small world

Ben and I were both born in Vancouver, but didn't meet until we were in university, 18/19 years later.  But imagine this: my mother, who has been in the hairstyling industry for over 40 years, used to own a hair salon, and Ben's parents, having lived nearby for a year or two when they moved to Vancouver, both had their hair done at that very salon! Not only that, but after they moved to a different neighbourhood, his mother liked her stylist--one of my mom's employees--enough to keep going back.  I wasn't born yet, and my mom took a couple of years off once I had been born, so I don't think Ben and I met as babies, but it's still boggling to me. It's a small world after all!

From the desk of Sandra Ewing

Whenever anybody asks me for my last name, I spell it out for them--I don't even bother saying it.  If I'm in a store, and they want to look up my name to see if I'm in their database, I just hand over the debit card I'm going to pay with--they can read it for themselves, and hang on to the card to charge me.

I'm not exactly sure when I started doing this, but I suspect it was in high school, when I was discussing a volunteer opportunity over the phone, and the lady asked for my name. "Sandra Yuen," I replied, oblivious to the aural turmoil it created on the other end. "Could you say that again?" she asked, and I obliged.  "Sandra Yuen."  When I reported to the volunteer office later that day, I noticed that she had written on a piece of paper, "Sandra Ewing?"

Saying it letter for letter doesn't always fix the problem, either: I say, "Y, U, E, N," and I see them writing down "Why" and then stop.  And then they realize they made a mistake, and they change it to "Wuen."  I have had to make clerks stop and really look at what was written, and still they thought they had it right.  "No no," I would say, "It's Y-U, not W-U." "Yeah, that's what I wrote, I don't understand the problem." "You've written W-U-E-N."  "No I haven't--OH."

Many people who read my last name, but have no idea how to say it, eventually come up with their closest guess, with "yen," "yoo-wen," and "y'wen" being the most common mispronunciations.  Plus two for effort and creativity, but sorry, no dice.  "Yoo-wen" might be the closest, except that's two syllables, and the name is meant to have only one.  Think of the name "Ewen."  A "Ewen Yuen" would be teased mercilessly, growing up.

My mother and I have had discussions before where we figure that "Yune" or "Yoon" would have been better romanizations, as they would provide far less confusion when reading it aloud.  Neither of those are particularly attractive spellings, however, and they don't exactly apply the nuances that exist in the pronunciation of my last name.  It might be better if I could write it out as "Sandra Yueⁿ," but it might be difficult to indicate that on the census form. Or any form.


"Yuen" isn't a common last name compared to many others in China, but it isn't rare, either.  In Mandarin, it would be "Ruan," and in Vietnamese, it's the surname "Nguyen."  Some interesting information on the character, 阮, can be found on this page. If you know how to read proper romanizations of Asian languages, the Cantonese section is relevant for my last name.

Goodbye, Olympics

After years of preparations, two weeks of city-wide madness, and 14 gold medals (!), the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver have come to a close.  It felt like an age in coming, and it went by in a blip.  It was surreal seeing shots of my hometown splashed about on NBC, and I daresay I will miss seeing TourismBC commercials between now and our next trip to Canada.  But this is not what I want to say.

Blogs are about opinions, so here is mine: the closing ceremony was hilarious, and I loved it.

Being not only a Canadian, but also a Vancouverite, I may be predisposed to approve of whatever shenanigans they decided to come up with for the "less formal" ceremony--especially in the heady wake of what was a fantastic, well-fought hockey game (what else would we expect from a game of NHL all-stars divided only by the 49th Parallel?), which was won by Team Canada. (Wooo!)

But, from the mime "fixing" the fourth column, to the amusing monologues mid-ceremony, to the crazy "WTF?" dance of inflatable Mounties, giant beavers, floating moose, two-man "canoes", plaid-clad lumberjacks, and "fluttering" maple leaves, the underlying theme of it all seemed to be about poking fun at Canadian stereotypes, and playfulness.  Rather fitting, after the "come play with us" theme during the closing ceremonies of the Torino games in 2006.

Really, that last part of the ceremony was worth the wait, despite delayed coverage on NBC, and despite having to listen to the grating presentations from various NBC commentators.  I really got a good laugh--and I'm sure many other Canadians did, too.  We are proud of our amusing stereotypes! And anybody who might be appalled or unimpressed by the seemingly comical display (especially after Beijing, which, we were told numerous times, was amazing, so amazing, oh my so amazing!--I am looking at you, Costas) perhaps needs to be told, "Don't take yourself too seriously, eh?"

Thumpa Thumpa

My little heart goes pitter patter as I read this article:

The 32 Most Commonly Misused Words and Phrases

I will admit I have used "alright" in the past, but not likely for any sort of formal document... although that is a poor excuse.  Occasionally I have to stop and think about "stationary" versus "stationery", but at least I stop to think about it.  "Could of" is one of the things that drives me mad, as does "whose" and "who's", but look, look, look!

19. Literally- If you say “His head literally exploded because he was so mad!” then we should see brains splattered on the ceiling.

Thumpa thumpa. <3 <3 <3 I could, like, literally die because this list is so good.

Police Blotter

Occasionally I like reading the police blotter notes that the San Jose Mercury News posts online.  I found them by accident in one of my Google Reader feeds, but occasionally they can be somewhat entertaining.  Normally most of them seem fairly tame.  Out of this past weekend's, however, I found this:

3500 block of De La Cruz Boulevard, Sept. 13 A man broke into a church on two occasions. The first time, he took cash and the second time, a Bible. Both thefts were caught on video. The pastor confronted the man and he was arrested.

Who steals a bible?

Another one I remember reading was much earlier in the year--somebody grabbed a couple bags of groceries out of some lady's car while she was unloading it.  That's got to say something about the economy.