@Blonskr I have switched my X account over to Chinese. Not on a whim. I have set myself a rule: from now on, if something can be said in Chinese, I shall try to say it in Chinese. I am in my forties. I mention the age not for sympathy, but to be clear about the starting line. While other people were memorising texts and writing weekly diaries in secondary school, I had already left that stage a long time ago. Coming back to Chinese now really does feel like being a secondary-school pupil again: learning one character at a time, reading one sentence at a time, and producing lines that still sound awkward. I often revise a post three times before I send it. My fingers pause over the keyboard. The thought arrives in English first, and only then does it turn, slowly, into Chinese. The gap in the middle is longer than I expected. Sometimes I cannot help wondering. If I had been born in Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, mainland China, or Malaysia, where Chinese sits in the everyday air, would this be easier now? People there grow up hearing it, speaking it and writing it. The feel of the language is in their bones. I did not have those years. This is not a complaint about where I was born. It is simply the fact of the matter. A different start means a steeper slope. Words have to be learnt again. Word order has to be drilled again. I misuse a set phrase and laugh at myself before anyone else can. It is genuinely hard. Hard is not the same as finished. Starting a language in your forties, one you might have known far earlier, sounds late. The more I sit with it, the more I think late only means a longer bend in the road, not the end of it. Secondary-school pupils have homework. So do I. Read a passage. Write a passage. Correct a passage. If I do not follow it, I read it again. If it will not sit properly, I write it again. If I know a few more characters today than I did yesterday, the day has not been wasted. Where strength is short, time can make it up. Where the ear for the language is thin, repetition can thicken it. Going all out is not a slogan for other people. It is a note to myself. I have watched people go very deep into a craft while they are still young. Age is not an excuse. The pace can differ. The direction should not. Language is a basic skill, and basic skills have no shortcut. You simply have to be there each day. Switching the account to Chinese is how I put myself in that room: comments in Chinese, notes in Chinese, and even the half-formed thoughts pushed through Chinese first. If it comes out wrong, I correct it and send it again. A little embarrassment does no lasting harm. Stopping would. So I want this on the record. I cannot change where I was born. I can choose what I do with the days ahead. Chinese is still difficult for me. I intend to stay with that difficulty until it is less so. I will not give up. I will get better. One character, one sentence, one day, stacked on the last. A secondary-school pupil in his forties, reporting for class. Onwards.