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The fact that I’m leaving Toronto for good hadn’t quite sunk until today. May has finally arrived. By the end of this month, I will be returning to Singapore, after spending 4 years out of my 22-year life here.

I came to Toronto to pursue a Bachelor’s after I graduated from high school in Asia. I had originally picked UBC in Vancouver, but after I hearing that the campus wasn’t downtown and that they suffer from 6 months of rain, I promptly accepted the University of Toronto’s offer instead.

The moment I stepped into the city, I fell in love. It truly is a cosmopolitan city. I have never lived anywhere in the world where you could step out and see authentic Ethiopian, Japanese, ‘Canadian’, Thai restaurants all lined up next to each other. A city so metropolitan where subway chatters and whispers consist of hundreds languages, dialects and accents. A city where there is no real majority of colors. Everywhere you go there will be Yellows, Whites, Blacks, Reds and Browns. It’s a city where strangers are not just strangers but potential friends. The friendliness of Canadians is such an amazing experience. Back in Asia, people are nowhere as friendly toward each other. This is the truly perfect city for a global nomad like me.

Recently, I’ve been given the chance to stay, after the Canadian government abruptly announced that international students can work in Canada for up to 3 years and without a job offer. Strangely, even after hearing about the decision, I’ve decided to leave.

Toronto is the perfect city for me. In fact, it’s too perfect. People tend to stop evolving when their environments are too well-suited to them. If I get too comfortable here, I fear that I will lose the fighting spirit to achieve my ambitions. I may end up stagnating and my potential stunted. Furthermore, as a ‘visible minority’ and a female, I will have to face a very low glass ceiling. My ambition is to be on top of the world. A place where the glass ceiling may potentially be low will only hinder my ambitions. I am not saying Canadians are racists and misogynists, but it is a fact of life that women and minorities will find it harder to rise on top no matter where they are in the world.

So, the obvious solution is to return to a place where I will at least be consider the majority. I will have one less thing to worry about. As for my gender, I will just have to work 10x harder than men and prove that I am stronger, smarter and better than my male counterparts.

Another reason is my interest in Asia. Now that I have experienced the West, it is time to experience the East. As an Asian person who attended British elementary school, American middle and high school and a Canadian university, I’m extremely Westernized. But after living in the West, I realized I’m not as white-washed as I’ve always perceived myself to be. A lot of my core values have roots in Confucianism, and I honestly cannot live 2 weeks without rice. Being here has only deepened my curiosity about my Asian heritage. I just have the feeling that I will understand myself better if I go back. It doesn’t necessarily have to be Singapore, any Confucius-influenced country will do: China, Korea, Japan.

My last reason is to learn to trust my instinct/intuition. I’ve based most of my life decisions on reason and a few reckless ones on overwhelming emotions. But I have never once trusted my gut instincts or my womanly intuitions. I’ve always chastised them to be too risky because there are no real grounds for those feelings. For once in my life, I will give in to this instinct and urge to leave.

Somehow, another part of me cannot help but feel that I might be making a mistake by leaving the opportunity of acquiring a permanent residency in a wonderful city such as Toronto. But at the same time, my urge to leave now is strong because I’m all fired up about climbing my way up on the social ladder. I am afraid I will get too comfortable and end up living here forever as a mediocre white-collared worker. I intend to lead a life of ambition. And I will need challenges to rise to the top. I will also need to experience more of the world, in order to affect the world. Life is short. I cannot afford to waste 3 years of my youth planning for my retirement.

With my decision to leave, I have chosen the thorny path of life. I hope I have made the right decision. So farewell, perfect city. You simply are too perfect for me.

Chinese version of the post found here.

Which path of life have you chosen? The safer and easier path? Or the challenging path?

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Nanyate?! Network Update: Sorry for the lack of blogging lately. It’s partially because I haven’t felt the spark to write, but mainly because I’ve been having a headache registering a new domain with a new domain registrar. Everything from ordering to support to changing DNS servers has been a nightmare. It’s all done now.

The new domain will be home to a blogcast authored by ID of Notbrainwashersafe.com and me. Our blogcast project will be kickstarted when ID graduates and when I return to Singapore. That’ll be sometime in June.

The domain is located at Toiletrev.com (nothing there, just a temporary under construction page I made with a background stolen from ID’s old layout). Strange name, yes. History behind the name is long and we’ll save it for a blogcast. We don’t know what we will blogcast about yet. But we’ll figure something out.

After all, ID and I were high school best friends. *gasp* Bet most of you didn’t know that. That’s right folks, juicy internet gossip from Nanyate.com.

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In an article from New Scientist, a man claims that his grandfather could speak 70 languages, and write in 56. And he’s never even attended school. This man also explained that while they were traveling to Thailand, his grandfather admitted that he couldn’t speak Thai. However, in less than 2 weeks, he was able to argue with vendors for discounts - like a native! Years later, the writer was sent to Thailand for a job, and returned to converse with his grandfather in Thai. Even after spending months in Thailand, his command of Thai is still far below his grandfather’s.

As ridiculous as this story might be, it is a true one. And according to many experts, the existence of of hyperpolyglots are not uncommon throughout history. Why hyperpolyglots have sprung up throughout history, no one knows. Some experts claim that it’s intelligence. Others say that it’s a talent. Some others say it’s a side effect of a medical condition. And a few reckon that it’s pure hard work and interest.

For me? I would have to agree with the latter. Learning a language is not a talent and has absolutely nothing to do with your IQ. It’s a process, and with time and effort, normal people like you and me can do the same.

I’m not incredibly smart. I suck at math. I suck at art. I don’t particularly like science. I don’t particularly like school. But one thing’s for sure: I never ever stopped learning languages. When I was a child, I started speaking so late in my life that my parents thought that I was mute. It probably had something to do with the way I was raised. My father spoke to me in English. My mother spoke to me in Mandarin. My grandmother spoke to me in Hokkien. Once I started speaking, I always spoke in three languages, often repeating myself. If I wanted apple, for example, I’d always say “apple, ping guo, peng gor.” I’m not sure why I did that, and why I’d know that apple stood for ping guo and ping guo stood for peng gor. But it happened.

Currently, I understand 8 languages and 2 dialects. In terms of proficiency, I’m bilingual in Hokken and English; almost bilingual with Mandarin, and passively bilingual to French. (Passive here means that I can understand and read French fluently, but I still struggle with speaking and writing.) I’ve had formal education in Spanish, Malay, Indonesian and Korean. I’ve also picked up Cantonese colloquially to survive in a cantonese-dominant city. And recently, I’m also able to understand intermediate colloquial Japanese and basic Kansai dialect as an unintended side effect from watching too many animes. My Japanese understanding is at the point, where I don’t need sub-titles for certain genres of anime anymore.

(To the ignorant South East Asians, Malay and Indonesian are very different languages, despite sharing some similar vocabulary. The difference between Malay and Indonesian is like the difference between Portuguese and Spanish. You can’t count them as the same language just because they share a common pool of words. The grammatical structure between Malay and Indonesia are so different that misunderstandings can occur in a 5 minute conversation between a Malay and an Indonesian.)

My point here? A superior brain is not needed in learning multiple languages; it’s passion. For me, learning a language is the only way to completely understand another’s culture from their perspective so I always try to learn new ones. And as the number of languages I know increases, the easier it becomes to learn a new language, since most languages share similar roots. For example, since I read French and Spanish, I can understand some basic Italian.

But of course, learning a language and mastering one is completely different. Mastering a language requires a lot of painful effort and time, if you’re not a language genius. I needed 7 years of school, starting from 5th grade to 12th grade to be passively bilingual in French. I needed 4 years at university to be almost bilingual in Chinese. And even then, both are still lacking compared to my English.

But then, I was inspired. I stumbled upon many blogs, where Japanese people blog in English so that they could improve their English. The amount of effort, the amount of pain, the amount of time they put in so incredibly admirable. All this make me wonder, if I had put in that much effort into learning French and Chinese, I’d be fully bilingual by now. But I’m only 22; I have a lifetime left to master all these languages. So, I decided to have my very own second-language blog, where I will predominantly blog in Chinese, and occasionally in one of the 6 other languages. I’ll start with one entry per week, and slowly build up from there. I now present to you:

LANGUAGEDIARY.COM

So ありがとうございます Kirin, PONTA, Weber, Little_sun and Natsuwo-beer for being wonderful inspirations. I hope that as you all improve your English as I’ll improve my French, Chinese, and Japanese (once I find myself a teacher) too!

So do you speak a second language? How long have you learned it for? If you don’t, do you want to learn a new language? Which ones? Why?

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I’m sorry if this entry is lackluster. Call it writer’s block if you will, I’m just not feeling the passion to write recently.

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