Probably a useless thought, but I’m wondering if my job position is “Junior Content Specialist Editor”, am I supposed to be a “content specialist” or a “specialist editor”. Do they mean the same thing?

Anyways. So it’s been a week at the office. What’s my take on the job? I got to do some semi-creative writing in the middle of the week which required composing introductions and conclusions to ESL teaching articles, some editing/proofreading in the last few days that involved re-writing dating blurbs, and moderating and copying job ads everyday in a jobs/classifieds site that I think I’m now in charge of. In the coming week, I will be collating a hundred-ish Asian celebrity profiles and pictures after daily sourcing. It’s supposed to be fun, looking at idols’ bio and photos, but I have to work so fast I don’t have the time to read any of it. Appealing to fans of Taiwanese and Singaporean celebrities, if you have any good English sources for celebrity profiles and images, please contact me asap!

I feel like I’m somewhat on a (paid) “how to make money on the internet” course. Which is very useful, yes, but I think I would like my writing to be read mostly by people instead of search engines.

Nevertheless, I quite like what I’m doing/learning for now, and have some ideas of my own to either work on this current site or make another. For fun, not just for monetization.

On other news, MissY has started preparing curriculum for the kids in the kindergarten she’s teaching at. The kids keep her very happy there, which keeps me very happy too. Even though now I have to vie for her attention with 4-7 year-olds, and they’re hard to beat with their “sooooo cuuuuuttee” tugs at her shirt, and their puppy eyes looking (blink-blink-blink) earnestly at her begging for a spinning ride in the air, which is something I cannot get from her ever, obviously (but I will try asking for it one day when I weigh a bit lesser). It’s good to see her being so contented teaching these kids, and makes me wonder whether I should try it, despite my loathe towards most of them little monkeys, which probably stem from my wanting to be like them, haha.

ESL teaching is good money, but I’m not sure if my wanting to try it is for the right reason.

MissY sometimes comes home and expects me to be a kid too, though. She makes me sing along to her songs like “hello hello hello hello, hello teacher, hello friends, hello hello hello hello, hello!”, with the necessary hand waves and face turns. We do two versions, in English and in Korean, since my Korean is somewhere at the kids’ level of English. And her tone towards me is changing towards a more authoritative one, speaking to me as if I were her student, which I’m not sure if I dislike or allowing it to take on new dimensions in the relationship.

Then there are interesting things like this video she has incorporated into her teaching the other day:

I’m thinking she and I can become composers of kids’ songs too!

Ah, all these exciting project ideas.

Singaporeans are mocked, laughed at, and made fun of because of our reputation with our language(s). Can’t blame foreigners or ourselves for doing so because these exist:

(found this powerful image at STOMP’s website, under “Friends of Stomp”)

For the majority of Singaporeans, being Chinese, we pretty much have a confused mother tongue, or a different concept of monther tongue, and as the ads imply, we do not speak good English, and we need to be told that Mandarin is “cool” to be encouraged to speak it. These “encouragements” come in various embarrassing ways:

Go Malay and Tamil! Our hopes are on you guys to show the world we do speak a proper language or two. Or else we’ll soon have Malay bagus! or Tamil अच्छा!

———————————————————————————————————————-

This semester has seen Fudan’s course selection system introduce the English interface for the first time, which is an incredible feat, knowing the jwc people. However, of course, there are English issues such as:

Obviously a direct translation from Chinese, but sounds kinda cute?

While doing my folklore module term paper, I came across some English-pronunciation-influenced Chinese, or Chinese pronunciation of English:

“那摩温”: number one

“司冒而”: small

“德律风”: telephone

“大拉斯”: dollars

“康姆”: come

“谷”: go

“吞的福”: twenty four

“也司”: yes

“扑铁秃”: potato

I’m actually doing a paper on food and festival culture but just thought this is interesting. Taken from a Shanghai Folklore book.

As some of you already know, I’m picking up some Korean as we go along, but my Korean vocabulary is somewhere around a four-year-old and my grammar probably… a two-year-old? Do they start talking at two?

So today we were having a nice sam gyup sal (BBQ pork belly) dinner at a friend’s place and naturally the three friends were talking in Korean and MissY my translator couldn’t possibly do all the work while laughing herself, so the things I understood in their conversation sans translator goes something like this:

“…male…”

“…don’t have…”

“…female…”

“…have…”

“pork belly”

“really?”

“where?”

“interesting”

“crazy!”

“You wanna die?”

During my summer vacation back on the sunny island I worked for a brief period of time at a certain foreign bank. While for most of it I was soaking in monotony, there were instances that made me chuckle, or perhaps I seeked laughable instances so that I can entertain myself.

I was looking at a pro-family schemed (that involves free money from the government) account opening forms, where I spent some time taking note of the ranges of income different professions fetched. I came across rather fancy names, and wonder whether I’ll meet anyone such named in my lifetime:

Xanthyer; Nicodemus; Kevia; Bellburly; Janielle; Manfred; Gershon; Velkissia; Ezekiel; Ebenezer; Zephania; Rykielyn; Trevetta; Junette; Faarung; Charlize; Reyeden; Princern; Zaverie; Alaric; Keicia; Edsel; Walvis; Farrell; Kennice; Mateo; Lettoria; Killian; Zenden;Velkissia, etc.

Then there were names I thought parents tried too hard:

Jazzmin; Juztin; Cherish; Bright; Boeing; Precious; Pinky; Chance; Aristotle; Heavenly Joyus, etc.

And sure-to-be-teased ones:

The **** Bean; Boo Lee; Week Lee; Ai Kiew; (Surname) Bun; (Surname) Quick

Checking through certain addresses, I noticed someone who wrote:

Address: Blk ***, ****** Street ** #**-**
Building Name: HDB
Immediately I looked at her profession: Teacher (??!!!)

There’s more. Speaking of professions, one form showed this:

Profession: Pastor

Nature of Business: God’s business

Which actually isn’t very funny as I write it now, because it can’t beat this one (disclaimer: I’m not picking on teachers):

Profession: Teacher

Nature of Business: INDOORS

Don’t judge till you read the end!

P/T Englihs Editer
Living style media and the adevrtising companies seeks for Some times working some times resting foreigner language Editer needs.

The Must to have things:
1. The original born English speaking one
2. To be more than 23 years living time
3. The one can rely, would to take responsible and is being focus on the detailed part
4. Can working 3 to 10 hours any week
5. If not being smoke too much, is still better

To apply:
(Please email your CV and a new and improved interpretation of the above to info@enjoychina.com)

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

And why am I torturing myself so?

Speak My Language

From my Chinese textbook 《Hochschuldeutsch (1)》 and UBC textbook for German “Treffpunkt Deutsch” (pp 9) respectively:

ch 读作[ç]，为清辅音，读音与汉语“xi”的声母“x”相似，但发[ç]时嘴张得较大，舌尖向下接近下门齿，嘴角向后咧。ch 在 e, i, ei, eu, äu, ä, ö, ü 和所有辅音后面均发[ç]。

German ch

After i and e, the sound represented by ch is pronounced like a loudly whispered h in huge. (this is so damn straightforward)

ch 在 a, o, u, au 后面读作[x]。发音时张嘴，舌尖抵下门齿舌背向硬颚后部拾起，但不贴上，用力送气，气流通过舌背和硬颚间的缝隙，发摩擦音。

After a, o, and u, the sound represented by ch resembles a gentle gargling.

I am so glad I brought my UBC textbook here instead of selling it while I was at UBC. One of the wisest choice in my life, huh?

I want to follow the class, so everyday is German day for me from now on.

Ich kann Blut kotzen (I can puke blood).

Every German lesson (on Monday and Thursday afternoons) I sit at the back of the classroom and barely grasp the grammar the nice teacher is teaching, although I hope that will change soon. Since the class has less than 20 students, I have to answer an average of three questions per hour. Everyone answers fluently and accurately while I struggle with the answers and translations by frantically flipping though my German dictionary in English and trying my luck when it’s my turn.

I guess I should be glad I’m the class entertainer since I come up with misinterpretations like “There are many ways to lead Rome (有很多方法带领罗马）” for “All roads lead to Rome （有很多路通道罗马）”

I will pull through.

Back at UBC I was learning Beginners’ German from a German PhD student whose lessons were quite fun and engaging. Even though he was unsure of certain grammatic rules, we always forgave him because beads of perspiration would form on his head even in the midst of winter. Our German textbook introduces grammar step by step and we were just getting into past tense. Learning was in short sentences. I was already struggling with so many rules to remember and vocabulary to memorize, but I managed to get by with pastel colours.

Here in Fudan my classmates are done with grammar rules and usages. My current textbook is filled with PASSAGES and during today’s lesson I was completely lost when the teacher read the passage and the class started analyzing sentence structures. Usages and grammatical rules are briefly reviewed in Chinese and I can’t really follow. There’s way too much I need to catch up with, and I’m not sure if I can handle learning a 3rd language with my 2nd language in such a short time. What is 第1-4格respectively? And then there’s 强变化动词，不规则变化动词 (irregular verbs?)，不定式 (indefinite?)，现在时(present tense?)，过去时(past tense?)，完成时…

I am so dead.