I still recall the very first lesson about 3 weeks back, some young dude made a speech in front of the class by reading out from a piece of paper (that was quivering), saying something about the rules in the classroom; not to fret if we encounter difficulties in learning a new language; and that the school wishes us all the best in the endeavour. Apparently he is in charge of our classroom, though he looked around 17.

Since that day, I have been spending my weekends in that little classroom (except last weekend since I went Huang Shan) from 2.30 - 8pm. Sometimes all the new vocabulary and different verb usages drives me crazy in those four walls, but I’m glad the teachers are patient and don’t get violent with the microphone whenever I screw up some sentence. The room does feel a tad like a pressure cooker, and we’re expected to sprout the tiresome ach-sounds, air-gargling sounds, and differentiate ich from ish, ö (I can’t even spell the pronunciation for this, but it’s between “o” and “yu”) from ü (”yu”), within the 9 hours we share together every week.

If I ever think about skipping classes due to pure sloth, I will be motivated by the determination of a classmate. He is schooling in Nanjing right now, and makes a 2 hour plus train ride every weekend JUST TO ATTEND GERMAN CLASS. I’m attending Beginners’ Class I whilst he’s attending both Beginners’ Class II in the mornings of weekends (8.30am - 2pm), and Beginners’ Class I in the afternoon. He’s hoping to accumulate enough class hours by the end of this year or beginning of next year to qualify for TestDAF application. In order to apply for TestDAF, one must fulfil 900 class hours. To get the class hours, one has to attend such classes, and PASS THE MID AND FINAL EXAMS. Anyway, I admire his tenacity, and push myself to take the 15 minute bus ride every weekend, instead of lazing around in front of my laptop. Prisonbreak can wait.

Although picking up a foreign language can be mind-boggling (see tongue- and mouth-twisters above), the interestingness of it keeps me going. Did you know a person from Hamburg is called a Hamburger?

Hopefully it will improve my Chinese significantly. I know I should have started doing so sooner. Just as I should have joined the blogosphere sooner, so that now I wouldn’t have difficulty remembering how I house-hunted, and the various other memorable (positively or not) experiences of my sojourn here. Anyway, do have a look at Squareface in Squarespace once in a while, yar?

Yeah I know many of my post titles contain “wannabe” in them, which reflects how greedy I am, huh?

I attended my 3rd German Class today (at New Oriental School), and it seems to getting fun. Not the way the class is being conducted, but the way this foreign language is weaving itself into my mind.

My weekends till June 10 are to be spent sitting in a classroom from 2.30-8pm (with an hour’s dinner break in between). This means Squareface will no longer be spending a lot of time online staring into webspace, but instead, reciting German by gargling air into chalk space.

We were informed today that we’ll be having a mid-course and an end-of-course exam for German class! We have to pass the exams in order to clock the 150 hours necessary for progress to higher level.

I hope to be trilingual in 2 years’ time then!

So the next step for Squareface to do, is to start a CHINESE BLOG. It shall launch tomorrow, the first day of April! And no, it’s not an April Fool’s joke.

(When will I be able to create a German blog?)

Executive Language Training is a language school providing English and foreign business language training. Their language courses are customized to your learning style and professional goals. They promote themselves as providing “accent reduction” training, but I wonder what that actually means. How do you have no accent at all? Or are they trying to imply that accents like the Chinese or Indian accents should be abolished? Or are they trying to say that they don’t advocate the use of British/American/Australian accents?

Nevertheless, I do think most people in Singapore need training when it comes to speaking professionally to clients, so perhaps their Business English is worth a look at.

When they say they offer “foreign business language training”, do they mean language training for foreign business dealings, or foreign language training for business purposes? *shrugs* Maybe their copywriter for this advertisement was playing on words to make you want to check out for yourself what they were trying to express, or perhaps the play on words was to show you how important it is to do so!

You know you’re in a corporate office environment when you start proposing everything you suggest; will do things you’re okay with; revert to people to get back to them; conduct meetings for all kinds of discussion; things you understand are noted; you bring up things in regards to a previously discussed issue; and kiv (Keep In View) (Kay-Aye-Vee) anything you don’t want to think about now.

In regards to this site, sorry I haven’t been able to entertain you as I’ve been busy having meetings, preparing for a presentation today, and kiv-ed this site for a while. I will revert to blogging as much as I can, asap.

Disclaimer: The way “revert” and “in regards to” are used here is not Standard English, but have weaved themselves seamlessly into common office lingo. The grammatically correct usage is, “In regard to corporate jargon, it is so widely used that we have become numb to the errors. Try as we might to correct people who use them, they may revert to old ways and continue to perpetuate these expressions.”