There are two Eric Chengs in my life. The other is also a Taiwanese classical musician, but he looks quite different and lives in Los Angeles. Our parents even know each other, although we never met in person until both of us had finished university. I call him “Harvard Eric Cheng.”

I noticed today on my new Droid that there was only one entry for Eric Cheng, and that it was a mashup of my data with Harvard Eric Cheng’s data. The contact record had all of our phone numbers and email addresses, plus Harvard Eric Cheng’s Facebook profile image. Editing the record showed distinct identities — one from Gmail contacts (me) and one from Facebook (him), and I was eventually able to separate the two by changing my Gmail contact record’s name to “Eric H Cheng.”

Still, I can’t have another Eric Cheng on my mobile device because it causes too many problems. Ideally, I would be able to exclude Harvard Eric Cheng from Facebook’s Droid sync or intercept his record and rename him on his way to my phone, but I can’t find a way to do that (yet). So until then, I’ve had to de-friend him on Facebook, which seems wrong. I wrote him a message, apologizing, and hope I can connect with him again once this issue is resolved.