June 7, 2015 | Awake & Dreaming

How Do You Feel About Your Last Name?

One of the biggest peeves I have is my last name or lack thereof. I have wanted to get my name changed officially to have the last name as Menon, just to avoid having people call me Mr. Krishnan. I hate being called that. That is not my name.

Ok, my given name is Roshan Gopal Krishnan – Gopal being part of my dad’s name (C. Gopalakrishnan) and Krishnan being also my grandfather’s name (Krishnankutty Menon). For reasons beyond me, I was named in this manner (it’s too long of a story to tell you) and I have hated it ever since I turned 15-16. Because I know that I lack a proper last name. Which is a problem in Kerala and some other places, a lot of us have no last names. In Kerala it is common to have a first name & an initial – the initial usually is your dad’s name of your family name (which is not a last name but close enough) and sometimes it’s in front of your first name (for example M. Roshan or Roshan M.).

This is a ridiculous setup because people tend to call you Mr. and last name and if you only have an initial calling you Mr. is a funny situation. But I’d prefer people referring me as Mr. Roshan rather than Mr. Krishnan. So back when I was 15-16 I thought that when I turn 21, I would get my name legally changed to add Menon (which is actually a common name as it refers to your caste) to my name and make things easier on me but – 17 years on after I turned 21 I haven’t changed it! I just couldn’t bring myself to change my name to that of representing a caste, which I do not believe in. But I like the name “Menon” and would prefer that as a surname. People still refer to me by the last name as Krishnan.

Or perhaps I could have been creative and got a unique last name and changed to it legally. Like Bananahammock! Or Crapbag!

Prompt from The Learning Network at The New York Times

So…..it’s not the major release blockbuster movie but another movie, with a much smaller budget and with an unknown cast, that has the same theme in it’s storyline. San Andreas Quake is a 2015 small budget release starring directed by John Baumgartner who also wrote the screenplay for this film that stars Jhey Castles, Jason Woods & Grace Van Dien.

Seismologist & scientist, Molly Dunn, is now a professor in a Los Angeles area college. She was discredited when her earlier project about creating a system that predicts earthquakes was a failure. Although teaching students and living with her husband and 18+ step-daughter, she is still working on a new prediction method. To her delight her new model seems to working fine, when she predicts almost to the exact moment (just 60 seconds delayed) a 4.0 quake; she warns the patrons of a campus coffeeshop. However the data she is collecting from several sensors in the region shows that a huge earthquake of 10.0 magnitude is about to hit the Los Angeles area and she tries hard to get the warning out but no one believes her.

Molly is able to convince her smart-Alec student Nick as she shows him the data while they were at the coffeeshop. He also just so happens to be the new boyfriend in Ali’s (Molly’s step-daughter’s) life. Molly warns her husband Hank, who is taking tourists on a helicopter tour and calls Ali at the upscale hotel where she works as a receptionist but the lines go dead as they are talking. Now Molly races to the hotel with Nick in his car and must survive a breaking bridge, a badly done CGI hippo momma that charges at them when their car hits her baby hippo, a desperate woman who pulls a gun on Nick to get the car for her and her young daughter and leaves them having to hoof it to the city. Hank meanwhile loses his chopper when a small plan crashes into it when it is on the ground and his tourist clients pay for a small plane provided he takes them to collect their dog first.

Ali and her co-worker Jackson have to help an elderly couple when the husband suffers a heart attack while stuck in an elevator. A reluctant hotel guest also helps them but they are late in getting to the bus that takes people away from the city. Molly and Nick get to the hotel via a tunnel, where they almost die of suffocation and head to the rooftop where they hope Hank can get to them on time. The elderly woman stays behind as her husband is now dead and the hotel guest is taken away by soldiers. Molly, Ali, Nick & Jackson head to the rooftop but Jackson falls off a broken window and the other 3 make it to the rooftop. At the last minute as the 12.0 earthquake destroys buildings nearby, Hank arrives in a chopper and the 3 make it safely and they take off as the city gets destroyed below them.

Really badly written with too man coincidences and bad acting by most. Jhey Castles looks a lot like Margiska Hargitay while the others barely do a good enough job but the bad CGI cannot save this story. A 3.5 outta 10 (and that is being generous)