A sign that my brother-in-law is truly part of the family: he can easily spell "Harihareswara" on the phone to customer service representatives.

Aparna Nancherla ‏(@aparnapkin): "Success is people saying your name right".

My last name isn't the easiest handle for others to grasp (as discussed previously on Cogito, Ergo Sumana). But my sister Nandini is very much on her way towards getting movers, shakers, and journalists to learn how to say our name. She recently co-presented "the implications of survey results from 11 African nations that shed light on payment and money transfer behavior in African households" (video).

She's turned her MBA and international affairs expertise towards solving the new last mile problem. I am a sucker for tales of local expertise and whiz-bang technology joining forces, especially in reducing the costs of information transfer or easing financial transactions (Indian example, Russian example). And she's become one of those experts and innovators! Both of us are into pretty rockin', worldchanging fields, and we've actually made it to the points in our careers where we have interesting conversations about work (in between sharing travel plans, going over our mom's health, and complaining about Aaron Sorkin's sudden inability to write interesting women).

(Side note: I am not on Facebook, but every two years or so I check on a few of my high school acquaintances -- specifically on what they've accomplished in their careers. We've gotten to the point where some of them are high school principals, or HIV policy experts, or sociology researchers. Always a bit of a brainbend. Of course, then there are the ones for whom the most recent mention Bing can find is an arrest record.)

Anyway. They got over Deukmejian, they'll deal with Harihareswara.