At the university I attend, it is a tradition for students to fill out an evaluation form critiquing their professor's performance towards the end of the term.  On average, most people do not take these forms too seriously.  Or at least I do not.  If filling out these forms means I can get out of class sooner, how else should I be expected to fill them out?  With meticulous detail or a generalizing "good" comment?  Someone else can do that.  Not my thing.

However, due to doing research for a very open and jolly professor in the Biology department here, I find out that some people actually do take the time to express their deep-seeded anger and wraith onto paper either through words or bodily substances.  It's funny, it's entertaining, and it's amazing of what kind of responses come back.  But then again, all of these responses are expected.  If you think you could be novel and original by writing "Fuck you" on an evaluation form, you will be mistaken.  Not only has "someone" already done this, many "someone" have already beaten you to it.  Doing it again only makes you seem immature and uncreative.  I am guessing that was not how you wanted to be interpretted. 

Anyways, apparently it was time for this professor to be evaluated by his general biology class.  On the whole, this course is designed for all the pre-health (pre-med/pre-dent/etc) freshman majors as it is a prerequisite for the upper division biology courses that they will need for a degree and which ever health career they choose.  I personally have not taken this course in a long time so most of my memories of sitting through those lectures have either been forgotten or traumatically repressed.  However, what I do remember, and everybody else who sufferred through the chapters, is that for one particular midterm, the biggest components that we all had to memorize were life cycles. 

At first, studying life cycles does not sound too bad.  How hard can learning that be?  Well, if all the organisms of the world grew up the same way, it would not be difficult.  However, considering how a typical human being develops varies greatly as to how a typical plant develops varies greatly as to how fungus develop varies greatly as to how bacteria develop..., there was kind of a lot of information to memorize and remember how each differs from the next.  And for a lot of these cycles (the ones that requires sex to be carried out), there is a male and female organism from the species depicted in the diagrams. 

And apparenlty, these drawings offended someone.  So much so that this particular person did not even write out a typical angry evaluation f-word.  Instead, this person first writes a short "HOW DARE YOU DEPICT A LIFE CYCLE AS ONLY BETWEEN A MALE AND A FEMALE??!?!" line and follows it up with the respective human life cycle they learned in class.  However, this diagram differed from the textbook's version in that the Male/Female part of the cycle was replaced by Male/Male figures. 

Despite being in a fairly conservative town, many of us in the lab, including the professor who the evaluation was intended for, are fairly socially liberal.  Some of us are also very qualified for losing a sexual harrassment lawsuit if one was ever brought upon us.  We are all for equal rights for the individuals of the LGBT community.  However, this note threw us all off guard. 

Then it dawned on us.  Whoever wrote this note, despite falsely accusing Dr. Professor of a crime he did not commit, had good intentions.  However, good inentions or not, this person is also, for lack of a decent and human term, a complete idiot.  Like (in my own words) please-change-your-major idiot.  Now keep in mind that I do not view this student to be stupid for the stance he picks.  If anything, we are both on the same political side of the fence.  However, what this person forgot to do was realize where the line must be drawn.  And in this case, it is one thing to fight for gay rights in the classroom.  However, it is a completely different thing to say that two members of the same gender can physically break the laws of biology and generate a viable offspring without a third party. 

As the department's secretary said, "It's a life style.  Not a life cycle." 

Back in high school, most likely junior or senior year, there was this one occurrence that I never fully understood or appreciated until now. 

As was usual for those years, a bunch of us were spending our lunch break within the confines of Mr. L's.  It could have been a Speech and Debate Meeting.  Or it could have been a rush to finish homework for the next class period.  either way, a writing utensil was required, and one was borrowed from Mr. L's breast pocket.

To the borrower's surprise, the utensil that looked like a mechanical pencil that he also owned turned out to be a ballpoint pen.  In response to the unexpectation, Mr. L. merely replied with, "Oh, you must be thinking of something something."  However, instead of actually saying, "something something," Mr. L had actually listed the original pencil's make, model, and caliber.  To the other young adults in the room, a person who was able to recall that much detail about an insignificant writing instrument seemed unusual and eccentric.  We said that.  Out loud. 

Mr. L's only response was, "If you love it enough, you will just know everything about it." 

Like always, it is so easy to blame the French for making things more complicated than it has to be.  Usually they do not deserve the blame, but hey, it is so convenient to do so when a scapegoat is needed. 

However, in today's case, the French rightfully do get to share a bit of the blame of the mess they created.  You see, a long time ago, a lot of the East and South Eastern Asian territories had developed a writing system consisting of distinct shapes and scratches not too unlike your stereotypical "Chinese."  With Vietnam, their written language followed this similar pattern.  But soon after the colonization by the French, the Vietnamese written language took a weird turn and went from scratches to an alphabet not too different from the Roman-based alphabet.  Just look above at the side-by-side comparison between ancient (right) and modern-day Vietnamese (left).   And looking at the image below, you will see a set of the current Vietnamese alphabet (it includes capitalization of letters, thus making the list look bigger than it actually is).  Engrish-looking. 
 
So, because of this radical transformation, because of this massive jump from an Asian-based alphabet all the way to a Roman-based system, there's a very good reason why a lot of Vietnamese last names are phonetic nightmares for most people.  Especially my grade school teachers. 

Let's take the most common of common Vietnamese names: "Nguyen."  And by common, just think of it as the the "Smith" or "Jones" of the culture.  Plus if you graduated from a high school with a significant Vietnamese population, you would remember graduation ceremony consisting of sitting through a half an hour of going through all the Nguyen's in your graduating class. 

However, despite the abundance of Nguyen's around, a lot of people have a hard time pronouncing it.  Hell, I even had a hard time pronouncing it as a kid, and I'm Vietnamese!  The more common mispronunciations arise from trying to figuring out what sound an "Ng" makes.  As a result,  when "Nguyen" is said, it comes out as "Nah-goo-yen" or "N-guy-en" or even as "fuck..." 

But seriously, just remember the important lesson we've learned today: blame the French for making things overly sophisticated. In this case, even though there's an "N" in "Nguyen," it's not pronounced.  Same goes for the "G." And "U." And the "Y" too.  Hell, pretty much most of the letters in "Nguyen" are pretty useless.  Just remember to keep it simple and pronounce "Nguyen" as "Win." 

Win with a Nguyen, as they say.