Alice? Why the heck not?

Does anyone remember this bizarre song from many years back?

I stumbled upon it again a couple of days ago and it brought back so many memories. The mind being a strange creature of its own however, led me down another strange path and my thoughts took another unpredictably bizarre journey. The word “Alice” triggered thoughts of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and I inevitably recalled the political allusions of the book to the then Victorian political world. Let’s be frank though, though the Mad Hatter is based on the then British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, if we transmogrified the book into modern times, Boris Johnson would fit the character perfectly. The more I contemplated Alice’s bizarre wonderland it occurred to me that our current social condition is equally disproportion and so detached from reality as well. We might as well all be Alice’s feeling tiny in a world of giants, or like a glance in a parallel universe of minute creatures. Personally I would like to be the Cheshire Cat.

Of all the peculiarities of the Lewis Carroll characters, the small Alice living in a world of giants is what resonates with me best. It’s not just because I am a small Asian living among the Teutonic gargantuan masses, where kitchen counters and cabinets are always too high for me, I can never buy pants or skirts here from the regular racks, and so on. Rather, it is my penchant for and fascination with large animals that makes me a bit of a misplaced Alice. My dream menagerie consists of a Tibetan Mastiff, a Maine Coon, a Flemish Giant (known locally as the German giant, or Deutsche Riese), a donkey, and an alpaca (or two). Alternatively, instead of a Tibetan Mastiff I would also settle for a Cane Corso aka the Italian Mastiff, and in lieu of a Maine Coon I would happily adopt a Norwegian Forest Cat. These two are a notch smaller than my original dream giants. No substitutes for the rabbit, donkey and alpaca though, although a Llama doesn’t sound too bad either. Oh, my dream vehicle to shuttle this menagerie around? A Hummer of course! Call it CSI hangover…

In summary, this is what the dream team looks like

Image sources: Tibetan Mastiff / Maine Coon / Flemish Giant
The donkey and alpaca are ©FrogDiva Photography

The logical and more pragmatic side of my brain tells me I should stick to my original plan of a Welsh Corgi and a bright green VW Beetle (top down), and that would leave plenty of space for my little Persian grannies Lolita and Cherry, maybe with the rabbit sandwiched in the middle. This is what the constellation would look like

(sources: Wikipedia and Pinterest)

The donkey can stay home, and the alpaca can run alongside. In any case, considering my short stature, there is no way on earth that I could take care of any of the Mastiffs. Either I live in a zoo, on a farm, or in a little cottage with absolutely no neighbours so my motley crew can roam freely. Hmmm, maybe I should look into getting a Komodo dragon while I’m at it.