Recently I have been receiving letters which reached me very late because they were mis-sent to another country. So I thought that I should touch on this problem in this blog. Hopefully it will guide non-Asian citizen an idea where Singapore is. It is a fact that Singapore is just a dot on the world map and many people in US or other Europeon countries. A brief idea of our location will be helpful especially for internet marketeers. Actually, if they follow the address given exactly there will not be this problem. I suspect someone in the despatch department was trying to be too smart thinking they know the Geography well. I get mail that change my address to XXX, Thailand or XXX Malaysia or XXX China. Singapore is a Republic city situated at the Southern tip of Malaysia but it is an independent city and not under any country. We are known as Republic of Singapore. It far from Thailand or China. They probably think that all Chinese must be in China. I have always given my address as XXX, Singapore. Another confusion is the way we write our names. Westerners' names start with "first name, middle name and last name". The last name is the surname or father's name or family name. Chinese names star t with last name (surname) followed by the person's name (usually two words) eg. Tan (surname) followed by Ah Teck ( person's name). However, the English educated usually add a Western name or Christian name ( if they are Christians) and this is usually written in front of the surname, in the above eg it could be John Tan Ah Teck. Knowing the Western way of naming I usually give my own name first with my surname at the end. It can be quite confusing to a non-Chinese because Chinese people know what names are surnames. These are actually clan family names , ie the Tan family, the Wong family or the Lim family, and so on. I hope this will help Western people understand the Asians better.

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