Japanese

Went Pasir Ris to cycle today, damn tired. Nothing much to say, except that it's good to be sweating it out and enjoying the sea breeze at the same time. The plan was to go to Esther's house to play Mahjong after tt, and then fetch Ziwei at the airport (he's back from NZ!). But I had a JPU class outing, so left after cycling. It turned out that in the end, no one went to fetch ZW...

Talking abt the JPU outing, aik joon insisted on tagging along (to see the shuai ge from VJ, but he overslept so aik joon didn't get to see him...) so I brought him along. In the end so extra lah. LOL. Left early also coz he dun want to be extra anymore.. Anw I realised I forgot most of my Japanese, so didn't dare to stand near or talk to sensei, coz it'd be so malu... But it's good to hear some Japanese, however broken, from the rest. LOL. It brought back memories of the past 5 years I spent at MOELC learning the language.

There appeared to be this void in my life this year, because I no longer need to travel to and fro between school, MOELC, and home twice a week for Japanese lessons, or mug Japanese on top of school curriculum. I miss going to Bishan (having witnessed the transformation of junction 8 over the 5 years), waiting in school or in MOELC for Japanese lessons to start (coz they were usually in the late afternoons and school ends earlier than that on most days), and chatting with my classmates in the MOELC canteen.

That routine was actually part of my life for the past 5 years. It was sometimes painful, to see almost every one quit by the end of the second year, to have to end school at 6.30/7.30pm twice a week and reach home at almost 8 (and stay up until 2am mugging if there's hw or a school test the next day), to mug for one more subject than every one else (which means more hw, projects, tests, exams), to overcome the nervous wreck going into each end-of-year oral exam, to sit for that almost impossible Japanese AO paper.

But there's also the good and fun, like being forced to sit in the first row and falling asleep right in front of Koh sensei (she never scolded me =P), making new friends (from all the different schools, and many Koreans) , learning another language that's both challenging and intriguing because it's so similar to Chinese - the kanji, and yet so different - the complex grammar structures (volitional form, polite form, transitive form, etc. etc.), and the alphabet-like hiragana and katakana. And of course the exchange programme, the satisfaction of being able to understand about 30% of Japanese dramas and anime (pronounced ah-ni-meh btw) without relying on subtitles, and the results achieved at the end after putting in so much hard work.

But now, I'm putting all these behind me.