You mean after 11 years of Chinese education, that's it?

It was quite sudden. Stealthy, without a trace.
I am, of course, referring to the seizure of the study of Chinese.
I have just come to a realisation that I will never be studying Chinese as a subject again.
I guess it is true, then, that once you've lost something, you'll treasure it much more.

I am sad to say, after just 5 months of not using Chinese (much),

I have lost touch.

It's quite a sad case, since my ethnic race is Chinese. And worse, people tell me I speak Chinese funnily. It's not that I want to, you know! Chinese -- or Mandarin, more specifically -- is a language whereby I feel comfortable speaking in. Really! I'm not kidding!

In the past, I used to live in Ipoh, Malaysia. So in Malaysia, they have Chinese schools, Malay schools, and English schools. My parents, seeing that I had zero knowledge in Chinese, and being the forward-looking parents they were, put me in a Chinese school. Major culture shock. Everybody speaking Cantonese which was alien language compared to Chinese. But being the adaptive me (:D), I picked it up soon enough. Ting Yat Mm Ooi Fan Ohkay! (just kidding)

Maybe it was the experience in Malaysia, where I somehow led the 'kampung' community lifestyle, where everybody spoke Chinese and Cantonese. Maybe it's because I used to have friends who would speak Chinese with me. Maybe it's all of these reasons put together and much more -- Chinese simply makes me feel at home. (I do speak Chinese with my parents at home, FYI.) When I hold a conversation in Chinese with another person, it's because I feel close enough to the person to do so. Doesn't mean I don't talk to you in Chinese so I'm not close to you!

Just that, if circumstances allow, if it's a good chat at night in a familiar heartland coffehouse, or just a simple conversation over a meal, I feel good chatting in Mandarin.

That's why, I am quite sad that I no longer speak/write as fluently (not that I did it very fluently in the past. The keywords are "as fluently".)

I guess all the Civics and Moral Education lessons in primary school about how not to lose our Chinese roots have not gone to waste.