TheSameAs

As someone who appears to be filling in online forms almost every week, I have noticed with increasing frustration a kind of sloppy shorthand that web designers keep using.

Deep in their resource pockets are endless 'generic' lists of things that might be useful, and possibly most used is the standard 'Country' list. The thing that drives me mad is the fact that they often have the United States of America and Canada at the top, but, as a UK resident, I have to scroll through around 190 names to find my country.

If these same designers took a painful two minutes out of their schedule to look at their site analytics, perhaps they might be able to add the United Kingdom to the hallowed top end of their list. I am willing to bet that the numbers who sign up to the sites would increase too.

Until then however, I am making a stand, and invite you to join me if you feel similarly annoyed. I have decided that for every form with a generic country listing, if the United Kingdom is not in the top 5, and could reasonably expect it to be there, then I will state my country as being Aruba. It is high up on the list naturally, and has a lovely onomatopoeic ring to it (isn't it the name of a particular type of sound effect?) Hopefully, it will start to create something of an anomaly if lots of people suddenly indicate their loyalty to a new sovereign state. Unlikely, but I live in hope!

Join me. Oh, and in case you didn't know, it is a small island in the Caribbean Sea.