Nationality

Not much happening KDE-wise in my part of the world. HEAD is broken, and I've just done a big ol' system upgrade to FreeBSD 5.3, with associated tidy-up still ongoing. 'Twas probably a bad idea to do it when term is still on, especially since the Christmas holiday is so close, when I'll have plenty of time for such things. Anyway, for lack of anything better to write about, I thought I'd summarize my nationality, for anyone who cares, since it's come up in conversation a few times on IRC, and makes a nice little conversational gambit.

If life were simple, I guess I could just say "I was born in Cardiff, in Wales, so I'm Welsh." But that would spoil my little gambit, and it's not quite correct anyway. The first fly in the ointment is that neither of my parents are Welsh: my mum is English, and my dad Indian (although he was born and brought up in Uganda, and has never lived in India). I don't suppose it's too complicated so far, but having a Portuguese surname, when (I assume) I have no Portuguese heritage at all, makes for a little more confusion. When I was applying to universities, I went to an open day at Imperial College in London. On finding the appropriate person to talk to, I told her my name, and was greeted with a stream of something that wasn't English. My brain must have been on form that day, since I managed to realise fairly quickly that she was asking me if I spoke Portuguese. Alas, not a word of it, I had to admit.

That's about it, although if I need a quick answer to a question about nationality, then I'm British - my passport says so :-). Still, it's nice being able to pick and choose between three countries when finding a sports team to support...

Well, KDE is pretty international, so I guess someone can trump me on 'number of plausible nationalities', so go for it! I'd be intrigued to see how many nationalities can be crammed into one person. :-)