One of my New Year's resolutions (other than losing 5 pounds and writing more in this blog, neither of which has happened yet) was to learn Cantonese. But is it really prudent given that I'm learning Japanese? Will the different sounds and knowledge get me confused? It's an interesting experiment. Also, is there any benefit to learning Cantonese for a native Mandarin speaker.
Cantonese and Shanghainese have always been the sort of "I'll get to it later" projects that I wish I'd done earlier in life; instead of sulking about my chess abilities in high school or wasting away my life on online poker during college, I should have honed in my skills on another language. THAT would have been the perfect time to learn Japanese (instead of trying to learn more words in English and being obsessed with the Mole, Survivor, and the National Spelling Bee). It would free me up now to study another language now, very practical skills with practical applications: when I went to Hong Kong and Macau 2 years ago, I wasn't able to communicate with some people due to their Cantonese, and didn't understand people in my home country (depending on how one views Hong Kong), which is always discouraging.
Shanghainese is different because it's used only in Shanghai, but that's still around 14 million people, about the population of Illinois, and that's just in the city. It's also easier to learn as a lot of words sound very similar to Mandarin, as opposed to Cantonese that requires different voice contortions and sounds like a different language entirely. Most people in Shanghai, though, do speak Mandarin, so the practical application of it isn't as high, limited to being ridiculed by native Shanghai people for not speaking their language, which is a pretty daunting prospect actually from what I've heard.
Other New Year's resolutions: take a dance class!(おどる) Yay! Seems like something useful to have, when busting out the moves at a wedding or a party or something. I always envy the people who seem to have the dance moves down, as they often are admired and get the ringing "yeah!" endorsement from all those watching. I don't really have any of those except doing magic tricks (not exactly a quick or exciting talent) or trying to tell jokes. Or a cooking class! (料理する) I am really bad at cooking.
One more resolution: buying a house? (不動産) Financially I'm approaching a time when it would seem feasible to buy a house (student loans paid off, have some savings, etc.) that I might want to invest in real estate. I AM a little worried, though, about the SoCal home prices (they've really risen in the last decade and worried about a peak) as well as the next financial crisis (there's one every 8 years or so, last one was in 2008....... when's the next one coming?) so I'd have to research pretty well to dive in.
Oh btw the next Powerball lottery (宝くじ) drawing is at 1.3 billion dollar jackpot....incredible to start the new year, but seems predictable and probably more likely in the future that these jackpots will only increase as the addition of more numbers to the red powerball (from 59 to 69) seems to increase the odds from 1 in 175 million to 1 in 292 million. One can dream. For me? I think I've already hit the lottery (living a comfortable life with healthy body, although actually recently I've had a minor cold, healthy parents, good job, and living in the safety of the United States). I only hope that the eventual winner(s) of the lottery use it for something good, like a worthy cause or something that benefits society, as that kind of fortuitous luck should motivate someone to spread the wealth, and there's already enough dichotomy between wealthy and poor in the world due to capitalism (I tend more communist when I think of wealth distribution).
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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