What are your personal memories of September 11th?
I was staying with my friends Gayle & Lev in Portland, Oregon. Another friend was in town, and she came over to spend the night. Lev woke us up, calmly telling us that terrorists had crashed planes into the World Trade Center. I was still trying to work out if this was some weird joke when I turned to my friend to see her in tears.
There was much mailing, and seeing the net and various mailing lists go nuts, and I posted a really long message to one of them. I watched the TV with the others in the house. I tried to work out what would happen next.
The following day I had been due to fly to San Francisco, and back to London a day or two after. Instead, Quinn (who was also around, and also had to get back to SF) and I hired a car and had a post-apocalyptic roadtrip southwards. I'm certain that I saw a passenger jet fly past us at one point.
If you were about to spend the day browsing through YouTube for Muppets vids, good news! I've saved you the bother and done all the tedious grunt work to find the five best. Don't ask why. Yay!
Now, you may disagree over my choices, but only if you provide linked counter-arguments. Then, EVERYBODY wins! Yay!
How many places have you lived in your life?
Hendon, Hendon, Jerusalem, Hendon, San Francisco, Hendon, Finchley, Palo Alto, Chalk Farm. With a bit of luck, in a month's time: San Francisco again.
What's your middle name? Is there a story or history behind it?
This is a bit of a sore point at the moment, actually.
My birth certificate calls me Jeremy Grahame.
My Hebrew name is Yoram Boruch ben Avraham Zvi.
My mum says my English middle name is Benedict.
My dad disagrees.
My credit card calls me Yoram J B Grahame.
My driver's license calls me Yoram Jeremy Grahame.
My doctor's office calls me Jeremy Grahame.
My passport calls me Jeremy Grahame.
My son's birth certificate calls me Yoram Jeremy Grahame.
When I went to the Passport Office recently to get my son his first passport, this caused problems.
My wife is begging me to change my name by deed poll to Yoram Jeremy Grahame.
But my recently-approved US Visa calls me Jeremy Grahame. So it would cause problems with that.
I believe that under British law, a person's name is not a single canonical legally-defined thing. I read a mailing-list post on this topic in relation to the problems it would cause for the beleaguered ID Card proposals, and I've tried to find it ever since but haven't managed. (I'll post it here if/when I do.)
This post has turned out much duller than I thought it would.
