My Pets' Nicknames

Nenek! Engkong! Mpid! Kucing gendud! You will hear me say those words at least once a day. They are just some of the nicknames I have for my dogs and cat, and the nicknames that I use more often than the rest.

"Nenek" is the nickname for my oldest dog, Snowy. In Bahasa Indonesia, nenek means granny. She got this nickname for being 13 years old, which is pretty old for a dog's age, and will turn 14 this year. In addition to that, she's the oldest among the dogs. Another version of this nickname is "Nenek Centil". The term "Centil" in Bahasa Indonesia is usually used for a girl who likes to play with boys, like the girl version of a playboy. I like to call her this because she likes to act playful and flirty around male dogs such as licking their faces and showing her butt to them several times.

Hello boys!

"Engkong" is the nickname for my second dog, Chiko. "Engkong" is the Hokkian version for grandpa. This is because he's 8 or 9 years old, which is also considered old for a dog's age. He also has coughs; more frequently than Snowy. This shows that his physical health is worse than Snowy, making him "older" than Snowy.

Next is Mpid. This is just a shortened version of my youngest dog, Speedy. It started from only Pidy, to Pid, to Mpid. I added the M in the front because it just sounds more comfortable for me. Also, when I feel as if I want to squeeze him because of his cuteness, I like to emphasize and say the M longer.

Last but not least, is my cat, the "kucing gendud". Those are the Indonesian words for fat cat. When we adopted him, he was really skinny and bony, making him a walking skeleton. But after a few months, he became a really fat cat. He looks a lot like a character in my sister's storybook. They're both fat, orange, and stripy. The cat in my sister's storybook is called "Kucing Gendut".

Out of all the nicknames I had given them, these are the ones that make the most sense. Not all of them react to these nicknames. Snowy doesn’t respond to anything, including her own real name, so there’s no point in calling her. Chiko sometimes responds to “Engkong”, as he starts to get used to being called that. Speedy always responds, as that’s just the shortened version of his real name, which he responds to too. As for my cat Goldie, he only responds to his real name or the shortened version of his real name, Odie.

My pets will continue to receive numerous, senseless nicknames as long as they live, as I will always find something new and funny about them. It’s a good thing that they all put up with their owner’s quirkiness and took all the nicknames good-naturedly.

Who Do I Turn To In My Most Difficult Times?

It is said that teenagers are awkward and I’m living proof of that. As I enter the dreaded teenage year, I suddenly discovered many situations that made me feel self-conscious and at loss about what to do. The person who I turn to to help me deal with difficult social situations is my mom. One of the most frequent and unavoidable tricky situations was walking my dogs in my neighborhood. It’s always full of people, like a park! There are kids and teens playing, adults out to talk with their neighbors, people exercising, vehicles, and other dog walkers. When walking my dogs, I just want to have a quiet me time with them. However, my all-white dogs are a constant attraction to passersby, and we often get disturbed by both positive or negative reactions. With people who like dogs, they would stop us and some would pet or play with my dogs. Some would even follow us. I only have a limited time to walk my dogs and I don’t appreciate being stopped every 5 minutes or so. People who don’t like dogs give us askew looks, a wide breadth, and I’ve even heard mean comments as they pass by. This results in me turning away from people I know to avoid having to stop and chit chat with them. I may appear rude and unneighborly, supporting the stigma that teenagers are difficult. As I often feel drained and agitated after taking my dogs for their walk, I usually talk to my mom.

My mom isn’t a counselor or a psychologist; in fact, she graduated from civil engineering. But being a middle-aged mother of a special needs child, my mother has an abundant of good and bad experiences. From her experience, she discovered that keeping bad feelings only made her feel worse. Instead, she sought out alternative ways to deal with them. A method which worked best for her was to release her negative emotions by breathing in and out. While breathing out, she imagined that her negative emotions went out with her breath. In other words: “pushing” them out mentally. She then would analyze what just happened and found out that she could learn some lessons from the experience.

My mom also taught that method to me. When I’m in one of my tempers, my mom always asked me to calm down first by “pushing” them away, as thinking with heavy emotions often lead to stupid decisions. When I was younger, she helped analyze the situation with paper and pen. It usually ended with her telling me the reasons of why people acted that way, and how I could react to them in a better way than what I did before. The reasons and factors sometimes surprised me. Sometimes, it’s just their habit to lose their tempers. Sometimes, it’s just because of the environment that they live in. I was also taught that my energy could be put into a better use for the greater good to help change the world into a better place. :)

Now that I’m older, I could analyze the difficult situations on my own and think of ways to handle them in a better way. Still, with an occasional help from my mom. As the person who raises me and helps me deal with my problems, she knows every little details about me. When retelling my bad experiences, I don’t have to explain myself, why I did what I did, because she already knows why. She would also know just the right words to say to me. I don’t think I would ever find someone else more perfect than her to guide me and help me through difficult situations.