The Night Circus

When I was younger, books were my way of imagining what the world was like. I did not have the almighty Internet to show me places and stories, so I let words and imagination carry me to far-fetch places. I remember being so engrossed by Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Victor Hugo and other novelists I cannot quite recall. I tried to bring myself to places I had never been to and let myself be part of unreal events. The possibilities were never-ending.

I grew up and went places. The world is not quite what I imagined. It is uglier, prettier, happier, and sadder at the same time. I travelled and had my own stories. Reality is so overwhelming that I almost forgot the habit of travelling with my imagination. J.K. Rowling, in her Harvard Commencement speech, has discussed at length the importance of imagination, and I was reminded of it again today, by The Night Circus.

This is not really a book review. I don’t think I will ever do a book review again, as I believe everyone should have the pleasure of finding out for themselves whether a book is worth reading. One thing I know is that this book has awakened my imagination and let it stretch far into the world of impossibilities. A story so rich and magical that it left me bedazzled and at peace all at once, like waking up from a nice dream.

“Stories have changed, my dear boy,” the man in the grey suit says, his voice almost imperceptibly sad. “There are no more battles between good and evil, no monsters to slay, no maidens in need of rescue. Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something in any case. There are no longer simple tales with quests and beasts and happy endings. The quests lack clarity of goal or path. The beasts take different forms and are difficult to recognize for what they are. And there are never endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep going on, they overlap and blur, your story is part of your sister’s story is part of many other stories, and there is no telling where any of them may lead. Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon, or a wolf and a scarlet-clad little girl. And is not the dragon the hero of his own story? Is not the wolf acting as the wolf should act? Though perhaps it is a singular wolf who goes to such lengths as the dress as a grandmother to toy with its prey.”

Erin Morgenstern – The Night Circus

 

Language crisis

I have been dealing with internship applications lately, and every time, there will always be a Language section. I often get to choose a language in which I am a “native” speaker, and another one which I am fluent at. Even though I always tick Vietnamese as my native language and English as the language I can read and write fluently, I often feel like I am not completely honest.

Technically, my choices logically fulfils the requirements, but deep down, I feel that something is not quite right.

It’s true that I qualify as a native Vietnamese speaker, but I find it rather difficult these days to hold a conversation in Vietnamese without using an English word once in a while, out of convenience and habit. In fact, 4 years in Singapore have given me a unique set of vocabulary that just cannot be translated directly into Vietnamese (or probably any other language for that matter), for example the word ‘kiasu’ (roughly means ‘afraid to lose’). I have to admit, I overuse English sometimes. Quite often, English words just comes to my head faster, making it difficult for me to talk to a non-English speaking Vietnamese. Once I had to pause 3 seconds to try and remember the equivalence for ‘museum’ in Vietnamese. 3 seconds!

The fact that I am writing this blog in English instead of Vietnamese is enough to prove that I am more comfortable expressing myself in English. This is NOT to say that my English is good, it just means that writing in English is easier for me. This has to do with the fact that I left Vietnam early and my Vietnamese writing education stopped at secondary school level (which was mostly “describe a tree/a water bottle” or at best “tell a story about someone that means a lot to you”). I literally just learned how to communicate professionally in Vietnamese during my summer internship last year. It was sad how I had to keep an English balance sheet next to me as reference in order for me to understand a Vietnamese balance sheet.

Still, it wasn’t a complete disaster, I got a hang of the terminologies after a couple of weeks and was functioning like any other Vietnamese university undergraduate. My point is, language is sometimes not as simple as native and fluent, even for basic business requirements. There are always in-betweeners (like me) not belonging in any category. I’m sure any bi-lingual person could relate.

That’s all the ranting I have got for today. Have a great first day of summer (20 March)!