Today, I received an early birthday present. A $2,500 diamond necklace.

I also received in the mail my latest pay cheque from Nuffnang.

When I walked into my room, I saw a box of my favourite pineapple tarts from Malacca waiting for me.

Today should be a madly crazy happy day.

So why am I still feeling depressed over things that are beyond my control?

Why why why.

What is wrong with me! I feel like stabbing myself with a sword.

I should be grateful and happy.

Right?

My Mandarin has never been as bad as it is now. I mean, it has always been bad — I was a chronic F9 case in school — but it’s really bad now, if you can imagine anything worse than F9.

I can do very basic conversations like, say, discussing a shopping trip with the girls, if I’m allowed to pepper my speech with English words.

But ask me to be interviewed in Mandarin, on national TV no less, and I am suddenly struck dumb. I mean that quite literally.

That was actually what happened last week.

I received a call from my manager:

“Channel 8 news wants to do a segment on POCC (Power Over Cervical Cancer) and they’ve requested to interview you in your capacity as POCC ambassador.”

“Um… um… in Mandarin??”

“Yes.”

“My Mandarin is very bad. I can’t do it.”

In the end, I was talked into doing it. I would be given the questions and a list of key terms I would need to use in Manadrin.

On the night before the interview, I received a list of six questions. I typed my answers out in English and attempted to translate it.

It took me an hour to translate just the first two lines because I couldn’t figure out how to structure my sentences correctly. I had about 35 lines to translate.

First: “Cervical cancer kills one to two women every five days.”

The only way I knew how to say it was: “每五天,子宫颈癌杀死一到两个妇女。”

Well, at least my Mandarin is good enough for me to know that THIS IS VERY BAD MANDARIN.

For my non-Chinese readers: What I did was a literal translation almost word for word. But what results in Mandarin raises an imagery more like: “Cervical cancer picks up a chopper and hacks one to two women to death every five days.”

Simply put, very crude.

Here’s another example of my butchery of the Chinese language:

“The earlier people know about this, the more lives we can save.”

My translation: “如果大家越早知道这个消息，就会越少人死。”

If you can read that, you now understand why I rejected the interview right off the bat.

Actually, I wasn’t even aware that my Mandarin had degenerated to this degree. I had eventually agreed to do the interview because I believed if I could prepare my answers beforehand, I would be able to do it.

It was only when I was attempting to translate my answers that I realised my Mandarin is now effectively 87 keys short of a piano.

I finally sent out an SOS on Plurk, Twitter, Facebook. I received lots of good translations for the two sentences above. But no one offered to help me translate all 35 lines of my answers.

Thankfully, I managed to get a friend to help me. By the time I received the two pages of translated answers, it was midnight. The interview was the next day. And I’d only had two hours of sleep the night before so I was rather exhausted by then.

But I had two pages of Chinese to memorise. It wasn’t simply a matter of remembering the points. I had to memorise everything word for word because, if I were to answer in my own words, I would come out with something embarrassingly rubbish like: “POCC 希望会有两万个人去他们的网站支持他们和子宫颈癌打架。”

I didn’t have enough time to memorise everything so I had to wing it and hope I didn’t look too bad.

If you happen to watch Channel 8 news this Sunday, and you see me stuttering on TV and looking quite bimbotic, you know why.

To compound matters, my laryngitis had not totally recovered, so I was still sounding rather hoarse.

Maybe with clever editing, Channel 8 will manage to make me look halfway decent, but I’m not too hopeful about that.

Look, I think my Mandarin is even worse than Ris Low’s English. So that’s why I never laughed at or criticised her. We can’t all be good at everything!

In any case, I think I’d better not accept anymore interviews in Mandarin. Or I’d better go back to Chinese school.

Now I hope I won’t set POCC’s efforts to reach out and save lives back by a millennium because of my disastrous Mandarin.

I mean, I hope people won’t see me on TV and say, “She sucks,” and then not watch the rest of the segment. Lives could be lost because of that!

Seriously. I’d feel really bad!

Anyway, it’s this Sunday (July 11), 10 pm, on Channel 8. I don’t know what time the POCC bit will be aired but it’ll be a short segment. Around five to 10 minutes.

I don’t think I’ll dare to watch myself.

So, I recently attended a class where the teacher was unable to communicate with the students.

*cue baffled look*

But I enjoyed the class, even if it didn’t seem like a class so much as it appeared to be a babysitting service.

*cue bewildered look*

It was my first manga class at Inoue School of Language and Arts. It was a very small class, just me and three friends. I think the manga classes aren’t as popular as the language classes.

Our teacher is a Japanese manga artist. We don’t even know his name. He can say about five words of English, none of which gives him the ability to introduce himself.

Logically, I should be peeved that I paid good money ($289 for 8 sessions + $20 registration fee) for a teacher who can’t instruct us effectively. But I appreciate the chance to practise my Japanese, even if my Japanese is only slightly better than his English.

But what really sold me was the fact that our teacher is rather adorable.

I mean, he’s not good-looking in the eye-candy sort of way. He’s like one of those funny Japanese stereotypes you see in Japanese shows. Excessively polite, nervous, bumbling, executing little Japanese half-bows at the slightest provocation.

I find the little quirks of the Japanese quite endearing and delightful, so I felt entertained in class.

The first order of the day was equipment distribution.

Teacher started digging out used pencils from various containers. He then sharpened them one by one. Next, he dug around for used erasers. We each received a sharpened pencil and a cheap battered eraser that must have seen better days.

Next order of business:

We received this sheet of paper with blank little rectangles in which we were supposed to draw.

(The second and third rows were originally empty.)

Using a few words of English and many gestures of sign language, our teacher indicated to us that we should populate all the blank spaces by copying the first row.

He then tried to give us some complicated instruction about doing something differently for the third row but we didn’t understand his sign language.

So I said to him in Japanese: “Speak Japanese!” hoping I would be able to understand his Japanese better than his English.

He looked at me in surpise and said, “Ah! Good!”

He continued trying to speak in English.

In retrospect, I realise what I might have unintentionally said to him was, “I am speaking Japanese,” rather than the imperative “Speak Japanese.”

I should have phrased it differently. But I know what to say the next time!

Anyway, it took us about an hour to complete our assignment. I had the chance to practise more Japanese by asking the teacher a question in Japanese, to which he replied in mostly sign language and some kooky English.

For most of the two hours of class, he mainly sat in the front anxiously flipping through the pages of a large dictionary.

Twenty minutes into the class, he presented to us the fruits of his labour.

He had written these four English words on a piece of paper, which he showed to us:

“Go hear difficult me.”

It was very illuminating, indeed. We immediately felt wiser by his instruction.

After a doubtful conference amongst ourselves, Minou finally said to him, “Do you mean that if we have any difficulty, we should come to you?”

Our teacher looked at her with a polite smile and bow-nodded, but his eyes were stressed and worried. We couldn’t tell whether we had interpreted his words correctly.

Well, we completed our first assignment anyway. He collected our work and gave us another task. This time, we had to draw a giant face. This is A3 size:

(Circles and guidelines were provided in the bottom space. The rest are drawn in by me. Just noticed I forgot to shade in below the chin.)

“Copy,” he said, bowing nervously as he did.

As for our first submissions, he looked at them very briefly and placed them reverently on the tables in front of us.

No, I didn’t misuse the word “reverently”. He really did that. Everything he did was polite and respectful to a fault.

When we finished the second assignment (he didn’t collect those) we received a third one.

I only managed to draw the eyebrows and two circles for the eyes before our two hours were up. (My friends managed to finish theirs, though.)

Our shy teacher then showed me a piece of paper on which he had scribbled several English words and phrases. He pointed to the one that said “Next week”, then pointed at my unfinished drawing.

Then he handed us back our first assignment, saying, “Present for you.”

With that, class ended.

So, in our first lesson, we basically learnt how to copy faces.

There are seven more sessions to go. What will transpire? Will our teacher be able to say more English words? Will there be actual instructions or will we be doodling on worksheet after worksheet for the rest of the course?

Stay tuned for more updates!

Can’t make my guy look the same every time!!

You know how sometimes funny incidents happen when you’re with friends and you’re, like, doubling over in laughter and gasping for breath because it’s so damned funny?

But when you try to retell it to other friends, it’s not so funny because the spontaneity is gone, plus the need to explain a lot of background info kills the joke?

I wanted to tell about Japanese class on Thursday because so many funny things happened we were basically laughing from start till end. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t open my eyes. (A bit like how it’s impossible to keep your eyes open at the moment of a sneeze. Try it some time.)

I actually tried typing it out but then realised too many things have to be explained, so it’s really not funny anymore. You’ll probably get tired of reading before you even get to the joke. LOL.

I guess Thursday will just have to remain a happy memory in my mind.

Manga class starts today! I hope it’ll be fun.

I need to get my mind off yesterday’s stressful interview. I was asked to be interviewed for Channel 8 news regarding my ambassadorship for POCC (Power Over Cervical Cancer) and the interview was held in Mandarin.

While preparing for the interview, I realised that I’m losing Chinese vocab at an alarming rate every day. I’m even losing grammar. I can’t have a conversation in Chinese anymore without adding 30%-50% English into the mix.

I think I should go to China more often to get some practice. Yes, I can practise in Singapore but there’s the tendency to use lots of English words because you know whoever’s listening can understand it. So it’s not very effective.

I’ll talk more about the interview when I get the pictures.

Time flies!

I don’t know what I was thinking signing up for so many classes. Eek! Shall have to start giving up some. That is, finish the beginner course but not continue to take advanced lessons. I think the dances might be the first to go. Not very impressed with Jitterbugs.

Gotta go! Hope to see you at SHINE Youth Festival later! I’ll be going at 6:30 pm after manga class!

Advertorial

Since they say a picture speaks a thousand words, I shall just show you a picture.

There’s your one thousand words (plus four more as a bonus).

Okay. The End!

=D

I’m kidding, of course. While that’s a very effective picture which more or less sums up what this post is about, I suppose a few more words will be needed to explain things.

So, here’s the key message:

This Saturday, the SHINE Youth Festival will be launching with a bang at *SCAPE with 12 hours of nonstop activities for the youth of Singapore! (Happening 12 pm to 12 am.)

Epic wootage!

In its sixth year now, SHINE Youth Festival is a platform for youths to share and channel their passions and to be inspired. Run by the National Youth Council, the tagline this year, “Enough Talk Just Do”, embodies the spirit of the month-long festival, not to mention the spirit of youth!

(No, I didn’t ctrl-c-ctrl-v the press release verbatim. I rewrote it OKAY. Hah.)

I really like the posters they’ve created to promote the festival. It’s a series of four posters containing the tagline, which can be seen on buses, MRT trains and at Somerset MRT Station.

Maybe you’ve already seen them. If you haven’t, you’re not observant enough. Or you’re a hermit. Either way, you must make atonement by reading this entry all the way to the end because I have something important to say there. AND NO CHEATING by scrolling.

With this tagline, SHINE Youth Festival challenges all youths in Singapore to do more than just express their passions through various media. This year, youths are encouraged to inspire others through their actions and to contribute to good causes.

Well, that’s not very hard, is it? Youth is energy! Youth is passion! Youth is heart! And youth, I am assuming, is you!

If you’re between 15 and 35, you’re youth! (Even if you’re not, you can put on a funny hat and pretend. I’m sure no one will be able to tell.)

The festival needs you on this very important Saturday (July 3) to celebrate the official launch of the festival.

Come and be wowed. And come in beach wear because the theme of the day is Urban Beach. Be entertained with nonstop fun activities, including an Urban Beach Pageant!

Everyone is welcome! No admission fee is required! Just walk in, you know. It’s, like, an open space.

There will be all kinds of performances and showcases at the 12-hour-long launch party. There will be dance, music, cosplay and competitions. Bring your cameras. There will be tons to photograph!

And also, be ready to party through the night! Starting at 7 pm, it’s Hip Hop in the City time. Then, at 9:30 pm, party on with your favourite J-Rock groups such as Zerodia, Renaissance and Quis, till laaaaaate!

Supporting SHINE Youth Festival is the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports, as well as four key partners who will put up marquee events to keep the celebrations going on through the month.

Very exciting events, I must add.

There’s COSMO Youth Parade 2010 by Mascot Parade Limited, happening this Saturday also! Highlights include a costume parade, a card game tournament, a cosplay competition, a Gundam caravan and a maid cafe.

The other three partner events (no less exciting) will be held through July after the launch day.

There’s U@SHINE by Singapore Street Festival, which will showcase a host of exhilarating street music and dance performances until July 11 at The Cathay and Plaza Singapura.

The Big Groove 2010 by O School will present some of the world’s most entertaining dance groups with a dazzling show themed “The Year of the Champions” on July 11. Dance workshops will also be held at O School from July 8 till 10.

Finally, there will be a series of four community service projects organised by students from the Singapore Management University, one of which is starringSMU’10, a car wash project that will take place in Holland Village on July 24 and 25.

Also noteworthy is the Rolling Good Times event, a fundraiser which will be held at the SMU campus on August 8 to help sick children whose families cannot afford their medical bills. Buy a ticket for $10 and have a great day of fun with less fortunate children! (You’ll receive a complimentary McDonald’s Happy Meal with your ticket.)

You can click on the respective websites to learn more about the marquee events later.

Cos I’m not done yet.

OMG. Seriously.

I said month-long celebration, didn’t I? Yes, I did. Somewhere near the top. See lah you fail your pop quiz. (If you didn’t fail, you can drop a comment to scold me for falsely accusing you. BUT ONLY GENUINE ONES HOR.)

Apart from the four main marquee events, there will also be an abundance of other fringe events which are too many to list here. These will include exhibitions, competitions, workshops, volunteer projects, performances and charity events, just to name the ones that I managed to catch before my mind exploded from the overwhelmage.

Go check the calendar at the SHINE website to view all the events yourselves. Make sure you pace yourself if you don’t want your mind exploding like mine.

KAPOW!

Okay, then. Last reminder for the road:

The SHINE Youth Festival launch event will be held at *SCAPE this Saturday, July 3, 2010, from 12 pm to 12 am. COME IN BEACH WEAR.

So, here’s the important thing I said that I’ll say:

I will be attending this event together with five honoured people. These people don’t have names yet because I haven’t picked them, hur hur.

Alright, I’m not kidding. Let’s have fun together, how about that? Give me a chance to get to know some of my readers. YOU.

If you want to come to this event with me, drop me an e-mail to introduce yourself and state the times you’re available that day. I’ll arrange the rest. (Limited to five okay, cos I’m not a certified tour guide. I haven’t mastered the ability to grow 20 pairs of eyes and 10 mouths to look after and scream at a large group of people all at once.)

Yes, you can “sign up” for this even if I already know you. That would be kind of nice because it will reduce the percentage chance for a scary stalker to appear in the group.

My e-mail address:

Yes, I know it’s very short notice. This is to train your spontaneity!

And, now, all that remains to be said is…

ENOUGH TALK JUST DO!

E-mail me!