One of the things that I enjoy about Facebook are the posts that come to me, especially the funny jokes that I can sometimes use as anecdotes. I particularly like reading the posts that a school friend of mine by the name of Joachim Pacheco sends very often. Yesterday he put on his page, a joke that I thought that I could use this morning to put in context what I have to say to you. It goes like this:
A Chinese walked into a room in America late one night and he saw Steven Spielberg. As he was a great fan of his movies, he rushes over to him and asks for his autograph. Instead Spielberg gives him a slap and says, "You Chinese people bombed our Pearl Harbour. Get out of here." The astonished Chinese man replied, "It was not the Chinese who bombed your Pearl Harbour; it was the Japanese." "Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese – you're all the same," replied Spielberg. In return, the Chinese gives Spielberg a slap and says, "You sank the Titanic. My forefathers were on that ship." Shocked, Spielberg replies, "It was the iceberg that sank the ship; not me." The Chinese replied, "Iceberg, Spielberg, Carlsberg – you're all the same."
We may laugh at that one, it may bring a smile to our faces, but it brings up a very important question: What's in a name? Shakespeare penned those lines in his famous tragedy 'Romeo and Juliet' when he wrote, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet." But as Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet found, there is something in a name. The name Montague really meant something and it caused quite a bit of upheaval for them.
