April 22, 2007

SINGAPORE

Preparing for my Chinese Exam

(周末学习华语因为明天我有华文考试）

Today will have to be a quick post because I have a Chinese examination tomorrow evening. This was a long weekend spent agonizing over Chinese characters, but I am now able to recognize roughly 450 characters (about 600 words.) While this may seem like a drop in the language bucket, after about 1000 characters one can read the newspaper, and after 2000 characters one can hold in-depth conversations.

Reaching such goals will require many more days locked up in jail cells like the one pictured to the right. Depressing, huh?

Welcome to Asian schooling.

One last thing: An anonymous reader kindly (ha!) informed me that my "writing has regressed over the past year," so I will do my best in the coming weeks to improve. However, I suspect the problem is not so much my writing - it was crap to begin with - but  how my life has become a little too mundane recently. Not to worry, though, for exams will soon be over and a fresh month of travel will begin in May. My plane ticket has already been booked, but I will keep the place(s) secret for a little while longer.