Sometimes I wonder about the tube drivers in this city. This happened earlier this month:

Tube driver (at the tube stop before Finchley Road station): This train will NOT be stopping at Finchley Road. I repeat, this train will NOT be stopping at Finchley Road.

(train pulls into Finchley Road, slows down, and stops, but the doors don't open)

Tube driver: This train will NOT be stopping at Finchley Road. (pause) I'm aware that we've actually stopped at Finchley Road, but we will not be stopping at Finchley Road.

This is the first time I've heard an entire tube carriage of people burst into laughter.

Conversation with my supervisor a couple of weeks ago:

him: "What's that website that a lot of young people look at on the Internet?"
me: "Facebook?"
him: "No, where people can change their status and things."
me: "Twitter?"
him: "No. It's been criticised for a lot of violent videos and things that have been posted on it."
me: "YouTube?"
him: "Yes. Thanks."

*blink*

I went to an Alicia Keys concert on Tuesday night. Having gotten on the tube home with as much of the population of the arena as could reasonably fit into the carriage, I resigned myself to standing for most of the way home, as did many other people, and put my iPod earphones in. Given the number of people in the carriage, people were pretty much standing everywhere, and there was a rather boisterous lot of middle-aged women standing near the doors.

The train stopped for a bit between stations for no apparent reason. Suddenly, I heard a man's distinctly Caribbean accent come over the speakers:

"Do not lean against the doors. I will cancel this train, you hear me?"


If that's not a truly Onion-Sauce! moment, I don't know what is.

During my trip to my new office in London some time ago, I was struck by the fact that many of my future colleagues shortened my name to Tom.

This is interesting.

Perhaps I might have a shot at reinventing my name after all.

I saw a cockroach at work yesterday.
There was no bug spray around.

So

I jumped on it.

And it felt good.

Thank heavens there was no-one else around. I am such a child.

I just discovered that my father is on Orkut.

Bloody hell.

Some spaces should be private, dammit.

Sitting in class last week, I felt K. draw a cross with a pen on the back of my neck.
I turned around and whispered, "What are you doing?"

She replied:

"Nothing. I was just showing S. where I would need to stab you for you to die instantly."

Should I be worried?

We have all sorts of funnily-named people in college.
People have been nicknamed Darling Dingdong in this place, after all.

But now Sal and I really want to see what happens if this girl gets in:

BARCELONA PANDA

Who names their child that? Seriously? An endangered Spanish mammal?

Mirinda has now decided it's a good idea to advertise "New Mirinda Orange".

But Mirinda's already an orange drink, you say.

No, no, this drink's USP is...

*drumroll*

real fruit flavour!




Sheesh.

It's surprising how, after twelve years of perfect attendance and paying full attention in class, I very quickly acquired the habit of tuning out teachers in college. It's not that I like the courses any less: in fact, I'm sure some of them are vastly preferable to the crazier school subjects.

I think it's contagion: as time wears on, we zone out more and more, and an entire class of people who have realised they can just phone it in decide that putting in the maximum possible effort doesn't do nearly enough good in the long run anyway. This is why our teachers think so much less of us than our potential employers: we've decided that an optimum distribution of energy favours an internship or a job far more than any classroom activity - which is fair enough, I suppose.

It does lead, however, to situations in which people forget that there's a class going on in the first place.

I understand how people can forget each other's names and have to ask third parties in hushed tones to remind them (heck, Meryl Streep's character in The Devil Wears Prada made it an art.)

I understand how people can sort of remember names, but still kind of get them wrong - Vidit becomes Vipul, Anita becomes Anupama - nearly there, but not quite.

What I do not understand is why people take it into their head to call me whatever Christian name strikes their fancy. I've been called Anthony, George, Joseph, and all sorts of things bearing little or no resemblance to my actual name. And these misplaced appellations are delivered with the air of someone who is accustomed to using them, instead of the sheepish, uncertain tone with which one delivers a "Vi...pul?" or even the absentmindedness that might characterise something like "As I was saying to Anupama the other day..."

No, no. I get a confident, almost stentorian "George, what were we supposed to look at in this document?" or a firm, self-assured "I think Anthony is right - it would be a problem to enforce such a restriction." (The former is an actual quote from an intern at work yesterday; the latter was uttered by a professor in the middle of class. Both of these people are not in the least unfamiliar with my name.)

Are these people even trying?

Despite how vitriolic I can be on occasion, I have this annoying habit of being sympathetic to people when they're actually down and out. It's especially annoying because the effect is that other people think I utterly despise the subject of my vitriol, when the truth is that I don't care so much once it's out of my system. Whether it's Antonella Barba or Hilary Duff, I just stop caring once I'm done ranting.

Maybe this has something to do with the fact that I'm listening to Britney Spears' first album again for the first time in years. It was a birthday present way back in 1999 and was never my favourite album even then, guilty pleasure or otherwise (some of the lyrics would have been considered cringeworthy by any teenager). It has its moments, though...

...but no, I'm still not a Britney fan.

Question:

How shallow is it on a scale of one to ten to be influenced by a person's looks when striking up and continuing a conversation?

On the way to work this morning I saw this on the back of a lorry:

"SAVE TO RAIN WATER"
"AVOID AIDS"

This was eclipsed this afternoon by the discovery that, in the Shanghai office, there happens to be an actual employee named:

*drumroll*

Camel Wang.

Seriously.
I wonder how many Hairy Camel Wang jokes this person had to suffer growing up.