I was reminded by the following tweet from a fellow Toastmaster from Finland of a funny anecdote from a few years ago.
In May 2011 Luca and I attended the annual shareholders’ meeting of Berkshire Hathaway (see here a post describing the experience). One of the activities for shareholders that we joined was to dine on Sunday evening at Piccolo’s, a steakhouse popularized by the taste of Warren Buffett, apparently a frequent customer (we indeed happen to have him dining together with Bill Gates two tables away).
The anecdote I wanted to share in this post stems from my rather strong Spanish accent when speaking English, together with the little vocalization effort that I put sometimes in my speech plus the use of the phonetic alphabet to spell words.
When I wanted to book a table at Piccolo’s to have that dinner, I was asked my surname, which is uncommon even in Spain, thus I spelled it: India, Romeo, Alfa, Sierra… Hours later, we arrived at the restaurant and informed the waiter that we had a reservation, at the name “Irastorza”. She went to check her registry. Swiftly and politely she said: “sure, come along with me”. I was close enough to her to see that in the book she had just noted: “India”.
The Blog by Javier 
Awesome! 🙂
I have to do the same for my surnames and the UK postcode… people get it right at the end. However, I must always have to repeat it a second time, as the first thing that they start writing is India (which also happens to be the first letter of my postcode and surname).
It’s a good thing have “awkward” names… Mine are soo usual that last week when I arrived to NY I spent more than a hour in immigration been checked…(even though I listened to the official asking another one what to check of a Spanish guy… And the answer was that nothing).