So I check my email this morning to see if Roger, my research advisor, had emailed me back yet about something I asked him. He hadn’t, but I did get an email from a Chinese guy with the subject heading “Merry Christmas!” I almost deleted the email without reading it, thinking it was some email sent over the MIT CSSA listserve …

Well the email turns out to be from a guy in China who saw my name and picture (more on this later) on the BE student board webpage. He goes to (or maybe graduated from already) an university in China and is about to apply to graduate schools (not to MIT, just grad schools in China). He wants to make friends with me because he thinks that I may be Chinese (from my name), and he really likes Biology.

So, according to the okay, but slightly iffy, English of his email, he saw my name on the BE student board page, and from the member picture saw that I looked “handsome and kindly.” Now I ask, since I am not in the member picture, nor is my picture anywhere on that BE student board site, where did he see this “handsome and kindly” face of mine? Did he see Hyung-Do or Diana in the members picture and think, “oh, Asian looking person, must be Shan Wu”?

So now what do I do? Email back and say … “actually, I’m not all that handsome and kindly since the face you saw in the member pictures is not mine, but is instead probably either Hyung-Do or Diana.” Or perhaps, “I am actually a female graduate student with no resemblance to Hyung-Do or Diana’s face in the members picture you saw on the BE student board page.” I haven’t figured out just how to reply to his email yet.

Either way, my parents got a good laugh from this episode.