I had another quiz in Mandarin this morning -- it was a small vocab quiz, where one aspect of the words would be given in pinyin, chinese characters or english, and we had to fill out the rest of chart. Friday we have a chapter quiz (covers 2 chapters). Yao Laoshi then broke us up into pairs to create a dialog about finding a car. After the class finished their dialogues, he said the class speaks better Mandarin than we can write, so he might be focusing the class on more writing. I find the memorization of the Chinese characters pretty tough. It's one of those things that I wish was taught to me when I was younger. When I look back on life, there are many things I wished I learnt when I was still a kid.
I was chatting today with my old friend Mik (who I've known for over 18 years), and we started catching up, as old friends do. He gave me two pieces of wisdom: "Do and be your best in everything that you do, and you will never have regrets, for there was never a better choice to make" and "Assumptions are the termites of relationships". He attributed the latter piece of wisdom to me, much to my surprise. I don't think I've used termites metaphorically in my life...ever. Still, it's good advice. It's been a while since I've really done my best at everything. I usually end up sacrificing one thing for another. It's hard to find balance in things sometimes. Take the last couple of years: when work is good, my personal life is bad... when my personal life is good, my professional life is bad... and so it goes.
Right now, this moment, every moment, we make decisions. Some decisions are made with some thought behind them, some are made unconciously through our actions or inactions. With an uncertain future ahead of me, I try not to worry too much that the decisions I make are closing more doors than they open.
Leave a comment