Decisions.

I turned 21 recently. It was on a Saturday, and I spent the entire morning and half the afternoon at a seminar at a neighboring university in Nilai. The other half of the afternoon was spent replying to birthday messages and napping, while I spent the night watching football alone at a mamak shop.

It seems to be a sort of custom with some people in that turning 21 is a grand occasion and is deserving of huge celebrations. 21 is the age where you finally attain your freedom and can finally make your own decisions, apparently.

Without going too much into what other people think of birthdays, celebrations aren't really my thing. I've been thrown a couple of surprise parties before and, while I appreciated the gesture, I really had no idea what I was supposed to do when faced with such a situation. I'd much rather people didn't go through all that trouble just to celebrate something I'm not really fussed about anyway.

Reaching this age, though, served as a reminder that time is, in fact, moving steadily along, instead of creeping slowly across the ground as the slow pace of the early days of the current semester might have fooled me into believing. That, in turn, served to remind me that I have some big decisions I need to make about my future.

One of those decisions concerns my future career path. As a student of Actuarial Finance, and one who is doing well enough as far as CGPA is concerned, I'm mostly expected to continue along the actuarial line - intern at some multinational insurance company, take a few papers, and eventually become a full-fledged actuary.

To be honest, though, my heart probably hasn't really been in that for a long, long time. I've been giving it a lot of thought lately, and I've finally decided that becoming an actuary isn't the right choice for me. Frankly speaking, I've always enjoyed the Finance component of Actuarial Finance more than the Actuarial, and that's where I see myself now. I have a new dream, and it's to work in the finance industry.

Besides that, something else I've been thinking about is marriage. I'm not saying that I want to get married right now, but surely it's coming to the time where I need to start planning. I'll be graduating soon, and after that I'll start earning my own income - sooner or later I'm gonna have to get married, and I'm gonna need to be financially sound enough for that.

Some people want to build their careers first before they even begin to think about getting married, while some don't even want to get married at all. I respect their choices, but I'm firmly in the (relatively) early marriage camp. I'm a family person, and I just think that having one of my own would provide me with a strong support system to get me through life's challenges. A wife and kids shouldn't be a hindrance to you living a good, successful life - they should instead be motivating and inspiring you to work hard towards one.

I feel myself growing all the time, and thinking about such things as well as finally having the strength to decide on them only provides further evidence for that. There's no guarantee that things will turn out as planned, but at least now I have a plan. Let's just see where this road takes me.

Languages.

I recently started learning French in preparation for my planned trip to France to watch the Euros next year. I use this website called Duolingo, which I found out about from a college friend who's using it to learn German. The site has other European languages as well (and even the man-made Esperanto), so I'll see if I can add other languages to my repertoire as I go along. For now I'll just focus on the French.

I'm always hearing about how French is such a hard language to learn - I do, in fact, have a few friends studying in France who can attest to that - particularly in terms of the pronunciation and the grammatical structure. It's true, of course, and especially when compared to the two languages I grew up speaking: Malay and English. I am coping, however. I like learning new things, and it also helps that I'm highly motivated to study French right about now.

Personally speaking, the pronunciations aren't too much of a big deal for me. It's just a matter of knowing which letter combinations produce which sound, and then speaking with your best impression of a French accent. I've heard a lot of English spoken in French accents over my life, and I love imitating accents, so enunciating the words isn't something I find burdening. I'm yet to have a native French speaker evaluate me though, so for the moment I'll just assume that my imitating of the audio voices on Duolingo is good enough.

As for the grammar, well, I'll admit that it is a bit difficult, but that's only because it's different from the languages I know. And even so, it's not too different: for example, pluralizing words is generally just a matter of adding the letter 's' at the end of a word's singular form, which is similar to English, but easier. The thing is, I think the reason people have problems with a foreign language's grammar is because they subconsciously (or even consciously) try to tie it to their own language. 

I see why people try to find similarities (it makes the new language's grammar easier to remember, for instance), but the problem arises when they assume these similarities are the rule, rather than the exception. The main thing to remember is that all languages are different, and, though they share the same roots, they each have their own structure. Understanding this concept makes learning new languages easier since you learn them as being completely new systems, rather than basing them on ones you already know.

I have studied other languages in the past. In my private school days, Arabic was part of the curriculum. I hated it and was terrible at it, but it helped me to understand Arabic grammar, which, according to a friend of mine who studied Arabic at lower secondary level and is now in France, is even harder than French. Quranic recitation classes up until I was in secondary school helped out with my pronunciation. Equipped with this foundation, it probably wouldn't be too tough if I were to start taking up Arabic again in the future.

I also studied a bit of Mandarin many years ago, when my brother was taking Mandarin tuition in preparation for going to a Chinese kindergarten and subsequently a Chinese primary school. Our parents made me and my sister join in - I absolutely hated it. I found every aspect of that language difficult and annoying. Looking back, though, my parents were, of course, right to make me learn it and I wish I'd taken more interest in the classes. I can still pronounce Chinese names and words properly, though, so there's that.

Besides that, since coming to MIU, I've picked up some Tamil and Hindi words and phrases - hard not to, considering the people I'm surrounded with. I've been told that my Indian accent while speaking Hindi isn't bad either - unfortunately, the accent sometimes seeps into my Malay and English as well. Besides the aforementioned two, there are also many other languages being spoken here - at times it's like I'm a foreigner in my own country, which is even more ironic considering that my own native Malay is this country's official language.

All in all, from my experiences with studying languages, the most important things are interest and effort. I was terrible at Arabic and Mandarin because I was forced into them, and I didn't (and still don't) like being forced into things - though I do retain some of the knowledge, I would undoubtedly know more if I had actually been interested. 

I'm doing all right with French at the moment because of my interest. France serves as my motivation, and hopefully it will continue to do so. I hope I'll still keep up my French after the trip, or even if the trip doesn't go ahead. I regretted not studying Arabic and Mandarin properly; I'm not about to go the same way with French.

Going with the Flow.

The short semester finally came to an end last week, after possibly the least stressful final exams I've ever experienced throughout my life in university. That had mostly to do with this being a short semester and I only took two straightforward subjects with straightforward exams set by my generous lecturers, but an easy ride on the studies front did not mean that it'd been an easy semester. Far from it.

Things started out rough at the beginning, but, thankfully, time heals all things. Everything either sorted itself out or I just learned to deal with the predicaments I'd found myself in. As I read somewhere, life isn't about what happens to you, but about how you respond to what happens to you. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

I realize I am being very vague regarding the details of what has transpired over the past few months. I've never really been the type to discuss every single nuance of my life, but I've noticed that I seem to provide even less details these days than I used to. Perhaps nothing has just struck a chord with me strongly enough to prompt me to properly write about it.

It all has to do with experience, I suppose. The first time you experience something, it's just so new and exciting and you want to tell everyone all about it. I remember the first time my roommate let me drive his brand new Mini Cooper - I was so excited that I was literally giggling and bouncing about. Over time, though, I got so used to driving that car that it became nothing more than routine. And such is life.

I will be starting my final semester before going for internship in mid-September - I should be excited, but I'm not. It just feels like yet another semester, only with different subjects, different lecturers and, of course, different challenges. It could just be the fact that I've only just started sem break and I really don't want to be thinking about next semester right now, but well.

The other day my classmate was talking about how she couldn't believe that we'd be graduating soon. I, on the other hand, could believe it. We'd sat for our first semester together about two years ago, and, for me at least, two years are two years. As our degree was a three-year program, it was only logical that our time at Manipal was almost up. The clock was running out, and our lives as university students would soon be over.

I'm guessing what she meant to say was that she doesn't want it to be over. She doesn't want to escape the easy life of being a student and go out into the cold, cruel world. She doesn't want to be one of those people who are forced to put their jobs ahead of their family and friends because they need the money to survive. She doesn't want to have to be responsible for her own life and livelihood. Not just yet, anyway.

Those are all very common, yet very understandable fears. I would be lying if I said, if given the choice, I would choose a hard life over a relatively easier one. At the same time, though, I understand that it's all a part of life and everyone's gotta go through it sometime. You can't be a kid all your life, after all. Furthermore, by choosing a degree program that's a year shorter than usual, I knew the consequences of my decision and that, no matter what, I'd have to go along with whatever happened.

Just like my previous semester, what is to come for me is bound to be rough at first, before getting better over time. Whatever happens, I'll take it as it comes.