Sunday.

Mugged, and wrote my first assignment, for the group. At first, I wrote using such complicated grammar and words, that I was sure, non of my group mates would understand what I wrote. So I changed to vocab and words, simpler, for them, for the teacher, and for better grades. (if its too hard to read, i'll surely fetch a bad grade).

I managed to rush the assignment b4 8pm, and watching Man U vs West Ham on the internet (Good!). Then I decided to go to amatoren cos they screen movie there every sunday 8pm, and some friends told me I'd be there. I managed to get out there on just 1 clutch now :). But I was late, like 820pm I reached there, and when I reached there, there was no seat. I saw Matteo nearby, tapped him. He saw me and then I didnt expect him to stand up, and gave up his seat for me. I was expecting more like "is there another seat?" cos I came late, and everywhere is dark and expected him to know where the empty (bad view) seats were. But he was so nice. The movie was GORY. People keep shooting one another, and at the end, the guy chopped his mate into pieces and put it into a machine to dice it into blood. Yucks. And full of foul language and basically, I didnt understand why these europeans find this show funny. Well, there were like some weird indirect jokes which I dont get much of it.

Anyway. Realised that the 4 girls in my floor were there. The german, norwegian, czech and japanese - thus, I realised that they lived here for 6 months already and that I will never be as close to them and join them for activities, which further makes me feel less sad moving house.

After the movie, I went to talk to Valentina, Carmen, Matteo, and a weird asian girl was there. Being Asians, us, we werent that friendly, so we talked in a group and still never introduced. Val and Matt left. Finally, I had enough, so I broke the weirdness and introduced myself. I managed to guess that she's Japanese. Carmen commented: "Yea, Im beginning to see a little difference between Chinese and Japanese"
Which reminds me and I told the Jap girl, Moe (pronounced as mo-e, like wall-e)
that in Singapore, we tell the difference between a China Chinese, Singapore Chinese, and Indonesian Chinese, just by the looks and its quite accurate.
She cldnt believe me. Yes we can. We do look slightly different.
It amaze me how some people think all Chinese come from China and look like that.

Curiously, Mo-e heard about Singlish and wanted to learn. Carmen, never heard of it, and was really curious. It really feels good you see them trying so hard to pronounce words like "Shiok, Kena" etc. Carmen even formed a phrase "Shiok lah!" and asked me "is that correct?"
Yes it is. :).
I pondered upon Why (not how) Singlish was formed. And so I explained to them:
"Well, Singaporeans are lazy speakers. We find English grammar too much. So we like to omit some stuff. Like 'what do you want', we say 'what u want' / 'where are you going', we say 'where u going'. etc. And some words that we form/borrow, is because English doesnt have the word or you need a longer sentence to express it in english. Like "Shiok" - it means something feels so great. "Kena" - means something bad happens to you. You just need to say "I Kena" and everyone knows something bad happened to you."
Carmen: "John, so how many spoken lang can you do?"
Me: "Well. Spoken, if you count dialect, its 3. I can speak a Chinese dialect - teochew"
C: "is it v different from Chinese?"
Me: "the grammar's the same, but the vocab is completely different"
C: "What do you speak with ur friends in Sg? How did you learn those?"
Me: "I speak english w my friends. I actually learn Chinese, Eng, and teochew together. Cos my parents can speak Chinese, my Aunt and Uncles speak english, my grandmother can only speak teochew. I lived with all of them as a kid."
C: "Why?"
Me: "Well, if my history isnt wrong, we gained independence in 1965. So my parents are older than my country. Before independence, they can choose between English or Chinese education. My granny decided that half her children will be english educated and the other half chinese educated. Then after independence, everything starts to become english"
C: "oh. and so, how common is this dialect?"
Me: "I think only the granny generation speaks it"
C: "So its dying?"
Me: "Yea. I realised that. Well and actually, alot of the younger generation dont seem to be able to speak much Chinese too anymore. And some of my friends, they can understand Chinese, but they cant/dont speak it at all"
C: "Yea. I realised that its kinda sad that English is taking over the world and people are starting to abandon their mother lang, but at the same time, its interesting to see different forms of English - like Singlish - forming"

And another part of conversation:
C: " so you can speak Chinese?"
Me: "Yea"
C: "read?"
Me: "well, if u give me a chinese newspaper in Singapore, I have problems reading it." "Well, I stopped learning Chinese at 16. So, haven been reading it. And Chinese is REALLY REALLY HARD"
C and Mo: "YES I KNOW. I learnt that its like the hardest lang"
Me: (wow! impressed! they know)
C: "I have like german friends who gave up studying Chinese"
C: "Yea Chinese is like pictures right?"
Me: "Yea sort of. We dont have like 'a, b, c, d' so if you see a Chinese word that you dont recognise, you cant pronounce it and you wont know it. Not like the european languages that also uses alphabetic script (hence, giving u guys an easier time in learning English as a 2nd lang, compared to the Asian counterparts like Japs/Koreans). Even Japanese and Arabic, they have like strokes that represent 'a, b, c, d, ...' right? And then they form words with the strokes, but it is possible to pronounce/read a word u never seen b4"
Mo-e: Yea, thats Japanese.
Me: Chinese, no. Either you know the word, or you dont. So its really hard to read.

I wanna meet the 2 of you more regularly, to learn/practice german/japanese. Do that.