I had a ‘yumcha’ – drinking session with my old friend.
She had other friends on the table as well.
All of them were Chinese speaking, mostly Mandarin.
Both of us tried to converse the best we could.

On our journey back,
“Woah, I had no idea your Mandarin was so good.”
“No, la. Yours better.”

Both of us continued to express our surprise at each other’s vast improvement on the language.

For as long as we could remember, we only spoke Cantonese and smattering English to each other.

The last time we heard each other speaking Mandarin was back in primary school.
So, you can imagine our surprise!

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My bro asked me.
"From the scale of 1 to 10 , what is the possibility of you giving up your studies again? Ten being the most likely."

I immediately said 1.

I think I was trying to convince myself.

I really hope it's working.