Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Nat,
We’re not married, and we gave one of our kids my surname and the other one his.
Awesome. Because I have male friends called Nat, I had assumed you, also, were male. Hello!
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Richard Grevers,
I think the most sensible solution for double-barrelled breeding with double-barrelled is to combine half of each parent’s name in the most aesthetically pleasing combination.
Best example of which I am aware: the Gracewood family. Grace + Wood x Deed Poll.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Shaun Lott,
But personally I can’t stand the double-barelling of the kids names… just choose one and be done with it! :)
I think we were very lucky in that we have two names that sound really cool together. Our first-born is Jimmy Rae Brown.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Shaun Lott,
Totally yes and mysterious to me. I’m Dr S, my wife is Dr M… but quite often I’m Mr S to some bloke on the phone who has dealt with my wife first. You just roll with it.
Yes! Although I find it's quite a good one for filtering cold-callers. Anyone who addresses me by my partner's surname has probably fished our phone number out of a database.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to B Jones,
The metric is no longer a good indicator of family instability, and arguably it hasn’t been in years.
Nicely observed.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Isabel Hitchings,
I got engaged to my partner of sixteen years (and father of our two children) on Thursday.
Warmest congratulations!
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The following occurred to me and has been added to the post:
The only real issue is what we call each other: "partner" can be an ambiguous word. Sometimes it is easier to acquiesce to the use of the word "wife" when dealing with tradespeople or call centres. I don't really mind doing that. It's less bother than correcting people.
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When my sister (Karen Brown) got married to her lovely Aussie bloke (Greg Brown), she went around telling people she was going to insist on being Mrs Karen Brown-Brown, so it was clear she wasn't taking her new husband's surname. She didn't, of course, but it was an excellent joke.
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Southerly: Getting There is Half the Fun, in reply to Brent Jackson,
LAX being bad is definitely not a recent thing. It is the worst airport I have ever been to – a 2 hour transit in 1997, that was inexplicably lengthened to 4 hours, in a grimy room with no windows, and insufficient seating, ventilation, and lavatories, and a complete lack of food and drink. Staff unfriendly and unhelpful, who enjoy shouting at you.
That'll be the room we were herded into in 1991, with a baby. It just makes no sense.
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Southerly: Getting There is Half the Fun, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Everything about Singapore airlines and the hub at SIN is worth the extra money, especially if you are larger than the size other airlines decide is sufficient* for seat spacing.
It’s fascinating to note the difference between transiting in Singapore and doing so anywhere in the continental US. Both countries have security issues, but in Singapore that oddly enough doesn’t mean that all passengers must be treated like political prisoners.
The awfulness of transit in the US seems to me to be a bizarre failure of capitalism. At least in Singapore they understand that bored travellers are likely to be particularly willing purchasers of goods and services.
Our experience, years ago, returning to NZ from London with our four-month-old firstborn, still dumbfounds me. I recall thinking, as we were herded into a bare, dirty, crowded “lounge” at LAX, where we would be for several hours with our baby: Why are they doing this to us? This is stupid.
And that was before the War on Terror. Does anyone have a theory as to why American airports are so rubbish?