My Icebreaker at TMI

Hello, everyone! My name is Surfer_Diver.

Although I came from China and now live in America, I do not consider myself a Chinese American. Instead, I think I am an Earthian, the counterpart of the Martian. As you may know, I have travelled a few times to the Philippines for business. In the foreseeable future, I may need to make some trips to Singapore and Malaysia. With such expanding global footprint, I think it is fitting to consider myself an Earthian.

In our company, I am part of the R&D team, working on the next generation technology and product. Outside of work, I enjoy a few hobbies. One of them is jokes. I frequent an online Jokes forum, where people share and comment on jokes. There are Chinese ones as well as English ones and I like them both. But the most interesting jokes are actually the bi-lingual ones. Once I read a joke there in Chinese, which roughly says “Marriage is a university, where a man loses his undergraduate degree and a woman gains her graduate degree.” I thought, well, this was not a good joke, because I could not see where the joke was. After a few minutes, I realized that it was a good joke if properly translated back into English: “Marriage is an institution, where a man loses his bachelor’s degree and a woman gains her master’s degree.” I guess that someone translated it from English into Chinese, but the joke was lost in the translation. I posted my finding on the forum and my fellow jokers were pleased. By now, you probably already figured out that I am married. Yes, that is correct.

Another thing I do outside of work is to improve my English language skills. One item is grammar. I noticed that I tend to get nervous over my own mistakes while speaking. For example, I may say “There was two cars on the side of the road.” The “was” and the “two cars” do not agree with each other. When I realize that, I become uncomfortable and nervous. This likely causes even more errors to follow suit. Now, I think a good approach is, first, to minimize these mistakes, and, second, to relax and continue normally if they do occur. Vocabulary is another item I am working on. You are all aware of the vast vocabulary of English, which is quite a challenge for non-native speakers. I managed to memorize a bunch of words while preparing for tests early on, and it is a happy experience to hear some of these words actually being used by colleagues here. Because of the rich vocabulary as well as topics, casual talk over lunch has been quite enjoyable and it is definitely one of the highlights of the day.

Well, to summarize, I am Surfer_Diver, an Earthian, who works in the R&D department, enjoys good jokes, and would like to improve his language skills.