Language

I just realized something... listening to the kids outside my window speak to each other in Japanese...

it must have been hard for my dad watching me (the only person he lived with for a long while) grow up speaking a foreign language... That's not something that had really ever occurred to me... seeing it from the other side. I mean, I always got the whole.. you should speak more Chinese because you are Chinese argument but that never really meant much to me. Perhaps it would have been more powerful to say... you should speak more Chinese so we can communicate our experiences, our history, our wisdom, legacy, heritage, culture... etc etc etc... and other complex things that can't be conveyed by half-assed attempts at breaking down a language barrier...

Sigh... it only took me a little more than a decade to figure this out.