Living in Taiwan both increases and decreases your command of the English language. As a teacher your knowledge of the nuances of grammar become incredible. On the other hand your spelling can take a hit as your are subconsciously influenced by all the incorrect spelling you see. Seeing a word spelled ten different ways on ten different papers can make you second guess all that you believe is true.
As frustrating as it can be to sometimes have a brain fart and forget how to spell a word, it's nice to know that the same thing happens to Chinese speakers. With all the various lines that make up a Chinese character, sometimes native speakers forget exactly how to write the word. Not only that, with so many words having the same pronunciation, sometimes people forget which character is for the exact word they want. Meaning they sometimes think it's another word that has the same pronunciation but different character.
This always makes me feel good. It's ridiculously hard work to try and remember how to write every Chinese character, so it's nice to know that even native speakers can forget. The picture commemorates one event that I often think of whenever I need a pick me up after forgetting how to write a few words.
This is a bank I used to use, but when they changed some of their policies, I decided to close my account. When I went to close my account, a friend came with me to help out. When filling out the paperwork, my friend had to write down some numbers but she couldn't remember how to write the characters. In her defense they wanted the very old style of writing numbers, not the common way of writing numbers in Chinese characters.
Regardless, it made me happy to see that even Chinese speakers can't remember everything, and this specific memory calms me down whenever I feel frustrated for not remembering how to write something. Yay for other people's forgetfulness bringing me happiness!
