When I was in my thirties, my father handed me my birth certificate, in case of need. I recognized our address in Rangoon, Burma, on Schwedagon Pagoda Road. I had heard that we lived down the street from the famous magnificent gold-leaf covered Schwedagon Pagoda. Rangoon is now called Yangon; Burma is called Myanmar by the current government.
art exhibits expo music musique events evenements show spectacle short film review courts métrages fashion photo street-life travel voyage stories movie cinema pop culture museum gallery Paris France fashion mode video
surreal art history critique post modern graffiti
Note : At this era, Burmese Birth Certificates are made in English Version and Burmese Alphabet Version
I said, Who are these people? He gave me the wrong certificate!
Aye Aye Yee. That is the name of the child on the document. Maung Maung Soe and Ma May Yee? Who are these people, listed under father and mother?
And where would he have found this certificate if it is not mine? Who and where are we?
Hah! It's as I suspected all along, I was adopted!
Seriously, though... All along, I never realized that we had completely different Burmese names. I am the youngest child in a large family. Nobody ever bothers to tell me anything.
No one has ever called me Aye Aye. No one calls me by my true original name, the Chinese name Soon Yee.
My father called me Ninui (youngest child) till I was seventeen years old. Everyone else called me Cindy, the American name I received from my parents at the age of three when we arrived in the United States.
When I lived in Thailand for several years, people called me Sin DEE, a Thai name, with the accent more on the second syllable. Now, living in Paris, I am called Sandy, as they can't really pronounce Cindy.
Recently, I was PACSed In Paris with my partner. PACS** is a form of civil union just a step below marriage in complexity, in which a couple who lives together can register their relationship with the city government. This permits foreigners to stay with their native loved ones without the complexities of getting married.
One of requirements of PACS is a recent copy of a birth certificate.
How can I get a recent copy of my birth records from an uncooperative government
and
even more pertinently, how can I get a piece of paper that even has my actual name on it, you know, the one listed on my passport, and driver's license?
My partner, Franck says… Don't worry, you can probably get a new birth certificate, with whatever name you want, in Burma for ten dollars…
I put aside my inquietudes, and got busy with the paperwork needed from numerous institutions…
as I am busy paying fifty dollars a piece for a couple documents requisitely notarized at the United States Embassy in Paris, I become aware that I could slip all of my names, Cindy Aye Aye Soon Yee Cho, onto these particular documents, and hope the officials and the notary at the Embassy would not notice…
The women at the Embassy, are cheerful, the American Notary and even the French official who checks over the document first.
I leave out the Yee from Aye Aye Yee, figuring that the Yee in Soon Yee ought to just about take care of that, and frankly, with two Aye's already present, two Yee's seem a little superfluous.
In the end, all my manipulations are unnecessary. They do not notice nor do they care. The French woman makes me re-write my document because i put brackets around one word, but she doesn't seem to mind the different names.
The women at the Embassy congratulate me.
"On what?", I said.
"On getting PACSed!"
And fortunately, the warm-hearted woman who finalizes our papers at the PACS Registration Office, the woman who is closest to a priest or judge as we are going to get… no comment on the ancient birth certificate, with the original rusty staples holding several pages together. No comment on the different names.
Felicitations! she said.
Note : At this era, Burmese Birth Certificates are made in English Version and Burmese Alphabet Version
PACS** : This is an interesting concept for Americans. The French have come up with the clever idea of a form of civil union to aide gay couples who cannot get married. In this way, gay couples can share in some of the benefits of being married, such as shared medical insurance. As it turns out, many straight couples avail themselves of this union, as discrimination only goes one-way, on a governmental level. Speaking strictly in terms of American governmental policies concerning civil unions and attendant benefits, the concept of the "gay Republicans" has always seemed illogical to me. I refuse to espouse any political views here; I am talking logic. Hello, what's up with that?