Wǒ de zhōngwén búhǎo As the title says, Wǒ de zhōngwén búhǎo (excuse butchered the 中文 and also the random sentences that are about to follow). Please note this is more of a 'before shot' so I can look back on this in the future to see how far I've come. So please excuse the majority of this post being in English. 澳大利亚 我叫Nick. 我是二十一节我是澳大利亚人。我作为一个工作software engineer。我有三只猫。他们都很好。我是learning中文for我的nu朋友。她是中国人，但她也是澳大利亚。 谢谢您的阅de 再见！ So that's the first time I've actually sat down and tried to come up with a basic introduction about myself (especially in hanzi). I have been learning Mandarin for a few weeks and although my tones are still butchered, have the vocabulary of a two year old and and I'm constantly referring to Pleco every 5 seconds, I feel as if I've made good progress. My reasoning behind learning Mandarin is simple. I've always loved languages (I learned French as a kid, Tagalog in my teens and have played with a bit of Spanish. Hola mi nombre Es Nick) but I wanted a new challenge. At the start of the year I said "I'm going to learn mandarin". The industry that I am in is ever expanding and with work, we deal with a lot of Chinese manufacturers who constantly get frustrated with the inability to communicate effectively between the parties. So I saw an opportunity to be able to help expand our international and business relations. Also the fact I wanted to watch 'If you are the one' without subtitles also helped. Anyway come May all I could say was 'Ni hao!' So it was safe to say I was totally putting in the effort (sarcasm). Until I met my girlfriend. She is Australian born Chinese and although she isn't fluent in Mandarin, it has been the catalyst I had needed to kickstart my mandarin journey. 3-4 weeks later into my active study, 我feel很好 about it and I am excited for what this journey holds for me. Hopefully this will serve as a good way for me to reflect on and (hopefully) see how far I've come. I am hoping to (by the end of the year) gain a level of 'fluency'. By that I mean at least the basic level of being able to carry a basic-intermediate conversation without having to refer to Pleco every two seconds.