Naming the Cat

Whereas our Kat's name is Katrinka, our cat is name Kuci, short for Kucita, her formal name, pronounced kuchi and kuchita. The origin of her name is that Katrinka was calling her kucing. Since kucing means cat in Indonesian, I protested that we shouldn't call a cat, Cat. I suggested something close to kucing - Kucita to usually be called Kuci. Katrinka persisted with kucing and I persisted with Kuci. That worked out fine until a guest would ask what the cat's name was. Katrinka would say kucing. Notice I don't capitolize it as that would be acknowledging that it was a proper noun. When Katrinka told guests that her name was kucing I'd say, "No, she's wrong. Her name is Kuci." This sort of exchange was never accompanied by any arguing but it did confuse guests at times. Sometimes now Kat calls Kuci Kuci - or Kucing.

Explaining the name Bandi from the previous post

 You may already know this depending on what you follow that issues from these dancing fingers, but the origin of our doggette Bandi's name goes back to the same afternoon with Katrinka, me, Made the vet, and Nyoman driver mentioned a couple of posts ago when I made the tasteless suggestion of Airway for our new puppy's name. Katrinka then said Well then what should we name her. Some novel names were tried - Spot, Rover, Fido - no, none of them seemed right. Katrinka said, Well, she's blond, how do you say blonde in Indonesian? and she brushed the side of her head with her hand. Neither of them speak much English at all and I didn't know the word for blond. I started to look it up on my iPhone but the vet seemed to have understood what Katrinka had asked because she said, Bando. Oh - Bando. That sounds nice. So she was Bando. Till a few days later when we discovered to our embarassment that bando meant headband. That's what vet Made had assumed Katrinka meant with the brush of her hand down the side of her head. The vet came by and I told her of the misunderstanding we'd just discovered. I told her we didn't like the name Pirang which is blond in Indonesian and that we'd used bando so much we decided to just change it a little bit to bandi. Oh no she said, that's no good, not a good name. Why, I asked. Because it sounds like bandit and bandits are bad. Bandit! Wonderful. I called Katrinka to come out to the courtyard and we agreed that our doggette was a bandit of sorts but she was small and female so, bringing in a little Spanish we gave her the formal name, Bandita which we do use sometimes though mainly we call her Bandi and almost three years now, she's ansswered to that name.

Explaining yesterday's use of the initials RW

Unknown to tourists “RW” stands for Rintek Wuuk meaning “fine hair” in the Minahasan dialect. Recent reports have uncovered that the Balinese people are brutally killing dogs and serving them to unsuspecting tourists.

I suggested to Katrinka we call our doggy Airway when we got her. RW here are pronounced the same as airway. She didn't understand but the vet and our driver Nyoman did not approve of that name so she got Bandi instead.

Puppy Love

Our friend Alice send Katrinka a What's App with a photo of a sweet little puppy saying we should take it. I went staight to my iPhone and sent Alice a message that said if she happened to have any extra puppies lieing around that I'd be happy to have them to sell for cura and melpas. She wrote back that she supposed that was some sort of food. No, I responded, those aren't doggy dishes - that's called RW. Cura and melpas are animal sacrifice ceremonies here in Bali and puppies are 2nd only to chicks on that menu.  

COVID-19 Has Resurrected Single-Use Plastics and not for good reason

 Read about it in Smithsonian Mag dot com

White Light Missals

 Catholic priest friend Stephen Frost keeps up an admirable river of art and commentary at his White Light Missals blog.

The Meaning of Life again

 Yesterday's post on the meaning of life which mentioned the Monte Python movie of that name, reminded me of the excellent, wonderful song from the flick, the Galaxy Song. That's it from the flick.