Was supposed to do Fishy stuff.

Lena's Account:

That day, i was in class when someone poked their head into our class and said: "Hey, have you gotten your fighting fish?"

"WHAT FIGHTING FISH."

"Ehh... must go and get yourself.. At the bio lab there."

Rightaway, me and my classmate Joy set off to the bio lab. Apparently we were not the last to take our Betta -- there were still half a styrofoam box of fish jars. Anyway, most people don't know this, but I chose the fish. ..HAHA. Duh! If we went to get it, obviously we chose it. It was not like assigned or anything. I peered into each and every faeces-clouded fish-inhabiting jar, and could not decide between the white one with the red tail, or the emo-looking black one. We took five minutes to choose. Joy was definitely not helpful in making the choice.

Anyway, we took the jar back, along with some food, and a small piece of instruction sheet. I talked happily to the fish on the way back and even gave it a tour around our classroom, thus earning hurtful and ostracizing comments from Joy. Finally, i set it down on the waiting empty table at the side of the class. I even put up a piece of "Name Me" sheet for our classmates to provide suggestions.

That night, i went home immediately to find out about the proper way of keeping Bettas. I was so excited, but turned out the class's response was lukewarm.

Well, for two or three days, not many people showed enough interest for the fish. It was basically neglected and left to rot in its murky practically poisonous water and hideous jar. It was fed irregularly. Most of the time it was overfed -- you know how people are..."Ooh look, our fish! Let's FEED IT!" Yeah.. Well, but there was interest, at least: someone commented that it was black and ugly.

Imagine how miserable our poor fish must have felt. Unnamed, cold, bloated, sick and insulted. Tsk tsk..But of course, we did some things right -- we left the fish in the class, but the air con is set such that the temperature in the room does not go below that of what Bettas are comfortable with. The class's main concern was, however, naming the fish. We gave our Bio teacher Ms Priscilla Ang the honor of naming it, but she never got round to it. We understand, not everybody are good with fish names like us...
Well, just as the fish was about to commit suicide, saviour RITA came along!! She really cares alot for our dear fishie, and she offered to take it home. I agreed. And the next day she returned with a new fishtank, new fish food, new fish water solution, fishtank accessories, a tiny fishtank plant, and a brand new refreshed fishie. :) It looked so much better!

From then on, everybody was going on and on about how chio our fish was. In between lessons, people stroll over just to have a little ogle at it, and jealous parties from other classes curse our fish horribly. Oh well, what can i say? I ran around calling it "The Chioded Fish". Not everybody used it, but for a loong period of time i regarded it as the temporary name for our fish.

The class treated The Chioded Fish well. They made repeated attempts to scare the wits out of it, such as shaking its tank and making faces at it, so as to "toughen" it up. I might include that the attemtps never really worked. During the holidays, i brought it home! As i sat in the car holding it tightly to my lap, the car came to a slow stop and water splashed all over my pinafore. You can imagine what happens when the car made sudden stops. I realised our fish's sufferings when i started to smell of fish water -- the odour was worse than a that of a stinkbomb.

I stepped into the house, held up the fishtank proudly, and exclaimed: "Welcome the new member of the family!" We kept it at home for about a week.

And My mum definitely took a liking to the fish. After the holidays, the class kept asking where the fish was. "Bring back the fish arh!" were daily reminders in my ear. So i went home, and my mum was like (dismayed) "What! Take care of it liao then now return..." I know its sad, but there were 34 other people waiting for its return, so there.

You'd be interested to know: Our fish was only named last week. During Bio lesson. Its name is DongDong. Don't ask.

Ahh i'll tell you anyway. Dongdong came about one day when my ex-classmate came into class looking for me. At the same time, Siyi (the 309 Dead Fish) was complaining about our fish's lack of name.

My friend went "Aiyah, call it Dongdong."

Dongdong. Siyi started laughing her head off. She giggled at any other mention of the word later on. Thus "DongDong" replaced "The Chioded Fish", as insisted by Siyi, but only as a temporary name still. Last bio lesson, we asked Ms Ang for the last time. "Name our fish!"

Then i don't know who mentioned that we call it DongDong. So Ms Ang went "ok, call it Dongdong."

yeap. That's about it. Dongdong is offiical. It may sound stupid, is stupid.. But our love for Dongdong will not be reduced just because it has a ridiculous name. :) Now that The Big Day for Dongdong, we give it our full support. You will win, Dongz! We have faith in you! And that's coming from your cheerleader team of 35! XD