Talking...

I have never loathed talking. Talking may mean differently to other people but to me, talking is a happy thing to do. No.1, I can keep secrets (I guess), so I never fear for myself that I'll be talking too much or spill other's secret out. Anyway, it's not like I have many secrets to keep. No. 2, I love talking to anyone I know. I like to bug my roommate, my housemates and also my friends next door. I can talk about anything with them, from secrets sharing to important academic work and also crap. We would laugh so hard until we drop flat on the floor gasping for air. This is how I talk.

However, after reading and viewing 'A Thousand Years of Good Prayers', I found it sad that a daughter find it so hard to talk with her own father. Well, it is not totally her fault. She was bought up in a quite family. Her family members never talked much with each other. She was not used to talk to her father since young. Her father, Mr. Shi, watched his daughter to grow up as a quite person and he never tried to change that. He thought being quite is a symbol of a good daughter, good girl and good woman. Besides, he always give excuse that his work is very confidential and ended up not talking much to his family. He would never answer questions. His wife had a lot of questions for him. But instead of trying to trust his wife and explain everything to his wife regarding what happened at work, he chose to close himself up and waited until his wife stopped looking at him with questioning eyes. This made it very difficult for the daughter to speak out. When Mr. Shi went to America to visit her, he kept on persuading his daughter to talk to him and tell him her feelings. Sadly, the daughter thought her father was being tiresome and got annoyed in the end.

This should not happen among family members. Family is supposed to be the one we trust the most, me, as a daughter, I love to talk to my father. Frankly speaking, I talk more to my father than to my mother. When I was still schooling, I used to talk about everything to my father when I got into his car. He would listen in silence. Well, I'm not sure whether he was listening, but I didn't care, my story never ends. I would tell him about the teachers, about the canteen food, about my friends and also my duty as a librarian. Sometimes, we would talk until I felt like crying. That was because he was talking about my bad results and he mocked me (it was a constructive mocking). At home, when I was not doing my homework, I would sat beside him and started talking out of nothing. I can't remember whether I was encouraged to talk a lot since I was young. But I was labelled as the talkative one by my family members. I guess talking just came naturally to me.

Talking may be hard due to language barrier. In the movie, Mr. Shi was trying to buy her daughter a gift, a good luck charm. When he went into the shop, he couldn't communicate well with the seller as his English was not fluent. He couldn't explain well what kind of gift he wanted for his daughter and ended up making the seller showing him a few things that were unsuitable for his daughter. Later, he was tricked by the seller by buying a wooden bear that he claimed to have a certificate to prove its origin which he couldn't show. Mr. Shi didn't doubt the originality of the wooden bear and ended up paying a very high price for it. I think if Mr. Shi was more fluent in English, he might understand that the seller was taking an advantage of him. Mr. Shi might not buy the wooden bear and go somewhere else to look for a more suitable gift.

I guess I have a little language barrier problem in talking. I seldom talk much to my mother because since young, I didn't express much of myself to her as she was the fierce figure in the house. At school, I talked in Mandarin, so my BM is quite bad. I talked only the basic daily conversation with my mom and hence, my BM never improved to a higher level. When I first came to study at KBU, my Malay friends around me said my BM sounded weird. I was shocked and I talked little to them as I found it hard to express what I want to tell them in BM. Later, with their encouragement and my own determination, I tried to improve my BM and started talking with them. Now, I can talk faster in BM and I became good friends with my housemates.

Talking shouldn't be that difficult. Without talking, there won't be any mutual understanding among different people. Should we all stop talking in the future, the world will be a silent and deadly world. Talking can be telling other people about happy things and talking can also be telling people the sorrow and pain we have in our hearts. Talking is the beginning of everything. Without talking, we can't make new friends, we can't get what we want and we can't let other people know what we know. So, take a step out and start talking.