The best thing about expanding the team is that we're getting a whole new crew of awesome people with even better names. I've mentioned the previous crop of eyebrow-raising names when I first arrived in China. But our new team is giving the Cinderella, Elvis, and Hawk of yesteryears a run for their holy-crap-how-did-you-pick-that-name money.
Introducing the new lineup:
First, there's our bubbly over-the-top foodie who doubled as our course developer by day. In our first standup team meeting when we're all doing self-introductions, she looked at me dead pan in the eye and said "Smile." I did, awkwardly. Then I realized that she wasn't commanding me to smile - that's her name. Smile. Her last name was Li. So she's Smile Li (read it) and then she later switched to Smiley Li because she wanted a singalong three syllable.
One of the new QA engineers shyly introduced herself to me as Nemo. I welcomed her and mentioned that we'd had another Nemo before and asked if she really liked the movie. She looked startled for a minute and shook her head slowly as if surprised that my English was so bad - "No, no. My name is nee-mon. You know, the fruit." Ah. Lemon. Too bad that Apple had left us already, otherwise we could have a fruit salad party.
Out of the blue, we also hired two app developers who were called Seven and Cywen, but both pronounced them like the number. They were going to do a stone paper scissors for the rights, when Seven told us that his name reminded him of his first love because he used to hang out in his ex-girlfriend's college dorm of six girls all day long and got tagged as the seventh. Cywen just deflated after that and settled for a life of being called Max. We were all disappointed he didn't pick Eleven, but certainly glad that he passed on Six because he always said sex instead.
I won't even mention Coco (guy), Afra (girl), and Hello Kitty (asexual?). Ok, well Hello Kitty was really an American intern called Katie but the staff just thought it's hilarious and so Japanese hip to call her a cartoon instead.
Then in walked a girl who sweetly whispered on her first day that her name was Sissi.
I spent my entire childhood glaring at people who pronounced my name "Sis - see". I even ran a high school student body president campaign on the slogan "Sisi not a Sissy." But, even though HR had called to persuade new girl to give up her name because there's already another Sisi around, she still showed up, utterly unrepentant. So now it's Big S and Small S. I'm technically Big S and she's Small S even though we're the same size and I'm younger. But I'm going to put a stop to that too because sometimes the local Chinese staff slip and say "Big Ass" instead.
Good thing that was never my nick name in high school. I wouldn't have known how to work that one into a pep rally slogan.
Introducing the new lineup:
First, there's our bubbly over-the-top foodie who doubled as our course developer by day. In our first standup team meeting when we're all doing self-introductions, she looked at me dead pan in the eye and said "Smile." I did, awkwardly. Then I realized that she wasn't commanding me to smile - that's her name. Smile. Her last name was Li. So she's Smile Li (read it) and then she later switched to Smiley Li because she wanted a singalong three syllable.
One of the new QA engineers shyly introduced herself to me as Nemo. I welcomed her and mentioned that we'd had another Nemo before and asked if she really liked the movie. She looked startled for a minute and shook her head slowly as if surprised that my English was so bad - "No, no. My name is nee-mon. You know, the fruit." Ah. Lemon. Too bad that Apple had left us already, otherwise we could have a fruit salad party.
Out of the blue, we also hired two app developers who were called Seven and Cywen, but both pronounced them like the number. They were going to do a stone paper scissors for the rights, when Seven told us that his name reminded him of his first love because he used to hang out in his ex-girlfriend's college dorm of six girls all day long and got tagged as the seventh. Cywen just deflated after that and settled for a life of being called Max. We were all disappointed he didn't pick Eleven, but certainly glad that he passed on Six because he always said sex instead.
I won't even mention Coco (guy), Afra (girl), and Hello Kitty (asexual?). Ok, well Hello Kitty was really an American intern called Katie but the staff just thought it's hilarious and so Japanese hip to call her a cartoon instead.
Then in walked a girl who sweetly whispered on her first day that her name was Sissi.
I spent my entire childhood glaring at people who pronounced my name "Sis - see". I even ran a high school student body president campaign on the slogan "Sisi not a Sissy." But, even though HR had called to persuade new girl to give up her name because there's already another Sisi around, she still showed up, utterly unrepentant. So now it's Big S and Small S. I'm technically Big S and she's Small S even though we're the same size and I'm younger. But I'm going to put a stop to that too because sometimes the local Chinese staff slip and say "Big Ass" instead.
Good thing that was never my nick name in high school. I wouldn't have known how to work that one into a pep rally slogan.
Nothing to do with names but this is a shirt
I regularly see at the office.
Caption: "THE MAN: The employees walked
around in jeans and sweaters."
Now that's how you show attitude around here.
2 comments:
this post gives me a good laugh during the time of stress :)kason says you are such a good writter! -emma
I agree with kason!
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