Hi world. I've stolen some time from myself to write this post. I've slacked the whole afternoon away and not feeling guilty over it. I think Im amazing. I've completed two presentations and the 2nd draft of FYP. Am left with 2 more presentations and 4 reports, and hopefully, no more fyp. wooooooooooo. Im supposed to be working on my report now.

Throughout my years of majoring in Chinese, I've received shocked, surprised, puzzled, disbelief, response from friends and strangers. It's funny that they think they are IN, but in actual fact, at least to me, they are all but inside their own world, to have viewed Chinese in such a way that I can neither cry nor laugh coz it's funny and sad at the same time. I don't have to defend myself by saying that I don't mean they are ignorant. Coz the fact is, I do think that some people have stereotyped the subject and the people studying the subject. Here are the classic examples of the classic response I received when I tell people that Im majoring in Chinese:



1. Oh my god!!! you mean you actually study CHINESE? Oh man I can never do that! ( I know)

2. So are your notes in Chinese ( NO, it's in Hindi)

3. What? You mean there is Chinese in NTU? ( take a trip to south spine, there's even a chinese lib always infested by you engineering students, depriving us of seats in our OWN lib!)

4. So what you study? Chinese characters? ( NO, we have specialisation in linguistics, literature, contemporary politics and society, philosophy, history and study of south east asian chinese)

5. Oh i can't believe it! you don't look like one of them!

5. " so how are they suppose to look like?" -----" very cheena one lo...nerdy nerdy one."

6. So you gonna teach after you grad? ( yes, but its not the only available choice)

7. Oh no i can't believe it! you speak good English, in fact you're bilingual!" ( F***. Please do read up on stereotyping, for your information, it's called essentialisation in English and 刻板印象 in Mandarin)

8. So why do you want to study Chinese? It's so ........ ( coz I'm good at it)


So you see, the whole point being, I feel sorry for them.