Yukon Jay - 小祥

Guns and Chinese

Yes, this is me holding a rifle (forget what type) with my friend Beata Saturday night. She decided she should learn how to shoot incase she ever needed to in self defence, and I thought maybe I should do the same incase I need to defend myself when I'm travelling in some wartorn developing country like last summer in Laos. So I introduced my friend Jason to her. Jason is in the army reserve and collects rifles as a hobby. They ended up going to a shooting range on Sunday while I was at UBC all day (shall explain why later). Dont plan on having a new hobby with guns... well unless I decide to start a revolution and declare North Vancouver independent and rename it to Jayville.

So Sunday while they were shooting, I went to a Chinese speech contest at UBC for a friend who was in the final round. I was amazed how good some of the contestants were. The speech had to be about how Chinese has influenced their lives. There were 6 different groups based on different skill levels. I had a somewhat difficult time figuring out what some of the advanced students were saying because they were so advanced... they were in their 4th year of Chinese studies. As for the group with native speakers... I gave up trying to figure out what they were saying after the first minute. It is not a surprise they retain the language simply because there's a huge Chinese ethnic enclave that exists in Vancouver... I mean Vancovuer is often called Hongcouver.

As most of you know, even though Chinese is my mother tongue, I'm not all that fluent. I pretty much lost interest in learning it after moving to North America at the age of 8 and never had the desire to learn until 2 years ago. I remember when my parents were teaching me Chinese in Texas and kept saying one day when I grow up, I will want to learn it. I hate to admit it but they were right. Right now I'm only in my 2nd and final year. What impressed me the most was the number of Caucasians that were interested in Chinese. It is nice to know there are North Americans that are interested in learning it other than Spanish, French, or German.

Speaking of Chinese speeches... my version of the speech contest would be my one on one oral exam with my prof in 2 weeks. I have to write a 5 min summary of a Chinese movie we watched... that is if I remember the movie.

Jay

Posted by Jay at March 15, 2004 01:26 AM