Of hole punchers and 方块字

Had another gathering with some of the HTAC group of cronies. The location was decided by someone working in the eastern corner of Singapore, so naturally we ended up at Changi Village. The order of the day was SEAFOOD! (to be exact it was one pepper crab, one chilli crab, one plate of gong gong, one plate of numerous chicken wings, one plate of cereal prawns, one plate of kang kong.Yummy~) I am getting rusty at gathering...I should have taken a photo to show the feasting that we did :D I am still full as I am typing now..

Anyway this topic came up during post dinner drinks (most of the peeps decided to refrain from alcoholic stuff since most drove), cos someone had to host Chinese delegates at her work place. She had to speak in Mandarin, and in the middle of it, 她讲的辛苦，对方也听得辛苦。In the end, the other party asked if 她是不是华籍。 At this juncture, our course coordinator added that her friend working in Beijing, had also a hard time trying to even communicate the daily stuff to her Chinese colleauges. "给我那个...er...hole puncher" only drew stares of incomprehension.

And thereafter we tried our mandarin prowess (or the lack thereof..)
stapler = 订书机
paper clip = ? 夹纸的？
water hydrant = 消防栓 or 喷水柱？？
处长= ？


I recall there was an article in the straits times today (18 Mar 09 that is), that MM mentioned that Singaporeans should continue to be bilingual, followed by a small column which talked about the upcoming Speak Mandarin Campaign. This year, they are going to target at two groups to encourage them to speak more of the 方块字- one group who are weak in the first place, and the other group which had lost the mastery of the language over time.

With the multitude of information we have to process everyday, I wonder if it is efficient to try to be bilingual. It could be the frequency of usage, since it is rare that we will need to touch on the use of Mandarin, other than for special ocassions such as the one above. But more often than not, we lapse into what is our most comfortable lingo, which probably runs more in sync with the speed of our train of thoughts. Imagine during the same visit which my friend hosted, she would have to memorise all the nouns, try to embellish the delivery with 成语(and appropriate/correct ones some more!) to make it more interesting for the half a day visit, and then revert back to the use of English as her main mode of conversation for the rest of the 364 days.

I guess we are just not built to be bilingual in our workplace. Not that I dont like Mandarin. In fact, I find that as a language, 华语还是比较内敛的。But by the time I manage to think of what is mandarin for the hole puncher I might as well go grab it on my own and save myself from some hair tearing.