At work, all my colleagues come from various places. My boss was from Hong Kong, but has already settled down in Melbourne. All his other employees are mainly part time students. They are all Chinese, from Malaysia (KL and Sarawak), Singapore and China. Heh, it’s really a jumble of languages when communicating with them. It’s either I speak English, Mandarin or Cantonese at times. My Sarawak colleagues converse in Hakka and Hokkien (I think it is Teochew or Fuchow actually, but they all sound the same to me, heh).

While I did lament about not being proficient in any one single language before, I guess it’s a privilege to be able to communicate with everyone in whatever language (or dialect in this sense) as you fancy.