Changing Your Name in Australia

I changed my legal name late last year. This explains how I did it and how much it cost.

What	Who	How	How much
State Government	Births, Deaths and Marriages	by mail	$84.60
Driver Licence	VicRoads	in person	free
Bank	(confidential)	in person	free
University	Monash University	in person	$60.00
Voting	Australian Electoral Commission	by mail	free
Mobile Phone	3 Mobile	in person	free
Internet	iiNet	internet	free
Phone	Telstra	by mail	free
Roadside Assistance	RACV	in person	free
Car Insurance	AAMI	in person	free
House Insurance	RACV	in person	free
Health Insurance	Australian Unity	by fax	free
Passport	Passports Australia	in person	$200.00 (passport) + $12.00 (photos)
Superannuation	Colonial First State	by mail	free
Total			$356.60

It was great that VicRoads, the banks, and RACV let me change my details and issued new cards free of charge.

This was more than countered by needing a new passport, and by uni charging a ridiculous fee of $60 for a "replacement card", which I needed to attend exams.

Of course, I also had to update my details with my magazines, charities, political organizations, and various web sites.

PayPal in particular was annoying. Despite faxing my change of name form three times, and calling them and emailing them several times over the course of six months, they did not update my account. An email to their complaints department also went unanswered. I ended up signing up for a new account. My previous donations are shown under my old name.

Also note that most companies require a certified copy of a change of name certificate, even those who never required proof of identity when first signing up! (Logically, those were things like phone accounts where a change of name without proof of identity could be used to transfer debt to another person.)

Most automatic credit card payments continued to work under my old name. I've updated them just in case.

So if memory serves correctly, it cost $356 and lots of time.

All in all, it's only worth it if you really care enuff to change your name!

(It's probably not fair to include the full $200 for the passport, since my new passport is valid for the next ten years, but my old one was only valid for about three, so the effective cost was about $60, bringing the total down to about $210.)

Name Change

I changed my name legally from Michael Wardle to Mikel Ward late last year. This blog tells you why.

I've long had an interest in spelling.

At primary school, there were three Michaels in my class. Two were spelled the conventional way, and the other was spelled Micheal. Often peeple would spell my name Micheal, indeed it happened just today! I used to be angry, but I realized the spelling was strange, and it's understandable for peeple to get it wrong.

When I was 14, I went to Austria on a student exchange. I learned German, and was enamored by the spelling, which seemed much easier and more logical than English spelling.

In German you can read a word and know how it's said. To understand English spelling, you either need to learn English, French, German, and a heap of exceptions, or you just learn the pronunciation and spelling of each word as a symbol in isolation, more like Chinese. Words like Wednesday, comb, indict, friend, tongue, through, and business aren't said the way they're spelled. Proper names are even worse. Leicester, Edinburgh, Thames, and indeed Michael are totally confusing!

When I came back, I started experimenting with different spellings of my name in private. The one spelling I was particularly fond of was Mīkl (the bar, properly called a macron, above the i means it's a long "igh", rather than a short "i"). Since that letter doesn't appear on most computers, I wrote it Miikl or Mykl. I tried this on my name badge when helping mum and dad out in their first Subway store. It didn't go down too well! They thought customers wouldn't know how to pronounce it, so I should just write "Michael".

In my current job, I spend a considerable amount of time on the phone. When I spelt my name and email address over the phone, most people knew how to spell Michael, but most peeple couldn't figure out Wardle.

This is also understandable, since a literal spelling would be Wordl. Indeed, my ex-girlfrend's mum Pam spelled it something like that (I think she spelled it Wordle).

First, the "ar" in "war" should rhyme with "car", but it doesn't. There's a rule nobody knows about that the sound of an "a" changes if it follows a "w".

Second, the "le" has a silent "e" on the end, since words ending in an "l" sound used to be spelled with a silent "e" (like in candle).

(Did you know that no word ends in "v"? The same thing happened: historically the Norman English added an "e" because they didn't like the look of a word ending in "v", which is the reason for "love" and "live" rather than "luv" and "liv".)

I discussed this with my auntie Christine who said she often gives her surname as "Ward" over the phone to avoid having to spell it.

I discussed it with my family, who said some other family members had changed the spelling of the family name, but usually to "Wardell".

I read up on our family history, and apparently the name "Wardle" came from either "Wardhill" in Lancashire in England's North West, meaning person who looks after the hill, or "Weardale" from Tyneside and Wearside in England's North East, meaning [from the] valley of the river Wear. I reasoned that since "Wardle" was a contraction of either of those, and essentially a corruption by those too lazy to spell their name in full, and since "Wardell" was still likely to be confused and misspelled, I would go one step further and make it "Ward", which surely most peeple knew how to spell!

I read several books on spelling reform. The one that made most sense was Valerie Yule's paper called "International English Spelling", that showed that English spelling could be made shorter and simpler, yet still quite familiar, by using accented vowels, for instance "indict" would become "indìt", unambiguously showing the "i" is long. That would make the spelling of my name "Mìkl". The main problem with this proposal was the accented letters were hard to type. (I've since developed a keyboard layout for Windows that lets you press right Alt and a vowel to get an accute accent, e.g. í. I find this very handy.)

Another idea is the cut spelling proposal, which basically says you just drop silent letters. I tossed up the idea "Mical", and started using it informally. I used that spelling when entering a competition to win tickets to the soccer World Cup and ended up winning! Not a bad omen if you believe in that sort of thing. :-)

In Germany, I stayed with several distant relatives (second uncles and third cousins). The first family I stayed with was the Lepple family. They were great hosts. One night, I asked them to draw a family tree for me. They wrote my name as "Mikel". I loved the idea.

When I got back, I discussed the idea with frends, who also mostly suggested "Mikel", the logic being it's like "Mike" with an "l" at the end. (Ben suggested "Mycal"!) I tried a few different computer tools to figure out how peeple thought it would be pronounced, and most programs thought "Mikel" would be said "Mike-l", but "Mical" would be said "Mick-l". Another point in favor of Mikel.

I was also somewhat vain. I wanted my own .com address, and both michaelwardle.com and michaelward.com were taken. A whois search showed that mikelward.com was available, so I thought "why not!?".

I bought mikelward.com, and lodged a change of name application with the Victorian births, deaths, and marriages registrar.

My next post will explain the steps I had to take to change my name.

Going Back to Uni

A few weeks ago Katie asked me if there was any way to finish uni this semester.

I thought I had to do five units, with the usual full-time load being four. Knowing I had to do two of the most difficult units, programming languages and project, I figured it would be better to not overload. This would have meant I would graduate at the end of 2008 if I went part-time or by the middle of 2008 if I went full-time.

I contacted uni to confirm this, who advised I only needed to complete four units, meaning I could finish by the end of this year if I went full-time. As I'd been studying part-time since 2000 (first the Certificate of Software Engineering at Melbourne University, then the Bachelor of Computer Science at Monash), it felt well and truly time to finish it off.

I discussed it with Eileen at work who said I could take leave without pay.

I asked uni which electives I could take, and discovered some of the subjects I'd originally planned to take were no longer allowed. Those included data communications (CSE3318) and computer architecture (CSE3324). I would also have been interested to take LISP programming (CSE3394), but that hasn't been offered for a few years.

I enrolled in programming languages (CSE3322), computer industry (CSE3323), computer graphics (CSE3313) and project (CSE3301) as the only realistic way to finish my studies at the end of this year. It seemed like the options would only be less if I waited until next year (in which case my main subject choices were image processing and project, but the faculty couldn't guarantee those subjects would be offered next year). It was a bit disappointing considering they were part of my course plan when I enrolled in 2004, but I guess that's the downside of doing uni part-time.

My time table looks like being Monday thru Thursday. I'll try to sign up to volunteer at Wholefoods when I have a free hour or two over lunch on one of those days.

As for work, I've been told I'll be able to work on projects when I get back, rather than the support work I've mostly been doing since going part-time at the start of this year. Hopefully it will work out and I'll find something challenging and interesting, but that will depend on whether they find somebody to replace me doing the support work.

I've already purchased my text books (the main one being "Elements of ML Programming" by Ullman and "Compilers" by Aho) and can't wait for the social life!

Software Engineering Exam

I had my Software Engineering (CSE3308) exam this morning.

I left around 8.30am to ensure I got there on time. Ended up parking a few blocks away from the racecourse on Balaclava Road as I figured a walk would be a good idea to relax and clear my mind. It also helped that parking there was free, while the uni were charging $6 to park at the exam venue.

The exam was easier than expected. There was a fairly standard question on object-oriented design, one on data-flow diagrams, one on entity-relationship diagrams, one on process specifications, and a few on various aspects quality. The only thing that surprised me was there was no question about user interfaces. Still, that was fine, since that part of the course focussed too much on regurgitating words from lecture slides (e.g. sovereign versus transient versus parisitic) rather than designing a good user interface (a la Joel Spolsky and Jakob Nielsen).

I finished all the questions in about two hours, so I had an hour to spare. I went over my answers, but decided I couldn't add any more, so I left early.

I decided to treat myself and get the keyboard I had been wanting for a while. A Yamaha PSR-E303. It's a fairly cheap portable electronic piano keyboard ($280 Australian) that's touch sensitive (i.e. the harder you press, the louder the notes are) and sounds like a piano.

When I go shopping for music (which isn't nearly as often as I'd like), I usually go to Allan's Music in Kew. Since my brother Chris lives nearby in Hawthorn, I decided to drop in on him first.

We had a chat about life, love, the universe, and everything, and went to get lunch at Grill'd, a gourmet hamburger shop on Glenferrie Road. I had the Garden Vegetable burger, which tasted great. Chris had the Hot Mama! Mmm...

Ended up at Allan's around 4.30pm. Had a quick look at a Casio for the same price, but decided to get the Yamaha because it sounded more like a piano. Including a stand and a power adapter, it cost $350.

I got home around 5.15 and had a bit of a play. The main music I'd been wanting to play was some Whitlams song books I bought at their gig a few months back at the Corner Hotel. Most peeple know their songs from Eternal Nightcap, such as No Aphrodisiac, but I think their stuff off Torch the Moon (Royal in the Afternoon, I Will Not Go Quietly, Ease of the Midnight Visit) is even better piano music. Had a bit of a play and realized I desperately needed practice!

Jodie noticed the keyboard and decided she needed to lend me her headphones. Don't think I was playing too loudly, but she's studying for her pilot's license, and it's only fair to try not to bother her.

Megan also noticed the keyboard. I expect it won't be too long until we're fighting over who gets to play it! :-)

Voluntary Vegetarianism

I started back at Monash Uni last week.

On Wensday, there was an orientation carnival, with most of the clubs and societies setting up stalls.

I signed up for several language and political clubs, including the German Club, the Spanish and Latin American Club, the Labor Club, and the Amnesty Club. (The Monash IT Society and The Monash Greens were noticeably absent.)

There was also a stall for a vegetarian restaurant on campus called Wholefoods. The idea is to volunteer in the kitchen for an hour and get a free meal. This was a revelation to me, as I'd been at Monash for two years, and never knew about Wholefoods. (It's upstairs in the campus centre.)

As I'd scored 3.5 planets on the Ecological Footprint Calculator, eating more vegetarian meals seemed like a good idea, so I signed up and went along to the training session later that day. Knowing I'd be at uni on Mondays, I signed up to do lunch on Mondays.

This week I helped out in the kitchen for two hours. When I started at 12 o'clock, there was already a long line of people waiting for us to start serving. I started serving people, but soon some more staff appeared, so I spent most of the time going back and forth between the kitchen and the front counter topping up the bain-maries.

I met some really great people, including Jay and Lance, who had been working at Wholefoods for ten years. Also met Ollie Bennett, who I knew from The Greens back in 2001, and served Jeremy and Alia who I met on the training.

When I did serve meals, it was really good. The people I served were all quite frendly, and I got a couple of big smiles and compliments. I think we must have served nearly 200 people! :-)

The other highlight was trying the food. I stopped around two o'clock to grab lunch, and had a bit of the spaghetti napolitana and a bit of the dahl. The spaghetti was nice, rather like spaghetti bolognese without the meat, but the dahl was surprisingly good.

I am now looking for any good dahl recipes, so if you know any, please let me know!