Registration Day! Finally after 'lepaking' for more than a week, I could finally register. The registration times were from 8.30-11.00 and 14:00-16:30. Being the Malaysian I am, I arrived at the registration building at 7.45am and even then, there were quite a number of other students who had already arrived. I suppose the "kiasu-ness" of people do not just extend to the South-East Asia perimeter. I was extremely glad to be the eighth person in line but somehow the registration staff allowed groups to register in advance. Therefore, I still had to wait quite awhile. I was not a happy bunny; anyone that knows me can testify about my impatience. We went through all the different stations which included checking our body temperature, buying insurance, obtaining materials, taking a digital photograph and paying our tuition fee. During this process, I met a group of Indonesian Chinese. One of them actually just graduated from Sunway College, KL in September. How extremely coincidental. I have been using the word coincidental numerous times over this past week but there is no other way of describing it. Perhaps it is God-given? They even invited me to a trip this Saturday. However, I already have prior engagements. I do praise God for his blessings!

I then received an invitation letter stating that my placement test was to be held at 3.00pm at the No. 2 Teaching Building. I was rather confident but that soon became a pile of embarassing mess when I could not answer many questions. You would think a multiple choice test would be easy. However, this certainly does not apply to you if you cannot read half of the Mandarin characters on the test paper. I had to guess most of them at the end. In all fairness though I was not the only individual who found it difficult, many of the students left within an hour of the test starting. The test takes 2 hours. Either they are super smart or extremely competent in Mandarin, or they simply could not be bothered to answer since they were essentially guessing the answers. I remembered what Kyle and Rex told me: "In times of uncertainty, guess C. It works most of the time." And so I did but of course only for those I really did not know. However, you have to give me some credit because I did try my very best to answer the questions but some of the characters were just unintelligible to me. Now I know how it feels for some foreign students to sit for an English examination. Hmm...give me an English test paper and I will ace it. Give me a Mandarin test paper and I shall brace myself for it. After the written test, we had to sit for an oral test which was basically just an informal conversation with two teachers. They seemed impressed with my oral skills but noted that my writing and understanding of characters might not be up to par with the former. They advised me to switch oral classes if I eventually find it too easy since they place us in classes according to the written level. It is certainly possible to be in different levels for the written and spoken since it makes no sense to be in a level that is entirely unsuitable for the individual. I will be informed of my test results in about 2-3 days time. I am curious to know my level. My guess is probably beginners or just a level above. Either way it does not matter too much since I can still learn Mandarin from my dear Malaysian and Chinese friends. Doreen has been a God-sent as she has been so patient with my incessant questions about how to pronounce words, how to write and other trivialities. I wish I could have brought back my test paper and shown it to Doreen; this was not allowed by the examiners. Instead I had to repeat the questions from memory in the hopes of discovering if I answered accurately. For now I can be certain that I have 3 correct questions out of 50. Not bad huh? Ah yes, I can still rely on some of my "C" answers in the probability graph. The odds seem stacked in my favour!