...and we talked.

Three or four weeks ago I've been writing about my experience concerning talking with my Chinese friends. Few days afterwards I went out with 韶憶 (Sháo Yì). She read my post before and I already told her not to be worried at all. I think, it helped a bit :-) She's friend and former classmate of 儒鴻 (Rú Hóng), one guy from our lab. When he told her I joined the lab this semester, she wanted to speak English with me. She asked 儒鴻 for my MSN after and told him something which I found out quite a funny -- she's asking for my MSN, but she don't want to nothing but talk :) Well, in many cases if one is asking for someones MSN, what else besides talking it can means? I know why she did that, her purpose was to make sure that everything's clear. Actually, from European point of view it should be like a girl's trying to challenge you though (Hey you, only talking, you have no chance, do you understand?) :-)

And we talked the other day and it was good. We kept talking and talking about many things including Taiwan, Chinese, our impressions from Finland, life, and stuff like that... She can speak fluently and even though she's got some small doubts still, we have no troubles with understanding each other. I knew before she's writing her blog, but I didn't expect I'm going to read her post about our talking. Surprisingly, bilingual post. It is nice to know the thoughts and opinion of the others, thanks 韶憶 ;-)

Should I say something more? Read her post if you like to. Just I can add that I don't feel fearless, traveling and living in different country doesn't require anything special (and one can say, it can be actually easier then living in your country). She told me about her dreams and visions for the future and I have to say she knows pretty well where is she heading. And I'm sure she can make it.

Does it saying something to you others? Sure, you can see that talking and sharing thoughts it isn't so difficult after all as it may seems.

^.^ k.

Let's Talk!

Talk about what? Talk with who? No, the question of these days is... talking in English. Since my Chinese is still pretty nothing, the only way I can speak here is English. At the first, I'm really glad for that a lot of local people can speak English. Many of them are really good, even though they weren't abroad. I'm really impressed by you guys! Thank you...

I've got the impression that most of people which I've met here can understand well, but when it comes to talking abilities, it's much more worst. Perhaps, there is more then one reason for that, for instance the education system focused mainly on the grammar and vocabulary, movies on the TV with the subtitles, or using English text books and slides during the classes. The catch is, many people here are actually thinking that their English isn't good enough to speak so they won't speak just because of that.

From my point of view is really sad that even though people who has got actually really good English are thinking in that way and referring themselves as a person with poor English... What about to encourage you a bit? ;-)

I've experienced that some people, especially girls, are replying me with the scared face the sentence which I don't like to hear: "I'm so nervous to speak English with you!" According them, they've got two reasons. One is me and the other one is talking English. I'm afraid, I can't do anything with myself in order not to make them nervous... Can I? Though I hope we can do something and change their feelings towards speaking English. I mean, I can understand you can feel quite uncomfortable, because you're not sure if you can express yourself clearly. But you know what? The language is just a part of the communication and actually more is going on via non-verbal channels. The body language is very often useful for better understanding and it can help you to guess the meaning in case you're not sure.

Do remember, the person you're talking to won't judge you're English or making jokes about that. And you can asked again in case you didn't understand. There is nothing to be be ashamed of. Forget about Dr. Eye for a while and let's try... Like with many things, it's just about the practice -- practice makes you perfect --you have to do it over and over in order to achieve better level. And you'll see it isn't so difficult after all. The only thing which you need to do is the first step. Like I mentioned above, you know a lot about the grammar and vocabulary, so it won't be a big issue for you.

I was asked what to actually talk about during the conversation. Of course, for the start in the campus environment, you can always use the cliché such as "What's your name? Where do you come from?" "What is you major?", or my personal favorite one "Why did you choose Taiwan?" and nobody won't mind. However if you're wondering what should follow and thinking about that too much, just let the conversation keep going. You'll always find out another topic to talk about. Just think about your talking with your friends. And especially in case you will meet someone who's got the same interests as you or is interesting for you in some way, you'd most likely won't find yourself in the trouble and running out of the ideas for the chat.

And, I'd like to note that even though it's kind of funny that some local people like to say hello to me when I actually already passed them, it's much more better to speak with me and the others foreigners face to face ;-)

Please, my Chinese friends don't be afraid of talking English, I'm sure we can communicate very well, we are human after all :-)

^.^ k.

Soundtrack: Daft Punk - Human After All

Got a Stamp

A stamp? Are you asking what for? It's easy, you can't have a bank account here without a stamp which works as your personal signature. Which is kind of nice. Slowly but surely I'm loosing my good penmanship and everytime when they are asking me in the bank to write my proper signature I'm nervous. Well, that's how guys using computer a lot ends :-) Regarding the characters on it -- my Chinese name -- 凱 洛, Kai3 Luo4. Obviously, it suppose to sounds similar to my first name. The characters on the stamp are in the opposite order, Chinese are writing the surname first. 凱 stands for 'triumphant; victorious'. One can find this character in the name of "the Arc of Triumph" in Paris for instance. 洛 is a surname and it's also the name of river. Rosita already explained me the meanings in May, thank you! She also did perfect drawing with decomposition of these characters (see another picture). Very nice of her, you can see the different parts actually making the whole character. She did similar job with the 'Samurai' character back in Oulu times (we saw that character in the movie The Last Samurai and I was curious about that). I really like this whole thing about the meaning of each parts. It's interesting and helping to memorize the strokes for writing. And on top of it, it is fun.

In case you're wondering why you can't see the characters among the ones from the pictures, you just haven't installed the support for Chinese characters in your system.