Freitag, 9. Januar 2009

This Is the Dawning of …


… the Age of Aquarium! Well, it certainly looks that way, as I shall explain. The OMM moved into a nice new house recently, but as part of the process he realised he would not be able to take his beloved aquarium with him and had the idea of starting it up here in the Marienburg instead. The rest of us thought this sounded like a pleasant enough suggestion and so yesterday four of us went off to the local pet shop to try and populate the aquarium. Well, what fun that was. I have to tell you that I have never had any trouble whatsoever deciding between the trout or the salmon in a decent restaurant, but when you are going into a longer-term relationship with the fish the decision which one to take is somehow more difficult.

A Fish Named Wanda?

Well nearly, anyway. We haven’t started giving them names yet but things did get quite silly as we began interpreting what each species might symbolise and imagining which one could best represent our consulting activities and be our “signature fish”, as the Americans like to say. We started with the shrimps, but rejected them as inappropriate because they can never be found when you need them. Then came the various goldfish species, but we felt that they seem to be more show than substance and have a particularly dim way of looking at you. The Pearl Gourami (Mosaikfadenfische) are impressive, but seem to spend most of their time concentrating on “aquarium politics”, marking territories and protecting their turf, so they would be no good either. We thought we were onto something with the Pepper Cory (Panzerwels), who generally make themselves useful and are busy all the time, until someone pointed out that they are mainly to be found licking the bottom of the aquarium, and that this may not be an ideal symbol for our work. But finally we found the perfect fish for our purposes - the Ghost Fish or Glass Catfish (Glaswels). These fascinating little creatures have a transparent body which you can look right through, so there are clearly no secret agendas here, they show lots of guts (literally) and, most importantly of all, you can see the sh-t before it comes out …

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