My friends know me by “different name” at different stage of my life… (i) hanyu pinyin name, (ii) dialect name, and (iii) English name… oh my god… so much so that I had to sign off with all three names when I mass-mailed my new hp number to the whole contact list. Hanyu pinyin & dialect names are the official ones… English name is the unofficial one. Should I or should I not make it official? Contemplated but procrastinated… and finally, I went down to the law firm to sign the deed poll to have an English name added as my first name. I don’t think this is anything new or surprising about… I still retain whatever name I have… I am still the same old me.
Legal change of name…
To reflect a noble me… (meaning of my English name according to one website).
It was a simple procedure: Submit my request via email, and then arrange a time to go down to the law firm to sign. Full-stop? Neh… The troublesome part is what comes thereafter. I still need to have my IC changed, need to inform this and that authorities, institution, banks, etc…
Not too long ago, I changed my blog’s name for free.
Now I change my name for a fee.
I mean there’s a standard template for the deed poll, so adding our name here and there and printing it probably will take less than five minutes. Signing in front of the lawyer definitely takes less than five minutes. Wow, less than 10 minutes of work earns them $80. Easy money.
Next step is to go and take a nice passport-sized photo (maybe I take my own… can take 1,001 and choose the nicest… ;p) and not screwed up my IC. Changing IC requires another $60… so there goes my $140 for a simple name change.