Accent

I am actually envious of people who can pick up accents really quickly. Is it a natural born talent on different people?

I know friends and cousins who could pick up accents overnight. They can speak really fluently and even fool natives into believing they are one of them. Generally people I know like that are mostly girls. I have also known a lot of others like me, having trouble picking up the accent even though we have been here close to 2 years now. I wonder why. Is it because I talk to my family and friends on skype every alternate days? Or do I need to get an aussie girlfriend to speed it up?

I know some of you will be like: 'why should you be so disgusted with your own accent?', 'Why must you embrace a foreign culture and ditch the one you grown up with?', etc.
Well what I realize is, as much as I try not to believe it, you will be made fun of if you speak broken english. People don't really take you seriously.

I don't blame them. I mean if we see some chinese man speaking really broken english, we'd make fun of him too. That is the thing with the language barrier. It really depends on individuals, whether you are born to pick up languages quickly or not, but the main goal is to be able to project your thoughts to other people properly. As to getting bullied for having a foreign accent, racism will exist as long as we still have a different skin colour.

To be honest, I really love the aussie accent. They sounded fast and jovial, it is fun to listen to them speak. So I did join in various social events, club meetings and this morning I attended a peer mentoring program training. The thing is I got a good idea of the accent, but I have to try in order to pull it off. What I want is to be at a level when I can just pull it off with out trying. Let me explain in a graphical representation, lol.

1. speak to family or friends I am already comfortable with:

thoughts wanna project › mouth to speak

2. speaking with aussie:

thoughts wanna project › process into foreign accent › mouth to speak

So there is a time lag when I try to process into a foreign accent. The lag often breaks my stream of thoughts, so I sounded boring with no time to polish words with vibrant context. I was brought up in a Malaysian english speaking environment, obviously my thoughts are in manglish. It doesn't help when I am not a very good talker. Haven't I told you I was bad in public speaking??

Haha I think I am just looking for excuses. At the end of the day, there is only one thing that matters the most:
CONFIDENCE.