Friday, February 17, 2006

Nathan - Judeo Christian Hindu

I received one of those Liberian/Nigerian Spam today. Nothing different, except this came by fax all the way from UK. So somebody actually spent money in sending out spam fax. I was about to throw it away, when this line caught my attention

I took this decision because my Husband's relatives are not Christians...I don't want to use this money in an ungodly way. This is why I am contacting you

I generally sign off as Nathan in my mails to my European customers in order to make it easy for them. So the spammer thought that I was a Christian and took that angle. That reminded me of one of my most stupid conversational error ever. When I was in UK a few months back, I went to meet one of my clients with whom I had been in touch by mail for over 3 years.

This was the first time we were meeting face to face. After introducing and small talk about weather, he asked me, "So, is Nathan your Christian name?". I don't know what got into me, I was sort of confused and I replied without thinking "No, it is my Hindu Name".

6 comments:

Nilu said...

Satire by habit?

Chenthil said...

I wish it had been a planned repartee. But no, it just slipped out. I still can see the confusion in his face.

Chakra said...

when i was asked that question, i had thot "ivanunga oru oru religion kum oru peru vechupaanga pola irukku"

Harish said...

hehe! :)

Chenthil said...

Is there some problem with blogger comments? I am not deleting any comments, but some comments seem to vanish by themselves.

I saw an anon asking whether I was offended. Why should I, when it was a cultural misunderstanding by me, I was more embarrassed. Christian name is generally meant for the first name of the person.

Anonymous said...

Well christian name is the normal terminology for ur sir name
It has occured several times to me.