WE SPEAK: Speak Chinese Week.

In International Economics class today, I made a resolution.

Let's see how far I can get writing my notes in Chinese.

Now, I take every pride in my Chinese skills...or lack thereof. I'll have you know, when I was in Primary 3, I won the second prize in some school HanyuPinyin competition, and I still have the giganto gleaming silver trophy sitting pretty in my room. In fact, I take the pains to clean it once every few months, and I am proud to say that I can still see my reflection on the trophy.

Of course, the main reason why that peculiar trophy is still in my possession is because I do not exactly have any other trophies to put up. I've got only ONE other trophy, and it's considerably smaller in size...though still silver.

It was from coming in second in a three-legged race in Primary 3.

Out of all the other Primary 3 students, a big feat back in those days I tell ya!

I remember when I was younger, there was a shelf in my house where my parents lined up all the trophies or medals of us kids. My dear siblings had trophies from...tennis or essay competitions or whatnot.

In Primary 3, I decided to put up my three-legged race trophy next to all the rest.

The trophy was actually very pretty, with the KCP school crest and things like that...until you move closer and read the anticlimatic words "Silver -- Three-legged race novelty event".

I also won some Chinese handwriting competition in primary school...I'm not entirely sure why KCP was always having competitions like that, and why I ended up participating in them, but I did anyway, and I have some accolades under my belt that I suppose I should be very pleased about.

I think that's where my talent in the Chinese language stops, sad to say.

I don't think I was always horrible in Chinese. I used to like memorizing Tang Shis/Poems and pretending I was living in a cave in the Chinese mountains and I had no food and no water and all I could do was read out poems everyday to my multitude of goats and chickens and birds.

I was a strange child.

The parents did Malay in school, and they're considerably better with Malay than Chinese. The sad thing is, I can't speak Malay either! Except ungrammatical Malay taught by Minah Izzah. And I know how to say things like "tiga people!" when I go to a Malay food stall and they ask me how many people there are...yeah I have to refine my spoken Malay.

I will say that I never disliked Chinese, I just didn't have anyone to speak it to. If I spoke it to my dad, he'd try really hard but he always ends up talking about the same things because his Chinese is pretty limited. I remember asking him for the time in Chinese once and he said "Qi1 dian3 (seven o' clock)". I asked him again a while later and it was still "Qi1 dian3". If I asked him 45 minutes from then, it'll probably still be "Qi1 dian3".

My mom is considerably better, but she can't really read Chinese words. So sometimes we'd try watching Channel 8 and there'd be the emergency newsbar in Chinese on that channel and she'd always ask me to translate it...and I don't do a good job of it so I always end up telling her the wrong news and getting her all alarmed for no reason.

My dear siblings sound strange when they speak Chinese. It just sounds like they're trying to communicate with extraterrestial creatures. Half the time, we don't know what each of us are talking about, so we abandon speaking in Chinese. We'd probably be more successful with morse code.

And most of my dear good friends aren't even Chinese to begin with. In this case, English is always the best way to communicate in my life.

But you know what? I somehow ended up doing Higher Chinese in primary school, because I wanted to copy my dear sibling. It wasn't too bad because I was being tutored like three times a week in Chinese, but when I got into secondary school, it just...fell.

I never did pay attention in Chinese class. That is, to be honest, through no fault of others. Only maybe Gladys Chung. Hahahaha. We sat next to each other in class, and we did stupid things like change song lyrics into Chinese. At that time, Gladys really liked the song "Eternal Flame", so we decided to translate it into Chinese and sing it in class...

It got confiscated.

Now, I don't know what the teacher was so mad about. If she could just see my potential as a musician, or a professional translator...

And then I somehow managed an A2 for the O-levels, but was still made to do a year of Chinese in jc. Which is pretty senseless to be honest. I wouldn't have minded if there was an actual syllabus and if we did actual things in class, but the only things I seem to remember of me in Chinese class in jc is:

1) "Doing worksheets", but really playing the air guitar with Crazy Solly. Got caught by the teacher but he was too resigned to do anything about us.

2) "Doing worksheets", but really busy deciphering song lyrics with Fart.

3) "Doing worksheets", but really busy making crazy lists with Chelsea.

4) 'Doing worksheets", but really looking at the injured bird that Hsin Ching brought into class in a shoebox one day. Its beak kept poking out of the shoebox while the teacher was talking, and just to let you know it's not the easiest of things to prod a bird's beak back into a shoebox.

5) "Doing worksheets", but really busy looking at Hsin Ching, who this time, decided to bring mangoes to class. Mangoes that she had picked from the ground in our school yard. Some had worms.

6) "Doing worksheets", but really busy coming up with crazy games like the "Who will get married first in the class?" game or the "What is his/her future occupation?" game.

7) Not doing worksheets, because other than that I would have skipped the classes. Teacher actually came up to me one day and asked, "You've got lots of medical problems, eh?"

Sorry, teach.

That's why today, I decided to do something I've never done before. Write my notes in Chinese.

No easy feat, to be honest.

And to tell you the truth, I really don't understand what I've written at all.

I mean, economics is bad enough in English.

Bring on Chinese and my world gets even more complicated.

Now, based on the feedback I've gotten from some of my friends who have seen this...three-quarts of my notes make no sense :(.

And I have not cured the drawing incessantly problem I have when I am bored. That is a picture of how my eraser looks like, and the picture next to it is...I dunno, my professor was talking about some investment thing.

I also decided to write in detail what happened during our end-of-the-session discussion. The topic was "Why is forecasting exchange rates so difficult?"

I wasn't really bothering to follow in English.

Let alone Chinese.

But I got some of it down.

Joyce, who was sitting next to me, had her laptop on so we decided to check out the online translators. We decided to translate numerous quotes and important phrases into different languages, to prepare us for when we become global travellers in the future.

1) "Irrational" into Chinese and French

2) "Hi, my name is Pearlyn" into Spanish and Greek

3) "I am falling asleep in class" into Spanish, French, Korean, and Swedish

4) "Look, there's a bear!" into Korean, German, and French

As you can see, I'm already preparing for when I go on exchange sometime in the future.

Adrian Gonzalez is STILL not playing for Getafe. I've not checked to see if he's injured or what, but how can he be injured without even playing?

Then again, he's too tall for his own good, and he looks a bit clumsy sometimes. I wouldn't be surprised if he broke his toe after walking into a rocking chair.

Poor Adrian has been looking so sad lately, though he was born looking sad. But just look.