More Joe Chens
One of my earliest entries ever posted on this blog was about my name, and how it's way too common. I talked about the problems I had in getting a email account with my name (without having to add a whole bunch of numbers after it), or when I was at school in Taiwan and another guy named Joe Chen had the locker above mine.
Well, it seems this issue has even followed me to my current job. It doesn't happen too often, but every once in a while, I get an email at work that was intended for one of the TWO other Joe Chen's at this company. I guess it should only be expected that in a corporation that includes over 100,000 employees, my name wouldn't be unique. Fortunately, both of the other Joes are at a different location than mine, somewhere out in California.
So anyways, I got one of Cali Joe Chen's emails when I got into work this morning, and forwarded it to him. He replied later to say thanks, and I noticed that the timestamp between my email and his reply was almost exactly 2 hours apart.
It got me wondering about this other Joe Chen. We obviously already share the same name and employer, what about the rest of his life? Is his daily routine exactly like mine, except 2 time zones away? Like I get to work at 8 am every day, then check my email, look at Yahoo Chicagoland weather for kicks, and read the Chicago Sun Times for news on the White Sox, etc.
2 hours later, when it's 10 am here and 8 am on the West Coast, does Cali Joe Chen get to work and do the same thing that I did 2 hours earlier? Check his email, look up Yahoo weather for Orange County, read the LA Times coverage of the Dodgers or whatever?
What about around the world? There must be thousands of Joe Chens between China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc. Is there a Joe Chen who wakes up in Taipei 13 hours after I do, goes to work, and reads the Taipei Times about the Brother Elephants (the most popular team in Taiwan's pro baseball league)? Can it be said that "the sun never sets on Joe Chen"?
See, these are the questions that confound a man when his name is so common. If you have a unique name, consider yourself lucky. I already promised to myself that when I have kids, I'm naming them something like Zoltan-59C or Seven. Seven Chen, haha I kinda like that. Actually maybe it should be more like Twenty-four Chen, I guess, since Joe Crede is like the Mickey Mantle of my day.
Although, there is one good thing about having a generic name like mine. I don't have to worry about masking or redacting (that's my new word now, thanks to the HGH investigations) my own name in this blog. You try to search for "Joe Chen" on the internet, and you'll have to go through page after page of fobby grad students before you reach my page (if at all). My name has made me practically "unGoogleable".
