Yes, I would say that's fairly accurate. It comes with time as well, it will take a day or two to readjust to a language context you haven't been in awhile -- the cognitive load of those first couple of days is very high.

I'm a native English speaker from the US, and did terribly at foreign language classes in school.

Later in life, I spent 5 or so years learning Mandarin (speaking, reading and writing, traditional and simplified). I still speak it everyday and lived in Taiwan for years. Learned a bit of Taiwanese Hokkien, mostly for the food.

Recently moved to the Philippines for work and have to speak a little Tagalog, though most people in the business world here speak great English.

A new language in always in context, and you gain some new personality traits with it. My Chinese expression is more precise and logical than my English, partly because I lack the rhetorical skills to bullshit so I can't really afford to. My (very basic) Tagalog is entirely focused on making friends and diffusing tense situations, because rolling with the punches and making friends fast is an important life skill in the Philippines.

For non-human languages, I do data analysis by trade and have a very different approach to programming than traditional software engineers. I tend to use and write in the functional rather than the imperative style. Examples include Scala, R, and some uses of Python. When working with new developers, I usually spend some time introducing the paradigm and why it can help data driven products.

I distinctly remember how impressive my first visit to hubski was -- both the conversations and the product itself were so thoughtful. After making this account almost 3.5 years ago, I drop by very occasionally to read a few posts and see how hubski is doing. Glad to see you all are still here and still thoughtful =)

Even though the quality of conversation here is high, the volume of contest is a little too low for my liking. It's a trade off though, and you can't have it both ways. Seeing how certain other sites have become less and less useful with popularity, I hope hubski doesn't change too much.

Being constructed by humans does not preclude something from actually existing.

As with most places, and especially in the developing world (for lack of a better phrase), pollution is unfortunately a large problem. I hope to move further outside of the city soon.

I've exhibited some bad timing in this regard. I was in Taiwan during the 2008 Olympics, and in Beijing during the 2009 World Games.

Thank you, glad to be here! I don't live near Love River, but it is a lovely place for a bike ride or walk in the late morning or early evening.

I live next to the Lotus Lake.

Kaohsiung, Taiwan.