English

Too soon fri has turned into sat morning. In approximately 8 hours,I'll be on my way to Kuantan. My purpose? To sell the tickets for UMP's CNY '10 dinner tickets. So much for a free saturday.

I think my coursemate went home. Lucky for that person. I misssss home too,sometimes. But I can still cope with it. I think the thing I missed most are my english speaking friends. Don't get me wrong here. The friends I have met are great and wonderful. They are part of the backbones supporting me,no doubt bout that.

Too bad,too few of them speak real english.

And I missed the bunch of them who did back home.

I just can't deny that.

Try as much as I could( I really try to put in an effort,mind you.) I just cannot and I really mean it, get used to speaking mandarin the whole time. I'm a banana but the standard of my mandarin is still enough to get my point across. Perhaps there are time,actually countless times where I've been the laughing stock but I still can manage a proper conversation. I feel odd speaking mandarin but I don't have a choice,do I?

This seems to be the situation where I'm only left with two choices. One,speak mandarin no matter how funny I felt and I'll be rewarded with lots of friends. Two,remain a total banana and not speak a single mandarin. I'll have to be a 'katak di bawah tempurung' and live in my own world then. Looking at those two options,I'll still choose number 1.

Then again,my english isn't perfect either. It is far from perfect. Only people here will think that my english is good. I get this feeling that my english have deteriorated due to frequent and loong contact with people who speak mandarin their whole life.

Most of the time,they do direct translations from mandarin to english. Most of the time,the translation turns out funny too. Sometimes,I have to translate their english back into mandarin to fully understand a sentence. Just fancy,a direct translation of "he can't let go of her" in mandarin can be "he can't put her down". I'm not being mean,just trying to show that there is a difference in the structure of sentences in different languages.

I understand that these people (actually my great friends) have been chinese educated. They cannot be blame for their lack of proficiency in the language they have not used much. I'm just trying to make my point that this is one of the things I have to get use to being here. Maybe in 4 years time,I'll be able to write chinese characters too. =)