who am I?

Yesterday I embarked on the next step of post-marital bliss...the name change. :-) For most of you this process is simply taking your marriage certificate to everyone who would care whether you're a Le or a Yee. To me this presented an opportunity to get "me" reorganized. You see, when my parents came to Canada they didn't know the traditions here and gave Immigration the Viet version of my name. This meant that I'm legally known as "Hoang Dang Kim Le". I'll bet not many of you knew that Kim is actually my second-middle name. :-) Through frustration in early grade school from people not being able to pronounce my first name, I adopted a "known as" name. So unofficially I slowly changed my name to Kim Hoang Dang Le. This presented a problem because I ended up with not one ID with the same sequence of names. I was only able to rearrage the sequence on some IDs but not others. On the bright side I might be spared identity theft because no one really knows what my "real" name is. On the other hand - I can never prove that I'm really ME! A real pain in the ass when you have to show someone your drivers licence and a credit card for ID...I always have to explain why the names are all jumbled up. Did you know that your DL is probably the most secure piece of document you own? Next to your birth certificate or citizenship card that is. It's more secure than a passport as you cannot use your passport as a primary piece of document to obtain a DL.

I took the day off to go downtown to Vital Statistics to pick up my fingerprint, criminal record check and immigration papers. I rolled my eyes as the clerk informed me that after I get the cops to fingerprint me, run the criminal records check and the notary to stamp the rest of the documents, I would have to return to the office with the package and pay another $200 processing fee. That almost made me want to say "forget it". :-) Hoang isn't such a bad first name afterall! Lol...but Kim Anh reminds me that it's better in the long run to have one official name that is on all documents. So at the end of the long process I will become "Kim Hoang Yee" in the eyes of the Government of Canada. I have an appointment with the notary next week.

I've discovered that some agencies are easy (just need the marriage certificate) to change your name while others are much more difficult (need tons of supporting documents).

Easy = work, credit cards, banks, carecard, passport (you can basically be whoever you want on your passport!)

Hard = citizenship card, drivers licence, SIN