Mini Chapter with the Customer: A Pretty Name!

I was helping a customer over the phone today with her tickets, trying my best to find her the best available seats in the hall which was challenging with a close to sold-out show. Towards the end of her phone call, she asked for my name...

Customer: What is your name?
Me: Siew Ling.
Customer: What?
Me: 'See-you-ling.'
Customer: I'm having a hard time hearing you, spell it!
Me: S-I-E-W-L...
Customer: No, I want you to spell me your name!
Me: S-I-E...
Customer: You're not understanding me here, I want you to SPELL me YOUR name!
Me: That is my name ma'am, but I never got to finish spelling it.
Customer: Oh. I meant your first name!
Me: That is my first name. Allow me to finish. It's S-I-E-W-L-I-N-G.
[Akward silence]
Customer: Well, you have a pretty name.
Me: (T's too late lady, too late.) Thanks.

"You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely."

- Ogden Nash

"Age is a very high price to pay for maturity."

- Tom Stoppard

Events that took place on this day in the previous years, give or take a couple of days
2011 - The world still wonders if Osama bin Laden is really dead
2010 - Vets flocked to the Guelf of Mexico to rescue animals endangered by the oil spill
2009 - South Africa's 'Bang Bang Club' in production for film
2008 - Burmese government responded indifferently towards foreignaid for Cyclone Nargis aftermath
2008 - Women's groups in Malaysia reacted angrily towards proposed government restrictions on women travelling abroad on their own.
2007 - National Party wins the Scottish general election and becomes the largest party in the Parliament for the first time.
2006 - Picasso's portrait of his lover, Dora Maar, was sold at an auction at Sotheby's in New York for 95.2 million dollars.
2006 - Vatican excommunicates 2 bishops from China
2005 - Bill C-38, the Legal Marriage Act to legalized same sex marriage, passes its second reading in the Canadian Parliament
2005 - Civil liberties groups attack the Malaysian government plan to obtain fingerprint, palm print and foot print of new born babies.
2004 - Taiwan passes a bill mandating that official documents in Chinese be written from left to right instead of right to left.
2003 - SARS epidemic - virus lifespan detected
2002 - An EAS Airlines BAC 1-11-500 crashes in a suburb of Kano, Nigeria shortly after takeoff killing more than 148 people.
2001 - Tom Cruise sues wrestler for gay 'slur'
2000 - Ken Livingstone becomes the first Mayor of London
1999 - The first known examples of writing may have been unearthed at an archaeological dig in Pakistan.
1998 - David Beckham changed his hairstyle and grew a beard.
1998 - Kenny Rogers launches 1st online casino
1997 - (Give or take a couple of days) The Comet Hale-Bopp spotted visible to the naked eye in the Western Sky
1996 - ACDC had a concert at Festhalle, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
1995 - Tom Petty featured on the cover page of the Rolling Stone
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed a peace accord on Palestine's autonomy for granting self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.
1993 - UNOSOM II assumes the Somalian duties of the dissolved UNITAF
1992 - LA Mayor Bradley signalled the official end of the Los Angeles Riots.
1991 - Baby Baby by Amy Grant was still the #1 hit song on the US charts
1990 - Latvia declares independence from the Soviet Union.
1989 - The Canadian Supreme Court declared that sexual harassment is a form of discrimination.
1988 - PEPCON disaster in Henderson, Nevada
1987 - South Africa featured at the front page of TIME Magazine.
1986 - President Babrak Karmal resigns as party leader of Afghanistan
1985 - The 19-year cycle lunar eclipse was sighted over the Philippine's night sky
1984 - I was born