"Banana" Power!!

(Click image to see full version)

You might be wondering/explicating "WTF!!???" at the above image. Well, it's my attempt to scrawl together some chinese character. It is a typical example, Exhibit A, of my 'banana-ness'.

For those 'gai-jins' / 'ghost people' / westerners / anybody foreign without knowledge of Chinese culture... the term 'Banana' / 'Wong Pei Kung Jiu' (literally yellow skin banana in cantonese) refers to people of Chinese descent that have little or no knowledge of customs or culture of their Chinese ancestory. Typical symptoms of 'Bananas' out there in the world are:

1. Born in a western country predominantly with 'gai-jins' or predominantly with 'gai-jin' culture.
   
2. Also referred to as ABC (ie American Born Chinese/Australian Born Chinese/Ape Born with Cheese/etc...)
3. Unable to speak, read and write Chinese (Yes, if you can do one or two of the three things listed, you're still a 'banana').
4. Will demonstrate their superior articulation of English/whatever language in front of their inferiorly proficient relatives, only to be shamed/embarassed by them moments later because they can't hold their chopsticks properly.
5. Be labelled by their relatives as 'banana'.

Well, in a futile effort to rid of myself of being labelled as 'Banana' over my past 20 odd years I've been trying to self-educate myself in the art of written Chinese (therefore enabling me to read it). I can speak a few Chinese dialect at various proficiency (albeit, heavily slanged with my 'superior' English skills ^.^). But never been able to read or write my mother tongue. So by logic I should blame my parents for not teaching me their language (I meant, writing and reading) when I was young.

I've tried when I was 17/18 years old when an elderly Taiwanese lady (friend of the family) offerred to tutor me for free. We started with the Chinese equivalent of phoenetics (I think that's what it's called) and I was reading quite well with it. Then university came along and made me forget all that I have learnt to make space for biology, chemistry, physics, immunology, microbiology, physiology, biochemistry and that goddamn Krebs cycle biochemical pathway (including ATP production).

Ironically, I've also forgotten most of that too...

Anyways, tried to pick up the Chinese reading thing about 6 months ago when I bought a $1.00 cheap-ass chinese book from Chinatown titled "Shenbian de weishen me"... heck take a look at the title below:

(Click on image for full version)

See the cover! Makes you want to read it huh??!! hahaha... I mean who wouldn't after seeing the cute girl.

Anyways, tried reading that for about 1-2 months and stopped. Got too lazy. What else is new. So recently when my housemate was moving out we recieved a stash of goodies and among it was stacks of boxed paper - the Chinese equivalent of lined paper. Then my gf had the bright idea of listing step by step on how to write certain chinese characters. All I had to do was repetitively copy it step by step. Great idea. But I can sure say that it is boring and tedious. I procrastinated for about 3-4 whole days before I got to starting the first page - which you can see above.

So back to my 'banana-ness'. My writing looks horrible. I want to cry in shame. It's not that I am ashamed of my 'banana-ness' nor do I care what other says about my 'banana-ness'. It's just that my chinese writing is crap... and I think my English handwriting is also crap. And I blame all of this on computers. With the advent of computers I have lost the ability to write beautifully. I practically do everything off the computer. I think it is no surprise that students in schools nowadays have crap handwriting and it's all the fault of computers being so pervasive in society.

After spending about 1 hour on doing that chicken feet scrawl, I gave up... couldn't continue writing/doing the other 'worksheets' that my gf had made. *sigh*

I guess I'll get better after more practice. I hope. I really do. Please??