My eight-year-old’s classmate Shyrin is officially missing in Phuket. So is her mother and her mother’s boyfriend. Look, here are their photos.

I don’t know what to say. But I have to say something.

Soon we’ll have to tell my daughter. Honey, one of your best friends is missing. Yes, she might be dead. No, we may never know. I don’t know what happens when you die. I’m waiting till her father’s here too, so for now I’m talking with other parents from my girl’s class while out of her earshot and keeping the television off.

There are 800 other Norwegians missing too, and many already found dead. Norway’s a small country. The prime minister said it may be the greatest disaster to hit Norwegians in peacetime. Ever. And obviously the Norwegians, though closer to my home, are just a handful compared to the tens of thousands of other victims.

Please: donate money to the Red Cross and their efforts to find people and help people, or to one of the other aid organisations. Here’s the Norwegian Red Cross, and you’ll easily find your local equivalent if you search.

Oh no. “How’s my dwarf hamster?” my daughter asks, on the phone from her grandparents’ moutain cabin. Oh, fine, I say, walking into her bedroom to check. I stop. “Uh… The cage door’s open. And, uh, the cage is empty.”

She doesn’t sound worried. “Look under the bed, mum,” she instructs. I hang up, telling her I’ll hunt the house and ring her back. The dwarf hamster’s not under her bed, nor mine, nothing but dust bunnies there.

I’m not cut out for this dwarf hamster thing. Obviously as the responsible adult I should have checked the cage before leaving. And as soon as I got home. Oh dear. I foresee a lot of cleaning of floor surfaces in the next few hours.

If you were a dwarf hamster, where would you be?

updateYou’d go behind the fridge and find a path behind the kitchen cupboards. When your owner’s mum ripped up the hench and leant down to pull you out you’d put on your best cute hamster look. And fortunately not run to the bits that big woman couldn’t reach.

Phew.

3 thoughts on “missing

  1. diane

    Oh dear, the Rodent ran amok!

    Years ago, when our Rodents took surprise vacations, my mother lured them back with peanut butter, bits of cheese, and sunflower seeds.

    MJ’s mother used to chase their Rodent around the kitchen and capture him under an upside-down garbage bin.

    No doubt there is a Rodent out there with Jane’s name on it. And sooner or later I’ll be Rodent-catching too.

    PS. How small is a dwarf Rodent? Our Rodents were the usual size, which was not very big. A dwarf must be very small indeed!

  2. Radagast

    Congratulations on catching the dwarf hamster 🙂 I fondly remember helping my parents catch my various childhood rodent pets (mice or hamsters) after they inevitably escaped.

    As a side note (especially for Dianne), if you want to get a rodent pet I’d highly recommend pet rats. They’re highly social animals (best kept at least in pairs; separating genders of course) that are very friendly, and thus a joy to handle and have around. I had many through college and loved ’em all. If you do get some, though, be sure to get ones that have been handled well; feeders are typically very aggressive.

  3. mcb

    Just how small is a dwarf hamster?
    And how do you say dwarf hamster in Norwegian?

Leave A Comment

Recommended Posts

Triple book talk: Watch James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me discuss our 2023 books

Thanks to everyone who came to the triple book talk of three recent books on machine vision by James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me, and thanks for excellent questions. Several people have emailed to asked if we recorded it, and yes we did! Here you go! James and Jussi’s books […]

Image on a black background of a human hand holding a graphic showing the word AI with a blue circuit board pattern inside surrounded by blurred blue and yellow dots and a concentric circular blue design.
AI and algorithmic culture Machine Vision

Four visual registers for imaginaries of machine vision

I’m thrilled to announce another publication from our European Research Council (ERC)-funded research project on Machine Vision: Gabriele de Setaand Anya Shchetvina‘s paper analysing how Chinese AI companies visually present machine vision technologies. They find that the Chinese machine vision imaginary is global, blue and competitive.  De Seta, Gabriele, and Anya Shchetvina. “Imagining Machine […]

Do people flock to talks about ChatGPT because they are scared?

Whenever I give talks about ChatGPT and LLMs, whether to ninth graders, businesses or journalists, I meet people who are hungry for information, who really want to understand this new technology. I’ve interpreted this as interest and a need to understand – but yesterday, Eirik Solheim said that every time […]