Second chance

I went to an "indoor bbq" this evening, it was a welcome event organized by a local community church. It was good, everyone in there are very friendly and nice. We talked and laughed; it is kind of heartwarming especially when you are in a four-season country with cold weather now.

This friend of mine, PC, I met her in a theatre performance two weeks ago. She invited me to this bbq event. She is also a Christian and she shared with me some of her thought about Christianity. I am kind of a freethinker person; I grew up in a family with my mum and dad both has different religion. My parent adores and love and respect each other and we kids can always go to both temples and churches. One thing my parent have we kids know is that all religion teach and guide us to do good things and have kind heart. Nowadays the problem is some of the extremist interprets the holy text to the wrong direction, it is really up to how a person interpret the knowledge in front of him/her.

I didn’t really learnt about Buddhism or Christianity back at home. There was a chance for me to get to know more about Christianity in my first year undergrad, but I was too nervous back then. Imagine everyone is speaking fluent English and they discuss about lines in the Bible and they sing and dance (I am a very nerd kind of person, wearing a spec, not confident, did not have sweet next door gal look). I dropped out in second session. Now, here comes second chance, this local community church has service on every Sunday morning. They invited me to come if I am interested.

Well, I think I will go. You know why? It is because I am curious about all this philosophy and knowledge behind the religion. Have you watched a movie call Life of Pi? The main character Pi wanted to understand god and religion, I supposed and he practiced all this different religions. Well, I am not saying I will practice many different religions, but I will give it a try into learning the knowledge about it.

To be continued tomorrow. Cheers.

 

Back to Uni

It surely has been sometimes since I last written in this blog. Just a tiny update over here, I am now in Manchester pursuing my postgraduate study. Up until this morning, I did not think of writing again, either through blog or other writing channel. However, one of my lecturers suggested to us that if you want to improve your writing skill, you better spend fair amount of time writing everyday. She gave us some evidence with number and I figured that is no reason not to take her advice. So here I am, not sure how long I will keep my "promise" but I will do my best. 

3 years undergrad in Perth, Australia, 3 years working in Malaysia and now back to study again. To be honest, I am pretty stress since I got the offer letter from the Uni or hold on a second, thinking back now, I was also fairly stressed when I did all my application to uni and went through an interview session with my current course director. So what am I doing here? Stressing all the way. Leaving behind my beloved family and close friends. Well, there are indeed several good reasons that made me have this huge courage and also able to stand the stress I am facing now. I am not going too much detail about the reasons now, may be in the future. 

What stress I am having now? It is still the good old problem, my communication skill with local people. I had this problem back in my study in Australia. I was too afraid to speak to any Caucasian in Uni and most of the time I just kept very quiet in the class. I still have this problem now, and it is a very stressful thing, especially when we students are socializing, when people are talking about their casual story, I LISTEN absolutely carefully all the time but still 50% of the time I couldn’t catch what they are talking about. And I just stand there and smile. Not able to fully understand the conversation, I seldom contribute in the conversation too, if there is one. Well, for the moment, I will just stay strong, do not give up, believe that I am learning everyday and the situation will improve everyday. In fact, I am trying to have all my thinking in English, all my hidden conversation in the brain in English. I wonder when I will start dreaming in English. I really miss Mandarin, Hokkien and Cantonese too. If only English is my first language like Mandarin is, my life will be a lot easier. 

I will end here now, to be continued tomorrow. Cheers.