I'm a Sick Bird

After listening to "O Mio Babbino Caro" for about 103 times on all kinds of devices - home stereo, car stereo, mp3 player, and computer's WM Players, I finally started singing the whole thing in "Italian" last night. Well, except the "R" part. I just don’t seem to be able to get it.

Today, I asked everybody I saw in the office to show me the "R". Surprisingly, everybody did it, correctly. I mean, people who speak Italian, Spanish, Mongolian, French, Indian... can all do "R" with a trembling tonge! Even a Chinese guy, who speaks no Chinese and is married to a Italian woman did his "R" perfectly. Is it just me being dumb or me being Chinese? At the end, they all agree that I sound like a sick bird.

Being slightly disappointed and mostly entertained, I quickly switched my mind to the real sick birds, the ones under the influence of H5N1 influenza. Earlier last year, we heard news about chickens and people getting sick in Vietnam and in China. Then virus appeared in Turkey's chickens, birds and possibly turkeys. Now, in this morning's news, the bird families in African started catching up with the illness too.

I can’t help but ask these questions: do birds and chickens alike travel across the ocean? Or do they not? If they don't touch each other, how does their H5N1 affect one continent after another? If they don't talk or send email back and forth like us, how do they decide on such a collective action as to pick up the same virus? We know livings things die anyways -- by slaughter or from sickness. How do they figure out this life's ultimate destiny? How do they come to such a realization that it's about time they take a massive revenge on us human beings for our long standing bird eating habit?

My speculation is simple today. There must be some prevailing secret codes that transcend racial and geographical spaces among species. Look at how peoples of different human races all pronounce "R" so well and identically. When I cannot do it, I am frustrated and am trying so hard to catch up.