Octo-freak

It is not uncommon for the Chinese students who come to Australia to assign themselves a Western name in the interest of making it easier for all us ignorant monolingual Aussies to remember and pronounce their names. Usually they will pick something that's quite nice, and I guess it's a bit of fun for them to be able to pick a name they feel suits them as adults rather than having one arbitrarily assigned to them by their parents at birth. So in a few of my classes I have Henry, Veronica, Lucy, Gary, Jack - all Chinese. I also have an Octopus. No, I don't mean that sea creatures are now undertaking English classes in the hopes of succeeding in the capitalist Western rat race, but that some bloke from Hong Kong has decided that he wants to be known as Octopus. I could hardly control my mirth at the idea and my supervising teacher said several times, "Now, you're SURE you want me to call you Octopus?". Oh yes, quite sure. What a lunactic!