Mathilde Chocolate Milk

In the year 1995 in the country of Denmark, 403 baby-girls were born and named Mathilde. One of them was me. While my father was busy watching Tour De France, my mother was giving birth to me. Luckily my grandmother was there too. Normally babies cry when they are born. I didn’t and therefore I was put in an incubator for a couple of days.

Meanwhile my parents had time to think about my name. My father had already thought of the perfect name for a baby girl, Mathilde. His favorite movie were, and still is, LÉON. LÉON is a movie about a blunted and yet sensitive hitman. One day a girl knocks on his door. She lives down the hall and her family has been killed by the Drug Enforcement Association. A beautiful friendship begins. Maybe you are thinking: “Why is that relevant to this blog post?”. Well, the young girl, BTW excellently portrayed by Natalie Portman, has the name Mathilda and she is the coolest girl ever. Therefore my father gave me that same name, but with a more Danish ending. So, that’s why I’m called Mathilde, though I’m not quite as cool as Mathilda, but we do have one thing in common. We both love Madonna and so does my mum.

In school I was always called ‘Mathilde chocolate milk’ because of a famous chocolate milk with the same name. In the first many years of school I didn’t like it, but then one day I actually became ‘Mathilde chocolate milk’. An advertising agency was looking for the voice of ‘Mathilde chocolate milk’ to do a computer game and that voice ended up being mine. Suddenly, being called ‘Mathilde chocolate milk’ was quite alright.

For the past 10 years people have mostly called me by my nickname ‘Tulle’. To tulle means to potter about doing nothing, but still do something. When you tuller around, you do nothing of particular importance, but the time is not wasted. That I’ve learnt. Doing nothing is meaningful and being bored can sometimes be meaningful too. In an everyday life of business and chaos, it’s important to sometimes do nothing. I’m still not the best at it, but I hope my time here in Munich will improve my tulle-skills.