Somebody asked me to post a clip of my hamsters on Twitter. So here it is, the one I made right before Christmas madness, when Hero Material and I had to clean the entire apartment before our guests arrived.

FYI — Peanut is a winter white dwarf hamster aka Siberian hamster. He's the first son of Kuro and Shiro. The reason we named him Peanut is that peanuts are his favorite food in the world.

(Peanut says sorry his cage doesn't look very clean, but he blames Buttercup for it because she's a super messy hamster.)

On Friday November 13 at around 1:30 a.m. Japan Time, I found Shiro lying on her side under her favorite big wheel in the green cage. When I touched her, she was cold and didn't respond at all. I thought she was dead, but Hero Material said she was still breathing.

He took her out of the cage and held her gently between his hands. They're almost always warmer than mine, and we thought maybe if we could make her warm again, she'd be okay.

After all, that courageous hamster had fought and won against many illnesses.

I still remember the first time I saw her in a local pet store. She was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen: pure white except for the soft velvety gray ear tips and gorgeous sparkling black eyes. She lived in a small glass cage with Kuro. We were initially going to get only one hamster, but I thought maybe she'd be lonely by herself. So we bought Kuro as well.

They were my first pets. That night as they were playing in their new cage with a wheel (their old one didn't have one) I couldn't take my eyes off of them. They were hilarious, active and utterly adorable. I was in love.

Subsequent discovery that Kuro is a male hamster shocked me — he was supposed to be a she! — but Shiro and Kuro got along so well I didn't have the heart to return him to the pet shop. Nor did Hero Material. We kept them both. Shiro delivered her first litter: Peanut and Buttercup.

Then a disease ravaged her small body. It was a diarrhea caused by some parasites. I don't know how she got it, but it destroyed her appetite on top of everything else. She refused to eat her favorite food — green veggies, nuts, seeds, etc. At one point, her weight dropped all the way from 55 grams to 17 grams. When she collapsed on her side, we thought this was it…until she jumped back up.

She never made a full recovery — the diarrhea never stopped even though her weight reached around 36 grams. That's still very small for a hamster. Her mate Kuro weighs around 50-55 grams.

Small or not, sick or not, she was a fierce mother. I remember the time when I decided to clean her cage after she had her second litter. It was getting very stinky, and her babies were old enough that I could clean her cage without turning her against them. When she realized that her babies were exposed to some alien presence, she gathered them together and covered them with her own body, while giving me the death glare.

She always gave her affection to us generously. When I put my hand near her, she placed her paw on my fingertip and said her little hamster hello. She nose-kissed Hero Material many times, and she loved the attention she got from us.

So as she lay cold on Hero Material's palm, we took Kuro out, so they could say good bye. He groomed her cold blue belly and petted her a little.

I don't know how long we held her. I started to feel anxious because I saw blood where she'd lain down. She had no wound or open cut on her, and because where the stain was, she'd probably vomited the blood before we found her.

Finally when her paws started twitching and her whispers flickered, we thought maybe…maybe she'd come back to us just like she'd done many times before. However, it turned out to be her last breath.

Most winter white hamsters live for 2-3 years. She was only one year old.

We placed a big cashew nut between her forepaws. Cashews were her favorite food in the whole world. We didn't want her to be hungry. Then we wrapped her in a long swath of scentless white tissue. It was her favorite thing to make nests with. We wanted her to have something she liked so she can make a home for herself. Then we placed her in a white box in which our wedding ring came and buried her under a beautiful willow tree by the river, so every time we walk by, we can say hello. So that she knows she'll always be remembered and loved.

Farewell, Shiro.

Shiro‘s doing awesome. She now weights 28 grams, incredibly energetic and jumps on top of Kuro all the time to assert her dominance. Yay! :)

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Have you seen Nalini‘s Angels' Blood cover? It's just awesome. It's out on March 3. I can't wait. :)

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Two industry insiders' view on Kindle's text-to-speech feature:

Neil Gaiman's position is that TTS is okay. Jason Pinter disagrees since TTS can potentially cannibalize audio sales. He quoted an interview with Robert B. Parker:

…what about an author who makes $60,000 a year, $10,000 of which comes from audio sales? What if, down the road, the Kindle cannibalizes his/her audio sales to the point where another contract is not offered? Audiobooks are more expensive to produce than print books and carry a higher price tag, so the author loses out on a certain dollar amount for every audio sale lost. Saying this issue is no big deal is like a politician claiming we're in a “mental recession” while riding in his private jet, unaware that below him there are people losing their homes. At some point perspective is lost, and while arguing dollars and cents may seem silly to some, to other it ceding this completely may at some point alter their career.

There have been other blogs and organizations stating their positions on TTS. But what I find singularly interesting is that most of pro-TTS people are telling authors to just hand over rights without getting compensated. I haven't seen a single pro-TTS people telling Amazon to cough up some dough and pay the authors for TTS.

BTW — IBM has TTS technology that sounds like a real human. So it is a very real possibility that something like Kindle TTS may replace audio books within years.

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This interview with Binky Urban just rocks. I love the part where she discusses McCormick.

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Nathan Bransford discusses sympathetic v. unsympathetic characters. Everyone should go read it. :)

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That's it! Do you have anything to share? Or discuss further? :)

mood: stuffed…! Hero Material and I had three days of gluttony starting Friday
eureka of the week: figured out two important world building / plot elements in All the King's Women; must incorporate them into the current draft

Happy belated V-Day! :)

Hero Material and I ate tons of food. On Friday, I made cheese fondue — very very good! — and on Saturday, we had Italian and on Sunday, I made beef stew and a ton of garlic bread.

I still feel stuffed.

We also went to a local jewelry store on Saturday to look at some custom made rings and design diagrams (pics). I do like diamonds, but for our engagement and wedding, we decided to go for sapphires. Hero Material has six loose gems, and I love their deep blue color. The issue, of course, is the right setting.

I liked some of the designs, but it was much more than I expected to pay. And to be honest, I'm not sure if I want to spend that much money given the current economic condition (recession) and so on. Hero Material thinks that I'm fiscally conservative — meaning I don't like to spend money even during bubble — but we'll have to see. The designer told us that it takes about twenty days, so if we give her a month, she'll have all the rings ready for us.

(My mom was determined to send me hundreds of jewelry store catalogs. I had to ask her to not bother since it's really not necessary.)

Speaking of spending money…

Numerous Japanese news stations reported about U.S. “stimulus” bill's “Buy American” clause. (BTW — it was very amusing to watch it since Japan is incredibly protective of its own domestic firms.) The foreign countries' problem isn't that the U.S. is spending the money it doesn't have, but that it wishes to use that money to buy American-made steel and so on for construction projects, etc.

Now, I'm not a big fan of protectionism — I'll blog more about how it can really hurt consumers later with some examples from Japan — but come on! The bill is supposed to stimulate domestic economy. The American taxpayers are going to be infuriated if the government uses $800 billion of their money and stimulate the economy of some other countries, when American economy is in recession.

I can't help but think that the countries that complain are just looking for “free lunch”. They don't want to spend the money but still get the benefits. If they want to stimulate their own domestic industry, they too can pass a $800 billion stimulus bill.

mood: hopeful
Shiro's status: still hanging in there

On the writing front, revision is kicking my butt. At the same time I absolutely love the story, and I don't want to shortchange my characters. So that means I just have to gambaru*.

Re: Shiro —

On Monday, I held Shiro and cried. She was very weak, kept collapsing on her side and Hero Material and I were sure she was dying, esp. since she lost even more weight (17 grams).

The idea that Shiro might be cold and unmoving when I wake up made it very difficult for me to sleep, and Hero Material got up at 5:00 a.m. to check up on her. (He couldn't sleep well either.)

On Tuesday, Shiro ate some baby food, little chunks of her favorite nuts, grains and a little piece of dried protein treat. She also drank some water and walked better. Her eyes seem more open and alert, and we were just so grateful to have her still with us.

This morning, we weighed her. She's about 20 grams now. Hero Material held her and gave her more food. She loves the attention, I think.

I want to thank all my friends who sent Shiro good thoughts and prayers. I also want to thank generous people over at Hamster Hideout forum who gave me invaluable advice.

Thank you.

* gambaru — Japanese for “doing one's best” (at least in this context anyway)

mood: hopeful…!
currently working on: All the King's Women revision round 1

I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but the vet took some of Shiro's poo for tests on Friday. He said it'd take about three business days, so he told us to wait until Wednesday or Thursday for the result.

Meanwhile, Shiro's been very wet and uncomfortable. Also her diarrhea made her fur matted and dirty. I went out and bought a bottle of special unscented and alcohol-free shampoo for small animals for Shiro, and Hero Material and I washed her last night. She bit me hard twice. I didn't mind though. She's very sweet (and super-feisty) and doesn't usually bite, so I know she must've been extremely stressed out about getting washed with soap and water.

Hero Material and I've been also hand-feeding her. She's very picky about her food now, so we bought all kinds of stuff that a hamster might want to eat (except sweets) and chopped them up and fed them to her. She's been very good about taking those small bits of food from us, and she loves diced skinless almonds, walnut pieces, crushed peanuts, chopped carrots, corns and baby food.

Today, the vet called Hero Material. He started the conversation by asking about Shiro's health; he knows she's been losing a lot of weight. So he used a super polite form of Japanese to say, “Is Shiro still alive?”

Of course, we were happy to tell him. Shiro's one tough hamster, and she's a fighter.

The vet said that the test came back positive for parasite eggs. They're very unusual, and he doesn't know how she could've gotten them. But he said he'd prescribe some medicine to kill those nasty things in her tummy. He also wants to gather more poo samples and run extra tests to rule out other possibilities. Since there's no animal medical insurance, he said the tests and medicine would cost “too much”. Hero Material told him nothing was too good for our Shiro. (Besides, the Japanese doctors' idea of expensive is $20-30 for a visit plus medicine and $70-100 for lab tests. That's like nothing to us Americans who are used to paying hundreds of dollars just to say the word “doctor”.)

Hero Material and I are very hopeful that Shiro's going to make a full recovery. When that happens, I'm going to feed her so she doubles her weight. (She lost about half her original weight so far.)

A little haiku I wrote for Shiro yesterday:

Her life not an ounce
Small, wet white — trundling by
Brings tears to my heart