I mean, his name (or her name) really was Spot. Or Spotty, because it was a blue spotted pleco fish, or "Spot" for short to me. I wasn't able to spot him in a my mini pond of overgrowing water lily leaves for a week. I thought he was just hiding, or the lily leaves made it too dark for me to see him. But he wouldn't appear even in the evening hours, when he likes to show off and sunbathe. I mean, this fish had character. He was about 6 inches long and his body a little wider than an inch; he loved sucking algae, he was fat, and still fought with the guppies for flake food. His spots were dark brown and very vivid, almost purple in some light. His fins and tail were really fan-like and beautiful.

All that's left of him now is a ghostly, almost lizard-looking skeleton at the bottom of the pond. It is completely picked clean. I needed two torchlights to see it in the water. I haven't picked it out yet, being a bit shocked by his death, although the overgrowing hair algae attested to his absence. I had had Spot in my pond for only a little more than a year. He was so cool.

I'm going to get his skeleton out of the water tomorrow and see how pretty he was inside.

On another note, dead fish in feng shui mean that that fish took some bad luck meant for the house. In which case...maybe it makes sense that Spot, the biggest fish in my keeping, died. First of all, Sars is adversely affecting the already bad local economy. I think I can say with certainty also that it's affecting my art sales. My original fae paintings of which the last 15 have been sold with somewhat consistent results everytime they're on eBay--well, the last one just didn't get its usual amount of bids, let alone close to the usual final price. Yet, it got a HECK of a lot of attention and attracted a lot of positive comments sent to me in email. I guess people liked the look of it, they just didn't want to buy it. :P This is a first for me, and upsetting, because if any part of my art sales have been completely consistent in the demand and going price, the miniature fae paintings were.

I am not surprised, but I am disappointed that the US news media has managed to overexaggerate the SARS situation that people there are even more "freaked out" about the virus than the people here. It's not as if Singaporeans aren't taking precautions to the extreme that the recession now looks like a very real possibility because of the trashing that local travel, tourism, retail, food and entertainment businesses are taking. Really, ignorance and paranoia are wreaking more immediate damage to more people than the actual virus.

Sharp as this is going to sound, let me stress that it's bloody idiotic to expect the virus to be capable of traveling and infecting people by air mail. The virus can't survive the week-long trip; nor is the virus as virulent as some media apparently enjoy speculating and lying about. If it was airborne and/or capable of traveling long distances carried by inanimate objects, then the numbers would be rampant and uncontrolled all across the globe, which they are not.

Pity I can't put the above rant into my pages or auctions. It's not going to bloody help anyway. I expect that as long as sensationalist reporting exists to blow things out of proportion, and as long as people want to believe the worst and go beyond that in their imaginations too, selling any actual art pieces successfully in the near future is going to be near impossible.

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