Tuesday, February 17th
The official "language of commerce" here in Singapore is English, but the next most widely spoken is Mandarin, due to the large Chinese population. 3M pays for me to learn the local language until I have “social proficiency”, so tody I had my first Mandarin lesson. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but the “class” turned out to be a 90 minute one-on-one session. My first instructor was a Chinese-born Singaporean named Wendy, and here’s what I learned today:
Learning Mandarin is hard.
After only an hour, I was so mentally exhausted I almost couldn’t see straight. I am okay at pronunciation, but really lacking in memorization skills. The basic greeting is “Ni hao ma?” (How are you?) and the answer is “Wo hen hao, xiexie” (I’m very well, thank you). I could get the first part okay, embarrassingly because one of the America’s Next Top Model seasons was in China and they said it all the time, but failed to remember the response again and again. Wendy was very sweet, though, and kept reminding me it was my first lesson and was doing just fine. I will feel better in a month where hopefully I will speak better than a three-year-old. My lessons are twice a week from now until the fall, and I get tired just thinking about it. But I want to be able to converse with the Vegetable Lady at the wet market, and not have to rely on finger pointing and hand waving to buy broccoli.
That night we were able to have dinner with Jonathan, who is the cousin of David’s sister’s husband and who was in town for the day on business. It was a good time, and I was able to forget the stress of the day in Laksa and sugarcane juice, all for $3. Yum.
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