2008-02-25 marC
In a country where people have the funniest way of spelling their names, I'm surprised how most of them fail to write mine. Marc. Four letters. Most people achieve an error rate of 25 %. Here is an authentic excerpt from an email I received the other day:
> Hi there, I'm Marc from 10/237 ...
Hello Mark!
Yeah, nice to meet you, too.
***
God bless public libraries! My latest discoveries include
- l33t h4x0r h4ndb00k
- Linux Multimedia Hacks (Tips & Tools for Taming Images, Audio and Video)
- Unix for Programmers and Users.
Learning about computers by reading books. Out of the box thinking at its best! I want to know what all these Linux folders (etc, bin, usr) are good for! And I prefer learning/reading in my bed, so that's the obvious way to do it. Plan B is to spam Dale's Pandion account. Uh, I like plan B. But maybe he doesn't...
2 comments:
Hi! I'm sure people must have already explained that Mark with a K is a common name, and Marc with a C is not which is why people must almost go into auto pilot and when their head thinks Marc they spell it they way they always have. But that's no excuse I know! It's not that hard to get things right!
Relatedly how do you find speaking to people on the phone? Banks, power etc? I find it SO tiring here! Apparently people in the UK speak English but for the life of me I just can't get them to understand me on the phone! My street address is the worst I don't think I've said Roundhill once and had the other person understand me the first time. I rang my New Zealand bank the other day and it was so lovely just being understood!
Talking on the phone is no problem at all. People realize very quickly that English isn't my first language and to speak very clearly.
Here's a quote for you from a famous marK:
"In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language." [Mark Twain]
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