Sometimes a little voice in my head tells me: "You're never going to learn, this is all too hard." So I tell that little voice: "Go to hell and eat celery."

At first, a basic 50-minute lesson was too much, but now I can trudge through four hours, just like the average foreign university Chinese-language student does each day. But the older you are, the harder it is.

Brain researchers say learning a new language becomes increasingly difficult after puberty, when the human language organ becomes settled (and sits lazily) in the left part of the brain, which is the cognitive part dealing with logic and language.

Up until puberty, a child uses the right side brain to learn language.

Images, smells, sounds and touch play major roles in the learning process.

Hanyu is a huge project, and I need my whole brain on board so by creating funny sentences, such as the nonsense I told the cabbie, a 42-year-old like me can charge up the right side.

My new picture dictionary is really boosting my right brain involvement.

For example, I look at stick of celery and repeat qin (rising second tone) cai (descending fourth tone). I then close my eyes and envision a juicy, fresh stick of green celery repeating the word.

I relax and feel my brain slotting in the new word and building a new link so my language organ can recall the new word.

My brain is like a subway system, and there is a lot of track work going on up there at the moment.

Using a real piece of celery is even better.

I see its fresh green tone, feel its cool, grooved surface, smell its unique aroma, and hear it snap.

Then I add the shark image and the process makes me laugh, which activates even more memory workers in my brain.

I keep saying qin cai and it is no longer a foreign word in a text book.

Qin cai is celery.