The Umbrella Story

Ahh..I typed a blog post and clicked discard! I'll make this a short but sweet one.

Anyway, what memory do you have about umbrellas?

The short story for me is, someone took my favorite umbrella and it was never returned. It happened last year but today I still think about that umbrella.

Full story some other time, till then if you have any story, do share it!

Bow ties are cool

Well, only one of them is a bonafide bow tie but meet my humble collection of bows/ribbons, some that I don't even remember buying! They've been hiding inside the wardrobe for wayyy too long. Maybe I should clip em all on the Xmas tree! 

The first one was bought in January 1st 2008 at one of the night market in Taiwan. But I didn't pick up the bow buying habit until 2010. I would avoid wearing it to uni whenever I have Authorship or Media, Culture, Power classes because I don't want to be called to read or answer questions hahah.

Honestly, some of them were bought very impulsively. It was cheap, cute and and... they're begging me to bring them home. I don't regret it but man, I could have saved some money if I was firm .

Next purchase...I don't think it will be anytime soon. My priorities have um sort of changed  but I'll be heading to a really big scale bazaar next weekend and something unexpected (or maybe as expected) will happen.

Till then, do you collect anything? 

Call me Laila

As you all know, my name is Ai Rene (pronounced as Irene) but I also go with the name Rene and Rene (pronounced as Reen). People often ask me what should they call me? Ai Rene? Reen? My answer is always "up to you, whichever you are comfortable with"

Names can be quite political with a whole lot of discourses behind it.Instead of me telling people how to call me, I let others define me. They can address me as what they feel is most appropriate. Some of my former uni mates hail me as 'Chongar' and sometimes my sister would call me 'car'. There are also people who calls me Hi Rene! instead of Ai Rene.

Anyway, I better stop getting too ideological about names because I can have writing diarrhea if I start discussing about Althusser's theory of interpellation.

So one day, I was reminding my boss to call a person named Meilaila. Everyone else in the office gave me a funny look. And the next thing I heard was "how many names do you want Rene?"

Apparently they misheard it as "have you called me Laila?"

That's how I earn the name Laila.

But don't address me as Laila if you see me cause I might not know that you're talking to me. And only 3 people can call me Laila.

So, do you have any funny or ridiculous names?

My name

Hello! My name is Chong Ai Rene. But I usually go with the name Rene Chong because there are way too many Irene’s around me and I can’t stand people spelling my name as ‘irene’. I have nothing against ‘Irene’. It’s just that Irene is not me.

張愛玲（or 张爱玲 in simplified Chinese) is my Chinese name (obviously). Pronounced as ‘zhang ai ling’, I share the same name as one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction author. For years, people have always asked me, ‘are your parents big fan of Eileen zhang?’

Not at all. In fact, they have never read any of Zhang’s work! The reason I was given this Chinese name is because…

They foresee I have a future in writing!