<"你不是我的不要來"鴨鴨>

As previously mentioned, my niece is a fan of all ducks. She has ducks at both her home and mine. Big or small, furry or rubber or plastic, those that can swim or float or make noises. When she takes her bath, she has a special bathing rubber duckie (like Ernie of Sesame Street does). When she draws, she inevitably begins by drawing a duck. The pic below was taken about 5 months back, she is much better at her duck drawings now.
When she goes for kiddy rides, she'll zero in on the ducks first, if any. And of course, most recently, when asked what type of birthday cake she wanted, she replied,"要鴨鴨的！". Although she has found a new 偶像 in Pingu, her craze over ducks remain undiminished.

I think the craze started because a Disney short movie (those 5-10 minutes type), The Ugly Duckling. She was still quite little when she first saw it. So we watched it (actually, all cartoons if we can) with her so as to explain to her what is happening in the cartoon. There was this scene when the mother duck chased away the ugly duckling (actually a baby swan of course). So my mum explained to her,"mee mee 鴨鴨跟 baby 鴨鴨說你不是我的不要來，baby 鴨鴨就哭哭了。"

That must've really made an impression on her because she started to refer to things that are the odd one out as "你不是我的不要來". There was once when I was back home, she started arranging all her ducks on the floor in a line. Then she started pointing to each and naming them. "這個是 pa pa 鴨鴨。。。這個是 mee mee 鴨鴨。。。" So I played along and started asking for the names of the other ducks. Heh, it wasn't long before she ran out of "relations" for names...

Now all her ducks are of the "yellow body orange beak" species except for one that I had bought for her from Sydney. It is one of those "white breast green/grey back and yellow beak" species. So I deliberately picked this duck and asked her what is its name.

"這個是。。。這個是。。。這個是"你不是我的不要來"鴨鴨！"

These names remain in use today.

Akan Datang: My landlord, Jim

209 days to go.