I finally hooked up with a local Christian fellowship on campus (at NUS, in case you didn't realize I was in Singapore), the Varsity Christian Fellowship, VCF.

Given the size of the fellowship and the size of the NUS campus, it seems to make logistical sense that the fellowship structure is focused around small groups (something that UWCCF has been trying to foster originally in the form of topical cell groups, and now discipleship groups). Being a resident of KEVII residence hall, I naturally decided to check out the KEVII cell group (CG). I was informed that they were meeting in the F block lounge at 8:30PM, so around then, I headed down to try to find them.

It took a bit of thinking to find F block, as it's on the opposite end of the residence hall (I'm in block C). And after finding it, I then had to hunt for the lounge. I couldn't seem to locate the room, but luckily, a couple girls noticed that I was holding a Bible and looked rather lost. They were actually on their way to the lounge for cell group as well.

The group was, in my opinion, a nominal size for a cell group. Not including myself, about 10 people, evenly split between guys and girls. Not too big, but not too small.

Since I was new to the group, we did the typical name, year, program, interesting fact introduction (should I have been surprised to find this here in Singapore as well?). And after a time of worship, we studied a passage from Hebrews.

It was a pleasant group, and a pleasant time. To be able to worship and study God's word with other Christians. The only subtle change was that I had no responsibilities.

I hope to be able to join them as often as I can. Between school and traveling (my calendar for the month of March is over capacity already), it'll be a bit of an effort, but probably one that's worth it.

I would have ideally liked to join a fellowship as soon as I got into NUS, but IHG volleyball and basketball took up almost every night of my first few weeks on campus.

Anyway. Interesting thing though - I really noticed today just how American my Canadian accent sounds in Singapore. Reading a scripture passage aloud really spoke to this. I mean, sure, I know that the northern United States accents are pretty nominal when compared to the southern United States accents. But for certain words of phrases, I could swear that I was approaching the fine line between southern and northern US accents.

Also, ordering food is always a somewhat nerve racking affair. If ordering local food, I know how the names are supposed to sound when pronounced correctly, and for the most part, I think I can pronounce most of them somewhat alright. That is, if I'm saying them quietly. Whenever you have to raise your voice, I find that it becomes more difficult to pronounce something properly. So, as I near the beginning of the queue to order, I'm wondering what's going to happen.

Yesterday after my first class, I dropped by the arts canteen to pick up a snack. I decided that I'd get one han chin pang and one nhohiang (no clue about proper spelling - I'm just going by how I know the names sound). So, finally it was my turn. And I ordered. Luckily, I think it came out well enough that the lady knew what I said. At least I think she was pretty sure of what she said, because, as she picked up the food for me, she asked for my confirmation at each one...

And then today, I decided I'd go and order bak kut teh with rice. So what do I do if I don't know how to say the second character of bak kut teh in Mandarin, but I only know how to say white rice in Mandarin? Not sure. Ok, so I'll just ask for bak kut teh and bai fan. And what would you expect but a combination of raising my voice and switching drastically between Hokkien and Mandarin would result in me completely ruining the pronunciation of bai fan.

Either way, I think she knew what I said. But it didn't matter anyway, because the other lady working at the stall asked me what I wanted again anyway, to which I just replied bak kut teh, and then she responded in English, "rice?"

So I got my bak kut teh and white rice in the end, escaping any serious confusion.

The same, however, can't be said for my last experience at the fishball noodle stall I ordered from the other day. I've been rather successful in ordering in exclusively Mandarin at that stall, because all I have to say is the number of the dish I want (that's what everyone else does). Of course, I'm still a bit nervous, but I assure myself that it should be alright. Reach the counter, and order: "六号" (some soup noodle with fishballs)

Everything seems ok so far. The lady asks me, "要。。。吗？" where "。。。" is what I thought I heard as 辣, spicy. So I replied, 不要. Either she didn't hear me correctly, or she thought my response was strange (or perhaps I heard her completely incorrectly). So she asked me again. So I replied again, "不要辣." At that, I think she realized my confusion (at least one of us knew what was going on) and rephrased her question and spoke a bit more clearly, "你要不要汤？" (do you want soup). Ahhh, ok, all was clear... "啊要要。。"

So in the end, I did end up getting my soup noodles with fishballs. A bit more work than just using English...

But practice makes perfect, I suppose. A lot of complication encountered when ordering food in a language I don't fully understand, I believe, can stem from me not knowing what phrases to expect back from my requests or statements. Once you build up a library of expected phrases, you can easily extrapolate muffled phrases into understandable speech.

As an example, one of the first times I ordered food in Mandarin, the person asked me, "这里吃？" It's not that I didn't understand the very elementary question (are you eating here?), rather, I didn't hear it clearly and hence could not understand the question. But once I figured this out, subsequent times when I ordered food and was asked this same question, I could almost always confidently give my response, because I was able to hear and interpret the question posed to me.

I think, however, I need to expand my Chinese use to something beyond ordering food. Maybe I should try to speak to my EE2001 group members in Mandarin.

Also, my time spent in Hong Kong over the recess week shall be interesting. While predominantly Cantonese speaking, I believe that a respectable number of people in Hong Kong should be able to speak Mandarin these days. So will I venture out to use Mandarin? Or will I default to English?

I wonder if my friends will try to get me to bargain for them in Mandarin, similar to how we got the two Indonesian girls to bargain in Bahasa Indonesia while we were in Malaysia.

The only difference is that I'm not a native Mandarin speaker, and my Mandarin knowledge is near zero. So I'd probably end up with as good of a deal (if not worse) compared to if we had just bargained in English in the first place.

I believe Sophie once said this to Joses and I as we were trying to hone our Mandarin speaking skills:　"Stop butchering my language!!!"