Naming convention

Anyone who has been to a coffee shop and given your name to the barista there knows exactly what I am talking about. They never spell your names right. I thought the baristas got my name wrong because I am an Indian and Girish is not really that common a name like let’s say Rahul.

But then after having coffee with dozens of other people with even simple sounding English names being horribly misspelt, I kinda figured that it’s like a “ritual” for them to get back at you. In one Starbucks I kinda got friendly with the barista and one fine day asked him why can’t he get my name correct. To this he gave a friendly suggestion that they don’t care what my name is as long as I can be uniquely identified amongst the orders. So he suggested I use “Gary” instead. It kinda made sense so the next time when I went around I told him I am “Gary”, only to have “Curry” written on my cup. Anyway, that’s the last time I used “Gary” and thought it was better to have my real name misspelt.

Recently I came across this gem of a video which has a hilarious take on this misspelling problem. Give it a look.

Starbucks Naming Convention

And today I had the fortune to go Starbucks twice and this is what I got:

       

Internet Detox

So I had to move houses again. I threw away a boat load of stuff and realized that I have become an hoarder. Before it gets out of hand, I decided to seek expert advice (read a book) and now am actively trying to live a frugal lifestyle. It’s difficult and I don’t know when I might just cave in to some fickle temptation again.

The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up

Anyway, the reason I disappeared for so long was not my moving or frugal living fad. It was because I was out of access to internet at home for close to a month. My expert brain miscalculated my contract terms and conditions and effectively locked myself off my service provider’s contract. Now all is well and I am back to the big bad online world.

In the last few weeks I realized that without internet at home, I actually have about 3-4 hours every night where I can do something productive than look at other people’s wedding pictures, baby pictures, travel pictures or political opinion on Facebook. I can actually get things done (like arrange stuff, move stuff, read stuff, meet real flesh and blood people) in the real physical world. The absence of internet helped me to rearrange stuff in my new place fairly fast and I could actually also catch-up on some of my long pending reading.

Anyway, now I got internet back again at home (this time it’s Fibre Broadband). That means, I will no longer have time (cause I will be slacking and stalking and feeling miserable on Facebook). That also reminds me I haven’t seen YouTube for a while. So I signoff, and start procrastinating again.