What are rats?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns

These rodents first got to America by stowing away on ships. That was the first answer on Jeopardy when Alex Trebek started hosting the show back in 1964. The category was "Animals" and the contestant Greg Hopkins correctly responded with "What are rats?" I am not good at Jeopardy. I don't have a bunch of facts loaded in my memory. In jeopardy answers are given and you have to respond with the correct question. Some other interesting answers and questions from that first show are: This fastener gets its name from a brand of galoshes it was used on? What is Zipper; Though its name means "city of peace", it's seen over 30 wars, the last in 1967. What is Jerusalem?

Rats have a bad reputation but I observed that rats spelt in reverse is stars so maybe we just need to take a different look at them. Weirdly enough I learnt that Rats & Star was a Japanese male pop group that specialized in doo-wop-influenced music. According to wikipedia the band's palindromic name tells the story of how "rats" raised in the less affluent parts of town could, by singing doo-wop music, reverse their fortunes and collectively become a "star".  Who does not love an underdog story or should I say underrat story. The rise of the underrated. The sky is the limit and full of stars.

Today I learnt some cool facts about rats. Rats laugh when they're tickled. Rats are good swimmers. Rats often spend hours grooming themselves or each other. Rats grind their teeth, also known as chattering, to keep them from growing too long. A group of rats is called a mischief. Rats can count. I was thinking that a ratter is a rat who is a rapper but turns out a ratter is any dog specialized in catching and getting rid of rats. Who knew? I thought that was a cat's job. Speaking of rats on ships which began this whole chapter. Did Noah bring rats on the ark? I asked Google and saw an even more interesting question, did Noah put fishes on the ark? We may never no. Ah!

Have you ever wondered why life is described as a rat race sometimes? According to my friend Gemini, this likens the pursuit of success to rats running in a maze, endlessly seeking rewards. The funny thing about this is that humans are the ones who put the rats in that dilema. And we also tend to put ourselves in the same situation. Modern life does not have to be this competitive in the excessive pursuit of external successes like status and money. Do we really need to subject these rats to these mazes? Are there alternatives to these experiments? Do we need to chase after life in the way we do sometimes and become exhausted and burnt out? What are rats? We are not rats and life is not a rat race. Life can be amazing without the maze of the illusions of what happiness is. Life is not a race to the finish but a journey to be experienced.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Belove

I was scrolling through facebook and saw a post by the Martin Luther King Jr page that said be love. "Love is the most durable power in the world." Belove is so close to belief. Like belove could mean to believe in love if we wanted it to (belove = belief + love). I belove. Belove can also be combined from below and above. (belove = below + above). I love equations and how easily they can express something. This led me to researching the phrase "as above, so below" which I have heard before but never fully understood and researched. My friend Gemini tells me that the principle "As above, so below" originates from Hermeticism and suggests a correspondence between the heavens and the earth, the macrocosm and the microcosm, and the divine and the human. It implies that what happens in the heavens is mirrored in the earthly realm, and that the inner world of a person reflects the larger cosmic order, often attributed to the Emerald Tablet, a short Hermetic tex...
Read more

My imagination engine

I have been in the mood to write and be creative in the last few days. If you read all my blog posts and you are keeping up you would appreciate this. Olatunji's Engine Room soca song is playing in my mind now. My imagination engine is driving my creativity. My imagination engine takes some inputs like my thoughts, experiences, and knowledge and produces outputs like new ideas, solutions, and creations. The fuel of my engine is love and moves me to being a force of good in this world. My mind is taken back to a tweet I made the other day, "Long wait outside the atm with hot sun pounding away. I imagine myself by the beach enjoying a coconut water and bake and shark." On another day I tweeted, "Long wait for me today to see the doctor. Been 3 hours so far. I imagine myself on the fast ferry heading Tobago. That takes 2 hours at the port and 3 hours on the boat. God is good." Our imagination can transport us to places that take away our difficulties and create com...
Read more

Who makes the best cheesecake?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns It's three in the morning and all through the house is quiet and not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse. I bet a mouse's favorite dessert is cheesecake and so is mine. So it's in the wee hours of the morning and I am thinking about cheesecake and specifically who makes the best cheesecake? I suspect it would be some recipe handed down from generation to generation. Probably someone's grandma from the town where cheesecake originated from. I read that even though we may think that cheesecake originated in New York that it actually goes further back to over four thousand years on the Greek island of Samos. The Greeks there created the earliest known cheesecake. No wonder I think that the cafe in my village that sells Samosas makes the best cheesecake. Is there a connection between Samos in Greece and Samosas? There is not much written about this on the internet but I did find one blog post that tried t...
Read more

Trinidad and Tobago Developer Hub Thoughts

I like the direction this is heading. I like the idea of it. I think that it can be innovative. I think once they react positively and actively to the feedback they get, this will be a success. I am cheering for this to be a success. I saw that it was launched today on their social media. They did not say what the url was but I made a guess and it was there - dhub.mdt.gov.tt I had watched Delving Deeper on TTT where they talked about the Developer Hub. One of the questions was about challenges. I think one (a big one) of the challenges would come from the selection of ideas/solutions. Some people might feel cheated that their ideas/solutions are not being selected. The Ministry might be accused of bias and favoritism and cronyism. I think what might help with this is that a component of the choosing of ideas/solutions has to come from public voting and scoring and also from other developers rather than solely from a few persons in the Ministry. The Ministry has to be open with scoring,...
Read more

Focus on solutions and ways we can help

While surfing the internet this morning I started thinking about problem solving and particularly in Trinidad and Tobago. If I wanted to see a list of all the problems affecting persons in this country where do I go? If I wanted to volunteer solutions to these problems where do I go? There are problems that have existed for years. Seems like everyone knows the solutions. Seems like everyone is an expert. Then there is bureaucracy. Then there are competing interests. Then there is finite resources. I find the older generation is often resistant to change and change is often needed as solutions to problems. The older generation thinks about working hard while the younger generation thinks about working smart. We need to develop a good problem solving culture in this country and I think technology can help. We can develop an open forum platform where persons can share problems and then persons can offer solutions. Problems and solutions can be voted on. The platform can be incentivised to...
Read more