Stian Soiland-Reyes

Banks are well known to be somewhat stuck in the 70s with their computer systems, in good company with the airlines. We are quite used to getting cryptic four letter acronyms on our bank statements and airline tickets, and for our names to be transcribed into some kind of semi-secret, truncated caps-lock based language without space or even a hint of support for international characters. For instance, I’ve received airline tickets in the name of SA,ILAND/STIAMR, and on my bank statements POS does not mean position, but “Point of sale”, meaning that I’ve purchased something in a shop. Probably “Shop” is too long to fit in the column-based data files on the AS/400 mainframes.

Last month, I went with a colleague to the travel agency the university is using for its bookings, to get a last minute multi-leg flight Manchester–Boston–Chicago–Manchester, preferably without any transfers. This well-dressed gentlemen (we had been shown upstairs to the “business travel section” to avoid the students trying to find cheap around-the-world tickets) started hammering the keyboard with assertive keystrokes, and he kept typing for 15 minutes, until he looked up very pleased. He had managed to arrange the trip, cheaper than what I had looked up earlier with Expedia or Kayak, and he said he just needed to move to a different computer to make a printout of our reservation.

I continue to be amazed by the use of text-based console systems, it is almost as I remember the magic of travel agencies as a kid. Of course in those days they used to have real monochrome amber terminals with tobacco-yellow keyboards (and circular keys!), and all the terminals of the office would be linked up to some kind of advanced multiplexed 1200 baud fixed link to the mainframe server abroad somewhere. These days they are still using the same kind of mainframes, it seems, but the terminals have been replaced by normal Windows PCs, running terminal emulator software in Java inside a standard browser window.

The travel agent told us that it was much easier these days, as he could easily search in many different systems from the same computer. He showed me how he flipped between 5 different terminal sessions with Alt-Tab — he had been searching for our flights in each of these systems.

You might think that consoles and green letters on black background would have been replaced with true web-based systems, .NET and the whole shebang, but this guy said the thing is that all the airlines are using these kind of systems, every day, so you couldn’t just change it overnight. He was operating the booking systems like a king, similar to how a clever Linux system administrator would dive into a black terminal window, type frantically and hard, and be able to trace down which of the 20,000 home pages on the web server had been infected and sent out all those Mystery shopper emails. The travel agent said that the backend systems had not changed much over the last 25 years he had worked there, but he did admit that now and then a new command, along the lines of PQX, would appear.

I believe a web-based system, no matter how web 2.0, dynamic and RESTful, would simply not do for these experts — I watched in pain once with an insurance broker as he slowly tried to navigate a badly designed internal web-solution for getting insurance quotes. In the end, as he found some Swiss company giving me the best quote, he took down my details in a classic terminal-like application, which went like a charm in comparison to the first challenge.

So back to the travel agent, I then noticed something peculiar, a secret of the trade perhaps. Do you know all those CAPSLOCK-DISCLAIMER-things in the bottom of the ticket? All those weird codes? Here’s what we got (I’ve replaced the travel agent’s name with “xx” to be kind):

FOR TRAVEL INSURANCE PLEASE SEE THE UNIVERSITY WEBSITE
CAMPUS.MANCHESTER.AC.UK/PURCHASE/INSURANCE/TRAVEL.HTM
FARE GBP 215.00 TAX GBP 237.10 SECTOR FEE GBP 3.00
BKG FEE GBP 35.00
NON REFUNDABLE/RESTRICTED CHANGES AT A FEE AND
ANY FARE / TAX DIFFERENCE.
INTERNATIONAL TRAVELLERS SEEKING TO TRAVEL TO THE US
UNDER THE VISA WAIVER PROGRAMME ARE NOW SUBJECT TO
ENHANCED SECURITY REQUIREMENTS
ALL ELIGIBLE TRAVELLERS WHO WISH TO TRAVEL UNDER THE VISA
WAIVER PROGRAM MUST APPLY FOR AUTHORISATION USING THE
ELECTRONIC SYSTEM FOR TRAVEL AUTHORISATION - ESTA
PLEASE REFER TO WWW.XXTRAVEL.CO.UK/LINKS.HTML
TRAVELLERS HOLDING PASSPORTS NOT ELIGIBLE FOR THE
VISA WAIVER PROGRAM STAYS OF LONGER THAN 90DAYS OR PERSONS
INTENDING TO UNDERTAKE PAID WORK IN THE USA WILL NEED TO
APPLY FOR AN ENTRY VISA-PLEASE VISIT WWW.USEMBASSY.ORG.UK
XX TRAVEL WILL BE PLEASED TO OFFER FURTHER ADVICE
IF REQUIRED.
PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING CHECK IN TIMES
LONGHAUL INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS MUST BE RECONFIRMED 72 HOURS
PRIOR TO DEPARTURE. FAILURE TO DO SO MAY RESULT IN YOUR
FLIGHT BEING CANCELLED.
THANK YOU FOR BOOKING WITH XX TRAVEL.

I guess we are all quite used to seeing this long telegram-style sequence of continuous letters on our tickets, and we generally don’t read them, as they are all in caps, smell of licence agreements and lawyer talk, and then there’s those cryptic airline codes that probably are there to tell the check-in staff that you should be seated next to the toilet furthest in the back of the aircraft.

Here’s the big surprise.. the guy was typing in all of this — by hand! He was not issuing advanced commands to a mainframe over the Atlantic, he was simply trying to write me “Thank you” — a bit peculiar as I was sitting right in front of him!

This really got me wondering.. are there always a guy like that typing in those statements? Why don’t we read them? Imagine a guy trapped in a little cave on an island somewhere in the Pacific, with only a 70s terminal available (Lost-style), and no matter how hard he tries, his caps lock is soldered and stuck in always-on, and he tries to sneak in a scream for help on the bottom of your airline ticket, but you would never notice..

PX1 441 TXF MAN OSL 21 NO TRANSFER TAX 33.00
GBP PLEASE HELP ME FR14 MAX BAGGAGE ALLOWANCE
23 KGS I AM TRAPPED FRS SVG KL221 DO NOT FLY
KM5 EUROBONUS.NO/DOESNOTWORK.HTM HAVE A NICE TRIP

Anyway, I was quite pleased when I heard our reservation being printed out. You see, it came out on a classic 24-dot matrix printer, on tractor-fed paper with holes on the sides. Some things are better left unchanged!

Now what happens these days, when banks and airlines are moving into the digital age, is that they want to be present on the Internet, modern and up to date with HTML 3.2. Consultants are hired, and the customers of the bank get a nice, clean web-based system that kind of does the job. After a bit of trial and error you can even claim it’s somewhat secure. In my bank, even the clerics and sales people are using a web-system that looks suspiciously similar to what I see at home. But under the hood it’s still one of those massive mainframes turning the wheels — and in a way that’s good, right? You probably would not want some MySQL-Ruby-on-Rails-thingie hacked together in 2 months to keep track of your bank account?

But then you get these young people appearing in management, with revolutionary ideas such as bank statements per email and using the online banking system to give customers notices of “important changes”. Of course it takes a few rounds to figure out why HTTP://WWW.MYBANK.CO.UK/PRIVATE/INDEX.CFM?ARTICLE_ID=12 does not work, when http://www.mybank.co.uk/private/index.cfm?article_id=12 does — but then there’s another problem, those ancient IBM machines from the 70s have difficulties with typographical stuff like headers and bold fonts — after all the most advanced thing the amber screens could do was reverse video.

So the bank clearly ended up with some kind of hybrid, a web solution where the staff edit the messages in a classic console, and I end up getting messages like:

**ONLINE BANKING IS BEING IMPROVED**

**NEW**

We will shortly be making improvements to your online banking service. Along with a brand new look, we’re also making some changes to the page layout and navigation.

**MAKING IT EASIER TO GO PAPERLESS**

With online statements, you can search, download and save up to 7 years statement history.

If you haven’t switched to online statements already, you will soon be given the opportunity to do so when you log in to online banking.

Plus, we’ll also be giving you a further incentive to go paperless - go to mybank.com/paperlesswin for details.

**EXISTING MYBANK BILL MANAGEMENT CUSTOMERS**

Please note that links to the Bill Management Service will shortly be moving to the ‘Payments’ section of online banking.

So I’m looking very much forward to this improved online banking experience, after all, they’ve already almost cracked the capslock problem. Hyperlinks, headers and bold font are still in waiting — but do you really need that just to deal with some accounts and credit cards?

I am hoping that the future online banking experience will be more like that terminal solution I spotted at the travel agent — after all then I can write THANK YOU FOR LOOKING AFTER MY MONEY in the telex requesting a transfer of £100 to my savings account.

OK, as suspected I’m not very good in updating my blog.. To give you a quick brief, I am now happily married, and I have changed my name. Or at least I’m trying to. Let’s start with my original name, as given to me by my parents:

• Stian Søiland

Now as a side note, my dad’s grandfather changed his surname from Søyland to Søiland when he moved to Stavanger, probably to make it sound a bit more posh, as Søyland is a rural area.

I’ve done something similar, if you know me from the Internet, my name is:

• Stian Soiland

Within United Kingdom one needs to make it perfectly clear that I’m not a nobility or a professor:

• Mr Stian Soiland

Those companies who keeps sending me bills are polite enough to keeps my first name a secret and to show how well their IBM System/36 machines can process 5-bit names:

• MR S SOILAND

The airlines would need to send this through a couple of Telex machines, transforming my name to:

• SOILAND MRSTIAN

This is still quite good compared to once when I bought a ticket from an Norwegian airline using my proper name, and something broke down in the Latin1->UTF8->Latin1->EBCDIC->ASCII loop:

• SA,ILAND/STIANMR

Woh, look at all those names!

Now that we are married we decided to change our names, and after careful consideration we agreed on the double-barrelled surname Soiland-Reyes. There are many good reasons for this particular choice:

• By Mexican traditions, given our original names, our kids would get the surname Soiland Reyes, a combination of my father’s surname and my wife’s father’s surname. (Or my wife’s father’s father’s surname, if you want).
• The hyphen should to some extent avoid us appearing as Mrs Soiland or Mr Reyes in various systems. (This technique is already used by some Mexicans in UK to avoid them getting addressed by the mother’s surname only)
• Avoiding the Ø makes the name easier to use internationally - we are after all a Norwegian-Mexican couple living in UK
• It sounds nice
• It’s very modern.. or posh

Now just to make this clear, we’re not really following any particular traditions:

• Mexicans don’t change their surname when they marry
• In England usually only the wife changes her name
• Norway is kind of similar to England, except it’s getting common these days to either just keep the old names, or to take the spouse’s surname as a middle name - kind of exchanging surnames. (This still leaves the question open about what surnames the kids get)

So how do I get about in changing my name? Well, traditionally in Norway this is quite a straight-forward process, as there is a National ID registry, Folkeregisteret (literally: people registry). In Norway basically everybody, from the tax man and banks, insurance companies and health service, all the way down to mobile phone and cable TV subscriptions, require your personal ID number, personnummer.

This number is assigned when you are born, or when you move into the country, and is simply your 6-digit birthdate, ddmmyy, and 5 identifier digits (to separate the individuals born on the same day). Well, that’s not totally true, the two last digits are actually checksum digits, so there’s only 3 digits to identify the person. Not true again, as the first digit is limited to 000–499 for people like me born in 19xx. (Since the century is not part of the birthdate). Well.. and the third digit is even (0,2,4,6,8) for females and odd (1,3,5,7,9) for men. (So that means there is room for a maximum of about 250 boys born on the same day. Not a problem yet for Norway..)

Just to summarise with an example:

241279 15365

For the (roughly) 76th boy (76*2+1=153) born 24th of December 1979 (153 is within 000-499, so 19th century), with a checksums of the previous digits being 6 and 5 - the last checksum includes the first in its calculation for improved security. I wonder why there isn’t a third and fourth checksum?

Well, the idea is that since everybody uses this number as your identifier, they can look up your name and address in the ID registry, and in theory all I need to do for them to pick up my new name is fill in and send a form to the ID registry requesting a name change. Yes, it’s requesting, not reporting, as there are rules about valid names in Norway. For instance I can’t change my surname to something that is used by less than 200 people, unless it’s a new surname I invented, or you are getting married to someone with that name, or you have a letter of support from each of the persons currently holding that surname. Oh, and Jesus is not a valid first name either. (Keikoburger is allowed, though).

Puh! Or - at least - this is what the rules used to be. I’m not quite sure what they are now, but as there are only 197 with the surname Reyes in Norway (and probably a few hundred thousands in Mexico), that’s just below the limit, so I played safe and attached a copy of our wedding certificate with my form for the name change. I think I had to let them know I was married anyway. I was not quite sure if I was to sign with my old or new signature, so I think I did both.

However, that’s not how it ended. It turns out the national ID registry is only allowed to change name of people who live in Norway, and as I currently live in UK, that doesn’t include me. Well, is that really a problem? I’m not paying tax to Norway or using my Norwegian bank accounts much. I don’t believe my student loan would disappear overnight because they didn’t get my new name.

Ah, I’ll tell you, my passport is Norwegian, and that’s currently the only valid ID I have in UK, and also it tends to be the what those airport people want to look at when I check in. So I guess I shouldn’t change the name of my credit cards and book airline tickets in my new name yet. To change the name in the passport, as with everything else in Norway, the passport authorities asks me to do this through the National ID registry.

OK, so I asked the registry how I get them to update my name, and they said what I needed to do was to first change my name in the country where I was resident, and then send them a proof from the the authorities of that country that I had changed my name. If I am not allowed by law to change my name in that country, I would need to send a letter from the (for me British) authorities explaining why, for instance if they had a rule that foreigners had to change their names at home. (I’m sure Norway has such a rule, just to make it difficult. I wonder if that one has a similar clause: If you are not allowed to change in your home country, then write to the UN).

So I should go to the authorities of name changes in UK to get this done.. presumably the naïve Norwegians think there’s a UK National ID registry with a similar scheme as in Norway. Luckily this is not yet the case, although they are trying. How do you change your name in the UK? Well, at first glance the procedure is quite straight-forward:

1. Start using your new name

I have to say, there’s something charmingly attracting with the low-profile bureaucracy of this country. Well, it’s unfortunately not quite that simple, as I have to go to every authority and company I’ve been dealing with, like the tax authorities, the gas company, telephone company, my employer, etc, and inform them about my name change.

Some of the companies just happily updates their records, but others, like my bank, are a bit more reluctant, as they want some kind of proof that I really intend to keep the new name and no longer use the old one. After all, I might owe them money, and they don’t want to waste time hunting me down by my old name. “No, sorry, Mr Soiland doesn’t live here any more.”

As a side note - since this blog post is already long enough for a book chapter - as UK don’t have the luxury of a primary key such as the Norwegian personal ID number, what is your identity in the UK? Well, it’s a kind of combination of:

• Your surname
• Your title (Mr/Miss/Mrs, etc)
• Your full postal address
• Your first name
• Your date of birth
• Your previous postal addresses for the last two years

The lower down the list you go, the more authoritative. So “Soiland” is enough for ordering a taxi, while my date of birth is needed to buy an insurance. If I apply for a credit card I need to go all the way down.

You might be asked to prove your identity. Proving your name and date of birth is through the usual ways, like a driving licence or birth certificate. In UK the driving licence also includes your current address, so you can get quite far down the list.

However, when the companies wants to be really, really sure about who you are, like when you open a current account in a bank, they also ask you for a second proof of address. Like.. a gas bill! What if you don’t have gas installed? Well, though for you.

Funnily enough I didn’t need to send any proof of ID to get a new credit card from a company I’ve never dealt with before, but when I wanted a new account with a bank I’m already a customer with, I had to send in my original gas statements, photo-copy of driving licence, etc.

I still think this is somewhat better than a national ID card.. I’ve seen in Norway how anyone really thrust you must be you, since you happened to know those 11 digits - that you keep giving away to more and more organisations.

So, back to name changes in UK. Traditionally a woman who changes her name after marriage just needs to bring her marriage certificate to the bank so they can update their records, but if you are changing your name for another reason you can do what is called a deed poll. A deed poll is kind of like a one-man contract where you just make a public statement, kind of like:

I hereby declare that I, previously known as Stian Soiland, am now to be known by the name Stian Soiland-Reyes.

But of course not those exact words, it should be a bit more formal, proper Shakespearian English. In addition to your signature, the statement need to be signed by a witness, signed and possibly even sealed. Legally any adult would do, but of course the lawyers say you should do this through them so they can charge you. Well, actually it’s not the only way, another one is to just print it as a notice in a major newspaper, and bring the newspaper to the bank. Yes, really. I don’t know if anyone has tried this, though.

So there are no naming authority in UK, you just change name with all the organisations you care about, preferably at the same time so they can’t claim you changed your name to avoid trouble. But I am already in trouble, because I don’t want to change my name with the bank when I don’t have a valid ID with my new name on - what if I need to manually withdraw my money? (To be fair, I could technically bring my passport and my marriage certificate, but still!).

I talked to the Norwegian embassy in London, and they said that to pass the rules I just have to write a letter to the ID registry stating that in UK there is no naming authority, and that I would still like to change my name, please. So that’s what I’ll be doing pretty soon. Oh, but they want the original wedding certificate, which I don’t want to send away as then I can’t go around doing my name changes in the UK. They said I could send a certified copy instead.

Now, here’s yet another culture crash between the countries, for Norwegians a certified copy means that you have shown the copy with the original to someone working at a government office, and that they stamp the copy to verify that it’s a true copy. While in UK as far as I know you can verify a copy yourself by simply writing on the copy, I confirm that this is a certified copy of the passport of Fred Bloggs, and that I have compared both original and copy….yada yada, and sign it. To make it more official, any “trustworthy person” can do this, including a GP, teacher, member of parliament, nurse, police man, etc.

I have a backup plan. Don’t worry. Under EEA rules, which I love more and more, I am entitled to exchange my Norwegian driving licence to a British one provided by DVLA, the driving authorities if you want. Once I’ve done that, I can inform DVLA of my new name, and tada - I have a British photo ID with my new name. I asked them about this, and it is even possible to do it all in one go, so it should only take a few weeks. The only sad thing is that I would lose my Norwegian driving licence, which in addition to my passport is the only thing I have to prove my magical 11 digits to Norwegians.

Well! Just to cheat, I’ve started using my new name for unofficial stuff, even if I’ve not gone through with all of this yet. So my new name for any practical purposes:

• Stian Soiland-Reyes

I’m still collecting samples of how this looks after going through various systems, Amazon seems to do it properly, while DVLA use “MR STIAN SOILANDREYES”. Another mail order company had used a simplified capitalisation algorithm and sent a letter to “Stian Soiland-reyes”.

I’ve updated my email address to stian {} soiland-reyes.com - and as you might not yet notice, my passive blog has moved to our family domain name as well. If you send me emails to my old name or address, I might politely remind you of my new details. Just to annoy you. If you want the same right - get married. Or do that deed poll. I can be your witness.. or are you saying I’m not a trustworthy person?

For my wife it’s a totally different story I won’t go into, but it’s sufficient to say that in Mexico people generally can’t change their name, and also that the Mexicans assume everybody always have both a mother’s last name and a father’s last name. (Which could make it look like her father is called Soiland!). And if we get kids, they might in Mexico get the surname Soiland-Reyes Soiland-Reyes..