"Elephant" is a Fool

For the uninitiated, this is the imprint of a Chinese seal. One of the earliest that I made.

The large character in the middle is "象" (in ancient writing, of course), which means "elephant", while the 4 smaller characters on the left say "象是笨蛋（'Elephant' is a fool）" (the word "Elephant" here refers to a specific person, so it is NOT a generic statement saying "all elephants are fools").

This seal was inspired by the fact that I was nicknamed "Dumbo" and also by a novel of the same name (象是笨蛋） by 西西. I'm not a particular fan of this author (she is good though, I must say), but the title of her book spoke of my feeling at that time, because I was going through a painful breakup - with a best friend; I haven't started dating at that time.

I picked up seal-carving when I was in the first year of U, I think. It was during a holiday, and I was doing a short stint in a factory where an uncle of mine was manager. During a lunch break, I found the nearby supermarket having a small exhibition of all things Chinese, and there I found - to my utter delight - a complete set of tools (the carving knife, the vise, the stone, a dictionary of ancient characters, etc.) for making seals. And the rest is history (part of it being that I spent most of what I earned during that holiday on buying stones and little ornate boxes for containing the finished seals; yep, no doubt about it: "Elephant" is a fool).