_No relation to the fabulous essay in Psychology Today called Life After Infidelity (read it, you may learn many things about yourself.. like I did!)_
# Has been all about waking up, seeing, and wondering if I slept with my contact lenses on.
# Is getting competitive: I wondered this morning if I was flirting with the ophthalmologist so that she’d mark me as 6/4.5, instead of _just_ 6/6. It didn’t work. I’m _only_ 6/6.
# I can’t run until this Friday, lest my newly created cornea flap.. well, flaps. It’s making me depressed.
# Is every bit as awesome, though it’s been days.
In non-visual news, my new household is a melting pot of various languages. Mandarin, Teochew, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Thai, English. All languages I understand, in varying degrees (except Shanghainese). I keep thinking in several languages and occasionally confusing myself. Like: _wa gai hua grr_ bu da hao, tai kok wa _nit noy_. Then I type in English at the same time while processing thoughts in a few languages, try to IM in English at the same time and end up telling “somebody”:http://tr.openmonkey.com/ about how “I have trouble communicating with my _husbands_”, though I mean “housemates”, and I wonder if that’s because I keep hearing my Chinese housemates practising English for their SATS and I’ve started typing the way they speak.
A typical scenario.
Chinese student A: (practising presentation in English, to prep for SMU life) “What is the word first come to mind starting with “L” you think of?”
Me: “What?”
Chinese student A: “What is the word first come to mind starting with “L” you think of?”
Me: “What?”
Chinese student A: (switching to Mandarin, thinking it’d help) “In the English language, what is the first vocabulary you think of starting with the letter L?”
Me: (switching awkwardly to Mandarin, our positions in linguistic superiority switching too) “Sorry.. that word… “vocabulary”. Sorry I do not know what “vocabulary” means.”
Chinese student A: (still in Mandarin) “In the English language, what is the word starting with L that you first think of?”
Me: (finally grokking it) “Oh.”
Luckily for me they were more interested in how I’d rephrase that sentence, rather than what I was going to say as the first “L word” I can think of. When we start having dinner together it is going to be interesting. In a week I’ve already talked about aunts marrying uncles (linguistically awkward: in Mandarin it has to be the uncle “qu lao po”, not “jia” as in marrying into), and talked about Chinese cities which apparently only exist in my head (because of my pronunciation, and inadequacies in Chinese geography). It’s when I’m yabbering away in Teochew on the phone, trying to pick up what the two of them are discussing in Shanghainese, then the Cantonese girl and I kill the Mandarin language (okay, more of me), while I try to decipher the Thai being spoken, and I walk to my window and want to scream Hindi vulgarities at my neighbours screaming in Hindi across the block from each other, and suddenly I forget where I am. Suddenly homesick for Mother India, especially when I’d give anything to be “in Allahabad right now”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/slideshow/page/0,,1991045,00.html — and I could be, if I wanted to (and be paid obscenely for it). But there’s something called an undergraduate education to be completed in lightning speed so I can get the hell out.
possibly related
Kawanku /
The Truth About Hostel Life /
Festivities /
Short Notes /
Conquer the Chinese Language, Conquer the World /
Life After Visual Acuity
_No relation to the fabulous essay in Psychology Today called Life After Infidelity (read it, you may learn many things about yourself.. like I did!)_
# Has been all about waking up, seeing, and wondering if I slept with my contact lenses on.
# Is getting competitive: I wondered this morning if I was flirting with the ophthalmologist so that she’d mark me as 6/4.5, instead of _just_ 6/6. It didn’t work. I’m _only_ 6/6.
# I can’t run until this Friday, lest my newly created cornea flap.. well, flaps. It’s making me depressed.
# Is every bit as awesome, though it’s been days.
In non-visual news, my new household is a melting pot of various languages. Mandarin, Teochew, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Thai, English. All languages I understand, in varying degrees (except Shanghainese). I keep thinking in several languages and occasionally confusing myself. Like: _wa gai hua grr_ bu da hao, tai kok wa _nit noy_. Then I type in English at the same time while processing thoughts in a few languages, try to IM in English at the same time and end up telling “somebody”:http://tr.openmonkey.com/ about how “I have trouble communicating with my _husbands_”, though I mean “housemates”, and I wonder if that’s because I keep hearing my Chinese housemates practising English for their SATS and I’ve started typing the way they speak.
A typical scenario.
Chinese student A: (practising presentation in English, to prep for SMU life) “What is the word first come to mind starting with “L” you think of?”
Me: “What?”
Chinese student A: “What is the word first come to mind starting with “L” you think of?”
Me: “What?”
Chinese student A: (switching to Mandarin, thinking it’d help) “In the English language, what is the first vocabulary you think of starting with the letter L?”
Me: (switching awkwardly to Mandarin, our positions in linguistic superiority switching too) “Sorry.. that word… “vocabulary”. Sorry I do not know what “vocabulary” means.”
Chinese student A: (still in Mandarin) “In the English language, what is the word starting with L that you first think of?”
Me: (finally grokking it) “Oh.”
Luckily for me they were more interested in how I’d rephrase that sentence, rather than what I was going to say as the first “L word” I can think of. When we start having dinner together it is going to be interesting. In a week I’ve already talked about aunts marrying uncles (linguistically awkward: in Mandarin it has to be the uncle “qu lao po”, not “jia” as in marrying into), and talked about Chinese cities which apparently only exist in my head (because of my pronunciation, and inadequacies in Chinese geography). It’s when I’m yabbering away in Teochew on the phone, trying to pick up what the two of them are discussing in Shanghainese, then the Cantonese girl and I kill the Mandarin language (okay, more of me), while I try to decipher the Thai being spoken, and I walk to my window and want to scream Hindi vulgarities at my neighbours screaming in Hindi across the block from each other, and suddenly I forget where I am. Suddenly homesick for Mother India, especially when I’d give anything to be “in Allahabad right now”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/slideshow/page/0,,1991045,00.html — and I could be, if I wanted to (and be paid obscenely for it). But there’s something called an undergraduate education to be completed in lightning speed so I can get the hell out.
possibly related
Kawanku / The Truth About Hostel Life / Festivities / Short Notes / Conquer the Chinese Language, Conquer the World /