The title above says it all.

I have the fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on how you look at it) honour of having an unusual name.

See “The Day Daer Born and Died at the Debates” for the unfortunate honour of having an unusual name.

And apparently, it’s a unisex name. I’ve  just found out about that unisex thing.

How?

Through the wonderful social networking site we called Facebook.

If you’re wondering what my name is, it’s already screaming at you on my blog’s site name. Yes, that’s my real name, its not some nom de plume I randomly came up with (ooo… ending a sentence with a preposition. So flame me, grammarians.)

Here’s the story of how I found out my name was a unisex name.

One day, deciding to waste my time and life instead of doing something productive, I logged onto my Facebook account. In the Request box at the top right corner of my screen, it showed me that I have 22 requests from my friends to do either of the following:

1) Join some group.

2) Join them in Mafia Wars and help them kick some ass, or get my ass kicked.

3) Join them in poker games. (Dude, let’s just meet up and play face-to-face).

4) Join Mouse Hunt.

5) Accept a gift from them. (Thanks, but I prefer to accept something real from you, in person).

6) Do an IQ test. (Just face it, I’m MUCH SMARTER than you).

7) Do/Join/Accept something so random and obscure that I don’t even know it exist on Facebook.

So I ignored all these requests, and when I mean by ignore, I don’t bother clicking on the “Ignore” button, I just leave it as it is. I don’t know why I do that, maybe it’s because I like to look at all those requests from time to time. Weird habit.

So beside those 22 requests, I saw that I had a friend request. Finally, I have an another friend! I must be getting popular in some way, even though my social circle expands at the rate of a sloth crawling for its dear life.

But a friend is better than nothing, right?

So I clicked on the “Friend Request” link, and…

Found myself staring at a picture of a girl who I’ve never, ever, in my entire life, seen/met/spoken before.

Not only I did not know her, she share the same name as me.

Her name was Zareth. So that’s how I found out my name is unisex.

 

 

 

 

 

This is her. She’s cute and she’s from Venezuela. So that mean’s she speaks Spanish. I just malign her profile picture to protect her identity. 

So, she’s cute, she’s from an South American country and she speaks Spanish.  So, accept her request! I would have accepted it on a whim if I knew her, but I didn’t. 

I’m quite anal about accepting friend requests on Facebook. When I first started out on Facebook (3 years ago, good old days), majority of my friends were high school classmates. Yet, at the same time, I would get requests from people I have no idea who they were and why they would want to be my friend.

Because I’m good-looking?

No that can’t be it.

Or cause I’m fun? I look fun?

No that can’t be right either. It sounds wrong too.

So I’ll take a look at their friend list and their wall to get some clue whether I’ve met them somewhere. I remember looking at another  girl’s profile because she sent me a friend request and I read about 26 wall comments on her profile, all of them repeating the same thing:

“Hi, thanks for the add, do I know you?”

“Hi, do I know you from somewhere? Thanks for the add btw.”

“You’re cute. Do I know you? 😀 😛 :DDDDD”

“Hey there, thanks for the add! Do I know you?”

Well, you get the gist.

This girl was basically going around collecting friends. Why would she want to do that? I know Facebook is a social networking site but it’s awkward going around and asking people to be your friend just because you want to have a lot of friends. I know some of you may say “But Zareth, that’s how friendships began! People start off as strangers and end up as friends! Someone has to make the first move!”

Well, hear me out first. So I accept the girl’s request (not the Zareth girl, in case you’re confused) and wrote on her wall:

“Hey, do I know you?”

And she replied:

“Haha, no, but I just wanna be friends.”

Me:

“Uh, ok.”

This was our first and last wall conversation, which took place more than two years ago. Yes, two years. Since then we have not spoken to each other and I still do not know who the heck she is. Yet everyday, when I log onto Facebook, I see her activities, her friends and her photos on my homepage. I bet she sees mine too. And she doesn’t bother keeping in touch. What a friend.

So this girl was the last random friend request I accepted on Facebook. Then came alone this Zareth girl. Unfortunately for her, I learned my lesson and by then, have set down a few ground rules about friend requests. In order starting from most important to least important:

1) I know you personally or I have met you in person at least once.

2) I know you through a mutual friend and have at least spoken to you in person once.

3) I don’t know you personally but we share at least 10 mutual friends, so I must have met you before.

4) You mistook me for my fraternal twin brother. Well, it happens.

5) You’re one hot chick. Can I have you numba?

Number 5 doesn’t happen often. In fact, it happened only once, and that’s because the girl saw that I was under the University of Sydney network and she was under the same network, so she send me a friend request. Unfortunately, we only spoke once and that was it. 

Anyway, Zareth girl didn’t meet the top 4 requirements. So I ignore her request and just left her friend request hanging around in my Request box. A few months pass and I forgotten about her request completely.

Then today, when I logged onto Facebook, I saw that I had another new friend request. I was curious to know who was it because I haven’t met anyone new in person.

So I clicked on the link and…

I saw a guy who had my name too.

What the….

 

 

 

 

Picture maligned to protect his identity.

I definitely do not know this guy because under his information, he went to a sports high school in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, which is on the Borneo Island. The last time I’ve been onto the Borneo Island was when I was five and that was when I was staying in Brunei. 

I guess these two Zareths wanted to add me on their friend list because they’ve never seen a Chinese guy with such an unusual name and they want to share their unusual names with me. Or they thought that their names were unusual and was surprised to see another guy with the same name. Either way, although I want to celebrate my name with theirs, I’m not going to accept their friend requests.

They can create a “Zareth” group on Facebook and sent me an invitation though. But then, I might just ignore the request too.

Unless there’s a hot chick that share my name.

Now, that’s another matter.