India - the city

super tall

I go on auto pilot sometimes and end up responding in weird ways. On the telecon to introduce us when we dialed in, I said - Hi, it's Jennifer and Heather. Only it was Jennifer and Rana.

Once someone asked me my height, and I said six ten with a completely serious expression. Demographics wires got crossed. It cracks me up still.

India - the country

name change

An Indian colleague just came from getting married. He mentioned his wife needs to go through the process of changing her name on official documents, ie passport, before she gets her visa, etc. What's interesting here is that she is not only changing her surname, but also her given name. He mentioned that there was even a name changing ceremony.

So, of course, I googled it. And found confirmation on wikipedia (what better confirmation than someone I know telling me they had experienced it, but still - if it can't be googled it doesn't exist):

In some more traditional families, a new bride might change her full name to one her in-laws prefer.

I'm not talking about an -ova being changed to an -iva either - these were 2 completely unrelated names (legal note - character's names have not been disclosed to protect the parties involved).