Sunday, November 25, 2001
The Name Game
I'm back from buying the present for my supervisor. We bought him a cardholder, one of those matte silver ones. Spiffy and we got it engraved. I want something that is engraved specifically for me.. How cool would that be.
Argh! How annoying is it when the smoke detector goes off for no particular reason? I am reminded of Phoebe in Friends, who rips her smoke detector out of the wall because it keeps beeping. And it still beeps even when she smashes it to smithereens so she wraps it in a blanket and dumps it. It's quite funny and I am so tempted to do it. If you want to know which episode it is, it's
The One where They're Up All Night in Season 7. I can't seem to give you the direct link, but the page is pretty idiot proof so go ahead and try if you want.
Dumb smoke detector...it goes off randomly. When we're frying up a storm in the kitchen, it stays quiet. When we're sitting down watching The West Wing, it beeps till the cows come home. It's like one of those domestic roosters who don't know time of day and just crow as and when they like. My friend, Karen, used to complain that they were this idiot chickens crowing in the middle of the day behind her house. She used to scheme about what she was going to cook them into. The things that go through our minds when we had to study for exams. :)
Okay, lots of people have been asking me why my web address has got
Huang in it when surname is
Ng. For those who don't know, Huang is the pinyin version for Ng and despite what my mom has said about my name being unique, it obviously isn't true. There is at least ONE other person out there with the EXACT same name as I do. I know because she tried to contact me. She sent me an email and said since we had the same name, we should be friends. She lives in Malaysia. I now don't actively use ANY email address with my name as the username. It's just too creepy for me. My oh-so-unique name has got me into so much nonsense.
Let's see. When I started primary school, Singapore was going through that phase where it was using our pinyin names. So, I was Huang Junfeng without the Christian name that my parents kindly bestowed upon me. That confused me to no end because I didn't know that I had that name. I spent my first year spelling Junfeng as two separate words. I think I was the only girl in class that had to do spelling corrections on her own name. Plus I hated being known as Junfeng. So, when I had enough guts, I began telling people what I thought my name really was. Being in a neighbourhood school where most of the kids spoke Chinese at home and had Chinese names, having a name like mine baffled them as much as Junfeng baffled me. So I started being called "serene ,serena, selene,selena, sharon, sharona" (not much imagination I must say). The boys made horrid derivatives from it which had to do with excrement and is just too gross for me to repeat. Some of the teachers stuck to Junfeng and one day, someone came in to deliver a message that "Mrs so and so would like to see this girl", handing the teacher a note and my math teacher who called me "Jun-Fong" insisted she got the wrong class and she was wasting her (the math teacher's) time. I timidly put up my hand because I knew that my mom was going to leave something at the office for me and the messenger had looked directly at me when she delivered the note and said I was the person being called for and she said " no, you're not. Don't talk nonsense" . It's funny now, but I think I almost cried then.
Things didn't get any better when I got older. I was told after a debate within the class that I was not voted best speaker because most of the kids didn't know how to spell my name so they chose this girl who had a Chinese-pinyin name that they could spell. Oh well, my troubles have yet to cease. Daniel's mom spelt my name differently everytime and a friend from college spelt it with too many "E"s and he wondered why I walked away in a huff.
So what's in a name? Apparently, tons of bad puns and jokes, especially from cruel cruel kids. I swear that I'll name my kids something easy enough to spell. Well, that isn't quite true, actually. I made up a quiz about myself lately, yes, part of my self-centred, post thesis boredom. Anyway, one of the questions was, What did I want to name my first daughter? And the choices were a) Darjeeling b) Tullarmarine c) Tullulah-Belle d) Serendipity. As you can see, I'm intent of torturing any future daughter I have. I think just for thinking up these thoughts, I'm going to end up with all boys... and I so want a daughter to dress up and send for balllet classes. For those who are curious, I wanted to name my first daughter Darjeeling. Yes, Darjeeling, after the tea. Don't ask me why. I don't remember, Hey, just be grateful that I've gotten over that. :)
Well, tomorrow, I'm going off to sell my car. My first car. I wanted so much to drive my bro's Land Rover Discovery, but my parents decided it wasn't a car for a girl to drive. And I'd get bullied on the road, cos I'm a girl driving a Land Rover. Don't question the logic that is my parents. Sometimes, I'm certain their brand of logic isn't from thie world. Well, because of that, I spent this year being envious of every girl I saw behind the wheel of a Land Rover.
I have a mitsubishi lancer (a safe car because my eldest brother had one in Singapore before he traded it for a much spiffier but more problematic VW Passat), which was a manual and had no air conditioning. So I kept putting it in 3rd gear by mistake and lamenting everytime it got over 20 degrees that it was time to sell the car. And the time has finally come. It's nearing summer, and the car will be intolerable plus we're going home, so it's time. Oh well. I have less attachment to it then I did the Land Rover so I'm not too perturbed.
Okay, this could go on and on, but I won't. Time to pack for Queensland. We're off on Tuesday. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!
Later.
Ondine tossed this thought in at 23:33
0 thoughts...
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" Far in the stillness, a cat languishes loudly"