The Journey of a Conquest

it was thursday and it's the day i was supposed to give a presentation in english about ''mechatronics overview'' ..... for the sake of telling , i'm the only one from ''Mechatronics Engineering'' and the only Non-German joining this ''technical english'' class as it's actually meant for those who are doin the course ''Automotive System Engineering''......if i were to explain y i'm doin this, i would have to trudge back to those early decisions at the beginning of this sem...so i'm not going to do that.....anyway, SINCE i'm the only one from M.E and SINCE the American lecturer wants us to do the presentations in an entertaining way rather than an informative one.....i thought...well...i could raise some controversies because i'm really not bad at it...hehehehhehe....:p

so i started off by saying something like.....

'' if u do not know very well bout Mechatronics..u ought to be worried now...b'coz over the next few minutes...i'm going to brief u guys about it which perhaps more importantly will either MAKE or BREAK ur love for A.S.E .....u guys might have made the biggest wrong choice in ur lives ...bla bla bla....''

and guess what.....haha....my presentation was a success and the American lecturer even singled it out for flattery and praises ...to me, it's indeed a much-needed pat on the back ...... and he even sent me an email which sounds like this :

''You began as well as any native speaker that I can imagine - a good, friendly and inviting introduction indeed! Your voice was brilliant and clear and your use of inflection was outstanding. Your volume was varied and you took natural breaks - which all combines to make your topic easier to follow and attractive. You were speaking quite quickly, but were nonetheless completely understandable (for me...). Your use of rhetoric/real questions was first rate. The vocabulary in use was high-quality and varied, yet not too high-level for most of the audience to have followed. Superior slides with animation and colors and cartoons - again quite on the level of a native-speaker professional talk.

Compared to all presentations that I have seen at the FH, you are certainly in the top 2%. Perhaps it helps having grown up in your country - the educational system there and the obvious stress on learning multiple languages has led to your much more natural sounding use of English - which sets you apart from most Germans that I hear. Your 'attitude' of brightness, a bit of showmanship and energy is absolutely not a typical German trait.''

after reading that, i suddenly felt that i have understood something but could not get wat's it exactly... a day later, i was on my way to a class when i met 2 chinese guys heading towards me.... from gut instinct, i could tell that they are from china...and i made the first move to talk to them.......after chatting for a few minutes....they told me that they were a bit surprised to find someone from malaysia in germany who could speak fluent chinese , but somehow sounds like a taiwanese.....hahahaha..:p

Thinking bout those events now retrospectively, i suddenly understand something which has been lurking around for quite a while already, albeit with a seemingly subtle sense of uncertainty.....
It seems like the main reason that's been holding me back from going all out to ''conquer'' the german language itself is me myself .......
well...u see....human mind is evasive...it likes to remain complacent with hazy notions about certain things rather than grasp the import of difficult concepts .... i dunno if it's true for u but it's definitely true for me at times ......had it not been those above-mentioned events, i wouldn't even think of penning my thoughts bout this matter down at this moment...

I guess it's clear to me that the fear of losing my command of other languages has subconciously held me back from progressing forward with the pace that i'm supposed to be moving with ...... i frown at the idea of letting something getting the better of me, but sometimes we have to let pride takes the second place to the facts of life ...... for those who are wondering, this points to the equation of life (created by me....:p) which states that there're equal gains and losses in everything that we do...

in this case (beim idealen Fall...:p), to really flourish in german language, one has to think the german way, write the german way and talk the german way......and the way i see it, it comes more or less at the expense of other languages that one has already had under one's belt ...... apparently, i'm not willing at all to give up any bit of my command of english and chinese (2 of which i deem to be most important of all) for the sake of german language...... dun get me wrong , a good command of an additional language will most probably give me the edge over the others when it matters....but i oso think that this could only be the case if i'm equally good in other languages as well........

and guess wat ????? the worst thing is ....... i'm having the feeling that my english and chinese are slipping away slowly from me....and yet my command of german doesn't grow in tandem with the rate of decline in those languages ...... anyway, i will not give up...far from it :)....i'm still trying as hard as i could to amalgamate those languages under one roof, though the journey seems tortuous....granted, i might end up nowhere and eventually get myself entangled btw those languages .......anyway, as someone who's struggling to strike a balance btw those languages, my stubborn innerself rather believe in this :

to love is to risk not being loved in return
to try is to risk failure
to hope is to risk disappointment
but risks must be taken
because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing at all