Delta Mike Victor

After more than 4 years consecutively in the USA, I got my first experience with DMV.

It was not like the movie Zootopia. Excellent service but it took time to get my card.The paper I received when I applied said that I need to call or visit them after 60 days if I don't receive my card which was the case.

So after 60 days, I went back to their office and they said they can't do anything and I need to call a specific number to figure out why I didn't get my card. Something about immigration / validation.

When I moved to San Francisco 4 years ago, I called PG&E for the electricity bill and at the end, the billing name I got was a Spanish version of my name (... Sebastian … instead of Sebastien). Not a big deal but I want to fix this kind of misunderstanding in the future and this is why now, I am using the NATO Phonetic Alphabet!

NATO phonetic alphabet

Above is the NATO phonetic alphabet (common words to say).

If I want to say "Poutine" (over the phone, not at the restaurant), here are the words:

Papa, Oscar, Uniform, Tango, India, November, Echo

My talking is like the UDP protocol: I will skip or duplicate some words sometimes. I will even drop some words, inverse the word order and my speed talking is usually pretty fast. Still need some work to improve this part but I used the NATO phonetic alphabet when I called the DMV.

It worked well except I didn't use that for the numbers. I usually say the letter O for zero / 0 which is the same pattern as the song Jenny 867-5309 !!! The good thing is the guy on the phone told me that I should say Zero instead of "O" to avoid confusion which I did after that.

I got it!

If you are more curious, you can find more information about the NATO phonetic alphabet there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet

2 weeks after the phone call, I received my card (very different from the picture below) !!!

Thanks for reading,

JS.