I am Flor..ence?!

What's in a name? Rather, what's with my name?

One day in office, while I was busy trying to be a diligent information systems analyst, I heard a voice from a distance...

"Florence...", the voice said. I thought it was just my imagination so I dismissed it. But I heard it again, "Florence?" Then I realized it was my local colleague on the other side of the office cubicle calling me. From then on, he has been consistently calling me Florence. I don't know why he pronounce my name as such, Florianne doesn't at all sound like Florence, does it? He must know how my name is spelled, he receives emails from me and sends emails to me. But I didn't mind because he's way too senior to be corrected anyway (hehehe =P ). Besides, it is my mother's name and I like her name anyway. Still, only the first four letters are the same, ya know.

Then one day, I heard another voice say "Florence". When I realized it was from another collegue (and he is one of those very few "cool" local colleagues) from the side of the cubicle behind my desk, I then thought he must have heard my name pronounced as such by my senior collegue so he has adopted the same.

However, the funny thing is that in church as well, when our head local catechist introduced me to my class, she introduced me as.......you guessed it right, "Florence"! So I realized, the mysterious pronouciation of my name must be because of the local language.

But here's the weirder thing, during our Department's Chinese New Year gathering, when the emcee called out "Florence" as one of the seven finalists for best dressed staff , although I did hesitate for a moment before standing up, I already had an almost sure feeling that it was me he was referring to. Well, I was half hoping that maybe there was really a Florence in our department although I know there isn't from our staff directory..but just to be sure though before I stood up and got up to the front. The finalists were then asked to walk around the place (imagine me trying to suppress my itch to do something silly like do a catwalk or make a pagent-like wave...just to make the event fun, ya know, ahihihi =P). Then the rest of the staff were asked to give their votes by dropping a toothpick in one of the seven bowls with each of the finalists' names. After the winners were announced and we started queueing to the buffet table did I take a peek at the names in the bowl and guess how was my name spelled...F-L-O-R-E-N-C-E !!! What the?!?!

So, the whole department now thinks my name is Florence and I am quite sure that name stuck in their minds (because I had the second most number of votes, tee hee =P ) but it will puzzle them that they couldn't find me in the staff directory.

But that is the mystery to my name and the locals, so c'mon, let's hear it one more time:

give me F-L-O-R-I-A-N-N-E ................what do we get?

FLORENCE!!! wuhu!