That moment when you find out –
There’s an elephant –
Bearing your rare name
10.13.18
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Copyright by Minh Tan on listed dated of completion.
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Notes to this poem…
Damn truly unbelievable story! While posting a picture quote on Instagram, because I liked writing quotes and wanted to have them together in one digital location, I hashtagged my name for ease of finding later. Here’s a same post from Instagram.
On Instagram, when you type in hashtags, it shows you how often, or rarely, used that hashtag has been. A little to my surprise, since my name isn’t super rare in Viet Nam the way it was in Canada, there had been some 300 tags of the name. Out of curiosity, I clicked on my namesake #minhtan hashtag after my post and saw that most of the post had been from an account for the Osnabruck Zoo (in Prague, Czechoslovakia). Looking at specific posts, I learned that they had a baby elephant about a year old which they had named Minh Tan!!! Here’s the latest post as I blog these notes on August 12, 2019.
OH MY GOODNESS!!!
You have a rare full name like Minh Tan, that’s not exactly like a famous name someone else had whereby an animal might be named after it… and you find out a baby elephant half way around the world from you was given the same name! I mean, really, what are the odds?
Best good shock to my life of 2018, for sure!
I’ll tell you one thing, though, that baby elephant’s posts have a LOT more Likes on Instagram than MY posts LOL!!!
Ever since discovering this namesake baby elephant, I’ve been having the occasional recurring dream of going to Prague within a few years, going to the zoo, introducing myself with photo ID, and asking to have a personal visit with Minh Tan the baby elephant. lol
You wait, though. It’ll be one of those weird dreams I will make come true one day soon. 🙂
The W-series poems comprise mostly of haiku or tanka composed during walks I took on the portion of Halifax’s waterfront known as the Harbourwalk, during the warmer months of 2018 & 2019, when the Seabridge was in place.
Minh Tan's Old Poetry 
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