The hamster came to us without warning. Elsa brought it back from the childcare school. She had "bought" it there.
Elsa's class is Kindergarten 2, which abbreviates to "K2" (De laatste klas van de kleuterschool - group 2 of zo misschien? Ik snap het Nederlandse systeem niet helemaal). Coming January this cohort is moving on to primary school.
A few weeks ago, the school began teaching the children money skills. This will be essential for primary school in Singapore, where you have to pay for your lunch.
Counting in currency doesn't come all that easy when you are 6 years old. In fact, it doesn't come easy to full grown adults. I remember paying at the supermarket 11,15 gulden when my basket of goods was 8,65 gulden. I got a long blank stare and needed to explicitly say "een knaak alstublieft."
The school went down the rabbit hole, by imparting a sense of basic economics. The project quickly took on a life of its own. The children designed their own currency and they coined it "K2-coin". And then, they started making money.
Now, how cool is that? They literally made money - how often in your lifetime can you do that? I immediately tried investing in K2-coin, because bitcoin had proven so lucrative. However, the teacher denied me leveraging our mortgage. So, instead I cheered the kids on with the message that they will blossom into future central bankers. These children cannot possibly do a worse job than the current incompetents.
After their treasury was created, the kids could "work" to earn money. 'sMam immediately yelled: "child labor!" But of course this was nothing of the sort. The children read books to the class and received K2-coin for the effort. They cleaned up the class in return for some K2-coin. They were paid K2-coin for making sport shoes in a bathro... Oh no, so that never happened.
And then they were allowed to spend their hard earned K2-coin. There were pancakes to buy and apple juice and... Elsa bought a hamster.
Saywhat?
Aiden called it a Ham-i-ster, so his name was quickly "Hahmister". I subsequently dubbed it "HaMister SoulSister" to celebrate one of the only two songs over the past 50 years in which the ukulele is appropriate (the other one is REM's losing my religion).
The good news is: Hamister is not alive.
The bad news is: Hamister behaves like it is alive.
Wait. Let me make a video... 1 minute, just to share the gist.
This battery operated machine runs around as if it is some physical incarnation of chaos theory. Seriously, I have been observing Hamister for a while and it moves like the random walk of the stockmarket. And that made me wonder... if I watch it long enough, perhaps I can model it's path, and then use that to somehow predict the price of, say, bitcoin.
Elsa and Aiden also treat this cute little critter like it is alive. "Look, Hamister is trying to escape," said Elsa, while she stuffed it into the ball and Hamister was wheeling its way up and out... And, "I think there is a camera in there, so it can see where it is going." But there is of course no camera. Although made in China, this toy was not designed by Huawei.
Somehow that randomness of movement leaves an impression of determination, however paradoxical that sounds. We-humans are visually oriented and we think associative. It looks like a hamster, it runs like a hamster, so it must be a hamster.
Clearly, I love it. After Elsa and Aiden went to sleep, I let Hamister run around our house. It has visited practically every room we have. A hollow ball, a fluffy gadget with two wheels and one AAA battery. Together, it becomes the embodiment of tireless Brownian motion. I am completely captivated.
Eventually it rolled down a tiny step, into our kitchen. From that it will never recover without help. It is impossible for Hamister to go "up a step", even a sloppy slope would be insurmountable. It is unable to work harder than "default", to attempt reversing that amount of spent entropy. It is very easy to prove that Hamister is not alive. It is just hard to feel that, when you watch it run around.
Observing Hamister is like staring into a crackling campfire, there is this sense of futility, but you just can't not watch. By the way, it is very similar to 'sMam's pool cleaning robot, called Robbie. Robbie is also infinitely watchable, but this toy really looks like an animal. Hamister > Robbie.
Ah, now this is interesting... The hollow ball finally got stuck firmly between the back of our couch and the wall. Hahah... Hamister is locked forever in his little cage, unless I nudge it. Look at it go, frantically rolling around the tiny sphere, like a crazy bee in a jar. Hmmm... Time to short some bitcoin.
