Ni Hao

In the spirit of the Olympics (and it being held in China), my greetings to you means “How are you?” in Mandarin. Now, this all makes me sound as if I could speak it (Mandarin) right? On the contrary, I don’t. Although, my ancestors do but unfortunately, even my grandma doesn’t speak it. But, all’s not lost as I do speak other Chinese dialects, just not Mandarin So, you could say that I am not a complete “banana”. LOL..

Watched the opening ceremony the other day and as I’ve been expecting : nothing short of spectacular. Kudos to the creative team and Zhang YiMou. Now, in getting into the true spirit of it all, I feel like taking up Mandarin classes. No reason, just so I can feel a little superior and not so much of an idiot for calling myself a Chinese but can’t speak Mandarin.

You see, if I am armed with a minimum of good conversational Mandarin, I can strut confidently around the electrical malls in China (heard the stuffs over there are pretty darn cheap) and bargain for good electronic deals for example. Or at the very least, if I don't get the price that I want, I would still know what they are saying to me, good or bad. Oh well, fancy going back to school at my age..huh! We’ll see…we shall see…