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Well I do know what I am good at... |
I struggled to pick up the very complex choreography as quickly as some of the other dancers and yes, that drove me nuts. However, the tables were turned when we were in the minibus returning back to the hotel from the film studio. There was a Hungarian production assistant and a driver with us in the minibus and they would often speak to each other in Hungarian, rather than English. And my regular readers will know that I am brilliant when it comes to picking up languages and one evening, I realized I understood enough of the conversation and joined in - in Hungarian of course, not English. There was a moment of shock when the other dancers realized, "holy shit, Alex is speaking to the driver in Hungarian? Why the hell does Alex speak Hungarian?" The truth is I spent a week studying for it like a true Singaporean student: I memorized huge volumes of Hungarian from the internet and there were plenty of useful Youtube videos to learn from. I think I probably worked harder learning the Hungarian than learning the dance routine because learning about Hungarian grammar was a lot more fun than dancing for me. It isn't easy you know, but I am willing to work hard to learn a new language. Hungarian was hard, but not impossible to learn. In a week, I was able to pick up the basics, have plenty of vocabulary - I can't get my head around the grammar yet but was at least able to string together basic sentences to express myself in Hungarian. I would describe my Hungarian as 'baby-talk' (loads of words but paying not that much heed to grammar), but to the other dancers, it did sound like I do speak Hungarian.
So they asked me, did I live in Hungary before? Do I have a spouse who is Hungarian? Did I learn it at school? What is the reason? And I just shrugged my shoulder and said, "I studied it for just a week, since I found out I got this job." Now that was actually mostly true - though I have studied Hungarian before in 2006 when I last visited Hungary and still remember some of it from back then. But my dancer colleagues were like, "wait a minute Alex, you learnt a new language in a week? How the heck did you manage that? Are you like a super genius or something? I studied French for six years at school and still can't speak much. How on earth did you learn it so quickly? It's just not possible." I replied that once you speak several languages, you find it easy to get your head around new languages - they then asked me how many languages I spoke. "About ten or twelve, I lose count. But I am only really properly fluent in six of them. But I can probably speak to most people in Europe, from Portugal to Russia without using any English - yeah."
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We weren't required to speak a word of Hungarian on this job.. |
This dancer, let's call him Mr Long Legs (which I shall abbreviate to MLL) asked me to teach him something in Hungarian. So I decided to teach him the word for thank you, which is köszönöm ("kuh-suh-num") and I repeated it like three times. "Now you say it, try." He had a look of utter confusion on his face and said something like, "Kosovo?" I said no, that's a country in the Balkans. "Kuh-suh-num," I prompted him again. He then tried, "Kuh... is there a shorter version? Why is it so long?" And I was like, "the full version is nagyon szépen köszönöm, I am already giving you the short version. I suppose you can say köszi ("kuh-si") but that is rather informal. That's two syllables." But each time MLL tried to say it, it came out slightly differently. Kozi, kuzi, koosi, kushi, kuchi. Aaargh. I said, okay, forget thank you, why don't we try to say hello? And he said, okay, how do you great people in Hungarian then? I said, "jó napot kívánok". He just took a look at me and said, "Please Alex, I just wanna say hello, not ask them if their grandmother has returned from her weekend break to the lake in the countryside. Come on. Is there a shorter version?"
I could have taught him the word szia ('seeya') which means hi, but I thought, no I am gonna have some fun with you. I have spent all day struggling at the dance rehearsal, struggling to memorize vast volumes of very complex dance choreography. MLL was an absolutely brilliant dancer - undoubtedly one of the best in our team - and he struggled to remember words of two or three syllables in Hungarian (and if I be frank, he didn't come across as an articulate person). Now I would never call him 'stupid' because I had just spent the day in his company, seeing him do what he was best at. MLL was a brilliant dancer. He excelled at dance, picking up the most complex dance routines with such ease and he not only made it all look good, he made it look so easy. I guess it just goes to show that our brains couldn't be more different: MLL had a knack for memorizing physical movement, he had a kind of muscle memory that I could never have no matter how hard I trained at dance. On the other hand, I pick up new languages the way a sponge picks up water whilst he will always be hopeless monolingual as his brain simply cannot process new words in foreign languages. I was so jealous of his ability at dance and he was in awe that I could pick up Hungarian in a week.
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I am a gymnast, not a dancer - it's not quite the same set of skills. |
The next day, when we were being picked up to be taken to the film studios, I prompted MLL, "Go on, you can greet our nice driver in Hungarian." He stared blankly at me and said, "I know you tried teaching me yesterday but I can't remember a thing now." And I laughed and said, "you know, I kinda feel the same way about the latest changes to the dance routine our choreographer made yesterday afternoon." MLL and I were clearly good at very different things, yet I was the once masquerading as a professional dancer in his world - doing the same job as MLL and of course, getting paid the same money as him. MLL has had over ten years of professional dance training to become the phenomenal dancer he is today, I've never taken a dance lesson in my life. On the other hand, I have spent much of the last 22 years always studying so many foreign languages - I've had as much experience in that department as MLL has in dance training. I think there's a part of me that loves the challenge of being taken out of my comfort zone, like in one of those reality TV programmes, where you have to learn to do something brand new in a few days and there's a part of me that thinks, "oh yeah, I can learn something new, this will be fun, let's embrace new challenges in life."
But trying to keep up with dancers like MLL was such incredibly hard work, there's a part of me that says, "who needs ten years of training when I have talent oozing out of every pore in my being? Think of how many professionally trained dancers who have auditioned for the job and didn't get the part and they picked me instead because I am just so much better than all those other bitches out there. They can kiss my ass." And then there's a part of me that thought, "if only the job was to do with acting in a Hungarian film, if I had to deliver lines in Hungarian, I would be brilliant at it. I enjoyed learning Hungarian so much more than dancing. Maybe I should just stick to what I am good at and keep life a bit simpler - what are you trying to prove my doing things you are not naturally good at or are even trained in? The fact is I will never look as brilliant as MLL when it comes to dancing and even I will be the first to admit that." What is the point then of challenging ourselves? Should we constantly take ourselves out of our comfort zones? What are we trying to prove by doing so - do we even know? Is it quite simply a question of picking our battles in life?
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I truly enjoyed Budapest - it's a wonderful city. |
This kinda reminded me of my time as a student in Singapore - I could get As in English without lifting a finger or spending a second doing any revision. But to get an A in Chinese, I had to spend many, many hours constantly revising and putting in so much effort (and even then, an A was never guaranteed). But that's just life isn't it - we can't expect to be good at everything, we are naturally more gifted at some things than others and then there are other things which we probably can do if we try really hard but at some stage, we have to admit and accept the limitations of our abilities when it comes to those things. I don't think there is a simplistic way to divide things into two categories: things we can do and things we can't. Even amongst the things that we can do, we need to divide them into two separate categories: things which will be easy for us and things which can be achieved but we will find very challenging. By that token, is there anything wrong with simply picking the lowest hanging fruit so we can maximize our achievements and get the best possible results in life? Hmmm. I think I need to have some time to think this over.
That's some food for thought for you. Interestingly enough, since I've returned from Hungary - I've already done a bilingual German-English audition for a German film to be shot in Germany later this year, fingers crossed, it is so exciting! In the third part of my Magyar tales, I will talk about how I found it quite hard to get along with some of the dancers whilst I managed to get along quite well with some of the others. Such is the challenge of showbiz and having to work with brand new people every time I move onto a new project. Well, that's it for now guys. I still have many more interesting stories from Hungary to share with you guys. Many thanks for reading - nagyon szépen köszönöm.
Hi Alex,
ReplyDeleteyou wrote, "By that token, is there anything wrong with simply picking the lowest hanging fruit so we can maximize our achievements and get the best possible results in life?"
In my ideal education system, children should be allowed to pick the "lowest hanging fruit"... but at the same time, they should also study one subject they could master with more effort, and one they are probably going to flunk.
The first category would be their future career path; the second one would help them become more resilient; and the third one would make them realise each person has his/her own ability and limits - and that bludgeoning themselves to death to get A+ in every subject can do more harm than good.
Anyway, best wishes for your next endeavour!
Ciao Andrea and thanks for your comment. I guess dancing would be in the category of something I could master with a (LOT) more effort, I still can't believe I was working along side dancers with 10-20 years professional experience whilst I have never ever taken a dance lesson in my life before. But then again, there's also the question of whether or not one would enjoy it: without the pressure of mastering a routine within a strict schedule, I think dancing could be fun. Now there are other things which I wouldn't even find fun even with the best teacher in the world.
DeleteI think everything boils down to a cost-benefit analysis - if something is useful for your future, or even interesting, you should do your best; if it's not, making your life miserable shouldn't be an option :)
DeleteAs much as i would like to say pick the low hanging fruit, i studied English literature for my O'levels which is never an easy subject to score at so most students just drop it.
ReplyDeleteBut just like training muscles at the gym, you need to struggle abit to grow. I wouldn't even be doing a career switch in something totally unrelated to my previous industry if i only picked low hanging fruits. Heck i went from doing computer science to health science and biology. I probably know more about the human body now than most A'level biology students.
So struggling abit is good, but obviously if you totally suck after so much effort then you should just move on. Afterall no one is good at everything.
Thanks for your comment Choaniki. Do you think there's any value in deliberately trying to learn things which we don't have a natural ability for? Do we grow our minds or our souls in some way by putting ourselves in that kind of situation - if anything, to teach us the value of humility? You see, normally I would be quite dismissive of someone like MLL who couldn't learn even a few words of Hungarian, but he had gained respect for him as a dancer when I saw him doing what he was great at, so it gave me some new perspective.
DeleteNot everything we do must be what we are good at. Some things we do as a hobby or to kill time. Like you mentioned piano playing. I have a few classmates that play the piano for fun. They will never be world class professional pianists but it helps them destress after a long day of studying.
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