Visited Penang and Wuxi

 

Last week, I made a trip to Penang, Malaysia, followed by another trip to Wuxi, China. As there is no direct flight between these cities, I had to come back to Singapore for one night in between these trips, which lasted for a total of seven days. I had been to both of these cities multiple times before, but it’s been 10 and 36 years since my last visit to Penang and Wuxi, respectively, so I decided to revisit both destinations.

I spent the first three days of my vacation in Penang. I arrived on Saturday morning and checked into a boutique hotel situated in the middle of George Town. I walked around the hotel to acclimatize myself to the neighborhood. The old quarter of George Town is a World Heritage site known for its colonial architecture and rich cultural heritage, and is full of charm and character. I enjoyed walking randomly on the streets and lanes that seemed to have stopped in time, taking in the quiet and historical atmosphere.

What I particularly enjoyed watching was the traditional Chinese calligraphy of shop signs in those streets. They were created decades ago and most were hand-written, giving them a distinctive feel and unique character. Nowadays, modern printing technology has enabled mass-production of shop signs at a fraction of the cost, but most of them appear to be devoid of character and human touch, so I much prefer those old shop signs to modern ones.

Aside from exploring the old town, I also went to two shopping malls in Penang—Gurney Paragon and Gurney Plaza. At Gurney Paragon, I checked out BookXcess, an English-language bookstore nestled on the top floor of the shopping mall. While it had a nice collection of books, most of them were wrapped in plastic, so I couldn’t do much browsing, to my dismay. I also visited Popular Bookstore at Gurney Plaza, a stone’s throw away from Gurney Paragon. They carried Chinese and Malay books, as well as English ones, so they seemed more interesting than BookXcess.

Also at Gurney Plaza, I chanced upon a retail outlet of Padini, a local clothing brand. Judging from its Italian-sounding name, I initially thought it was from Europe, but it was indeed from Malaysia. Since I bought a few short-sleeved shirts by Padini in Kuala Lumpur 11 years ago, I’ve always been a fan of this brand. However, I couldn’t find their items in Singapore, so I was really delighted to finally find a Padini outlet here. I ended up buying two Padini shirts this time.

On Day 4 of my week-long vacation, I flew to Wuxi, China, where I spent the following four days. Wuxi is a city of 7.5 million residents, about 50 minutes’ high-speed train ride away from Shanghai. It’s located on the famous Taihu Lake and is known for its scenic beauty. Since Singaporeans can now visit China visa-free for up to 30 days, I decided to take advantage of it this time and travel to China.

I took a direct flight to Wuxi from Singapore, which took around five hours. I was able to get through immigration and customs relatively quickly, but the immigration officer asked me a few questions about the purpose of my visit and where I would stay, all in Chinese. Luckily, I spoke the language, so I could handle his questions smoothly, but I imagine it could have been a bit more troublesome if I didn’t speak Chinese.

In Wuxi, I visited famous parks like the Yuantouzhu Park and the Liyuan Park, as well as the Grand Buddha at Lingshan. I couldn’t help but be impressed by how well those sites were maintained. In fact, the entire city was super clean wherever I went, making my stay in Wuxi utterly pleasant.

Aside from the famous sightseeing spots, I visited a few bookstores in Wuxi as well. My favorite one was the Tsutaya Bookstore, which had just opened the previous month. Tsutaya is a famous bookseller chain based in Japan, known for its extensive collection of art-related books. This Wuxi outlet was great in that, while most books were covered in plastic, for many titles they provided a sample copy for browsing, adding to the pleasure of my shopping experience. In the end, I bought two books in Chinese.

I enjoyed my stay in Wuxi so much that I wanted to visit China again in the near future. My latest trip also rekindled my interest in brushing up on my Chinese, which had gotten rusty over the past few years. While there have been reports of economic hardships in China related to the latest slump in the property market, this country will remain an economic powerhouse for decades to come, and its language will stay relevant in trades and commerce. Although sometimes it can feel like a juggling act to maintain the multiple languages I speak, I’ll think of it as a fun activity to keep my brain young and active.

My Thoughts on the Immersion Method

If you are serious about learning a foreign language, you must have heard about the immersion method by now. It’s a method whereby you surround yourself with native-level content and maximize your exposure to your target language, no doubt inspired by how a young child learns a new language to fluency with amazing speed when they move to a foreign land.

Although I’m not an expert on second language acquisition theories, I can understand why the immersion method is considered one of the most effective approaches to language learning if employed correctly. This afternoon, I watched several YouTube videos on the subject created by famous influencers in the polyglot community and did some thinking about how I can implement the method to achieve tangible results.

Let’s assume that you are a Japanese person living in Tokyo learning English. What can you do to create an immersive environment conducive to improving your command of the language?

The first thing you can do is probably change your TV viewing habits by starting to watch only English shows, which you can find aplenty nowadays on streaming services such as Netflix and Apple TV+.

But what if your English still isn’t up to snuff and you don’t understand those shows? In that case, you can still put on the subtitles in Japanese rather than English. The main idea is for you to get used to the sound of English, so watching English shows with Japanese subtitles is still better than watching nothing at all. You can switch to English subtitles when you’re more advanced.

The second thing you can do is start reading books in English, and by that, I don’t mean textbooks for learners of English, but general books intended for native speakers on any subject you’re interested in, be it fiction, nonfiction, or self-help books. Again, you don’t have to read books that are too difficult. Start with easy books and gradually transition to more advanced ones.

The third thing you can do is switch the user interface of your smartphone and computer to English and conduct your web searches in this language. Search results will appear in English, and you will start watching English YouTube videos.

However, this is easier said than done, as your web searches are most likely related to your local interests—for instance, what’s on the menu at the nearby ramen restaurant, or whether your neighborhood drugstore sells the particular medication prescribed by your doctor—such information is definitely more readily available in Japanese than English. Therefore, you don’t have to force yourself to use English for such tasks, lest your browsing activities become too stressful.

Unless you’re living in a country where your target language is spoken, the immersion method is difficult, if not impossible, to fully implement. This is especially true if you’re learning a minor language for which there are relatively few learning resources available. For example, if you’re studying Cantonese in Tokyo, you might be able to watch Hong Kong movies on Netflix, but it’s practically impossible for you to find other learning materials, such as comic books and gossip magazines written in vernacular Cantonese script instead of Mandarin.

Even if you can fully implement the immersion method, one thing we can’t ignore is that it’s not a panacea or magic method by which all your language-learning problems are resolved and you can become fluent in your target language all of a sudden.

There is an essential difference between a young child transplanted to a foreign country and an adult learner of a foreign language using the immersion method. While the former is put in a situation where they need to speak a great deal every day with their classmates and teachers, and are exposed to copious amounts of native content in various subjects through the school curriculum, the latter can simply watch shows and read books without necessarily having to express themselves in their target language. While they both go through immersion, they will inevitably achieve different levels of fluency.

More importantly, we should not forget the effectiveness of more traditional learning approaches unrelated to the immersion method, such as conscious learning of grammar and deliberate acquisition of vocabulary through flashcards. Compared to watching shows on Netflix for hours, these seemingly old-fashioned methods can bring more substantial benefits, especially for beginners and intermediate learners.

In a nutshell, while I believe that the immersion method can be helpful, we should view it in relativity and not overestimate its effectiveness. What’s really important is for us to stick to learning methods that are reliable, sustainable, and suited to each one’s learning style. I don’t know if I’ll ever use the immersion method to learn a foreign language, but even if I do, I’ll be realistic about what to expect.

Keep Trying Till You Find the Right Method

 

Since last December, I’ve been using a French-Chinese dictionary to study French vocabulary. I go through each headword and example phrase in the dictionary by not only reading the explanation in Chinese but also verifying the meaning using ChatGPT in English, Japanese, and Chinese. After I’ve looked up the entries in a certain segment, I review the items multiple times for memorization. It might sound like a rather old-fashioned method of learning vocabulary, but it’s quite fun and pleasurable when you actually do it.

I try to study three pages in one sitting, but since I can’t study every day due to my other commitments, this learning endeavor has been progressing rather slowly. Nonetheless, a few days ago, I surpassed the 50 percent mark of my way through this dictionary, after nearly nine months of studying. This is worth celebrating, as it’s not a feat many people can achieve. Although my vocabulary is still inadequate for me to fully understand and enjoy French novels and movies, I feel confident that I’m on the right track toward my goal of mastering the language of Rousseau.

While I’m a self-professed polyglot, for most of the past four decades that I spent on language learning, I’ve been anything but an efficient learner. In my quest for achieving fluency in English, Chinese, and French, among many others, I’ve tried various approaches, but with the exception of a few methods which have proven successful, most of my attempts have been inefficient or downright futile.

Take the shadowing method, for example. It’s a well-known practice in which you try to imitate a model speaker by immediately repeating whatever they say, supposedly good for improving your accent and fluency. I’ve tried this method countless times, but each time ended up fizzling out due to fatigue and boredom. I also tried reading the same novel multiple times after hearing someone say that repetition is key to acquiring new knowledge. Again, I gave it up after a few trials, seeing no noticeable results in terms of enhanced fluency.

However, I do acknowledge that some of the learning methods I employed have indeed been effective. For instance, using flashcards to study vocabulary was a very powerful method for me. From high school through the first half of my university years, I crammed tens of thousands of English words and phrases into my head using flashcards, and as a result, by the age of 21 I was able to read English novels without feeling the need to reach out for the dictionary.

Looking back, it was an extremely intense period of putting upwards of five hours each day into acquisition of vocabulary, and it made a world of difference in improving my comprehension of the language, so I’m really glad I stuck it out.

Another method that I personally found effective was to memorize verbatim passages of written text in English. When I was in my early thirties, I challenged myself to memorize one page worth of text from an English novel each day, word by word. Although I was much younger back in the day with better memory, it still wasn’t easy. I used an IC recorder to check my recitation, and didn’t stop until I was word-perfect for each segment. In the end, I memorized 300 pages’ worth in total, significantly solidifying the foundation of my grammar skills in the process.

Fast-forward to the present, I practice expressing myself in English by writing a journal entry at regular intervals and having it proofread by ChatGPT. This AI tool is a game changer in terms of providing instant feedback on my written English, enabling me to identify my problem areas with pinpoint accuracy. I have persisted in this practice for almost a year and a half, believing that this is the most holistic and surefire method to improve my fluency in both written and spoken English.

Like I’ve previously mentioned, during my language-learning journey I’ve had my share of setbacks or even cringe-worthy experiences in my attempts at achieving fluency in as short a time frame as possible. If I’ve learned anything from my past, it’s that while it’s unavoidable to have failures every now and then, if you keep exploring you are bound to find a few methods that really suit you. Afterward, you simply need to persist in those approaches to achieve success in the end.

Reading a Physical Book is Essential!

A few days ago, I read a Japanese book titled 本を読むだけで脳は若返る (You Just Need to Read Books to Rejuvenate Your Brain), authored by Ryuta Kawashima, a medical doctor specializing in the field of neuroscience. Dr Kawashima is well known in Japan as the author of several workbooks for kids and adults for improving brain performance, and the developer of multiple best-selling brain-training games on the Nintendo DS game console.

I bought this book during my trip to Japan earlier this month, as I was curious to find out the effect that book-reading has on a person’s brain in comparison with using the smartphone for an extended period, like most people do nowadays. I, for one, am addicted to the smartphone and tablet, and clock up a substantial amount of screen time daily, from the moment I wake up in the morning till I go to bed at night.

This book has proven to be a very interesting read. As expected, Dr Kawashima argues that reading books, especially physical ones, confers substantial benefits to a person’s brain vis-à-vis staring at the smartphone, whether it’s for surfing SNS apps or for watching videos on YouTube or Netflix.

That argument is already expected, as spending time on the smartphone is widely regarded as the 21st century equivalent of watching the idiot box, a.k.a. television, while sitting on the couch. However, what’s remarkable about this book is that Dr Kawashima presents several images from MRI scanning, demonstrating that when the test subject is reading a book, a much more extensive area of his brain is activated than when he is using the smartphone, clearly visible in the form of increased blood flow.

According to Dr Kawashima, this phenomenon is observable regardless of what type of book the test subject is reading, be it an academic work or a light novel, as long as it’s text-based, rather than something containing large amounts of imagery, such as pictorial magazines or comic books.

Furthermore, even if you’re watching a video on an academic subject or an exciting movie, it activates a less extensive area of the brain compared to when you’re reading a book. This led Dr Kawashima to conclude that video tutorials, while seemingly better able to impart knowledge to viewers, are probably less effective than text-based learning.

Dr Kawashima surmises that reading something entirely text-based forces you to engage various parts of the brain to have a mental image of what’s being discussed in a book; on the other hand, if you are aided by imagery and sound, like when you are watching a YouTube video, it enables you to leave a large swath of your brain in a relaxed or even inactive state, resulting in much less engagement of your brain muscles.

Some people might argue in defense of the smartphone that, since reading text-based material is good for your brain, you can just read an e-book on your mobile device to reap the same benefits as if you’re reading a physical book. While this appears to be a valid point, Dr Kawashima states that reading an e-book on your phone subjects you to far more disruptions and temptations that can divert and drain your attention, due to the constant connectivity to the Internet. Therefore, if you want to train your brain more effectively, reading a physical book is still a better option than an e-book.

Another interesting point that Dr Kawashima puts forth is the benefits of reading aloud. Although most people are used to reading silently, reading aloud can activate an even wider area of your brain, improving your overall cognitive performance. He cites the results of an experiment where the test subjects showed improved memory skills after performing read-aloud exercises over several days. Presented with this evidence, I am seriously considering making it a habit to read aloud a few passages from a book every day.

We’re living in an age where the smartphone plays an indispensable role in our lives. While it’s important to embrace and reap the benefits of modern technology, we also need to beware of the risk it presents. To preserve my ability to think, I’ll always remember to pick up a physical book to read and train my mind.

My Thoughts on Buying a Property

Last night, I met up with my friend, CH, for a catch-up dinner at a local Chinese restaurant in the Tiong Bahru neighborhood. CH is originally from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. He came to Singapore in 2010 and naturalized as a Singaporean citizen in October 2022 after being a permanent resident for several years.

One of the first major things CH did after becoming a citizen was to buy a publicly subsidized apartment, known as an HDB unit, built by the Housing Development Board of Singapore. The property he bought is located in a relatively central area of the city, within walking distance from the subway station. It has a floor size of around 950 square feet (88 square meters), and cost him around SGD 825,000 (USD 634,000) before the renovation expenses.

CH paid SGD 325,000 (USD 250,000) in cash, and took out a mortgage for the remaining SGD 500,000(USD 384,000), payable over the next 15 years. That represents a monthly payment of SGD 3,400 (USD 2,600).  Assuming he gets around SGD 2,000 (USD 1,500) in CPF, Singapore’s mandatory social security savings scheme jointly funded by the employer and employee, he only needs to pay SGD 1,400 (USD 1,100) out of his take-home salary.

This is quite a reasonable sum to pay for an apartment of such a comfortable size. CH is also wise in that he didn’t overleverage himself in buying this property. He and I are about the same age, having less than 15 years to go until the retirement age. While leveraging can be good for you if the market swings in your favor, the opposite can also be true, so we need to be cautious.  I’m happy for him that he found such a good buy. 

Having said that, the downside for CH of buying this property is that his commuting time has gotten much longer than before. Currently he commutes to work and back spending 70 minutes each way, significantly eating into his precious hours of sleep every night. As I require a sufficient amount of sleep to function properly at work, I probably wouldn’t be able to cope with such an exacting schedule.

My plan is to keep renting a centrally-located apartment, so long as I remain employed. I spend around 20 minutes on my way to work and 30 minutes on the way back, a reasonable amount of commuting time. While I don’t consider myself obsessed with money and professional success, one thing I do appreciate is the value of time, so it’s imperative that I live in a place close to my workplace.

After I retire, I’ll no longer have to worry about living close to work, affording me more flexibility in choosing a property of my liking. Even after becoming location-independent, my top priority in selecting a place would still be proximity to the nearest subway station and supermarket, as I’ll need to cater for my physical strength, which will inevitably weaken as I age.

Unlike other metropolises in Asia such as Tokyo, Shanghai, and Beijing, the beauty of living in Singapore is that the city-state is so compact-sized that you can get to most places within an hour by train, no matter where you live. It also helps that Singapore’s subway network is still expanding, bringing even more convenience to residents. As such, I’m not too concerned about which locality to live in, so long as my place is close to a subway station.

Although I’m not in a hurry to buy a place, property investment remains a fascinating topic for me, and I never get tired of checking out property listings on the Internet. I’ll spend the next few years saving up more cash and reading more books on the subject. Undoubtedly, it will be the biggest purchase I’ll ever make, so I’m determined to do it justice by preparing fully.

How I Transformed Myself into a Reader

Last Sunday, I discarded a whole bunch of books and magazines in my apartment in an effort to tidy up my surroundings. It took me more than two hours to sort through my bookcases, but determining which items to discard and which to retain was relatively easy, so I didn’t find the task too stressful.

I have rearranged my bookshelves in such a way that the books that are of current relevance to me and therefore I want to read the most are placed in front for easy access, with the remaining books placed further back. As my interests and priorities shift over time, it would be a good idea to rearrange my books from time to time.

Currently, I have books in Japanese, English, Chinese, and French—my favorite four languages—with Japanese books taking up the biggest proportion. My interests are mainly non-fiction and self-help books, but I also read novels occasionally for language-learning purposes. I also have quite a few manga comic books.

Up until now, the longest fiction that I have read is The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, which took me five months to finish. It’s often cited as the greatest work of literature ever written, but I found some parts of it too arcane and difficult to slog through. Despite the sense of accomplishment I felt when I finished reading it, I don’t feel like reading it again, at least not in the near future.

Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm by George Orwell, on the other hand, are books that impacted me deeply. They had special significance for me because I had firsthand experience of living in Mainland China, which was still pretty much a socialist and planned economy with very little personal freedom back in 1986, when I first went to Shanghai to study.

I felt a general sense of unpleasantness and suffocation about the whole vibes of that society, but being a 12-year-old boy, I didn’t possess the vocabulary to put my feelings into words. Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm are remarkable in that the author successfully verbalized in precise and refined language the inner workings of a Communist regime and how they affected the way people lived and behaved in that dystopian society.

These two books resonated with me in a profound way decades after I lived in China. It feels like George Orwell vicariously expressed the discomfort I felt during the six years I spent there, validating my antipathy to living in a society that’s full of toxicity and hypocrisy. I am truly glad that I read these books, especially in the original English language.

Incidentally, unlike the bibliophile that I am now, I used to hate reading when I was a child. I grew up in a family where neither parent was good at tidying up and there was clutter all around me—hardly a conducive environment for any kid to settle down to read a book. 

Having an extremely short attention span, I much preferred watching TV to reading. There was also this vicious circle of not having sufficient vocabulary to read through a book, hampering my eagerness to read, which further limited my chances of growing my vocabulary.

The turning point came thanks to my love for learning the English language. Pursuing my dream to become fluent in English, I studied tens of thousands of words and phrases from high school all the way to university. By the time I was 20, I had acquired sufficient vocabulary to read through English novels, either contemporary or classic.

It was then that I began to read in earnest, so my reading journey began in English rather than my native Japanese. As I gradually developed the habit to read, I branched out into Japanese and Chinese books, and much later, into French books too.

I’m glad that I was able to transform myself into a reader, after spending the first two decades of my life not reading at all. Reading always gives me new perspectives, enabling me to tackle various issues in my life in a more informed way and enriching my life immensely. I don’t know what the next few decades hold for me, but I’m determined to continue reading for the rest of my life.

Sorting Out My Father's House

It’s been three weeks since my father passed away. I cried profusely on the day of his funeral and the following day, but have since accepted his absence as a new fact of life and regained my composure.

Since even before my father’s death, my primary area of concern in recent years has been what to do with the house that I will inherit from him. Before I can even think about whether to sell it, rent it out, or even tear it down, my most pressing task is to tidy up the place so that I can figure out its real worth and potential, while identifying the areas that need fixing.

Neither my father nor my mother had ever been a neat person, and over the past few decades they accumulated piles and piles of things in the house. Some of them are of decent quality, but most of them are worthless junk. The sheer amount of stuff is overwhelming, so I’ll need to hire professional help to sort out the items to be retained or thrown away.

I have already disposed of almost all of my parents’ clothes. Books and pottery are relatively straightforward, so I should have no issues sorting them. The problem is what to do with their photo albums. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of photos in the house, and only my sister and I can decide which ones are worth keeping and which ones need to be thrown out. As such, we can’t rely on professional help for this particular task.

The same goes for documents—mainly the legal documents like the deeds of the house, but there are also hundreds of letters that my father wrote to me during the six years I spent away from home studying in a boarding school in Shanghai, China.

Being a testament to my father’s love, these letters are, of course, priceless for me. Unfortunately, I don’t have the space to safekeep them indefinitely. What I plan to do is to sort them in chronological order and scan them into picture files before throwing out the physical letters, much to my chagrin.

While I consider myself a relatively neat person now, for the better part of my life I’ve been very messy and disorganized. As previously mentioned, neither my father nor my mother was capable of keeping things tidy around the house, so I grew up being surrounded by clutter until I left for Shanghai at the age of 12.

Based on my first-hand experience, I can say definitively that living in a messy household ain’t no life at all. Despite the fact that both my parents were nice and kind-hearted people, I don’t look back on my childhood with fond memories, just because my house was so embarrassingly messy.

When I was growing up, I felt utterly depressed every time I came home to a messy and dirty household, especially when I had just been to my friend’s house where things were tidy and organized. I felt completely helpless as I didn’t know the fundamental cause of the mess in our house and how it could possibly be resolved.

Feeling suffocated by the clutter, I couldn’t concentrate on my studies. It affected my attention span so much that I literally couldn’t read through a single book, a major learning disability of mine that persisted until I was around 20.

It was certainly a slow and long journey for me to transform myself into a neat person. Spending time away from my parents at a young age turned out to be a blessing, allowing me to learn to look after myself in a dormitory room. Since then, I was no longer a messy child, and was able to maintain my room in a relatively organized state.

However, the real turning point came for me much later, in 2015, when I chanced upon the book titled “Goodbye, Things: On Minimalist Living” by Fumio Sasaki, a Japanese minimalist guru. It completely upended my thinking as regards acquiring and maintaining household items, and as a result I was able to let go of numerous things that I held onto in my apartment. It became a joy for me to have fewer things around me and my quality of life has improved immeasurably since then.

Now that I’m fully equipped with the ability to tidy things up, I’m no longer daunted by my impending task to clear things away from my father’s house. Granted, it’s not going to be a walk in the park, but I will address it calmly and in a way that’s respectful of my father’s memories. I’m sure Dad will cheer me on from heaven while I painstakingly clean up his house.