satellite dish = beer
Thanks to Dan of Shanghaiist who spread word of my “satellite TV for beer” deal, yesterday I successfully traded a satellite dish with box for 4 cases (96 bottles) of Sol beer. Lenny and John B can verify that the Sol is much tastier than the satellite dish could ever be. Thanks also to Peter for his generous bid.
I’m leaving for the States tomorrow for a two week visit. Will there be any …
Two weeks ago was “Super Bowl Monday.” At 6am John B and I caught a taxi to Windows Scoreboard, the place the Carl said would be “the place” to catch the big game. Well, “the place” insofar as it’s a pretty decent sports bar, beer is cheap (in the Windows tradition), and you can even get a decent American breakfast for a reasonable price. Plus they were showing the Super Bowl through satellite TV, so we didn’t have to …
Wendy’s Ad
While reading an article (via John B’s latest blog) about how awesome my alma mater is at basketball this season, I came across this Wendy’s ad.
My first thought was, “Wendy’s would have a hard time succeeding in China.”
My second thought was, “I hope, for the sake of my own health, that Wendy’s never comes to China.”…
About a month after saying goodbye to Zhou Ayi (the housekeeper that went bad), I found a better job that once again enabled me to be home evenings for a cooking ayi. I was not at all discouraged by my previous bad experience; I was ready for a new ayi (and so was the apartment).
I used the “agency method.” When I walked into the little office, there was a woman at a desk, several middle-aged woman …
John “I build an entirely new weblog every two months” Biesnecker has just put up an interesting article on his newest new weblog, My Chinese Life. The article deals with mnemonic devices for memorizing Chinese characters. (You probably want to read it before you continue if you want to understand fully what I discuss below.)
John talks about how he remembers the characters 粪 (“manure”) and 商 (something like “business”). For the former, he uses the actual meanings of …
A while back I decided to try an experiment. I said that I would begin posting one entry every morning (China time), Monday through Friday. And I’ve been doing that, for over 14 weeks now. So how do I feel about it?
Well, it wasn’t that hard. My inspiration (or desire to write uninspired posts, as the case may be) comes in spurts, and during those times it’s pretty convenient to write up a bunch of posts and schedule …
New CBL logo
John B and I put in quite a lot of work over the weekend, and the new version of the China Blog List is now mostly complete, up and running on its own domain. John really did a great job on the new functionality, and I’m very grateful for all the programming hours he put into the project. I focused on the design and organization of the new site.
After putting all that work into the new …
The new China Blog List will be finished pretty soon. John B has done some amazing work, starting from scratch, and the new version will be way better than the current one. I’ve known for some time now that the burgeoning CBL is decreasingly user friendly. The new version will change all that.
I’m not going to spell out all the new features at this point, but I will say this: during the switchover there will be a lot …
I like maps. When I was younger, I especially liked looking at maps of imagined fantasy worlds. I drew quite a few myself (although I was never quite nerdy enough to actually use them to play D&D or anything like that).
In high school, fantasy writer Piers Anthony‘s map of Xanth caught my attention because the geography was clearly (mostly) Florida’s, and yet so much was not the same. I think it’s a similar charm which results in my …
Jamie’s recent post outlined his history with China. It was a history which crossed mine. The most significant common experience was had in a college in Hangzhou we call ZUCC. (If you’re American, you say Z-U-C-C, kind of like F-B-I. If you’re Aussie or kiwi, you say “Zook,” rhyming with it “book.” I have always wondered about that little cultural linguistic difference.)
In chronicling my three years at ZUCC, I aim to do three things:
John has lived in China for
11.5
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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