Rockstar Does Fishies By Playmesh

This is a fish. I don’t know yet if these ever die, but I know for a fact from Kings’ various ill-fated fish tank efforts over the years the ones from Kam Yee Kai (Goldfish Street) in Mong Kok are very good at it. Or rather, we are very good at killing them. So I don’t like going there because when my husband looks at me with all that enthusiasm, “Which one, which one shall we get?” what I’m really hearing is “Choose now, which one shall die.”

(See now, a dog – that’s different. They trot over to tell you when they’re upset/ hungry/ need a walk/ mad at Rockstar, but fish seem to fall short in the communication department.)

Then there are these iPhone fish. Rockstar insisted I download the app after his random swishing brought him to App Store and its irrestible goldfish icon. So not giving him my iTunes Store pin. Especially not after he started chanting my ATM pin in Starbucks (don’t laugh at me, that was how we were practicing our numbers <guilt>)

When iPhone Fish need to be fed, they swim around with speech bubbles asking for fishfood. A+ for communication! You clean their tank by shaking your phone. AAA+++! You train them to collect stars and avoid jellyfish. You get more virtual money to spend on your tank by doing various chores, some of which are signing up your email address to receive ads. Hey.

Diabolical. What would happen if this brainwave fell into the wrong hands? The world would no longer be a safe place. You could brainwash toddlers so they vote for you in another 15 years right in their living rooms under the noses of their iPhone-toting mums. Someone could misuse this for world domination. Or do stupid stuff. A nation of toddlers, all singing “My Humps”.

Anyway, I have ceremoniously upgraded the tank and Rockstar now has 13 fish. He’s bred 2 sets of adult fish and is planning further tank activities to afford the fish breeds he really wants. If we train them, we could turn a profit and not spend a cent (of real money) on the cooler more expensive fish.

The iPhone Playmesh gods have proved great market makers for trained fish buy/sells.

2 X Level 3 Clownfish = almost a BlackTetra

But am I home free? Rockstar wants to spend the real money we save on a blue toy car. Because he is “in blue group”. There has to be blue in everything. Didn’t Picasso have one? Blue phase? And then Hugh Hefner had the blonde phase?

Too bad about the annoying background music I should’ve turned off before the  bloody tune stuck in my head though.

Too bad I have to train 13 fish every 24 hours as Rockstar perches on the back of our sofa watching intently because you’re not supposed to go too near jellyfish in case they sting you.

But these fish don’t die and make you feel bad. Good for them.

So here are some of their names:

1. Sushi (because at least once in their life everyone should have a fish they can give this terrible name and all it implies to. And someday maybe I will discover why a clownfish deserved this fate.)

2. Yellow Vented Bul-Bul (his favorite breed out of the scrapbook of Malaysian newspapers sent to him by Grandmum – grudgingly settled for “Bul-Bul” because of name length limit.)

3. Car Key Bobby (I have no freaking idea what this is but well it’s not my purple guppy.)

4. Tikka (so he doesn’t have to eat it – he doesn’t like chicken)

5. Kick (as a compromise because “chick-chick” was “not suitable” for the blue tang he traded Carol The Level 3 Trained Guppy for after he discovered it was a “boy fish”)

6. English (protesting the “hard” Putonghua class he had that day)

7. Vickie (in honor of the 12-year old who used to live next door and babysat him as a baby)

8. 88 (after some Chinese song he learnt that day)

9. Fish (his imagination never ceases to amaze me)

Decades ago his father did this in the pond behind his home in Kampung Baru Rasah, Seremban. My mum did hamsters with me when I was 9 or 10…