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.

Scandalising me is more or less like tickling me:

The overwhelming majority of people who have tried have found themselves incapable of doing it, but once you've discovered how to do it, it's ridiculously easy.

I was reading about Silverchair's Daniel Johns today and the fact that his anorexia caused him to drop to about fifty kilograms at his nadir.

My reaction was:

"Fifty kilograms? I only weigh fifty-seven kilograms!"

I was more alarmed by the fact that he was scared that all apples contained razorblades, frankly.

Am I missing something?

I loathe people addressing me by my last name. I absolutely detest it. It drives me batty. My last name is not my name. I am not in an English boarding school. And it's not like there are other people in uni who share my first name. If nothing else, the use of my surname in conversation is conclusive proof that the speaker is not someone I'm very fond of, since my close friends never use it. My close friends all address me by my correct and full first name, strangely enough, despite many nicknames having been invented for me over the years, some of which are still in use.

Come to think of it, unlike many other people, the use of nicknames for me is an indicator of emotional distance, not proximity.

In any case, I'm going to use some excuse to change my surname in the future. It's a rubbish surname, and I doubt it'll cause substantial harm for me to change my surname if, say, I get married or something. (Yes, I am aware that I wouldn't ordinarily change my surname in such a situation. So what?) In addition to ridding me of this ridiculous thing, it will also enable me to be completely untraceable, since possible blasts from the past will have no idea that I've changed my name, or, even if they do, they won't know what I've changed it to.

It's too much to ask, though, that my parents also have no idea what I've changed my name to, isn't it?