Who is Farhan Lalji?

I don’t mind when people mispronounce my name. In fact I expect it. A certain sportscaster in Canada with the exact same first and last name has been mispronouncing it for years, so really it’s a given that at some point or another people will mispronounce my name. I accept it like I accept the fact that most people will think I’m American before I drop the subtle hints that actually I’m Canadian somewhere in our conversation. This doesn’t bother me at all.

That being said, misspelling my name, especially in an email, annoys me beyond belief. It’s plastered on my linkedin profile, on my twitter page, on facebook and worst of all in the actual email address that people are using to write to me. How do you misspell a name that’s included in an email address? I guess the fact that rarely are people able to say my name correctly makes the fact that people misspell my name so much harder to swallow, when it’s RIGHT THERE for most people. The number of people who continue to do this begs belief. It makes me say “Really?” every time I see an email, that starts off with Fahan, Faran, Fashan, or, as I read today, Farfan. Really, so my aunt, who named me, thought Farfan was a good name (apologies to any Farfan’s out there)?

I vented on twitter and found that I wasn’t alone in this, and while Shana wanted to write a blog post on netiquette I thought I would just tackle the subject of getting the basics right. Note: Steve’s tweet makes me think maybe I’m making a bit much out of it, or at the least I should change my name.

My wife kills me on my grammar and spelling. Being a primary school teacher she finds it super annoying when I use “there” instead of “they’re” or “their”, in my head I know the difference, but I write blog posts like I try to launch product, early and basically. Sometimes I get things wrong. I’m okay with that. While I know a lot of readers probably wince when they see some of the failings I’ve had in the past, I hope I’m getting better. That’s the point of writing for me, to get better.

However, when it comes to someone’s name, this I feel an obligation to spell correctly. For no other reason then I know how it feels to get it wrong. When I do get it wrong I apologize profusely and feel bad for ages. I would hope that people who get my name wrong feel the same way, but when it happens repeatedly sometimes I have a feeling they don’t. Eventually, I hope they’ll get over it, like I usually do. I won’t let it stop a deal or anything of any importance and I hope the same can be said when I’m the one making an error.

So there, it’s out in the open at least and now whenever I see someone has spelt my name incorrectly at least I’ll be able to put this post in the signature and then move on.

The Bee reminded me the other day of the idea that if you write things down they’re more likely to come true. That and the fact that I’ve done some form of resolutions post every year for the last 3 years means I probably should write something about my plan for the year. Yes, once again there is a theme to the year but it’s a bit personal so instead I’ll just give you some of the resolutions that are making up my theme:

1 – Write more; the idea is that every week day after lunch I’ll spend some time writing blog posts, hopefully that means that I’ll publish more than the 3 posts per month (or less) average that I was on towards the end of last year. Three years ago I set out to have 8 posts per month, hopefully this year I can exceed that target.

2 – Read more, between moving countries, travelling, Mira and starting a new company the books read list fell to under 30 for the first time in a while and with a sprint over the last couple of months which included reading the entire millennium trilogy in a week and a couple of other easy reads that number could have been a lot lower. The iPad has been great for reading books on the go and hopefully we’ll start the year strong. I plan on writing a books related post every month, and have put that in my calendar, so hopefully that should help as well.

3 – Make myself better – Yoga, Spinning, meditation (though we did a bit of this last year) are all called for. A serious back malfunction in November/December has given me a little bit of perspective. I need to do more than go to the gym. I need to try other ways of keeping fit and I need to eat better (though writing this after a KFC lunch shows that this one might be difficult). I’ve started taking Multi-vitamins and have some Yoga classes set up to get me started, hopefully the year will end much better than it’s began for me from a physical perspective.

4 – Take care of my relationships – I’m going to try and be a better husband, friend, grandson, nephew, son, cousin, dad (still feels weird saying I’m a dad). This year I think I did okay in some roles but in others I truly sucked. Let’s hope I show more love to everyone who’s shown me so much love over the years.

5 – Accelerate – I started a couple of projects last year, and slowly took my foot of the brake. It’s time to really push on some projects –particulary Ad Avengers – more on this later.

It’s interesting to see that a couple of my resolutions have been things I’ve been trying to do for years, hopefully this year is the year that things go from on a list to being done.