July - First Year Anniversary

Its been a year since i first started to write my third blogsite :-). To commemorate this, i am dedicating this post about my recent experience on choosing to learn a foreign language.
Yep, I am on track with my Plan-B and it dictates me make myself proficient or atleast a beginner level in learning a new foreign language. It was interesting to first list out the languages that i would wish to learn and then conclude the most appropriate at this point of time.
My final list consisted of Portuguese,Russian, Chinese, German and Spanish. Reading between the lines, you can understand the list partially reflects BRIC lining. Having acquainted with these languages at some part of my life (both academic and professional), i thought it would be a challenging and an interesting task to conclude the most beneficial language in this recession stuck world.
Moving backward from my list, i found Spanish to be the most attractive contender amongst the choices as i have a natural love towards Spanish language and culture. Digging inside my knowledge database, i seem to had the initial acquaintance with this language during my trip to Italy. I had travelled there as a backpacker and was staying in a hostel at Rome city. After splendid tours in and around the city and spectating the roman architecture, paintings etc., i was left with a different version of the word 'beauty'. A normal night at a hostel would provide some local food items and some wine to drink :-). I came to the lobby where fellow backpackers who were mostly students from NA,Mexico,Canada and UK had gathered and having a chat.
Without hesitating any further i introduced myself while grabbing a drink and started to chat with those folks and asking about their whereabouts. It was an interesting night as i got to know multi nationals and their view points on few topics. Being from London at that time, i was considered closer to the UK mates and gradually with all others.
While i was talking with few chaps, i noticed that Americans were able to speak something similar to Italian language and was asking them more about the language. And only then i discovered the fact that Spanish and Italian languages are more closer and sounds similar. So that factor made me to rethink about choosing Spanish language. I somehow felt based on the conversations that i heard those days that spanish language is somewhat sweeter and soothing than any other foreign languages that i have heard. Following my Italy trip, i was googling to know more about Spanish language and its culture and to my wonder, Spanish language was infact a romance language during its primitive times and later had spread and evolved as a full fledged common language. Spanish language is an official language in as much as 22 countries though most of them covers Latin America and few in EU as well. I was really exalted to know about this fact. I believe i wouldnt be wrong if i say that olden Spanish people were very romantic after considering this fact along with another masterpiece from them which is the world famous romantic Salsa dance. So i dare to recommend anyone who wish to be more romantic to explore this part of the world and its culture. After all these considerations, i could only find that an idea to learn Spanish is not apt in this chinese dominant Singapore.
Next in my list,again from backward, is German. Memory digging starts and leads me to my academic life. I had a very good Sanskrit pandit during my higer secondary class and he had informed us once that one who is proficient in Sanskrit can easily pick up German language. Though i have studied Sanskrit for 5years (completed three board certifications), i thought this may not be a good choice now and thought to opt this option out of my list for sometime now.
Somehow, skipping one in my list from backward, i tried to tally points on Russian. Though i like Russians (dont think i am meaning beautiful hazel eyed Russian girls only) for many reasons, say for their creativity, technological innovations and considered as a big challenging power to the USA, i somehow felt this wouldnt be much of importance now and thought to scrap it from my list.
Portuguese is the first in my list, and though obviously i added it because of its emerging economic status, its the same story again as it was for Spanish. There is no proficient school or teachers available here in Singapore to teach this language. Still i remain a loyal customer of Nando's and the hot sauces from their country. Will revisit this option soon once i relocate to Europe.
There comes Chinese from my list. I had always wondered why chinese literals are pictographic or ideographic in nature and that had caused an interest in me for sometime to explore this language. After swaying around my list, i thought Chinese language would be an apt choice at this point of time during my presence here in Singapore as the pointers to learn Chinese were numerous. As i commute daily through MRT & LRT, i keep hearing sounds that couldnt be understood to the core and i always thought from the day one that i should decode these sounds sooner or later before i leave Singapore. After an initial analysis, i found that YMCA is offering such courses at a reasonable rate as opposed to many other institutions which charge quite a substantial amount.
Slowly i came to know few interesting things about chinese language. One amongst those is the literal representation. Literals are now having two forms, traditional and contemporary simplified version. And these literals are based on imaginations or notions of olden people and their notations. For example, a man is considered to be doing always agriculture and the symbol or literal for man surrounds it. Likewise, for every thing, the olden people have customized symbols and pictures to represent a meaning.The simplified version may be a result of the contemporary thinkers who might have felt the traditional notions are difficult to understand as the ideology differs since then. Also there are numerous forms of dialects or styles within Chinese language and somehow there is an established standard Mandarin which seems to be followed by majority of the people in this modern world.
Well all settled, i have now started to learn Chinese language and will come back more with my explorations about this language.
Until then, tsai chien. (good bye= tsai chien)

Centumn after a gap

Today is another interesting day in my life. As i turn back and see, July 20th is phenomenally becoming my auspicious day :-)

I wrote ITIL V3, the left out certification in my bucket somehow due to my tight schedules during last year end has now been banged with a 100% score. Its really good to see a 100% in an external examination after such a long gap in my academic career.

Miles to go :-)