My Fair Lady

As a non-native English speaker, I have a lot of tall tales to tell regarding my learning journey. My first six years of my school life in primary (or elementary in US) school was spent in a Chinese vernacular school, Chinese being my mother tongue. However, English was taught as a subject starting in the third year (I think). But most of the time the teacher used more Chinese than English in the class. So I hardly spoke a word (OK, a whole sentence) of English.

Then it was on to the secondary (Middle and Junior High in US) school which had English as the medium of instruction. It was the first time I was exposed to a whole array of English grammar and essay writing. The linguistic assault was complete as most of the teachers did not speak, or chose not to speak Chinese, the lingua franca of my hitherto mono-linguistic circle of life.

I did the learning the brute-force way: poring over English dictionary, English-to-Chinese mind you, memorizing words that I could hardly pronounce let alone understand, and regurgitating them wholesale. Essay writing was a weekly chore, imagine doing the double take of first forming the storyline in Chinese and then translating the story into English, embellishing as I went along. Words were simply inserted to sound bombastic as the teacher put it.

My literary concoctions euphemistically termed essays had been variously described as pompous, unwieldy, circumlocutory, verbose, convoluted, words a young teen could scarcely feel for. So I persevered in my way and in the process learned and mastered the art of framing a plot in a certain way so as to accommodate a new word.

It was around this time that two American Peace Corps teachers were posted to my school. I remember one was called Edwin, the small one, and the other the big one whose name I could not recall. Anyway, it was also the first time that I came face-to-face with Caucasians who spoke with a weird, at least to my untrained ear, accent. But their arrival also signified a marked change in the English learning environment: for the first time I felt like speaking English in a real setting where the other party really needed to be communicated, unlike the contrived dialogue among orientals who labor to engage in a foreign language.

Then there were the English Literature classes during which we recited passages from works by such literary luminaries as Charles Dickens (The Tale of Two Cities), Robert Louis Stevenson (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), to name just a few. I still remember vividly the proud moment when the English Teacher cited a student (hint: not me) for using a particularly praise-worthy phrase that illustrates both contrast and rhyme: the uproar of the downpour. But the feeling of pride and achievement was contagious.

Reading English newspapers also started to become routine. So was watching English movies like My Fair Lady, which ironically was a parody of our predicament. An English Professor crossed path with a street smart lady with a smattering of Pidgin English and vowed to turn her into a lady exuding class and grace. The famous line, “The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain” has etched into my memory while the fairy tale ending has instilled in me the hope that fluency in English was indeed attainable.

University days soon came and left, hardly leaving behind any noteworthy ripples as far as mastering English is concerned. This was because speaking English became second nature, in lectures, in library, in the lab, over lunch and dinner. The references were in English, so was my dissertation.

It was while in the University that I picked up reading English novels. Novels by contemporary authors such as Leon Uris, Alistair McClean, Agatha Christie, and Mario Puzo started to fill my shelf. The forceful characters, the intricate plot, and last but not the least, the wonderful play with the English vocabulary and syntax, overwhelmed me to fantasizing that some day I could write like them too. Of course that did not happen, but the reading did provide me the sanctity amidst the rigor of academic pursuit.

My reading continued into my working life where periodicals such as Times, the FarEast Economic Review and yes, the Reader’s Digest (my favorite section is, you guessed it, Word Power) became the mainstay. While novels by authors like Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton, and John Crisham continued to be my reading companions, I also ventured into the management genre and got acquainted with Peter Drucker, Tom Peters, and Edward de Bono, on an on-and-off basis.

Libraries did not feature prominently in the grand scheme of things then due to “conflict of schedule”. They were mostly closed during after office hours and weekends. So my most active reading was spent in bookstores such as MPH, which abound in the vicinity of shopping malls. Typically, I would take a quick bite during lunch, except on Friday where I had close to two hours to kill, no, to enjoy. Then I would station at a nearby bookstore, scan the titles, pick out a book in random, and park my butt if there is a chair, otherwise leaning against a wall, and soon lose myself in the wonderland of words, ideas, and human ingenuity. I almost always never finish the entire book but instead jump straight to the last few pages that contain the gist of the books’ ideas, or rather nuggets of information. Often I would carry a pocket-size notebook to record gems of knowledge that someday I could apply, much like my youthful fantasizing during an innocent bygone era.

Then I got involved in a local engineering association and assumed the editorship for its monthly bulletin. Among my duties was writing editorials on a monthly basis. That helped tremendously in sharpening my writing acumen and excelling in précis writing where crispness and conciseness are highly valued. That stint lasted about 3 years and with that my writing days came to a halt. But the urge to write continued to simmer.

When I came to the US, my whole reading scene simply changed from one that required extra efforts to a haven of unfettered access. Libraries are located within miles of each other, parking space is aplenty, and books are, well, a galore. Most important, the hours are simply convenient to be pampering the patrons. So weekly trips to the libraries, and occasionally Barnes and Nobles, which is a nice place to have a cuppa amidst the serene setting that is unique to well laid-out bookstores, are made like clock work.

It’s inevitable that writing would take rein once the mind is filled brimful of thoughts engendered by the incessant reading. Something has to crack or click to let this flow of pent-up memory surface and permeate the pages, be they printed or electronic.

In a nutshell, learning a language is all about immersion, both in body (speaking and writing) and mind (thinking). And in that respect, I can be considered blessed because of conducive external circumstances that valued the learning of English during my formative years.

And as they say, the rest is history, history being in the making of this blog. And an English one at that, by a non-native English speaker. I’ve certainly come a long way on this path of literary expression. I must admit I’ve great help: teachers who taught me the rudiments of learning an alien language (but I had a great headstart while young) and writing in one, who showed me that writing is not about big and long words that are best left in the dictionaries; the authors, the journalists, and the columnists whom I’ve never met but nevertheless imparted the right and natural way of communicating through the printed word; my friends and relatives (you know who you are) who put up with my sometimes flowery display of incongruity strung from words, and my lovely wife, who granted me the peace of mind to pursue my literary quest, at much peril to her own artistic expedition. And yet, her natural talent is irrepressible and this blog is an avenue for both my writing and her artistic expression (hint: the flowers that adorn the pages).

As to the connection to the title, it's both an apt characterization of my liguistic foray into my first foreign language, English, and an endearing term for my wife.