A word of thanks

If my Chinese tutor from 1983 - 1994 (林老师) is somewhere out there, I would really love to get in touch, if just to tell her about how I’ve spent the last three years in China. Because she’ll probably laugh so hard at the improbability of that fact that she’ll fall over.

My cousins, sister, and I were such difficult students, I’m sure she remembers us — especially since neither of us showed any improvement in our Mandarin despite all that tuition (a lot about excelling in the learning of the language is attitude and a willingness to commit thousands of word combinations to memory, IMHO).

She’ll remember that one of the things we’d do was hide and lock the door in the ensuite bathroom halfway through our school holiday lessons (and eat Froot Loops — yes, while in the bathroom, although that could’ve been just me). She’ll remember that we lived in Bukit Timah, then Newton. She’ll remember my cousin moved to Edinburgh, but still had to pass Chinese for his ‘O’ level exams.

If you’re out there, all those lessons (finally) paid off. I am actually bilingual now, more than a decade after (just) scraping through my exams. You evidently did something very right, because a lot of it came back when I had no choice but to speak Mandarin. I can even switch between spoken English and Mandarin without missing a beat. I am much more aware of Chinese words and phrases and can’t help myself from practising translation when I read signs.

Heehee!

(This also goes out to my secondary school Chinese teacher, 吴老师.)

• 8 Aug 2006

• Thinking