Rui En's experience in "Sense of Home"

"My Chinese? Only 6.5 out of 10 lah!"
Well, then Rui En should do more English roles! She talks about braving flies and humidity in Cambodia for Sense of Home and gives us some very good reasons for why she should be the face of the next Speak Mandarin campaign.

Although Rui En’s been steadily holding her own on Ch 8, we’re guessing that she must have been quite a happy bunny when she got cast for "Sense of Home".

That’s because prior to being one of the most sought-after seven princesses on the Hill, Rui En was one of those actresses whose Chinese could be described as koyak (terrible).

“Oh I was really, really bad,” she said, shuddering. “I couldn’t even say simple things you know!”

For an example of how bad, Rui En said that a few years ago, she would have had problems ordering a cup of coffee.

But six years of being heavily involved in Chinese dramas (remember her first role in No Problem?) has done a lot to improve the songstress’ Mandarin.

For her role on No Problem, Rui En said she “was memorizing straight from the script”. “I felt a lot of pressure with that first role,” said Rui En.

“The only way to do it is to keep using the language,” she said. “I improved my Chinese just by being consistently involved in Ch 8 dramas.”

“Writing lyrics helps as well,” she said.

She’s penned a few songs for her upcoming album, which is set to be released in October.

From not being able to order coffee to writing lyrics in Chinese … we suggested that Rui En be the next ambassador of the Huayu Cool campaign.

She laughed and said: “Yeah! I’ll do it if they ask me!”

Still, ever the modest type, when asked to rate her level of proficiency over 10, she said “6.5 only lah!”

The star, who speaks English like she could potentially be a newscaster, must be glad then for her role in Sense of Home on Ch 5, which is her first English role since she played Steph on the second season of Achar! in 2004.

In the anthology series’ third episode, ‘Kampung Kid’, Rui En plays Caroline, the assistant to a Cambodia-based entrepreneur. Having lived in Cambodia for six years, Caroline thinks she’s gotten used to being away from home, but is she?

Rui En herself had never been to Cambodia before, but gamely took up the challenge of filming in a hot, humid, and totally foreign third-world country.

But while she happily swatted away flies and endured heat rash from filming, the extremely cautious actress would absolutely not touch any Cambodian food (despite the fact that everyone says it’s delicious!).

“When I work, I make sure to take care of myself. I didn’t want to get into a situation where I ate the local food and got an allergic reaction,” she explained. “I ate hotel food.”

While she went there “prepared for the worst”, like having no clean toilets. She also packed a portable DVD player to keep her entertained but amusingly forgot to pack the batteries. Still, Rui En said the experience was much better than she expected, and it had nothing to do with any of the comforts of home.

Speaking to the locals, she said, offered a new perspective on how to enjoy life.

“Whichever country you go to overseas, you find people who always seem to want more, who want more money, live in a better place. But in Cambodia, they people were very satisfied. They were very contented with what they had, they weren’t looking for a bigger house or a bigger car,” she said. “It was the first time I’d ever seen that in any country that I’d been to. It was very refreshing. It’s very cool to live like that.”

Sourced from: MediaCorp Channel 5 website
Link: http://mediacorptv.sg/en/buzzdetail/EDC080926-0000003