I thought of posting this entry a long time back but time did not permit me to do this or one reason leading to the other should have caused this delay, I guess. Gosh, even today there was a power cut so I had to save this post as a draft and then publish it later. First, let me just spell out my name, it’s S-A-R-I-N G-O-P-A-N and the last part of the name is obviously the surname. The first name is what I feel creates a hell lot of problems. Next coming to its pronunciation, it’s not possible for me to do that here but I guess, you people will pronounce it correctly. “Sarin” is the name of a river I reckon, in Switzerland, but only later on did I realize that it was the name of a poisonous gas too. Here let me just introduce 3 strangers who have really misunderstood my name, and who tried to play the fool with me, here they are.
Stranger 1: Hi da hw r u? How often’ve you received such kinda corny questions on your mobile? From an unknown number and not wanting to reveal his identity. Perhaps what would a person think normally? I’m not sure but this is what my stupid pea-sized brain thought; maybe I know this person or I will just ask who it is. And this is the reply I got: ver r u studying da? Now this just pissed me off first of all, ’cause this person didn’t answer my question in the first place. Instead he posed another question and referred to me as ‘da’ as if I was his sidekick or something. So I did not reply. After some time ‘Y not replyng da? msgs nt reching u?’ Eww, it infuriates me when I see such abbreviated texts. I stared at the message feeling sick to my stomach, that idiot didn’t use his dictionary on his phone or he didn’t know how to spell words either. And when I see a person like that, whoever it is, I immediately lose respect for that person and mock him/her cruelly. Using ‘u’ for you and ‘ur’ for your is okay but what’s the use in writing ‘reching’ to imply ‘reaching’ when you’re not really shortening the word, it is only one letter, for Pete’s sake. He probably thinks this way of writing is cool. That went on for quite some time and later I myself thought of revealing it, I said I was a he and not a she as you would imagine. He felt dimwitted and he never messaged me back!
Stranger 2: This happened 5 or 6 months back I reckon. One evening I received an unsolicited message. Excerpts: “hey i dont know who you are but some stupid guy is messaging my number to you.” Honestly, I stood dumbstruck staring at this message. First of all, I never understood what it meant as I was feeling very dizzy, and promptly asked who this was? And again the same crap, “hey i … you” Holy fuck! Then he asked my name and to which department I belong to. I understood, this was actually a come-hither-kinda guy from my college. So I replied ‘Sarin Gopan, Computer science department’. I could not tolerate the nonsense anymore as he was getting on my nerves, so I messaged my friends and asked who this jackass was. I got a reply from one of them; he asked me to hang on for a moment, so I phoned my friend right away and he said that it was ***, a guy from EC department from my batch. So he told to continue this, I certainly had no plans of doing this he insisted me to carry on. This went on for days together and it was really a pain in the ass, sending replies to this jack ass. One fine day, one fine night he called. I pressed the answer button unintentionally and said hello. When he heard my voice he hung up, he had a certain element of doubt and so wanted to make things certain, but after realizing who I was, he felt embarrassed. Oh, I thought of continuing this at least for a month but it was my mistake, really that should’ve been fun. He even threatened me for doing such a thing. I’m afraid not, I was ready for anything.
Stranger 3: Chat rooms are interesting and when you have a name like mine, you can’t ask for more, can you? What do you have to say about those jobless freaks who lurk around, attending cheap online classes, and try to hit on women? And asking ASLs, pleading all the way and posing all sort of idiotic questions? Now, let me just rack my brain and tell you an incident that took place months back. Here it is. I got an IM from a guy, he started talking to me and from my name, he took me for granted that I was a missy. Yet another male troller masquerading! Wtf?! And started typing in all the crap that he usually uses while trying to hit on girls. I told myself ah, this should be fun and continued disguising as a girl. What was even funny, I unleashed all my sarcasm on that poor guy and that conversation with me would have mutilated his online existence. Poor chap. As I expected, that turned out to be freaking hilarious. The questions he asked was enough to crack me up all day. It was getting crazy, I thought. Eventually, in the nick of the time I told him the person to whom you were talking to was a guy and not a girl. Run for your life now, and get a life, you loser! And finally ignoring me, he let out a sigh of relief. Obviously, after a long time that should have pissed him off. Seriously how on earth can a girl endure all these lousy, senseless and trivial talks in the cyberspace and elsewhere? I really feel pity for them.
Jokes apart. Perhaps, one of the most embarrassing moments in my life is when a lecturer reads out my name loudly, they certainly don’t know how to pronounce my name(but some try and manage it) but I still wonder how easy, it is for people to pronounce a name, say for example Pranatharthiharan(a school friend of mine) but the people pronounce it perfectly! I even know a friggin’ Tamil actor from the Tamil film industry with a slight modification of my name and folks even call me by that name. My bad. I even compressed my name like YESJI(SG), I know it sounds really weird. I copied this idea from a friend of mine (AARJAY)R J RAMYA. Perhaps, I feel I have a very good name and anyone who hears my name for the first time keep asking me what it means and from where I got this name. Such a stupid question, I don’t know, my parents named me!
P.S- The acronym STFU stands for Shut The Fuck Up. You don’t have to ponder on the title anymore .
Thank you.
December 15th, 2006 at 9:26 am
This was your best post ever! I shall reply with a related article on my blog if I remember or if you remind me.
December 18th, 2006 at 5:59 pm
hey man…good post…but am not sure if itz ur best one…coz i don find time to read all ya posts..but will surely do it soon..one thing gotta tell ya…these sms prankz r one thing for which uve gotta have a “don care attitude”..coz u know how familiar they r among us(teens)..
January 7th, 2007 at 9:23 am
So you’re saying that your name should be pronounced correctly or the person should go to my blog?
January 7th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Marc,i never noticed this comment of yours:(!obviously if he /she is not sure of what it means then he/she should be visiting your blog!
http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&q=STFU+PLS&meta=
January 10th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Hmmm… how abt Taiyyal Nayagi da???
January 1st, 2008 at 11:32 am
Nice post dude. People probably think ‘Sarin’ is a variant of ‘Zarine’(which is not just the name of a WoT character). The first time I saw you comment on Marc’s blog, the first thing that struck me was nerve gas.
May 4th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Sarin,if they visit Marc’s blog also they can’t find the meaning coz it says ” STFU PLS” don’t know what’s STFU means then GTFO!!!!( this is what his blog says and i guess am right about it )