Forget me not

Until recently, I used to think that my Mandarin was passable in terms of verbal and writing skills. I never had problems with the language in schools and had pretty good grades to show off for.

But I was brought back to earth with a huge loud thump one day at work. It had come to a point where I had to write an email to a certain company in China. The contact person knows no English. The teleconversation earlier didn't go as planned because I was bumbling most of the time. The prep before the phone call didn't help a bit. I was embarrassed and ashamed that my business Chinese vocab was that inadequate.

So, I was determined to make up for my boo-boo by writing him a bloody powerful Chinese letter.

That one page letter took me 4 hours. 4 long hours in which I had to repeatedly look up in the business Chinese letter-writing books (which I had the foresight to buy when I was in Singapore) and in the net for English-Chinese translation websites for help. Not forgetting the hair-pulling when I couldn't remember how certain characters were written and their hanyu pingyin. My conclusion at the end of my mini-project drama is my knowledge of the language has deteriorated drastically over the years. So has my eyesight in the span of a morning. Too much intense pc screen staring.

I refused to let it be. Practise makes perfect. It's time to take matter into my own hands. It's time to讲华语 (speak Mandarin). I took whatever opportunities I had to communicate with Chinese nationals, be it spoken or written. One day I got this from one of them:

The Chinese: 你是那里人? (Where are you from?)
Hoonie: 我是新加坡华人。(I am a Singaporean Chinese.)
The Chinese: 你的普通话讲得很好!讲得比我还棒! (Your Mandarin is very good. Better than mine.)
Hoonie (laughing rather hysterically now): 是吗?!您过奖了!哈哈哈哈! (Really?! Thank you! Hahahaha!)