If it's not for the benefit of those who wanna reply but don't know what to call me, i really don't mind being addressed as such. As Juliet (or Shakespeare) put it, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet." Only that my name is not Rose, and i believe i smell sweeter than a rose.
Unlike many Chinese who don't really like their Chinese names, i love mine, the actual full name (that was given by my late father) as well as this nickname (which is one of the pet names my dad used to call me). Even when i was studying overseas or working in angmo MNC, i didn't see a need to get a Christian name for myself, unlike many others who did so. An ex-colleague had asked me before why i didn't get a Christian name so that it would be easier to be remembered and pronounced, especially by foreigners. Well, other than the fact that i'm not a Christian or Catholic, i've always stand by this: if you wanna know me, then you gotta know my name. You may not get it the first time, but sooner or later, you will remember. I don't see why people can remember those strange long Japanese names such as what Ayumi Hamasaki lah, Takuya Kimura lah, yet can't remember two or three simple syllabus?!
Anyway, i have absolutely nothing against those who gave themselves Christian names. It's just a matter of different perspectives.
I do know that many people don't have Chinese characters reader installed (even though it's very easy to do so with WinXP), and many more don't read Chinese at all. Why in the first place did i put my nickname in Chinese only then? Hmmm, i don't know really. Although i think my command of English is fairly well, Mandarin is still my mother tongue. I went through eleven years of Chinese education. I still read Chinese newspaper and sometime I blog in Chinese too. The Chinese language and culture are something that will forever be close to my heart.
In fact, as an alumni of a Chinese independent school, it may be ignominious for me to even speak in a mixture of Mandarin and English all the time. I couldn't help it really. It was English for the tertiary and quaternary education, and it's English in the workplace now. I hardly write in Chinese nowadays and a lot of times i find myself scrambling for the right Mandarin words to express myself and end up using English phrases instead.
It seems like many people who studied in Malaysian Chinese independent schools and later had tertiary education in English-speaking countries are facing the same problem as i do. We are torn in between the two languages and very few managed to master both. In the end we are good at neither and the English-educated people (read: Singaporeans) laugh at our English and our ex-schoolmates who studied in Taiwan scoff at our Chinese. And i'm not even gonna touch on the level of our Bahasa Malayu. Huh? Apa? Aku tak faham lah...
Well, so much for "east meets west"; i'd say it's more like "not east not west".
