Understanding

Ever since uni started, i have, for the first time in my life, looked at an exam paper and thought to myself "wtf are these words and squiggly symbols doing on the page??? ". Yep, a blog about understanding. Pretty simple to understand. Writing about understanding the actual 'understanding' of things which you gotta understand in order to understand. Do you understand what i'm talking about? You do? That's amazing, i didn't even understand what i was going on about. Oh wait, you didn't understand what i was talking about did you? I understand. < /random>

Well like i said/typed, uni exams are giving me the biggest "WTF!? Is this paper written in Arabic ???" moments. I can't answer the problem if i don't even know what the question is asking. Ok...i see a plus sign, a squiggly smiley face lookin' thing, and a normal distribution curve...is the answer 'pineapple' ? Alright, look around the room for an asian kid that i can copy off...oh shit, i AM that asian kid. Screwed. I just don't understand...stupid exam paper, WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME!?!?!. I guess i could always try that thing, but forgot what it was called. It's apparently an ancient voodoo technique that stimulates your mind and helps you retain information that can help you gain answers. Its called...err..oh yeah, studying.

And then there's the misunderstanding that comes from not hearing what people say properly, which could lead to very awkward conversations with friends, especially with people who like to mumble alot.

"*mumble mumble*"
"What?"
"*mumble mumble*"
"Speak up!"
"*mumble* Jan..*mumble*"
"Did you just say you want a pass on Jan and see her mum get laid!???"
"NO! I said pass me the Jam and Marmalade!"
"...get your own damn marmalade"

Language barriers. Because I am of asian appearance, Vietnamese people like to speak vietnamese to me. The problem is, i don't understand 90% of what they're saying. I can only vaguely understand what they're trying to tell me by stringing together random key words that i hear and try to come up with a reasonable conclusion as to what they're saying.

Ok...so im hearing "gibberish gibberish ...TREE..gibberish vietnamese-jibba-jabba ...WORK ...ching-chong-wikkity-wak ... UNIVERSITY ...vietnamese bing-bang-bao...". So from what i'm hearing, i've come to the reasonable conclusion that you're trying to ask me if I'm going to university to get a job as tree climbing monkey named wikkity-wak-baby-got-bak...well the answer is NO, you crazy old bitch!

And understanding facial expressions. Especially when people are trying to tell you to play along with what they're saying without actually telling you to play along. They start telling a story to someone which you know is a lie, and they know you know it's a lie but they need you to play along, and then they give you a retarded look which resembles someone getting punched up the asscrack, and you're standing there confused until, a couple of sentences too late, you realise that they wanted you to play along with their story.

Bob: "Hey Joe, wanna hang out tomorrow?"
Joe: "Oh..sorry Bob, we're kinda busy with that meeting at work tomorrow, right Trung?" *retarded face*
Trung: "What meeting?"
Joe: "You know, the one for work"
Trung: "What? Since when do we have work meetings?"
Joe: *continuation of retarded punched up asscrack face*
Trung: "What's with the face!? There's no meeting tomorrow! It's as if you're making it up because you want to avoid Bob tomor... OHHHHHH... yeah we're busy, for that meeting ...for work ...about ...erm ...the rise in ninja koala bears attacking in the office...?"

And the most frustrating of all types of misunderstandings is the the one where you are unable to make someone understand something that's so clear in you're head because you are unable to properly convey it to them. All the connections and ideas blend perfectly in your mind, but you're unable to find the words to properly illustrate what you're trying to say to the other person, mostly because halfway through my explanations I start to give up and start mumbling words. They just don't understand, either because they need further explaining, or because what they believe is completely different to what you do. Even if you believe you're right, chances are, they believe they are too. It's here you can either just give up trying to make them understand and just pretend you understand they're point of view, or you can just keep fighting you're argument until it escalates into a samurai showdown with swords and ancient egyption laser beams... with a ninja koala bear attacking the office...?

I guess what I'm trying to say..or ask..is that, how can you solve a problem if you don't understand it? You'll just end up goin around in circles not knowing what the hell you're doing. Am i doing too much, or not enough? Am I doing something wrong, or am I just not doing anything right? I don't understand why I'm failing... I may not understand, but I do know that I want this to succeed so badly. If you're stuck on a problem, there's no point just staring at the question and leaving the answer blank. Even if you don't understand, even if you don't know what the hell you're doing, even if the answer you come up with in your head makes you look like a complete idiot, you just gotta go with what you know and wing it. You write whatever, you do whatever, you try to scrounge as much of a non sensical answer as you can in the hope that it doesn't end up in a complete failure. Right or wrong, at least you're trying. What's so hard to understand about that?

"Trung, what the hell are you going on about?"