The Abundance of Shirley Lees

Shirley Lee 🍟
Jul 30, 2017 · 3 min read

One of my major life goals is to be the person on top of the Google search results when people googled my name. The progress of achieving it has so far been upsetting.

DuckDuckGo is a search engine that doesn’t track your personal information, meaning that the web history does not affect the search results. This means that the name game is only fair if you compete on this site. If you key in “Shirley Lee” in the DuckDuckGo, the first suggested search that shows up is “shirley lee obituary”. Totally un-depressing.

The more unique your name is, the easier it is to beat the others in the name game. My friend Pinky Lui’s goodreads profile is the second thing on the results when I googled her name. Her Instagram profile is the sixth result. Most students in Hong Kong get to pick their own English names when they are a student. And they can change it whenever because it is not on any documents anyway. Pinky chose her name, I didn’t. I was born in Canada and my mum thought that it would be cute to name her daughter after her favourite singer. Then the name Shirley is on my birth certificate, my passport, my ID card, under my hair, under my eyes, under my skin. To rub it in, the name Shirley doesn’t even have any special meaning. Stella is a star, Kevin is a guardian angel; the word Shirley just means “bright clearing”. What am I, some grass?

Here’s my thoughts after digging around on DuckDuckGo:

  • The first person on the list isn’t even a Shirley Lee, but just a Shirley in a singer duo called “Shirley & Lee”.
  • There are four obituary sites just on page one.
  • There are two Shirley Lee, M.D. and one Shirley Lee, M.B.A.. Meanwhile I was still looking for a job last week and is now spending time to jot down my thoughts.
  • There is an author called Shirley Lee. But it could be two authors because some of the books actually have the name “Lee Shirley” on the cover.
  • Somehow, my goodread profile is above that of Shirley Lee the author.
  • Three more Shirley Lee obituaries and one more dentist Shirley Lee later, I found my Medium profile, aka, this blog, on the third page. Ladies and Gentlemen, there’s hope.

For fun I dug around on Google as well, and I instantly regret doing it. Findings:

  • It will be really really hard to be radder than this Shirley Lee, who is a translator, writer, musician that studied in Oxford University. She won prizes with her translation of poetry written by North Korean defectors. Utmost respect to her for doing meaningful work with her talent in the Humanities.
  • Another Shirley Lee is a singer who started a band called Spearmint in England the year I was born. Both of his solo albums are available in its entirety on YouTube. I am not sure if all indie music sounds like what he sounds like, but I think Mr. Lee should consider taking some singing lessons.

The quest to be the first Shirley Lee proves to easy and difficult; most Shirley Lees are dead, and most of the living Shirley Lees are boring management directors, doctors, and dentists. I just need to do one rad thing to be on top of the list. The mountain is here, and I just need to climb it. All I need to do is start.

But I am also craving Doritos and wanting to watch the next episodes of Suits on Netflix. Shit.

(88/100)


Here, a cool gif showing how you can help me with my quest of Shirley Lee domination:

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100 Naked Words

Est. May 2016. 100 vulnerable words, one day at a time. Every day.

Shirley Lee 🍟

Written by

unnecessarily enthusiastic over trivial things.

100 Naked Words

Est. May 2016. 100 vulnerable words, one day at a time. Every day.

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