Why I don't introduce myself as Jasmine

When my sisters and I were younger, we'll try to give ourselves a "Christian Name" which has no correlation with Christianity at all. I don't know, some people call it nickname, which makes no sense to me too, I thought nickname was something that people call you to make fun of you or a name that people really close to you calls you. Anyway, let's call it the angmoh name ok? Lol.

So my first angmoh name was actually Sandy, I forgot how I got the name. One of my sisters gave it to me I suppose. But I don't really like that name when I was younger, because it's so hard to make a good signature out of it! I'm bad with writings. It lacked a bit of character in it, and apparently I like mature names back then. 

Because later I named myself:

1) Emma (has nothing to do with Emma Watson though, she wasn't famous yet) 

2) Helen (because it's easy to sign)

Perhaps there was a few other name as well, but I don't know, I changed it about every 2 days or so, so I don't really keep track of it. But eventually how I ended up with the name Jasmine was because I was looking through one of those picture dictionary we all have one as a kid and I wanted to have a name of a flower. Crossing off names like Bougainvillea and Buttercup, eventually I settled with Jasmine because I like the smell of Jasmine (haha what a pure minded person I was!).

But once I introduced myself as Jasmine, someone asked me if I followed the name of my transferred standard 1 best friend who was named Jasmine as well. To be honest, I totally forgot about that friend and I was confused for a while because I don't remember knowing any friend called Jasmine (which was the reason I chose that name in the first place. Kids, we hate being called a copy cat). 

Anyway, nobody ever called me Jasmine after I've introduced my new angmoh name since everyone was already comfortable calling me 婉婷. Eventually I got a nice signature out of the name Jasmine too, but I ended up signing my Chinese name nowadays anyway. Sigh~ of all the trouble. 

However, where were I go, I always ended up going into a new crowd with someone called Jasmine as well (there's a girl in my secondary school named Jasmine Tan, then another Jasmine Tan during my form 6). The thing is that I can't be compete for the name because they were legit being called Jasmine for all their life. So I'm called my Chinese name through out my life, even my Malay friends calls me with that Chinese tone. Ah~ I have such cute friends. 

I thought when I go into university I would finally be able to use my name, but no! -.- My *former* roommate happens to be my coursemate and were also called Jasmine. She beat me to that name because she introduced herself first in the class, AS JASMINE, so yea, Wan Teng it is then. *sob*

However it seems that for workplace though, people prefers calling each other angmoh names like these. Of all my working experience, I think none of them actually calls me Wan Teng, but Jasmine. Sometimes I don't even respond because it didn't register to me that they are calling MY NAME. 

But I guess that's cool too. Like I have a code name for work. 

Tan, Jasmine Tan. 

LOL. Well I guess it's better than my dad's, he was the only few Chinese in his office and everyone calls him Tan (which makes me to pantang if people calls me Tan).