Linguistically speaking...

Ever since I found out the title of the Jay Chou song that I liked, I made a very Jay Chou playlist for when I drive. Like all men, whether they understand the language or not, the J-man protested vehemently initially. Then i argued that it makes me drive better, and because I was tired out from work, I need to relax by listening to my songs. He is very eager to make me happy after a tiring day at work for fear of treading on my toes. Haha!

No la, but he is also very sweet because he knows how tired I am, and so he gives in to all my whining, Jay Chou included. I also bargained that he gets to keep in touch with the Chinese language that way, even though gawd knows we can hardly hear what the man is singing.

I wonder what is making me go through this sudden phase. I had never been a serious groupie Jay Chou fan (Elisa and Daphne comes to mind), and I stopped listening to him by his 3rd album... Could it be a craving and need for my mother tongue and that I have no one except my mom to turn to? I even emailed a few of my Chinese ex-colleagues (in CHINESE!!) to keep in touch. I don't wish for my Chinese to deteriorate, and if i ever have kids, by golly I want them to be strongly bilingual, even if they can't be multi-dialect-lingual (if there is such a thing).

I just got an email from my good friend Jiani (another J!), and i miss the hilarious times we spent, trying to speak Hokkien, Cantonese, Malay, English and Chinese, failing miserably, but can still pass (if you know what i mean), depending on the people around us, and depending on who we want to leave out of our conversations. Aiyoh, so naughty. Yes, I miss that so much.

Here, I'm working hard to sound like one of them, speech accommodation they say, so it must certainly be contributing to my gradual loss of identity. At the cash registers I say "Hi, how y'all doin' today?" and say things like "ta-meh-tas" instead of "toe-mat-to". I cannot say "shiok" or "alamak" except in front of the J-man, because there simply isn't any point.

I didn't intend for the post to pan out into one linguistic rant, and I was even gonna post a few photos. But it was sitting at the top of my mind, and i had to get it out.

Four years ago, I started feeling homesick after about a couple of months in Shanghai. This, is probably around the same time for me to feel homesick again.