It’s raining in Cincinnati, and I’m kind of cranky from typing into a spreadsheet all day (don’t ask). So this is a quick entry.

For the past 2 weeks, a very interesting phenomenon has occurred. And by “interesting”, I actually mean “terrible annoying.” When strangers come up to me these days they call me “Sanjaya.” You know, that kid (who seemingly can’t sing) from American Idol. If you’ve seen the show you’d know that I look absolutely nothing like him, and you know, there’s the fact that I’m not…16 years old. But anyway, if they don’t call me “Sanjaya”, the second most common is a “Surya”-”Sanjaya” mix. Sanurya. Surjaya. Whatever. And yes, I’m being totally serious.

So the progression in my life has been like this:

11/81-12/06: I meet someone and it takes them 15 minutes to figure out how to say my name 15 different ways, before giving up.

1/07-3/07: People come up to me and say, “are you Surya?” or “are you Surya from the Apprentice?” Pretty surreal considering the previous turmoil in helping new people learn my name.

4/07: People come up to me and call me either “Sanjaya” or some horrid combination of both of our names.

Most distressing. The brilliant Don Imus recently ran into a little bit of trouble by calling some lovely ladies from my alma mater, Rutgers, a few poorly chosen names. I find it hard to believe that other people, likely far more intelligent that Don Imus, can’t seem to tell apart two very different looking Indian-Americans who were on TV.

Well, I guess they can tell us apart, they just can’t remember our names.

Or rather, they can remember his name, but not my name.

If there’s any justice in the world, somewhere, wherever that Sanjaya kid lives (or stays…I have no idea how Idol films as I’ve never seen it), people are coming up to him and asking him about his fascination with whiteboards and the word “absurd.”