i Google u

Ezalman, circa 1970s, not suspecting he would make a splash on the internet in the future!

I like to do this several times in a year - checking up on me! I always tell people that I have a unique name (for example, I am the only 'Ezalman' in Petronas, where I work - which is cool as there are about 30,000 employees now!). However, my 'uniqueness' is humbled once the population size increases exponentially (...try 6 billion people).

What this means exactly is thus : Short of checking phone directories the world over, I wanted to see what kind of digital footprint yours truly has on the web; and the main way to find out is to google my moniker and see what comes out...


The first link that arises is this : a profile for a Mr Ezalman Thambi Lee. I can see he's some kind of university lecturer or tutor. Never met the guy, but he seems to be getting more hits than me! Well he has students opening up his page all the time (sour grapes!)

Discounting appearances from this blog, I found to my horror, that my name only comes up as number 3 in the list, and that is from a website that had my contact details. The website in question is called Oil Financier . I enrolled in this online reality life simulation game when I first came to Sudan to learn about oil & gas industry financing. So I became a J.R. Ewing and tried to make my fortune prospecting for oil! Needless to say, I lost everything (I never had)...

When I first run the google search, it says that there are 109 hits, and somewhere at the end of the 1st page of Ezalman-related sites, I find this one. Now before you investigate further, bear in mind this question : what is the connection? I guess a webcrawler must have picked up the 'mini' reference and automatically added me into the site!

People who know me know that I like to play with computers, so I was amazed to find that my name is represented in this favourite pastime too! Ezalman cooler systems is a line of cooler systems that are used by overclockers to keep their souped-up PC's temperature in check. I know that there is a line of Korea-made headphones called Zalman, so I guess this would have come from the same hole...

So far so good - only one site making the connection. But there must be related sites with my name on it right? Right! Next I found that my name appeared on my sibling's farious Friendster and Blogspot websites : There was a link on my sis's website and a comment I left last year on my brother's friendster page . I also found a mention on my cousin's wife's personal blog too! That's nice...

Lastly, after 2 or 3 more pages of gibberish links (I think it was French, with a smitten of Ezalmans thrown in here and there), I decided to check out what would be at the end of the google search. Somehow my old University of Kent at Canterbury email address has survived all of a decade in cyberspace! I used this email address from 1994-1997 during my more formative years studying. Don't know if it's still active?

There you go. I'm glad that I am able to find my name on the web! Does it amount to much? No, I guess not, but this is my tiny contribution to the global fabric that is the internet...