Me and My Southern Accent

I should really be used to it by now but I still find it funny anyway.

This morning, I was wandering aimlessly at the market just outside my compound trying to find something to eat. That's one more thing that I like about my new house: the market is just a minute away. I thought I hit the jackpot when I saw a vendor selling what seemed like taho. Taho! I had not had taho in ages! It only cost 5mao (half a yuan, which means about P3.50). Thinking how lucky I was, I asked for an order. I wanted to ask the woman to put more arnibal into the taho but was a little too late since she was already tying the translucent plastic. Just to be sure though, I pointed at the brown syrup and asked, "这是甜的吗? (Is this sweet?)," The woman looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. "不是!是酸的. (No! It's sour.)" My eyes widened. I didn't know whether to risk it or just go find something else to buy. "你认为是甜的吗? (Did you think it was sweet?)" I nodded. Curious glances from everyone within three meters. "你是哪里人? (You're a person from which place, or basically, Where are you from?)" I was still too shocked thinking about sour taho that I was not able to answer. How is it possible to have sour taho?! She gave my original taho to the woman beside me and decided to give me the taho without the sour brown liquid, telling me to just put sugar in it if I wanted it sweet. "行. (Ok)," I said, dazed. As I was about to go, I heard the curious onlookers talking about me. "是南方人. (A Southern person or She's from the South.)," said the woman's husband. I turned back to look at him then said, "什么?我是菲侓宾人. (What? I'm a Filipino.)" Exclamations of surprise from everyone within hearing distance. I then went home, not forgetting to buy sugar from the corner grocery store before going up the six flights of stairs.

So there I was, watching "Sylvia" and putting sugar on my taho as I contemplate on my Southern accent.

Of course it is not at all surprising, having learned Chinese from Southern people as I was growing up. But for the life of me, I can't tell the difference! I can't hear my accent! I know, I know, it's because I'm so used to it and all. But just for a moment, I want to hear how I sound like and how it's different from the way most people sound in this part of China. And if I do go to the South, I'm sure they'll hear some other weird accent from me too.

When I first came here, Wendy once commented that Jesse, another foreign teacher at the time, sounded like a child when he spoke Chinese. I asked if I also sounded like a child. She said no, maybe someone from a different part of China. I did not ask her to be more specific as I didn't really know much about Chinese geography, much less their accents.

Recently, I asked Lynn if I sounded like a foreigner if I talk in Chinese. She said no. I sounded like someone from the South. "Oh-kaaay..." I said as I chewed on this piece of information. "But I like it," she was quick to add, probably afraid that she offended me. "I like listening to you talk in Chinese. Very soft." "Hmm..." I said. "Men like it too. That's why Andy..." I was already laughing so hard she didn't get to finish her sentence. She likes teasing me about men and Andy, in particular. The first Andy.

Anyway, that made me realize why people like repeating what I say in a sing-song tone. Or sometimes they talk to me with an exaggeratedly weird accent. It never made much sense before. I knew it had something to do with the way I sound but it's clearer now that it's because I sound "soft." Sorry, maybe this only makes sense to me.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing my ancestors injustice by denying to have come from the South. But then again, it would be hard to claim that I am from a place that I've never been to. So until that day, I will have to content myself with my Southern accent.

The HSK Adventure

It is finally over. After agonizing for almost a month, the mad haphazard studying of the last week, and the panic-filled nightmares of the past days, the HSK has come and gone.

After my classes last Saturday, my friend Vivian and I took the hour-long bus ride to Shenyang. We decided it would be better to stay overnight in Shenyang since I had to be at the examinees' meeting place at 750 in the morning on Sunday. Both Andys (Andies :p) had expressed willingness to accompany me but for a variety of reasons, I decided Vivian would be the best companion for this trip. I promised Andy1 he'd go with me to get the results though.

Vivian, having graduated from LiaoNing University where the test was going to be held, expertly guided me through the huge maze-like campus. She reserved a room at the hotel in the university the night before so everything went smoothly except for my nerves which were jumping around with anxiety. I brought four of my books which I didn't really use because I was too nervous to review.

It was nice. Sort of like an overnight vacation. Hotels always give me the feeling of an adventure waiting to happen. We had a value-for-your-money-barely-able-to-finish dinner and breakfast at the university canteens (two different ones). The one where we had dinner in reminded me too much of College Canteen in La Salle. Except it's more expensive in LS :p. Maybe canteens look the same all over the world.

Due to stress, or the cold, or both, I developed a slight fever and cold by the time we were about to sleep. It was nothing major, just the uncomfortable feeling of being sick. I started to feel it coming last Friday but I ignored it hoping it would go away by the time Sunday rolled over. By Saturday night, it seemed to intensify a bit and I was very worried. I took a tablet of Neozep before bed and first thing in the morning when I woke up. I was still feeling a little sick by the time I was about to take the test but of course, the test had to go on. Went on, it did.

I think I was more afraid of not understanding the people around me than of taking the test itself. I had nightmares of not being able to understand the examiner's instructions or something as important and I would just stare blankly as everyone, save I, did as we were told.

So Vivian took me to the meeting place. We were to gather in front of the College of International Students Building, then take the rented buses to another branch of the University, near the countryside, to take the test there.

When we reached the building, I looked fearfully at all the other people who were going to take the test when I saw a familiar face. When I registered about a month ago, there was a friendly Korean girl who was also taking the test for the first time. When I saw her again that Sunday, I immediately grabbed her arm and almost screamed at her face, "We've met! Do you remember me? Do you remember me?" She stared at me blankly and I realized I should be talking in Chinese so I said, "你认识我吗? 你认识我吗? (Do you recognize me? Do you recognize me?)" I don't know why I felt the need to say everything twice at that point. She nodded weakly and I tightened my grip on her arm. I did not know a single soul there and I needed to hold on to something, even if it was a skinny arm.

On hindsight, I'm not even sure if she really was the girl I met that day I registered. I only saw that girl once for a few minutes, how could I have recognized her among more than a hundred other Koreans? Uh oh. Good thing I'll never see her (or them, if they're two different people) again.

She allowed me to drag her into one of the buses and we sat together. I even took a picture of us. Hahaha! She must have thought I was a real nutcase. She brought me comfort. That was all I needed at the moment. There was one time when I opened my bag and she saw my books. She took a good look at them then pointed at one saying, "我也有这个." (I also have this). I asked if she studied it well, and she said it was too hard. I heaved the biggest sigh of relief through all my stressful HSK adventure and thanked god a number of times. I said, "我也那样想! 我认为我自己想那本书太难. (I also think that way! I thought I was alone in thinking that that book is too hard.)," then thanked god again several times. I was only talking in Chinese to be understood so I didn't care if it came out ungrammatical or awkward.  

Oh no, maybe it really wasn't her. Because if we registered at about the same time, shouldn't we be in the same room at least? Or maybe the HSK people shuffled us up so friends wouldn't end up sitting together or being in the same room together. Here's my rough estimate of the nationalities of the people who took the test: Koreans=89%, Russians=9%, Indians (or any Middle Eastern people)=1.3%, Filipino=0.7% (that's me!).

She immediately got rid of me once we reached the test site though. I think I might have scared her a little. Once she saw her friends, she bade me goodbye. Oh well.

I must say that these Koreans were very efficient. There were a couple of booths giving away free tea and chocolate drink in the building. There were a bunch of Korean writings on them and I had not the slightest idea what they meant. I did not know if these freebies were only meant for their fellow Koreans but since I could pass for any Asian nationality, I got myself a cup. I was careful not to say anything though. Couldn't afford to blow my cover, just in case.

We were guided to our assigned rooms and seats. As luck would have it, I was seated right in front, dead center. I would have been really stupid if I wasn't able to understand the instructions then since the examiner was demonstrating what should be done as she said them.

Expectedly, the test was hard. I guessed the answers for more than half of the test. The two guys seated to my right were annoyingly noisy, whispering to each other the whole time we were taking the test. I was sure they were copying answers from each other although I could not understand a word of what they were saying. They were talking in Korean. About ten minutes before the end of the test, the lady from the HSK office (she was very encouraging when I registered. There were two women in the office that day. She was the nicer one.) entered the room. Taking advantage of the disturbance, the two guys exchanged questionnaires. (We had a questionnaire and an answer sheet. These guys were also putting their answers on the questionnaire with the intention of exchanging them at the right moment and thus being able to compare answers.) The HSK lady was too sharp for them though. She swooped down on their papers and said, "不要考了. (Don't take the test anymore.)"

"Finally!" I thought. 

I didn't really care what they do but they were too irritating. They could at least try to be more quiet. I was trying to read! In Chinese, for chrisakes!

I think they'd still compute their scores though. Lucky bastards.

After the test, Vivian and I shopped a little. After exhausting ourselves walking around the malls for what seemed like hours, we finally decided to go home. It was on the bus that I found out that it was Vivian's birthday! I felt really terrible because I wasn't able to get her anything and she'd been really great about helping me with just about everything. She assured me that I shouldn't worry about it. The ride home was pretty much uneventful.

The results will be out after six weeks, at least. Oh, and I was well again when we got home.

In Shenyang: Before and After HSK

I'm not sure exactly. It's in the hotel where we stayed in LiaoNing University.

没希望! (Hopeless!)

It's time to give myself another peptalk.

Today, less than a week before my test, I was re-reading the HSK manual that contains all the information about the test. Because it's in Chinese, I usually just skim through it. This afternoon though, I decided to read it more carefully and guess what I discovered... NOT everything is in multiple choice! The last 15 items actually require me to provide, as in write the Chinese characters in the blanks! A random paragraph in Chinese will have random blanks which I will have to fill in with not-so-random but actual precise there's-no-other-correct-answer-but-this-one characters! Heaven help me!

The test seeks to promote the development in all areas (listening comprehension, grammar, reading comprehension, cloze) so even if one gets a perfect score say in all the three areas but fail one, s/he will still fail the entire test. Which means that I can't even hope to do well in the other areas so I can compensate on the surely dismal score I'll get in the cloze test.

Hermitdom, here I come.

This does not sound like a peptalk. The peptalk is really to convince myself that being a hermit is the best thing to happen to a person. I'll save that for another day. I'll have all the time in the world after I become one. For now, I'll try to find hope where there isn't one.

It's Raining Men (of course I exaggerate)

Before I start talking about the men...

I had dinner with some friends tonight in a Korean restaurant. Most of the restaurants here have private rooms where there's a videoke so one can sing while eating with the company of friends. Usually after everyone has eaten, someone would reach for the microphone and people would take turns singing. Tonight was no different. What was so surprising to me was there were actually OPM songs in the videoke machine! I have long since given up hope on that. It was hard enough to find 'singable' English songs, I was pretty sure nobody would even dream of putting OPM songs in those machines. Not in this part of China, I thought. Imagine my surprise when I saw Freddie Aguilar's "Anak" while I was skimming through the list. Scroll down scroll down, Eraserhead's "Ang Huling El Bimbo"! I couldn't pass up the chance. Off-key as I was, nobody could even tell. I was giggling at the double meanings in the song but they probably just thought I was very happy. After they sang several Chinese songs, I found myself holding the mic again. Scroll down scroll down, Regine Velasquez's "You Are My Song." I should go there with Marvin and Joy. We'll have a blast.

And now the men...

I'm still uncertain about the whole Andy-business. We go out once or twice a week but I'm beginning to think he isn't really interested in me that way. That's my defense mechanism for a just-in-case-he-isn't-so-I-won't-get-too-disappointed scenario. So there. We're friends.

There's this other guy whom I've been seeing on the side. Not as funny and charming and intelligent as Andy but very persistent and insistent. Rain hates him and tells me so every chance he has. There's something about this man that makes me almost feel sorry for him. There are rumors that he's married though, which he denies vehemently. Ho-hum.

And then there's another Andy whom I met months ago but only met up with the other night. Andy-number-2 speaks very good English which used to be one of my requirements. Now that my Chinese has considerably improved, it's not that necessary anymore but one can think of it as bonus points. Rain, my one-man screening committee, favors Andy-number-2 because "he's very relaxed" as compared to Andy-number-1 whom he described as "a pussy." The observation must have come from the time when I brought the first Andy to BeeHouse and he refused to drink beer. That's not being a pussy. That's not giving in to pressure. Hmp.

Now that I don't update my calendar anymore, I'll let you peek into how I spent the last few days and will spend the next few, in relation to the raining men:

Friday afternoon: museum with Andy1. The museum was closed so we went to have a drink (hot milk :p) and he tried to teach me Chinese from my HSK book. We didn't stay out long because he had a cold.

Saturday night: Andy2 wanted to meet up. We decided on watching a movie in my house but while he was on his way, Rain called to say that a bunch of them are going to BeeHouse so Andy2 and I went too. Ivy, Rain's girlfriend, whispered to me that Rain told her that I have many boyfriends. A little while later, Rain told me that the actual conversation was:

Ivy: So Joni can date different boys now?

Rain: Of course. She's a goodlooking foreign girl. She's on it like a fat kid on Smarties.

I don't know which is worse. He did say "goodlooking" so I forgive him. I'm easy to appease.

Sunday night: I watched a show sponsored by China Mobile (think of Globe or Smart) with Andy1 and some of his friends. All girls. One seemed to be really close to him. Mei shi. We're friends.

Monday night (tonight): Korean restaurant with the guy whose guts Rain hates.

Tuesday afternoon (tomorrow): Andy2 invited me to his demo-teach (of some sort) at his school.

Wednesday night: I'll be seeing Andy1 because I'm scheduled to give a foreign class to his class at WaiYan. Every once in a while, I give foreign classes to classes taught by Chinese teachers. This is the first time that I'll be giving one to Andy1's class.

I must remind myself that I have a test on Sunday. That should make me stay home on Thursday and Friday. I plan to spend the night in Shenyang on Saturday because I have to be at the test site by 7:50am on Sunday. Yes, I am shaking with fear.

New House

Also from Andy. My 10-year-old student gave the name. It means GrayGray.

My new house. I'll be sharing it with a new Pinay teacher pretty soon. I'm dreading it because I like living alone. Oh well.

On Moving

I'm now in my new apartment as I write this. And it's cold. I like this house better mainly because it's smaller and it doesn't take me as much time and energy to go from one place to the other (yes, I'm that lazy) but the cold! I'm wearing three layers of clothes now as I type.

Yesterday was the big moving day. The day before, I warned Andy that "我的东西太多. 非常非常多. (I have too many things. So many.)" He said he's strong so it's 没事 (no problem). So yesterday, his strength was put to the test. He was doing pretty good until he found out that my new house was on the sixth floor. Apparently, that knowledge proved a little too much for even his strength so he called a friend to come and help.

So after the four of us (Lynn, Andy, Andy's friend and I) ran up and down the stairs of my old and then new house, I treated them to lunch which was the least I could do. Andy's friend's girlfriend joined us for lunch. As most of the conversation was in Chinese and I was too tired to follow anything, I tuned out and concentrated on eating while not falling asleep. A little while later, Andy told Lynn to translate some of the things that he wanted to say to me. I wasn't looking at anyone nor was I paying attention to what was happening so this was Lynn's account of what happened: He was looking at Lynn while talking and she told him to look at me, so he looked at me then started looking at Lynn again. Lynn said, "Don't look at me. Look at her." He looked at me for a long time then said, "I forget what I wanted to say." I cannot believe how I was so clueless that this was happening right in front of me.

Later that evening, Andy would call to ask why I was sad during lunch. I said I wasn't. Chinese friends are always worried about people being sad. Then he asked if I left anything in the old apartment. I said yes but Lynn and I already went back to get them. He asked what. I didn't know how to say "the mattress" nor "the cushion for the bed" so I just said "that thing for the bed." I also left some of my shoes but I forgot how to say "shoes." Anyway, he didn't understand what I was saying. He then asked about the flowers. I started laughing and said, "在这里了. (Already here)." He said he saw the flowers and wanted to get them but his friend said they were not important so he didn't.

He gave me those flowers. When Lynn and I went back to the house for the mattress and some of my shoes, we had a discussion on whether or not I should take them. I was hesitant at first because we were already carrying a lot of things. But thank god I did. Saved me the trip to get them today. I think it's really cute that he was so concerned about them. Cute and sweet. After assuring him that the flowers were safely in my new house, he said he'd try to find time that night so we could play. I think he really just called about the flowers. Hehehe.

Andy's Site

http://nianjian1.blog.tom.com
How can I describe it? Everything's in Chinese. Is that enough description? Andy is the guy that I'm dating. His Chinese name is NianJian, thus the url. This site contains some of his essays and pictures. But you'll have to know what to click. Good luck!