Intellectually challenged

I know I have several things to blog about. It's like when something interesting happens, I'll think to myself, "Oh man I totally must blog about this!"

And then I'll forget. -.-"' I'll remember that I have to blog about a number of things, but I can't remembcer WHAT.

Sign. Brain degeneration.

I shall just blog about what I remember first! Before I forget again. =P

Haha I promised Stella to blog about my linguistics and multilingual studies interview. It started off when I received an email inviting me to attend the interview, then there was an essay topic:

"Singlish does not have grammar. Discuss."

I received the email while half asleep and it jolted me awake. The interview was two days later and the next day I have work, so I hardly have any time to prepare. The next day, I wikipedia-ed Singlish, and had a lot of fun reading a lot of interesting crap, but 80% of it was irrelevant. Raawwr! I was actually puzzled as to why they gave us the essay question beforehand. Kind of defeats the purpose right??

My dad drove me there.. it was 0930 la.. So early. Then I took some time finding the place. No, yours truly did NOT get lost, contrary to expectations. =P But it was kinda scary cos building after building and all the levels have the EXACT same structure, so it was like a maze or an illusion thing where you go through one glass door to find yourself 5 metres away from a glass door that looks EXACTLY like the one you just stepped through. Round and round.

But clever me (Ha!) found my way. AND I entered a room full of oestrogen and progesterone. >.<

Met Hui Xian, my fellow sec sch choir-mate and ex-neighbour! So coincidental la! We wanted to talk but the room was so deathly quiet and full of stony faces that we decided to leave the room to continue our blabbers.

By the time we went back in, we noticed one group of girls had gone off. We waited around for quite some time before asking the lady at the counter about our turn. She was quite confused too. Got like many different groups with different time slots. So we waited some more.

Then about 10 minutes later we were told that we were supposed to go to another room to take the written test with the first group of girls!!! MUMMY!

We hurried to a smaller room where candidates were already writing furiously. Oh well. *ashamed*

Managed to finish in time though I pretty much wrote crap and kept going round and round the same points without going anywhere.

Then we went to a third waitng area for the interview. Was thirsty and needed to pee but neither Hui Xian nor I dared to pop by the loo in case we missed our turn. Got to know a couple of people there. 80% gals. SIAN!!! Big negative for this course. =D Anyway most of them speak like flowing water. Smooth and fast and accurate.

Anyway the moment I stepped into the interview room the professor started shooting questions at me about the essay I just wrote. I gave pretty brainless answers. *cries*

e.g.
Her: You mentioned that the grammar style of Singlish is heavily influenced by the Mandarin and Malay, Mandarin in particular.

Me: (Blank look) Erm... Yes, that's right.

Her: Could you elaborate on it? How exactly has the grammar of English been altered?

Me: (Takes 5 seconds to absorb her question. Another 5 seconds to think up of something.) Well, erm, for example, the usage of 'la' in english is equivalent to the exclamation commonly used in Mandarin. And because the Mandarin version of 'la' is placed at the end of a sentence for emphasis or expression, when 'la' became integrated into English, it is placed at the back as well.

Her: (Gazes at me, expecting me to say more.)

Me: (Starts to feel like something has been missed out.) Um.. And there are also direct integration of certain Malay words... (In my mind: Oh shit! Why am I talking about Malay?? I should be talking about Mandarin!!) and Mandarin words as well. (in my mind: Dammit! I'm supposed to talk about grammar! Not vocabulary! Uh-oh.) ... .... Erm. And the sentence structures from Mandarin are also adopted when our Mandarin-speaking forefathers (LOL) tried to converse in English. Hence, the positioning of the subject in a sentence is shifted...

(Can't remember what I uttered after that... brain block.)

Her: Well, since you said that there is a direct injection of Mandarin grammar into English, can you explain why people from mainland who learn english do not speak the way we do?

Me: (raise eyebrows and purse lips) Well, I believe that the difference could be the multiple influence Singaporeans get from other languages. For example Malay and several dialects like Hokkien and Cantonese. The product of the mixture is thus Singlish. Mainland chinese - I mean Mandarin - is solely influenced by Mandarin. I mean, their English is only influenced by Mandarin. Yup. That could be the cause.

Her: (Looks at me intensely while I crap.) Er, well, I guess for someone who is unfamiliar and not well-?something? with linguistics, it is natural to take that assumption. It's alright; that's understandable.

SHIT!! My answer is totally a non-answer la! It's like she asked me wads my favourite food and I told her I have two brothers. And her response totally tells me that my answer was W-R-O-N-G. It's almost like she was taking pity on me when she said that. -.-"'

Anyway the girl who went in after me is really smart la. Indian girl, very fluent, very smart. Her essay was damn long. Although that may or may not be a good thing.... She received other very good offers from other places too. During her turn, she mentioned to the interviewer that everyone knew the essay topic beforehand. Apparently it wasn't supposed to be so. Oops! But anyway it was too late.

Oh well. I got through miraculously, but now I'm stuck in a dilemma between NUS and NTU. I'm very tempted to do this course because

1: 4 years direct honours
2: Enough free credits to do up to 2 minors
3: EXTREMELY interesting course contents covering many different areas of linguistics. (My bro did the course once as an elective and the course materials he showed me are all very intriguing.)
4: Chances to study overseas to learn other languages and cultures. (read: multilingual studies)

But hesitant because

1: >80% gals. (Stella says this should be the deciding factor. Boy-crazy Stella!)
2: New course this year, hence only about 50 people in the course, like guinea pigs.
3: Limited career prospects.

Oh well. I have till 2 June only. Better make up my mind fast. But whtever it is, I shall have no regrets. *grim smile*

Okay I wanted to blog about something else but I can't remember.

Oyah, by the way I wanted to post an interesting picture... but haven't scanned it yet. Shall scan it and upload on the next post. Then you guys can guess who it is! Haha!

Bet I got you all curious already uh? =D I love torturing people like that. Bye!


P.S. Advertorial: Have you guys read "Eats, shoots and leaves"? It's written by Lynne Truss. Wikipedia article here. Good book! =D Non-fiction. Talks about punctuation. Before you yawn, the title came from this cute joke. You might have heard it before:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.“Why?” asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes its way towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.“Well, I’m a panda,” he says, at the door. “Look it up.”The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. “Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

Lame! Haha. Just cos of that additional comma. -.-"' Ok Stella you kuku panda better dun go around shooting people ok! =D

After that book I tried reading "Cell" by Stephen King but it was terrible. The front part was him trying to write it like a movie script, and there was an extreme overdose of blood, gore and explosions in the first 60 pages. I gave up after that. Maybe it's just not my kind of book. Depletes your IQ! But his "Carrie" is good. Ok stop my postscript is getting too long le. Should have done a separate blog post on this. -.- BYE!

P.P.S Blogger is screwed up. It keeps adding extra spaces between paragraphs each time I edit my posts, and deletes random chunks of text. Stuff it!