If you're reading this, you know that I am fond of puns-- poor puns in general, the double entendre. You also know that I've recently moved to Sydney where I will be attending usyd (I just can't seem to bring myself to say 'Sydney Uni'. It just sounds too clunky and tooly on my tongue). It was a fairly selfish decision, it went against everything that my parents expected me to do, and indeed, lay to waste a lot of planning that had gone into me going back to school in the States; my id crisis. (Jennifer took a psychology class once-- I have been a fan of using and abusing the Freudian model since!! Today's complete perversion of the Freudian model was brought to you by GWU Summer '05, baby.) Sydney was my first truly selfish decision in years.
And my i.d. crisis, this alternative identity, this Anise May. In case you haven't been to Sydney, there are a lot of Asian people living there, Chinese people in particular. Despite the fact that Asians don't comprise the majority of the population, I would venture to guess that fifty percent of the people who I have interacted with on a daily basis have been Asian. I guess that comes from dealing with the Australian international bureaucracy-- good god, the visa lines, the international student office lines, the international student agent lines. It's enough to make you contemplate slitting your wrists, and certainly the time that the waiting affords you, or has afforded me, rather, has allowed me to be more creative in my super serious suicidal musings (if you come up with a synonym for musings that begins with an 's', I will ... think of something awesome for you. Perhaps a creative suicide plan of your very own).
At any rate, the Australian accent combined with the Chinese accent, if you will allow it, reduce my first name to Anise. Ok fine, Anus in ninety percent of cases, to be perfectly straight with you. But it's my blog and my artistic license-- so there.
As for 'May', well, the other fifty percent of the people I interact with are Caucasian Australians, and while they do tend to pronounce my name correctly (I get a lot of 'May-ay' from the bogans with thicker accents, hey-ey), spelling of it has varied widely. I've seen it on forms as 'Mae' and 'May' most commonly, though I got 'Mai' at the HSC office on Friday afternoon.
The point is, I guess, aside from a quick lol at the fact that my name has been butchered into tens and tens of weird permutations, that I don't know quite who I am here yet, who I will be, what I can keep of who I was and what I will be forced to adapt. Ji thinks I'll acquire an accent. I of course deny it point blank. But will I? Doug thinks I'll come back with some new affinity for underground punk. I think that that's unlikely (come on guys, I still headbang occasionally to Hanson... mmmbop). Will I assimilate because it's easier? Will I rigidly retain my culture because I need to feel nonhomogeneous? Anise May? Agnes Mei? I hope it's the latter, but Anise is kind of a charming name...
ps: Crushed pills ingested with a smoothie-- the suicide wave of the future. Just in case you were wondering.
