Fri 14 Jul 2006
I was requested to employ my “Mata Hari wiles” to get some information about something yesterday. I didn’t know the reference then, but now I do:
Mata Hari. Behind the patina of the pseudonym Mata Hari (“Eye of the Dawn”) is a rather prosaic Dutch name. Margaretha Geertruida Zelle (1876-1917) used Mata Hari as both her stage name and nom de guerre when she chose to become a spy for the Germans before World War I. Acclaimed throughout Europe for her interpretations of naked Indonesian dances, she met many men in high places, including German officials in Berlin who recruited her as a spy in 1907. During World War I, her dancing was the rage of Paris and she became intimate with top Allied officers, who confided military secrets to her. Mata Hari, who slept with literally hundreds, thrived on the deceit of espionage, but she was eventually betrayed to the French secret service by another German agent, Captain Walther Wilhelm Canaris, later to become head of the German secret service in World War II. Her trial was the most publicized of the many espionage trials held during the war, and her name became synonymous with a glamorous female spy and femme fatale. She was convicted by a French court-martial ane executed by a firing squad.
– The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, Third Edition, Robert Hendrickson
That’s kinda cool for this esoteric belly dancing German-speaking wiley fraulein.
Hey Cindy,
So I was looking through my email contact list for some reason and I came across your email address from your first job as a court reporter (I bet it isn’t valid anymore). I realized I hadn’t talked to you in a looong time — so I tried to find a way to contact you.
Google rocks. All it took was 1 try — I searched for “cindy ucla vicky” and wallah, here I am haha. Amazing: you were link #2 from that search.
Anyway, I’ll let you guess as to who I am. I’ve known you for … over 12 years but haven’t seen you in like 5. Here’s something I remember about you from way back that might help you remember — “Cindoe a dear, a female dear”!
A word about “Mata Hari”. Mata = Eye, and Hari = Day. Quite literally it would mean “Eye of the day”. But actually it means “Sunshine” or “Sunlight” in the most common use :).
By the way, you’ve put up a fantastic blog. I always remembered you as a great writer. Nice work.
P.S., your “Contact Me” button at the top doesn’t work. So I figure this is the only other way to send you a message! Oh and Happy belated birthday!
See ya later,
… Oops I almost signed the email like I always do. That wouldn’t have been any fun.
Hmm. Interesting. I was never a court reporter, so I gotta find someone who THOUGHT I was a court reporter. If you’ve known me since I was 18, we must’ve met in college, which would make sense because you can spell and put a sentence together (unlike so many people these days). You relate me to Vicky, so you must not’ve come from my college roommie’s side of friends, which eliminates A LOT of people. I can think of a lot of people I haven’t seen in a long time, but those people date back to high school, longer than 12 years ago, and the people I haven’t seen in 5 years, I hear from here and there via email or thru other means. The “Cindoe, a dear, a female dear” doesn’t help because that’s my email signature and has been for years, lots of people know about that. Maybe I’ll look thru MY email address book and look for clues.
Of course, if you did the math wrong and it turns out you knew me for 13 years (since age 17 instead of age 18), it changes a lot of things. I had a sort of interesting senior year in high school.
If I were you Cindy, I would use your Administrator Powers and check the email that “guess” had to type in to leave a message. Then you would have a clue to who this person it. I would make a great detective . . . :o)
Way ahead of you. I can’t tell who the email belongs to, since there’s no name in the email address, but I know the IP address hails from Fullerton. Haha. I just can’t think of who I would’ve known since I was 18 that I would’ve not seen nor spoken to since I was 25. I’ve lost contact with people from way back when, but I don’t think I’ve lost recent contact with someone who can’t get a hold of me thru other ways in the past 5 years.
To Guess, I forgot to say thank you for the compliments on my blog and on my writing!
Bingo! You are hot on the trail. The 12 years was only a snap estimate (notice I said “over 12 years” which would include 13 :). ). To be more exact — I have known you and Vicky since senior year in high school. And yes, it was an interesting year. (Although I did not go to DBHS.)
BTW, I am impressed that you would check the IP Address. I created a new account for this because my real one would make it obvious. Believe it or not, I even thought about posting this from work so you wouldn’t know I came from Fullerton — JUST in case you were sneaky enough to check via IP. That’s cool actually. It is something I would have done myself. Not very many people would know enough about server admin to do the same! Wow!
As for the court reporter, I guess I remembered wrong. Hey it was a long time ago :). What I remember is that you got a job in the courtroom that involved a lot of typing. So with my limited knowledge of what goes on in a courtroom, court reporter sure sounded good haha.. Ooops!
Then you misled me; the last time I saw you would’ve been 9 years ago. Think hard…am I right?
Wow, you had me thinking really hard on this one. I filed that email address of yours on my computer in the year 2000 (or so my records say). So that would be 6 years at most. But that had me thinking — It is entirely possible I only talked to you on the phone or by email at that time. But I THINK I actually saw you in person too, but I can’t guarantee it.
Ok now if I stretch my memory way back, I am absolutely certain that I met you when I had my previous car which was bought in 1999. So that means 7 years at most. So I have definately seen you more recently than 9 years. I remember this distinctly because we were trying out some of your CDs in there and checking out how good the stereo was.
I do have a weird memory in that I remember random details about things.
So with that, here are a couple hints I thought of which may or may not help.
1) I know Vicky as “Beeky”.
2) During one of our early conversations (quite possibly even the first one), you were making mashed potatoes (the kind from a box.) I have no idea why I still remember this but I do.
No, dude, it’s been 9 years. I thought about this last nite. I lost a cell phone-shaped light-up lighter in your car, and I got that lighter in Taiwan, where I went soon after I graduated in college in October 1998. I had both lighters with me for some reason and one didn’t work right, so that must’ve been RIGHT after I got back from Taiwan. Your car may have been a ’99, but you must’ve bought it in ’98.
Oh wait. I did the math wrong. (How typical of me.) I was thinking my age now, 30, minus the last year in college, age 21, equals 9 years ago. But it’d actually be 9 years this October/November.
Hmmm, I don’t remember the lighter incident. The registration on my car is in May which is really early in the year. I wonder if the 99 models would be out as early as may 98. This is possible — I need to check the build date on my car haha. It’s been so long I forgot that too.
If this is true I haven’t seen you in 8 years! wow! Although I did talk to you for sure in the beginning of 2000.
So who do you think I am?
I even CALLED you and asked you to look for the lighter and you checked and said it wasn’t in the car. Now every time I see the other lighter (that doesn’t work right), I think, “The stupid WORKING one is somewhere in JAMES’s Mustang.”
Wow, you have a good memory. I vaguely remember now that I did go hunting through my car after you left but I never managed to find anything. Maybe it’s still there somewhere tucked under a seat or something. You even remembered what kind of car I had after so long? I’m impressed.
I posted the email address I actually use this time, so you can grab it if you want.
Anyway it’s good to hear from you after so long. Was I right in guessing that the email address I had is probably dead by now? If it is dead, could you send me a more current one? I’d like to hear what you’ve been up to in the past 8 years I haven’t seen you. (Although I guess I could just read through your blog haha… it’s all there isn’t it?) Well actually, I dont think it goes back that far.
See ya,
James
You’re right, it only goes back a year. 🙂 The stuff before that are in typed journals archived on my computer. And some old-fashioned handwritten stuff.
…And about the memory — people can’t lie to me successfully for a reason.
Handwriting?? What’s that? Is that where you write letters with some kind of stick? I dont remember how to do that anymore.
By the way, I checked the build sticker on my Mustang when I got home today. Build date is 04/99! So this whole incident must have occured sometime in 1999. 🙂
And yea having a good memory is real useful when someone tries to lie to you since they rarely remember what they lied about.
By the way speaking about Taiwan — I had gone there recently. I spent a lot of time being adventurous and eating at the night markets. Night markets rock!
Night markets DO rock. You get the most useless crap for SO cheap! I do turn away from the pirated stuff, tho…whistling and looking up in the sky at the moon.