I've Hit My Ceiling? You Are Your Own Upper Bound!--How to Keep Learning A Second Language

In any case, I have to admit two facts:

• English is just my second language , to compete in such an international and multi-cultural environment, it is far from good enough.
• No matter how hard I try, I may never be able to pull up to those native speakers, when I say native speakers, I mean those Americans, British guys, Canadians, Australians, or even most of the well educated Singaporeans and Indians (Most Chinese guys ignore the fact that India inherited meritocracy education system from Britain, thus those who are able to afford the tuition fee can communicate and work with others in English better than the average Chinese, don't know how can we be so confident to mock their accent).

These two facts are like unchangeable theorems that I may never get a chance to prove them wrong, while it doesn't imply I should not try my best to approach the ceiling! English has been of great interest to me for years, and I have never stop improving since my junior year in college:

• Most of my Google RSS are in English (one of the major reason is I am really sick of the low quality and fickle Chinese media(both the online blogs and offline papers and magazines, the only two I am enjoying reading is Net-ease网易 and Zhihu知乎))
• I tried hard to pass the Business English Certification certified by Cambridge University with a Higher degree.
• I managed to get 3 8.0 points(4 in total) in IELTS.
• I have been a member and administrator of Economic China for years.

When I made up my mind to Singapore, I got several reasons:

• I can get scholarship which makes me more economical independent(which I am right now).
• Bilinguality can relatively be a strength (at lease not a con) in Singapore, at least your fluency in mandarin can make up to your weakness in English to some extent(which total depends on what kind of industry you want to jump in as I see now). While if you go to US or UK(I don't give a shit to Australia since there are already full of Chinese and you get bored, passive and less aggressive easily, and I also eliminated Hongkong since Cantonese is still the major living and even working language there), it will probably be very difficult for you to find a job other than computer related or dish washing(kidding, but it does has a narrow range of choices).
• Can go home quickly if there is any emergency.
• Food is good based on my travelling experience before.(On June)

All in all, Singapore is the best trade-off I can ever expect as my major concern is still 'working in that place for 3-5 years after graduation'.

Actually what is on the track is that 'I am walking my talk', I used all the connections I can at this stage and tried to find as much information as possible online and after doing some trade-offs, I am now working in Executive Coach International as a marketing and business development intern, and I was also recommended by Mr.Morgan as an SELF Assistant in CELC, NUS. 

Despite the financial benefit I get from these works(which can roughly afford me to pay the movie tickets and dinner bills when hanging out with my girlfriend, you have my words, Yu.), these working experiences also provide me a flexible while also competitive environment to thrive, especially in Executive Coach International.

As I mentioned in the title of this post, I was expected to talk something about keeping learning a second language, and we are approaching nearer and nearer :)

Most of the time in ECI, I work with Kunqi(my supervisor) and Yuting(another full time intern), both of them were graduated from top universities in Singapore with honored degree, and also are equiped with tremendous soft skills:

• Kunqi had been working as an Engineer(as I ought but do not want to be) and for government department for several years, what's more, as a life coach, she is excellent in communicating with people from different backgrounds and industries; multi-tasks, as well as working under pressure whilst still be positive and energetic.
• Yuting, a quite simple and cute girl, is really dependable and cooperative, also quite good at writing, I am already one of her blog's fans, here is the first step of her SEO,  http://withloveyuting.blogspot.sg/ , check it out, unlike other soul chicken soups, her words is quite touching due to her sincerity.

It's the experience of working with these talented people makes me realize my lack of ability in operating English as a tool in business environment. I mean, I have worked for Netgains, and UCweb's international product team, both of them are English speaking workshops, while being a 'marketer' and 'business developer' is really different from working with geeks. It requires more dimensions of the use of a language.

Aiming at my existing weaknesses, I have made a list for myself, remember, even you cannot hit the mark(as good as a native speaker), at least you should try your best to hit your own ceiling!

• Practice more on telephone speaking, I don't like making calls, I am even not that good at making calls in Chinese, so definitely I will do more in this part, I have already saved several great instructions to my Instapaper, but more importantly, I have to 'practice' more!
• Be a better E-mail writer, my words in mails can be confusing sometimes especially when trying to explain something abstract, and my style of writing should be more business like. I am already working on this: I get a lot of chance to practice everyday, and I also use some phrases other people are using in business communication mails for reference.
• Stop using bilingual dictionary, this is the first suggestion Mr. Morgan gave to me, thanks to IPAD's embedded dictionary, I am almost there!
• Write more blogs, as what I am doing right now.
• Make friends with  new words everyday, and look into the whole package of the use of this word.
• Do spelling check all the time!

Talking about new words: I read an article written by  David K. Williams on my Instapaper today, called 'The Case for hire Under-Qualified Employers', really an inspired one, but I am not going to tell you the lesson I learnt from this article, but a word: GEAR.

Of course I know what does 'GEAR' mean, but I realized that I have never ever ever ever used this word in any of my articles or daily talk, so I think it's gonna be a great initiative to use this word in my post today! So I checked it out in my dictionary inside my IPAD, here it is:

• as a noun, one of a set of toothed wheels that work together to alter the relation between the speed of a driving mechanism and the speed of the driven parts.
• as a noun, informal equipment that is used for a particular purpose.
• as a verb, design or adjust the gears in a machine to give a specified speed or power output.
• gear down, change to a lower gear.
• gear for, make ready or prepared: A nation geared for war!
• gear up, equip of prepare oneself: The region started to gear up for the tourist season.

It's also quite fascinating to know that this word originated from Middle English, and came from Scandinavian in the first place, (You can easily distinguish a word is from north Europe or French, at least I may).

OK, really late now, to leave a happy ending to this post, please allow me to show off a little bit:  

I am doing my best to gear up for the bigger challenges!

Question for Today: The Best Time in My Life?

I told you guys I would post something about my transforming experience from Google Reader to Flipboard + Instapaper in my last blog, well, before that, I would just answer a question flashing over my head  two minutes ago when I just finished doing my laundry(it was raining cats and dogs in the afternoon, so...long story), anyway, here it is:

• What is the Best Time in My Life?

Ummm, I enjoy spending every seconds with my parents, hanging out with my girlfriend, reading books or Google Reader now Flipboard + Instapaper, while above are all just 'behaviors', what I am really asking myself is 'What was the specific Time Slots/Duration I enjoyed living in the most?', the answer did not take me a lot of time to think through: July to September, 2011, right, when I was in India. Let me just make it straightforward:

• I had a well paid job, which can afford me to rent a bunk in the urban area, buy groceries(lots if junk food), have dinner with friends in some 'luxury' restaurants(compared with you-know-what-I-am-referring-to restaurants in India) from time to time, travel every week or bimonthly with redundant money for souvenirs(Kamasutra, my favourite one, for example).

• I got an awesome roommate, Max, who is tri-lingeual (regret now only learnt some lame dancing move from him, instead of some provocative French(which I am learning by myself right now from apps) or German(which I really have some interest but don't know how to start) ), and also a open mind 'white trash' addicted to Chinese culture and business a little(I still owe him a internship, and don't know how to make up since I am in Singapore right now), most worth mentioning is, I really learnt a lot of great personalities and codes of conduct for reference.Miss his smile (in straight way).

• Got to know lots of multi-cultural friends, who inculcated me with impressive 'Alcohol' and 'Bar' cultures.

• Got a lot of chances going to dozens of awesome places, although got a little tired by endless travel agenda, so started enjoying reading alone sometimes in the end of those few days.

• Tried some great food, while almost always order the same 'safe' thing.

OK, that's pretty much I can explain why that was my best time so far, then I realize now what make me a happier person:

1. Being economically independence.
2. A roommate who can  curse in different languages. 
3. Friends from different backgrounds.
4. Alcohol and pop(Punjabi) Dancing. (I dont want to show off  as a drinker, I was lame actually, Cola usually took over 75 percent of my glass).
5. Travel, only when in good condition and when that place was really interesting, otherwise, I prefer spend my time sitting in sofa with books and chips.
6. Food, don't be too spicy and don't look strange please.

You see, that's also a way to discover myself, now I understand myself better, try it out by yourself, see what you really like in your life.

To be continued, next blog will be Google Reader and Flipboard + Instapaper, I promise, unless there is some strange idea strikes again.

And I got a 25 free space from Dropbox, would like to talk about this promotion in the future blogs since I am quite curious how much does 1GB space cost in the server side...

A Flash of Idea about Blogging

I used to get a little pissed off (or, jealous in girlish language) when I saw some cool daddies recording their babies crawling on the floor, laughing or even farting (whatever a baby does, it seems Qute..) by their cameras.

'Where was my father then? Couldn't he just sacrifice a little bit, buy himself a  may-be fancy but totally worth-it video camera to record his own cute baby crawling and farting?!', lucky you little bombardiers, especially nowadays you can use your smart phone to shoot almost every scenes of the baby, it's just unfair ok? I was even cuter when I was a baby, but instead of some precious tapes, what I can get right now is just some faded pictures.

Ok, that's just a trick to throw out a minnow to catch a whale, you really think I will be jealous of those babies?Well, maybe a little...

Then I asked myself, 'Ricky, what have you done to leave the 30-years-older-you something to laugh your ass off since you were able to take notes by your own?' This tricky question really triggered my mind to call up 'what I have done these years to record my own life'? Well, here it is:

• I have a Picasa account, which including dozen's G's of pictures.
• I have some social network accounts where I put some lame posts all the time.
• I have a Blog, yes, the one I am writing in right now, which sometimes I may forget the password...

Then I found out that, a farting baby video will be much more fun by several orders of magnitude, such a genuinely tragic sort of story.

We are nothing but creatures crawling on the earthy, trying to discover ourselves and understand the world, we are all like babies,  more or less, trying to learn things everyday, trying to crawling as much as possible in order to stand up one day. 

I cannot stand the fact that I am losing my memories and my own path of the time I am living in right now any more. So, here is my #list#(I just want to finish this blog as soon as possible, I have tons of homework, that's true),

• Blog at least once a week in the rest of my life, try hard to think about what I have done this week, what I have learnt this week, whose personality impresses me this week. etc.
• Stay away from social networks, except for marketing understanding.
• Don't let any articles stay in my Instapaper over three days, finish reading it before you forget why you saved it.
• Reading one book in one time, don't try to be a multi-task hero, you are not!!
• learn things scientifically! You know what I mean, Ricky.
• In the following year, I want to be more expert in Web Design, IOS development, Excel, that's all.
• Be more professional in an English speaking working environment, practice more in Email and phone talking slills.

TO BE CONTINUED....My next blog will be why I am transforming my reading tool from Google Reader to Flipboard, and I will cover my user experience on Prezi, my understanding of 'Business Model Canvas', my learning process of 'Be a better Email-er' and 'A better phone-talker' after that, hope I will not be overwhelming at that time.

It's Not Just Food

Imagine hundreds of millions of people discussing one #topic# on Twitter, you may say it must be a heavyweight event like, ‘London Olympic’ or ‘Syria Chaos’, well, you need not to blame yourself, even the most powerful brainstorm cannot figure out the right answer - It’s just a TV show talking about, food. The 7-episode Chinese documentary, ‘A Bite of China’, surpasses all the other TV programs aired in prime time. The hit of the ‘food documentary’ even stirred up a boom in the online shopping industry: millions of orders generated as soon as a new food material emerged in the latest episode. "Drooling mouths, wet eyes!" such comments have been identified by the majority. But…why?

Instead of focusing only on the preparation process in the kitchen, the ‘Bite’ series offers a unique insight into the geographical, cultural and historical dimensions of people’s stories about their ‘experiences’ with food. There is no dramatical story or exaggerated expression, it simply originates from the cultural life through which people who are suffering with industralized fast food realize the relationship between human and nature.

Associated with China's recent PR campaign: investing heavily to produce a national advertisement to be broadcast in Times Square, New York, you may safely draw the conclusion that there is nothing more suitable than ‘food’ to deliver the civilization continuity of a nation as the comprehension of the relationship between food and people expresses the wisdom and taste aesthetic produced by Chinese laboring people through thousands of years. So when we want to put an answer to the mystery of this ‘Bite’ of success, we may just say: Well, it’s not just food.