learning. again, always.

Since starting a new/second job there has been many a day when I was feeling helpless and very small. There are hundreds of people at the new company I'm working for, many faces I remember but do not have a name, countless customs and habits, completely new field of work and responsibilites, not to mention hearing a different language being spoken 50% of the time. Working with a large number of colleagues and staff members, many facets of work and projects and varying degrees of authority to maneouvre through, my days have been interesting to say the least, since May.
Speaking English and Mongolian comes very naturally to me now. This wasn't the case for either, at certain times in my life, until about now. However, when a language like Japanese gets trhown in their, it's a whole new story. I'm getting to grasp the idea of performing tasks between 3 languages. I'm not saying I've suddenly learnt Japanese , although some people can manage that in 4 months, and they are a freak of nature (i'm jealous btw), but it's been challenging and will be challenging further to understand that what I'm discussing or bringing up has to be translated into 2 further languages and be understood by everyone. Navigating through working with different languages, many people and most definitely office politics...the word challenging doesn't quite cut it actually.
Japanese people are very different people to Mongolians, and Mongolians are very different people to Brits. There are a whole other composition of layers of characteristics, habits, tendencies, feelings, teaching and beyond. Knowing about one is not enough, two is still not enough. Fully comprehending what all three types of people and cultures function, and being able to communicate between them, is essential if you want to get anywhere.
This is why I've decided that learning Japanese will serve me several purposes:
1. better workflow (see above)
2. less stress due to less questioning of the accurateness of translations
3.contentness from knowing that you have things under control, even if you don't, you have the ability to by just opening your mouth...
4. being able to say i'm tri-lingual on my CV!

So, i'm learning again. Although it has been a learning experience since May, this time it's very structured and visible learning. Then again, we're always learning. I've been learning since September 2008. I've been learning since September 2006. I've been learning since I was born. We all have. Just a shame that to some it comes a little easily, and others have to write blogs about it to motivate them!