My Language Skills??

So this will probably come out sounding like a rant...because it highly likely is (won't be reading it over for grammar or anything either).

So...recently it was my grandma's birthday and I called her to wish her a happy birthday since I haven't seen her in a while, nor talked to her for a while either. Also, it's her birthday, so its common courtesy to at least congratulate them for living an additional year!

What I planned to be a few minutes call led to a whole hour of talking. It wasn't a particularly enjoyable experience because I never really like talking to my family, outside of my parents and sister (sometimes). They're lovely people, but I just don't click with them well?? They're too different from me with their different beliefs and views.

Anyways, my grandma touched on all of the major touchy topics to ever talk about with me, i.e school, love-life, family, religion....basically all those life stuff that I don't like talking about...especially with my own family.

Also, because it was my grandma, I can only converse with her in vietnamese since she doesn't understand that much english outside of the basics. Now this is where I will rant about my language skills. Later on, I'll probably divide this post into subtitles, because I have a rant for each of them. :)

My Vietnamese

Okay, so for those that know me, I never tend to ever speak vietnamese (my first language) in public EVER. Really rare that I do, but nowadays I do speak it more often towards my parents regardless of the situation. But when I do speak viet in public, I tend to throw in some english words here and there to make my viet sound broken. I don't know why I do it.

Maybe it's because I hate knowing that someone else who understands the language is listening into my conversation (it's none of their business). I know for sure that I intentionally make other vietnamese people believe that I am the worst at vietnamese, and how the rest of my cousins and sister knows more vietnamese than I do BLAH BLAH BLAH.

I am fluent in the language (I claim that I just know the basics) minus advanced level reading/writing...I know more vocabulary than I think I do (sometimes I'm surprised myself). In my writing, I intentionally don't put accents onto my words anyways because it's just a bit time consuming. I'm rarely put in a situation where I have to speak in viet to someone else via text anyways.

Maybe due to the fact that I can't write/read it in advanced levels (never took schooling for it outside of basics), I don't want to make it seem as if I'll be a reliable translator for someone that actually needs a vietnamese to english (or vice versa) translation.

LOL I just realized that I'm basically doing what my boyfriend is doing: claiming to not know my first language well, but in reality, it's the opposite.

I always found it funny though, seeing my family members (and other fortunate people to hear me speak a bit of viet) judge my vietnamese skills and boast about their own (or their child's) and compare etc. "This girl doesn't even know much vietnamese." "There's no way she knows more vietnamese than her sister." Look at her struggling to speak properly...see all her random english words popping up??!!"

FUNNY AF. I remember someone was listening to my call to my mom one time and commented about my vietnamese skills to my boyfriend. :)

I can speak it fine, I just don't want to most of the time.

I choose to barely talk to my family in family outings, and this also increased their belief that I simply don't talk because I can't speak it. LOL no.

I felt bad for my parents though, because no matter how much they insisted that I knew a lot of viet than my family thought I did, my family never believed it.

I kept the act up for a long time. q_q But now they know too much. I still insist that I only speak english though and know basic kindergarten vietnamese though.

School

Ahh...so everyone in my life has always touched upon this subject. Depending on who asks, will depend on my response and attitude towards them. If they are close to me, sure WHY NOT. But if they're people I barely interact with (or don't even know of), why do they need to know about my business???

For my grandma though, because she is my grandma, she has the same mindset like the rest of my family. Whenever they ask about what I'm doing in school, they'll always push me towards one career in a particular field. They are the typical asian family that wants their child to go into medicine (or something in the sciences). I am always getting pressured into becoming a dermatologist (since family profession is in the field of aesthetics) or at least pursue something in the health sciences because it holds such a great title. No matter how many times I say "I just don't like biology and chemistry," they'll always throw back "Still, try it."

Just...no.

Another reason why I don't really like mentioning my plans to my family (sometimes include my parents), because they'll always discuss it with other people!! Talking to one of them about something is like basically talking to everyone that they know. >_> There's a reason why I rarely ever talk about my businesses with my family.

Love-Life

Throughout my whole life, I was always teased about "boyfriends" and such. My family tends to do that to all the kids in the family. As I got older though, it became less of a joke and more of an actual "probing into my life" question. It's really hard to go around this topic unless my family member decides to change topic, because they will always somehow find a way to come back to this particular topic.

I keep my relationship kind of lowkey. Only my close friends know, and of course my close family (parents and sister). I don't think anyone else knows?? Sometimes even my own friends forget that I'm in a relationship lolllll. Likewise. For sure though, my whole family still thinks I'm single. They try to encourage me to go towards viet guys though lol. In their eyes, it's usually viet, or other races. ~_~ I don't really like viet guys.

Family

Also, because I am getting older, I keep getting the questions relating to my life involving my parents. I don't know why they keep asking me that everytime????? How can I know where I'll be in about 10 years? Heck, I don't even know where I'll be in the next few days. Stuff happens in life. The question they keep asking was, "Will you be living with your parents forever, or will you be living without them? Will you be living near them or far away?"

In an ideal world, it'll be nice to live somewhere NEAR them. However, I have no intention of living WITH them, no offense. I want to live by myself in the future, not be under my parent's surveillance forever. It's not like I'll not talk to them everyday via technology. =-= But atm, it's really hard to tell if I will be living near them, due to my current situation. Highly likely, I will be living in a different country in the long run....which kind of sucks because I love Canada.

But when I try to be realistic to them about this, they always go to the side and talk about how "kids over here don't cherish their parents like how they do in vietnam...kids over here lack a heart and warmth compared to kids in vietnam..." It makes me feel a bit like shet afterwards. They'll bring up examples of Canadian relatives that grew up to move out early on in life, and talk about it in a way that makes it seem as if it's a bad thing.

There's a difference between Vietnamese and Canadian living...do you ever really hear of cases where families move in Vietnam? Not really. Especially not in the area that our family resides. ._.Houses get passed on to generations. It's basically a rural area that is slowly becoming a city area as time goes by.

Times change too. It was different back then than it is now.

What really will determine where I reside in the future is actually my career. If my career takes me to a place really far from my parents, there's not really much choice. =-=

Religion

Last but not least, religion.

This was always a touchy touchy topic for me for anyone that is willing to speak about religion. Well..it's only touchy when the person that wants to converse about religion to me is really religious themselves.

In my entire life, I only ever met like 2 people who are really religious, but don't pressure you into sharing the same beliefs as them. For the rest of the people I ever interacted with...haha. My family is one of them.

I was raised in a family that didn't really practice a religion for a long time, but we did occasionally go to temples to pray and burn incense here and there. They referred to it as "Buddhism", but I thought Buddhism was just a way of living? According to my grade 11 teacher anyways. My family seems to worship many gods from that religion.

We weren't really really religious until probably a few years ago? I think I was in the beginning years of my highschool life. At that time, my dad was an atheist while my mom had some faith. However, my whole family became REALLY religious out of nowhere during that time. I truly believe it's because of the influence of one of my uncles (youngest aunt's husband).

Ever since he joined the family and somehow managed to convert his wife, and my grandparents to becoming a vegeterian, they became really religious. They started going all out on buying praying mantles etc (never had those at home before). Grandma started to shave her head and wear those monk outfits to pray etc. They all go to the temple weekly, and pray for about an hour or so twice daily.

Since they were doing that, it eventually influenced my mom and my other aunt to do that also. My mom started buying so much religious stuff and placing it in both our upstairs and downstairs living room. Upstairs mantle is much more expensive and bigger (much nicer than downstairs, that's for sure). My mom doesn't have much time to do her pray session daily, but she does try to do it as often as possible.

Because my grandparents, uncle and aunt listen to monks talk on youtube, my mom started doing that too. It's now a daily routine for her in the mornings. She claims it's relaxing and peaceful for her. Great to see that she has another way of relieving stress, outside of exercising.

Then out of nowhere, my dad started to become religious himself. He was an atheist before, but nowadays, this man legit drives 3 hours every Sunday morning to a particular temple that he loves in a different city, just to do his religious activities there (he claims that he only likes that temple). That is a lot of dedication. He's often away on Sundays because he is volunteering there (great for him).

You get the general idea? It started to flow around to all of my family. I believe it's because of that uncle.

They all look up to him and such because he seems like a smart, knowledgeable and experienced man. He is...just hate how he is really cocky and always believes he is right. This is the same man that was criticizing my swimming, taught by an athlete who trains others for olympics, and claimed that his way of swimming is the only correct way. SURE, you move in the water and such, but it's the least efficient way to do so. ._. He was acting as if MY swimming was just plain wrong.

Back to the religion topic and how it relates to me.

As you may know, I don't practice a religion. Never considered myself to belong to a certain faith anyways. I saw myself as an atheist no matter what. However, when this topic is brought up, my family just shuns it. I respect their religion and their beliefs etc. I don't ever really criticize them, because it's their own faith. Yet whenever I say how I don't have faith, they're like "DON'T SAY THAT NONSENSE." Then they try to force it onto me by making me go to temples to pray and such. I don't do it. I don't step into the temples at all either. I usually just stand outside and wait for them.

If I respect your religious beliefs and practices, just respect mine. Really hate it when they force it down upon me. My family does that too.

Is it really that hard to talk to me and omit the religious topics?

Grandma touched upon this topic because she was trying to make me become a vegetarian. They have their own messed up ways of forcing that onto me (using that afterlife excuse of eating worms and being in hell, showing animal torture videos). I remember the reason why I stopped going to their house was because they would show those videos in the background all the time, in an effort to convert me. No...I was just disgusted by the treatment towards animals. Didn't really affect my eating preferences.

They talk about it being sinful etc but they ate more meat than I ever did. =-= I don't even eat my side dishes most of the time...I just eat my main course meal which is usually a soup with rice. =-=;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

UGHHHH but trying to avoid this particular topic was like talking to a rebound wall. Everytime I say that I don't believe in this, it's just another cycle and another cycle.

In my experience, talking to religious people never really ended well, unless I stayed quiet. There are some openminded ones there (not the ones that claim they are, but aren't), but not the ones that I met. I try to stay away from them most of the time, or avoid that particular topic at all costs. It's like the same thing I do regarding politics.

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Well that was a long ish rant. I forgot what time I started writing, but I know for sure it was more than an hour ago, since I tweeted about it.

In the morning though, because of that talk I had with my grandma for an hour, and how shook she was at my vietnamese skills, she was basically praising me nonstop APPARENTLY to the whole family. Mom was clearly really happy about it and endlessly praised me. I don't really see it as much of a big deal like how they make it seem to be. I was just trying to speak to my grandma about the stuff she mentioned, and my views and beliefs on certain matters.

Sad to see that even though my grandma "understood everything" that I was saying, because of her close-mindedness (similar thinking style to my mom), she actually missed most of what I was trying to say.

This is why I don't really talk to my family.

#thoughts #rant