used in the lyrics, we usually dragged it out)

There was a jingle of bells, I looked down, and there you were looking at me, like you were saying "you called?".

We had accidentally christened you "baby" because we kept singing this one line. That was funny.

The only line that we knew from this song. And you probably picked up the only English word that we sang out.

Somehow from then on, you were "Baby."

So Baby Roscoe Cheong Bat Gau, you became.

Somehow you didn't get confused, you knew that both "Baby" and "Roscoe" was referring to you. And when we called you "Roscoe Cheong", you knew you were in deep trouble.

I think that was very amazing of you.

***

Hi Baby,

This morning I woke up with that unsettled feeling in my chest and stomach again, it wasn't as strong as the last few days, and I took mom's advice to take a few deep breaths.

I did, and it helped a lot. I only teared a little. I don't know if it was because I had to rush a little to get to work since I had to teach today, and maybe that was what held back the tears. So I didn't really cry that much today.

But somehow I feel guilty that I didn't end up crying like how I have the past few days.

Weird. But I guess this is what you wanted too right?

For me to stop crying like it's the end of the world everyday. That my pain hopefully lessens. To get out of this depression.

I think that maybe,  I cry less everyday, is that good?

I feel a little guilty; but I can't keep crying for your forever right?

I feel empty, and don't know what to do with myself right now...

-sunz-