Daryl Tay.net

I’ve been here a week and it has been nothing short of awesome. I didn’t intend for it to be this way, but somehow I’ve ended up mixing with a lot of the Asian kids here from Singapore, Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan and Taiwan. Now before you give me the whole “what the hell go and mingle with other people” crap, hear me out.

Firstly, it’s no different from what everyone else is doing. The European kids kinda hang out together and speak their language, understand more or less their culture etc and the same happens for us. It’s like a big thing to sorta settle into a foreign land and adapt to the culture, so meeting a community of same if not similar people makes it a little easier. It’s also easier to share experiences when you’ve actually traveled to those countries (the only one I haven’t been to is Taiwan and China).

That said, I do enjoy meeting the Canadians and British people that I meet here, simply because it’s easy to understand them and get along. It’s not that the French or the Italians or the Swedes have poor English, it’s just somehow easier to understand imperfect English from Asia than imperfect English from Europe. Maybe those who have traveled more can agree or disagree on that.

In any case, the interesting thing is that while our accents are different, somehow Mandarin seems to be the common thread (minus Thailand and Japan) and so a lot of the conversations are in Mandarin! Of course this means I only understand maybe 70-80% of what’s going on, and I reply mostly in English and amuse them no end when I speak in Mandarin, but it’s been really fun so far.

I have to admit, this is one fruit I never thought going on exchange would yield.