Category: Communication

Connectivity Anxiety

Communication

Once more via Insty, I see this little exposition:

Confession: I’m really bad at replying to messages. Sometimes it takes me days, even weeks, to get back to people. I constantly find myself typing out some variation of the words sorry for not getting back to you sooner, oops sorry I completely missed this, hey sorry I thought I replied! It’s an endless cycle: feel pressured to reply, feel guilty for not doing it, procrastinate, feel worse the longer I wait, finally apologise, they respond—and then I do it all over again. 

I’ve tried to be better. I’ve made countless New Year’s Resolutions to respond quicker, set myself strict rules to always reply the same day, even added texting people back to my to-do list. Nothing works. But lately I’ve been wondering if that’s because there’s a problem with me, or if it’s this expectation to always be available, to be instantly accessible, that’s the problem. 

Because it turns out I’m not alone in this.

You bet you aren’t.  I’m in the same camp, albeit for slightly different reasons.  I get a ton of email messages each day, mostly junk / spam / phishing but also a lot from Readers.  The latter are all welcome, always;  but as for the former, may they and their entire families suffer the fate of Julius Caesar and be killed by their associates.

I’m worse on the phone — unless it’s from immediate family, either actual calls, or else text / WhatsApp.  Here again, I love this Caller ID thing, because if it’s not a number I recognize, or doesn’t appear on my phone book,  it’s utterly ignored.  (Some people miss the old days when the phone — landline, Princess — rang and you answered it.  I don’t.  Even back then, if I didn’t feel like answering the call, I wouldn’t.  I figured that if the news was that urgent, they’d call me again immediately;  and if not, well, c’est la vie.)

I think I’ve mentioned before that back when I was flying out of Chicago at least once a week, I loved that “alone” time, whether at the airport or on the plane itself.  It gave me a chance to think, to plan, to dream… you know, what men did before some fucking intrusive electronic thing screamed in your ear 24/7, demanding IMMEDIATE ATTENTION!

Somehow, businesses survived without being in constant contact with bosses and subordinates.  When I was a manager with staff, I would tell them that if I was unreachable but a decision had to be made, to make the best decision they could, and I’d back them.  Or they could talk to my boss and ask him, if the decision was that important.  (90% of the time, it wasn’t, as I would discover later that day when I’d call in from my hotel room or from the client’s office.)  Not only did I tell them to make a decision, I’d encourage it, to help with their personal growth in the company.  I think that in over 20 years, they made maybe one questionable decision, and the fact that I cannot remember any details now just goes to show that it wasn’t that important.  No matter how much companies think that such things are life-and-death matters, they pretty much aren’t;  and as one of my bosses once remarked, “There’s no business decision that can’t be made tomorrow,” and in fact most times it’s even better to sleep on it before deciding.

So I often disconnect from the world.  Unless I’m expecting a critical call from New Wife or my kids, I don’t freak out if I’m at the grocery store and discover I’ve forgotten my phone at home (which I often do).  If I’m in bed and the phone rings, I won’t get up to answer it — once again, if it’s that important, my family knows to call again immediately to get a response from me.  (Corollary:  I never take the phone to bed with me;  it stays in the living room next to my laptop.  The only time I fetch it is on Saturday mornings — when I spend most of the day in bed with New Wife — just in case one of the kids or my sister wants to chat.  And that’s after I wake up and made the morning coffee.)

Yeah, I’m mostly disconnected from the world when I don’t feel like “interacting”.  When I’m at my desk and on the laptop, however, an email message from an acquaintance will often be answered immediately, unless I’m working through the backlog from the night before.

I value my privacy, and I’m at the stage of my life when I’m at the beck and call of nobody except of those I choose to be:  a number that is frighteningly small.

I have learned that the world, such as it is, is best kept at arm’s length.

What’s In A Name?

Communication, The Worst

It’s small wonder that I tend towards the irascible, having the name that I do.  Because, quite frankly, it’s a fucking pain in the ass.

Let’s start with the first (Christian) name.  Kim.  Easy to spell, easy to say, mostly it’s pronounced as written.  (There’s the occasional “Kym”, but that’s — I think — an affectation, like Tyffynny instead of Tiffany.)  My parents named me thus because they wanted a single, easy-to-pronounce, easy-to-spell appellation and in that, they were largely successful.  However:

“But that’s a girl’s name!”

This is the first of the many crosses I have had to bear, and my personal history is replete with stories of me taking a swing at people — okay, boys — who taunted me thus.

In fact, “Kim” is one of those gender-free names, in that it’s not a name, but a title.  In most versions of the early Anglo-Saxon language, “kim” means “chief” or “chieftain”, and as those ancient Anglo-Saxons didn’t care whether their ruler was male or female, the title bears no gender.  (Boudicca, she of the anti-Roman rebellion, was actually “Kim Boudicca” because the tribes of those days had no monarchy:  chiefs were elected leaders, not always hereditary ones.  (Mostly, but let’s try to avoid wandering down that branch line.)

And that’s just my first name.  (Also, in traditional English parlance, it’s my Christian name, but gawd forbid Americans are so intolerant as to use that when there are Muslims etc. in the populace who might take offense.  In addition, there’s no established church, so despite the “Under God” and “So help me God”, anything Christian is doubleplusungood, government-wise.)

Also, because my parents saw no need to give me one, I have no middle name, which causes endless issues with U.S. officialdom.  When I fill in the foul ATF 4473 form, for example, I have to put the idiotic “NMN” (no middle name) acronym, because to leave it blank or put in a “–” might screw things up totally.

And on we go.

My surname (“last” name in Murkin) is Du Toit.  So my full name is “Kim du Toit”, because if the name is preceded by a name or “Mr.”, the “d” is not capitalized.  But that’s only the beginning, because now we get to the Space Issue.

You see, there’s a space between the “du” and “Toit”.  (However, in modern-day France, it’s mostly spelled “Dutoit”;  go figure.)  But there has to be a space, as you will see.

An aside:  “toit” in French means “roof”, so my name literally means “of the roof” — perhaps because back in the mists of time, there was a Pierre who was a roofer, and so the family name might have become “Pierre of the Roof” (e.g. the Carter, Smith, Mason or Wainwright surnames).  However, as far as I can make out, the family originated in the south of France near the Pyrenees mountains, so “toit” could also mean “high place”, and the “de/du” has an alternative meaning of “from”.
The family motto, by the way, is “Dios y El Rey”, a Spanish term meaning “God and the King”, making the Pyrenees origin still more plausible.

Back to the pesky last name.  All my South African documents (birth certificate, passport, I.D. etc. are spelled “du [space] Toit” or if capitalized “DU [space] TOIT” (see the family crest).  So when I came Over Here in the Great Wetback Episode of ’86, that’s how I continued to spell my name.

Which is where the problems began.

You see, a great number of databases don’t like a space appearing in a name field — and by “don’t like” I mean they fall over or reject the spelling.  Worse still, it depends on which entity’s database we’re talking about.  The DMVs of Illinois, New Jersey and Texas will not accept the space — so my name always becomes DUTOIT on my driver’s license, except in Illinois where it’s DU_TOIT (!) — but the State Department has no problem with the space, probably because they have to deal with all sorts of strange names, so in my naturalization certificate and passport it’s spelled correctly:  DU [space] TOIT.  Ditto the IRS and SocSec, thank gawd.

Another aside:  some time ago I had occasion to visit the friendly folks at the local Social Security office (no kidding, they are totally unlike other government apparatchiks) and just for the hell of it, I asked to see my personal details.  Imagine mu surprise when the SocSec screen showed my birthplace as “Johannesburg, Saudi Arabia“.  I shared a merry laugh with the person on the other side of the counter, and luckily (for no reason I can explain) happened to have my passport with me, which showed my birthplace as Johannesburg, South Africa.  The guy laughed, and said, “So which one is it?” whereupon I offered him $10,000 if he could find in any atlas a town named Johannesburg in Saudi Arabia.  Then I asked to see the data input screen, and lo! “South Africa” appeared just below “Saudi Arabia” in the “check appropriate box” section.  He changed it on the spot.

Now let’s talk about other entities, e.g. banks.  You guessed it:  on a couple of bank cards, the space is elided, and on others, the space appears without any issue.  The problem comes, however, when I’m buying something online and have to enter my name As It Appears On The Card — because woe betide me should I add the space where there is none, or leave out the space when I shouldn’t.  So every online purchase necessitates me asking (usually out loud, with only a few Bad Words) “Now which [insert Bad Word here]  card am I using now?”

Finally, there’s the matter of its pronunciation.  Oh FFS. In South Africa, it’s pronounced “doo toy” because over time it’s become an Afrikaans name, and the Dutchies never found a French name they couldn’t fuck up.  Seriously:  “François” (“frahns swah”) becomes “”Franche Wah” and “Labuschagne” (pronounced like champagne) becomes the awful “Laboo-Skachni” — the -ch pronounced like the Scottish “loch”.

When I came over to the U.S. I decided to revert back to the (correct) French pronunciation because nobody could spell it anyway, and I happened to prefer the French manner because it sounds kinda classy and it’s all about branding, folks.  Also, the chicks thought it was super-sexy, and that’s all that counts, really.

On the day I was sworn in as a proud U.S. citizen, the clerk at the federal court asked me, before printing out my certificate, whether I wanted to change my last name.  Clearly, this would be popular with someone named, oh, “Krmczyl” or “Psmith” — or “du Toit”/”Dutoit”, for that matter.  Had I known this was possible ahead of time, I might have considered it quite seriously:  Dutton?  Dawson?  but that would have created problems should I ever have to get access to any South African documents (as I did, much later).  For continuity’s sake, therefore I said, “No, let me keep it just the way it is.”

So here we are.

And people wonder why I swear so much and am perpetually irritable.

Update:  a couple of folks have asked for a phonetic pronunciation of “Du Toit”.

Doo Twah (with a short “ah”)

Guaranteed Reaction

Communication

As I’ve mentioned several times before on this here back porch of mine, there are few topics that can compare with multi-language societies.  This one guarantees a rant of epic proportions, every single time.

You see, nothing divides a society more quickly than being unable to communicate with each other.   It’s cute when you’re a tourist;  it’s hell when you’re at home and are forced to deal with someone who can’t (or won’t) speak your language.

Trust me:  I know whereof I speak, having grown up in a nominally-bilingual country where speakers of either language hated or despised the others, all set in a multilingual society of no fewer than six other languages (English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Sotho, Ndebele, Xhosa, Venda, Tsonga, Tswana, Swazi).  And then let’s add Portuguese, Greek and Italian, with a few others such as Hindi and related Indian languages.

And everyone hated everyone else, most often because they simply couldn’t communicate with each other.  The Black tribes were remarkably multilingual, in that each tribe had at least a passing / conversational knowledge of about four other African languages, and of necessity most spoke English.  (Understandably enough, they refused to speak Afrikaans because they — rightly — regarded the Dutch derivative as the language of the Oppressor.) As for the Whites… well, they were mostly hopeless.  (My father, born an Afrikaner, was way out of the norm because he spoke English, German, Zulu and Sotho fluently.  Most Afrikaners spoke English begrudgingly and badly, and hardly any other than farmers spoke an African language.  This was also true of most English-speaking South Africans, who likewise spoke Afrikaans begrudgingly and badly, and no Black languages.)

I won’t even go near the topic of Yiddish and the Jews.

So you can imagine my response when I came across this priceless little piece of fuckery:

The Denver school district is among the first in the country to adopt a “language justice” policy as a “long term goal.”

The district would encourage non-English speaking students to be able to use their native language to learn as opposed to being educated in English, which advocates say is oppressive and rooted in racism.

Denver schools had about 90,250 students in 2022 with 35,000 multilingual learners with home languages other than English. The district has 200 languages spoken across the district, with Spanish as the home language for the majority of those.

The district included a draft of an equity document that includes a policy statement on “language justice.” It was included in the Nov. 16 school board agenda. The document includes this definition for “language justice”: “The notion of respecting every individual’s fundamental language rights – to be able to communicate, understand, and be understood in the language in which they prefer and feel most articulate and powerful.”

This is not going to end well.  As with all idiotic nonsense of this type, it starts off with the noblest of intentions (albeit wrong-headed), but the end result is going to be a population of alienated people refusing to speak to each other in anything but their home language.  And hating each other in consequence.

You heard it here first.