Chinese-Malaysian-French rojak

"Now how would that taste?", you may be asking. I've personally never tried it before but can imagine it tasting, quite frankly, disgusting! A concoction of pineapple, shredded turnip, cucumber, hae koh, and foie gras?!? Yikes, my stomach is turning already...

And what is the point of this rambling?

Only to conclude that this site is not about the critique of said fictitious salad but about questioning where I'm heading with learning French when my command of the Malay language is way worse than "Weak" ("Pitiful" is closer to the truth and that's still giving it too much credit) and my Mandarin is fantastic only when it comes to ordering food (yi wan mien tang, xie xie.), paying for it (duo shao qian?) and haggling at the street-side stall (ni bie pian wo!).

Are you starting the see the connection? (Rhetorical question; no need to answer...)

I've realised that being proud of how wonderful my English is and how I can speak and write better than quite a lot of native English speakers, have, frankly, left me in an uneviable position: English-speakers are a dime a dozen now, especially among my competitors in the race to reach the higher echelons of the international business and social scenes. With TV and journal pundits proclaiming China to be the next economic superhero and lauding Shang Hai for its record-breaking development (i.e. it has done very well to look exactly like Singapore and Hong Kong), I'm now seriously self-examining the loss of command over my second language. The shame I feel whenever a gwai loh comes on CCTV speaking in flawless Mandarin; and by Flawless, I mean with the exact accent of a true Chinese.

[One of my terrible habits is to digress beyond comprehension; I recognise this and will now get to the point...]

So why am I learning a foreign European language when my mother tongue is shamefully poor and millions already speak fluent French by virtue of living in a french-speaking country? What advantage do I have over competitors, especially those from Europe who can already speak English and French fluently?

No 2 ways about it, I must pick up my Business Mandarin and quickly too! As for Malay... I guess that will have to wait.