I hope none of my colleagues at my office reads this.
Anyways. I know I have been massively lagging behind in my Spanish class. But I was inspired by Women’s 400m Butterfly. Never mind trailing behind in the initial three laps. It is how much burst energy you have in the last lap that counts.
This morning, I was determined to practice how to write the number 0 to 20 in Spanish. Cynthia can memorize the spelling in two runs. My first language is Chinese. And I learn the language by memorizing the pattern of the character construct, not the sound of the word. So, I am in for the brutal repetitive drilling exercise to get it.
This morning, I was summoned by my director at another office building. To sit with him to go through something. Before we even began, he was summoned by his boss for a brief meeting. I could …
- Space out and look stupid.
- Feverishly texting my friends and look busy.
- Take over my director’s computer and Google the latest Olympic results.
- Or I could …
I opened my laptop, created an Excel spreadsheet that generated random numbers between 0 to 20, pasted these random numbers to a Word document, set the language to Spanish, and started to type the numbers in Spanish (see picture above). The first set was slow. By the time I reached the 100th number – I kid you not – I typed like a native.
From 0 to 20 that is.
My effort sort of paid off. Anna, our Spanish teacher, asked me to write some Spanish on the white board. Guess what I wrote? OK. You get the drift.
I like today’s lesson. We all shared with each other what we studied and what our professions are. Overloaded with Spanish words, certainly. But it was fun not in a Bingo sense like the last lesson. But getting to know some new friends that is. There were four of us working in the banking industry! Amazing. Time to pass the CV around!
Now, why do the nouns ‘office’, ‘restaurant’, and ‘factory’ take the feminine word form while ‘hospital’, ‘supermarket’, and ‘hotel’ take the masculine word form? I still haven’t got the hang of it. To further illustrate, a female architect is arquitecta. A male architect is arquitecto. When Anna taught us that a male lawyer in Spanish is abogado, I couldn’t help but screamed ‘avocado’ as a reflect action. That got everyone laughing.
Oh well. Baby steps. I know I can do this! ¡Adiós!
11 replies on “Hard Work Pays Off, Sort Off – And My Degree in Spanish Is Ingeniería y Ciencias Informáticas”
Haha you are more hardworking than I am. When I first learned the language, I jus practice writing from 0 to 20. Maybe I should revise using your method- write in randoms !
HAHA!
Your options on what to do is…. simply hilarious!!!
Tickled me till no end!
Si Ying – Oh, I started writing 0 to 20 sequentially and soon I was bored and stopped. Random test seems to spice it up a bit. Next lesson I need to make a speech in Spanish introducing myself in front of the class.
Meh. This is going to suck!
G – Believe it or not, these are the true options that went through my mind in that sequential manner!
Haha. Oh I actually like that because I thought I would have a higher chance of using it. Its quite fun trying to write it down first I though. I prefer writing it than speaking it haha
Wah! The Spanish lesson requires lots of tongue twisting. I was trying to pronounce the words. hehe….
After watching so many getai 歌台, I can sing like a getai singer liao. haha….
Si Ying – Oh. Same here too. I kid you not. I found it so much easier once I can write it because when I can write it, I can speak it. And I can take my time to write and rewrite the words. My Spanish teacher tells me that I speak very slowly, though my pronunciation is accurate. Nothing discouraging of course.
ECL – Oh yes. Lots of vibration. You sing Getai and I film you. Then we post it to YouTube, can? 🙂
These days I am so into videoing.
Go watch a getai and see if you like it. We can make a film like 12 Lotus!!
ECL – For that to happen, I have to watch 12 Lotus first! Ha ha ha.
Let’s aim small first, can? Like a 5 minutes video … or less … lol.
[…] While I understand the necessity of going beyond the number 0 to 20 as we have learned in the last lesson, learning a long list of not frequently spoken professions such as milkman and shepherd and even […]