Interesting experience on trilingual experience

As a trilingual person (hopefully, quadrilingual soon), lots of people tends to tell me that I have a thing for languages. Interests, yes. But definitely not "gift" in me.  Recently I found an interesting experience, I wonder if it's true for other people with a foreign language skills.

One day, I was listening to an interesting podcast in English (my first foreign language) when I realized that I need to cook. So I began cooking, and after like 5 minutes, I found that I completed ignored the podcast. It was playing loud enough, but it seems that the content just come and go (like we say in Chinese, goes into you in one ear and get out in another ear).

I suddenly realized that it's very difficult for me to multitask in foreign language. In contrast, when I was younger, I often listen to News or audio book program while doing something else. The conclusion still needs some validation, I should try to cook while listening to some Chinese( my native tone) program. However, I wonder if this is the thing that distinguishes the native speaker from the non-native speaker. I mean the fact that you can work with only very few part of your attention with a language can be a measurement of degree of your level with a foreign language, like it's hard-wired in your brain, you basically use the language, with no cost of energy, nor attention.

But the fact your brain just ignore the language when you are not paying attention can be an advantage. This reminds me that I feel less distracted or bothered by the public noise in foreign countries. Even if they are as loud as they are in China, the noise in the public transport, in the café etc do not bother me, since my brain filters them out and ignore them automatically if I do not pay attention to listen to these noises.