Mandarin Chinese

For some unknown reason people are always really surprised when they hear me speak Mandarin Chinese...they'd look shocked and then they'd compliment that I speak really good Mandarin, when in fact I'm really not confident about speaking in Mandarin.

I've only had about 4 years of learning Mandarin formally in class, but that was in primary school in Hong Kong (between 1996-2000; months before the handover they suddenly thought it was time for us to learn Mandarin) where we only had about an hour per week, and honestly no one was listening in class, let alone practicing or speaking it when we're at home.

Since coming to Britain I think I've actually learned more Mandarin than I had done in HK, mainly by watching Phoenix TV on Sky. And I guess the visits to Shanghai and Beijing (my Dad worked there for several years) helped a bit too.

I think people are surprised when they hear me speak Mandarin is because people from HK are supposed to be Mandarin-speaking-handicapped; some people are surprised just by the fact that I read/write Chinese alone...they think that since I've been in the UK for a decade I probably don't know how to read/write Chinese. Some of my parents' friends in HK are like "you can read Chinese? wow that's great!", and I'm like "duh of course I can". Okay I may not be able to write a business letter or an academic essay in Chinese (not that I don't have the vocabulary, it's just I don't know the format and style), but I can certainly read essays, novels and newspapers in (traditional) Chinese.

But the truth is I'm still not confident in speaking Mandarin, maybe because I so rarely speak it I'm never certain if I'm speaking it correctly or not. I really need to get back to practicing speaking Mandarin, and Japanese...and perhaps someday I'll go back to studying French and Spanish again (my GCSE levels only allow me to read menu at restaurants). It'd be nice to be able to become a polyglot :)

End of semester

Well actually the official end of semester is the end of January, after the exam fortnight. But I only have one oral exam in mid-January, and today's last day of classes so it could be seen as the end of semester I guess.

In the past few weeks things got quite eventful. Not socially though, apart from Seb's and Daan's visit to Manchester nothing much happened. I'm still working 20 hours a week at the shop, I'm still stressing about university and job applications.

On 5th December I took the JLPT N1, it was better than I had expected, so hopefully I had scraped a pass. Around that time I was feeling really really low, getting rejections after rejections in job applications. When Seb and Daan came it was so wonderful, just hanging out together, watching Friends, cooking and eating...

Around the same time Seb and Daan were here, I had 2 essay deadlines: dissertation plan and the essay for POLI30101 (Global Governance and International Organisation). The dissertation plan is only pass/fail so I wasn't too worried, but the global governance essay was quite stressful. It was due on Monday at 1400, I was writing it until 0400, then went to bed and got up at 0700 to continue writing it, and finished at around midday. I slept for 11 hours that night ;)

Then I thought after handing in the POLI30101 essay I would have an easier time, but obviously life doesn't always work that way. I went down to London on Wednesday for an interview, which was alright I guess but I'll have to wait till next week to see if I got through to the next round. Had another telephone interview this morning, after receiving 2 rejections... one of them was from Japan. This application to Japan had me stressing over taking numerical and verbal reasoning tests in Japanese (I just made random guesses); after the tests I got an e-mail saying that the next stage is a telephone interview, which made me think that I had got through and I started freaking out about having a telephone interview in Japanese (my business Japanese is non-existent), then this morning I got a rejection from them (obviously haven't passed the reasoning tests)...so I just freaked out over nothing.

Anyway the most upsetting is the other rejection I got today - from the Civil Service Fast Stream. The rejection from Uniqlo wasn't as upsetting as this - I've been wanting to join the FCO for a long, long time...guess I'll have to wait 'till next year, or maybe later...

Last night we had a nice, small gathering and Christmas dinner. We made Delia's roast chicken with lemon and tarragon, potatoes, tomato and mozzarella pizzas, Julia Child's tomates à la Provençale, Wen-chean's cheesecake brownies and the Hummingbird Bakery's pumpkin pie. Quite satisfying actually, the whole cooking and eating process. I guess that has become my main hobby, now that I'm not taking so many photographs since returning from Japan. I have, however, bought myself a long-desired Polaroid SLR 680 camera. I've been dreaming about this since I was 14 or 15, when I started to take up photography as a hobby. The auto-focus single lens reflex instant camera uses the Polaroid 600 series film, unlike the iconic SX-70 (which requires the less readily available SX-70 film), but then now that Polaroid is no longer manufacturing the film it doesn't make that much a difference eh? I need to save up money to buy the films (my finances right now are in an absolute mess), via either eBay (that's how I bought the camera) or The Impossible Project (started by some lovely people who decided to bring back the manufacture of the polaroid films).

This year we're spending Christmas in Manchester. Since Sam moved here last week my parents thought it might just be easier if we spend it here. My brother and I are responsible for the Christmas dinner though, and we'll have to start planning it soon! It's only one more week to go and we have to make sure we get all the shopping done before Christmas Eve... what's for dinner?