About Iyyaz

Greetings, 你好 (nǐ hǎo), おはようございます (Ohayou gozaimasu), 안녕하세요 (An-yŏng-ha-se-yo), مرحبا (Marhaban). For those of you that don’t know, “Iyyaz” is my first name. Despite having a somewhat uncommon name and a multilingual entrance, English happens to be my primary language. I can just about hold a conversation in Chinese Mandarin and some very basic Japanese phrases that help me get around when I’m in Japan. That picture on the left is me, but upside down and the other way around. I was looking into the mirror in my bathroom in the early hours of the morning in Japan. I think I had only landed in Japan six hours before. So anyway, I’m very lucky. I have a dot-com consisting of just my first name. I’m not sure of anyone else who does. I guess I’m lucky because my name isn’t spelt in the common way that it should be. Mostly it’s spelt with an ‘A’, but naturally my parents were different. The name is of Persian origin. Im unclear on the actual meaning of the name, but I’ve heard many variants. In Persian my name is written as ﺍﻳﺎﺰ, and while on the subject of multi-byte languages, my name is written as 艾亚孜 in Chinese (Simplified) and イッヤズ in Japanese (Katakana).

My company can be partially blamed for my fixation with East Asia. I work in the UK for a European division of Xerox Corporation (XRX) as a Project Manager. Suffice to say, I work with people from the other side of the Atlantic and also people who are close to the Pacific. You know who you are.

Right. See you later.