At my new job, I’ve been very impressed that my co-workers immediately managed to pronounce my name correctly. Until this point in time, no one in this country has been able to realize that Kirsten and Kristen are not the same name. From time to time I even got Christian and Christine. I just started answering to anything that vaguely resembled my name, under the assumption that this must be what life is like for people with much more difficult names to pronounce. I’ve come across people named Roisin (Ro-Shayne) and Aisling (Ashley, apparently) and have really began to feel for them.
My husband and I have always thought that the French must be secretly wetting themselves every time Russian Prime Minister Vladmir Putin is mentioned, as “putin” is French for “whore”. When we taught at a small language school in Dorset for European kids, there was a kid from somewhere in Eastern Europe named Mert (pronounced may-ert) whom I’ve heard got no end of grief from his French classmates due to how close his name resembled “merde”, the French word for “shit”.
This got me to thinking. When we were in China, our students all took on English names so as to better identify themselves to us non-Chinese speaking morons. It was common practice, and a lot of them had apparently been using these names in English class for quite some time. It brought to mind my eighth grade French classes where we all chose to be Gabrielle or Corinne to feel more Francais. For us it was a bit of fun, and usually the teacher forgot which names we had chosen and reverted back to our actual names by the third week of term. This was always epically disappointing in the realm of imagination, as somehow ceasing to be Gabrielle or Corinne also meant the loss of our imaginary boyfriends, Jean-Luc and Francois. Quelle dommage.
Anyway, the other English teachers at our University in China advised us that we needed to create attendance registers where the students would write their names in three ways. Once in Chinese, once in Pin Yin (a sort of phonetic Chinese), and finally their chosen English name. A lot of them chose simple, mainstream English names like Sarah or John, but it became clear early on that creative license was a key factor in naming oneself English-style. In my first class I had a Spiderman.
Here are some of the favourites: Batty (male), Bleach (male), Sugars (female), Kashmir (male), Only (female). My husband had a Space Rat (male) and a friend named Wagon (male. In his defence, his name was actually Wang Gong, so he was logical in choosing the English word that most resembled his actual name). Another of our co-workers had a Seven that sat next to an Eleven (both female), and a Voldemort.
And why not? Someone comes in to teach you English and asks you to choose a name that isn’t yours, for the simple fact that they can actually say it, why not be (for the most part, excluding Wagon) totally arbitrary and choose something unrelated and pointless. It was as if they were saying “Hey, this isn’t my name, and I’ve chosen something that you will never be able to take seriously as if it were. You won’t easily forget that I’m not actually Spiderman.” And amazingly, the ones who chose to be Sarah or John actually became Sarah and John in our minds. Spiderman was always going to be Liang Ming Chao because there is no way in hell I could train my mind to believe his name was Spiderman. So hats off to you, not-really-Spiderman, point well made. Maybe I should have taken issue with being called Kirsten and replaced it with something much more entertaining.
spiderman, spiderman
step in time
No internet is not a fun place in my world. I never thought I’d react all that badly to being without it, but there it is. It is like being denied something that you partake in so frequently it doesn’t mark itself on your memory significantly. I’d compare it to being denied coffee or wine with dinner. It’s fine when you’re doing something else, like reading, riding the bus, whatever. But when the moments settle down, you think, “A glass of red wine would be so nice right now.”
I think the reason I hate not having internet is because I can’t write to people. I’m terrible at answering e-mails on time as it is, but I feel so much better about it when I can at least know that the possibility of me being a responsible friend actually exists. I mean, who knows. I’ve not written to Sally in about 6 months, but hey, today could be the day. No internet takes that away from me, and then I have no choice but to worry that poor Sally is sitting there thinking about how horrible I am to have ignored her so completely. If I were able, I could just tell her of my plight… but this requires internet. (I mean, why the hell would I call her? So very archaic.)
Really, I have no friends named Sally, though in the last five minutes I have managed to convince myself to go find one. I don’t think I’d get too far with that, as no one seems to have that name anymore. It seems a good cat name though. (Things to do: 1. Buy cat. 2. Name cat Sally.)
So now I live in London, land of limited internet connection. (BT openzone my foot). It has been 2.5 weeks since my relocation from the peaceful Dorset coast and I’ve managed to learn a couple of things (though not many) about London. The first is that London functions like some giant machine that drains your energy. I get up to go to work, travel around a bit, do some work which is moderately but not insanely taxing, travel around a bit more, end up home. My work day is no longer than it was in Dorset. Quite possibly it is shorter. Anyway, by 8pm I am in my pyjamas, and by 9pm there is really no communicating with me. Apparently I am 97.
But another thing I’ve learned is that THERE ACTUALLY ARE CHIMNEY SWEEPS IN LONDON. No, seriously. Our neighbour had them over to sweep the chimneys in the old Victorian building that we live in. I even got to MEET them. Total disappointment though, as they didn’t look adorably sooty and carried no classic wire brushes. Damn. So I patiently waited for them to suddenly burst into song and dance, and when that didn’t happen I was thisclose to yelling at them, “What kind of crap London chimney sweeps are you, you don’t even sing and dance!!” Honestly, what is the world coming to when there are no dancing chimney sweeps in London, I ask you. Dark days. My bubble is officially of the burst variety. Next thing I know, I will be down at St. Paul’s cathedral only to find out that you can’t even feed the birds for tuppence a bag.