User Comments - bodawei

Posted on: Check Your Spam

I get really beautiful spam SMS from my phone company - pretty (moving) picture and a lovely thought. No hard sell. :) [I posted one to these recently.] Then I also get possibly one or two per day on average offering special deals. I like the spam because I am sure that some of the special deals are worthwhile - just have to be sure I understand them.

Posted on: Changing a Plane Ticket

My mate who speaks Chinese went on it the other day told me that they are calling it 和谐号 - but couldn't explain why. Have you heard of this by any chance?

Posted on: Changing a Plane Ticket

Does no-one know the names given to the new super-fast train between Wuhan and Guangzhou? 和谐号 héxié hào? Is that right?

Posted on: An Unplanned Tan

Hi brendaninaus

The regime is two 15 minute periods of bright sun and a supplement ( 1,000 IU of vitamin D3) each day - so the word 'sunbake' is perhaps misleading. But it is a convenient word for taking your clothes off and lying in the sun. And obviously you can't do that every day; eg. today it is raining. :( After 15 minutes the body stops absorbing Vitamin D I'm told. And dietary vitamin D is insufficient. Actually summer is when I need to work on getting enough sun here - it is the wet season; lots of overcast days.

Sun avoidance in Australia started way before Asian immigration started in earnest (cancer awareness in Qld at least was widespread by no later than the 1960s - my parents counselled me about the risk of skin cancer in the 1950s.) But perhaps the Chinese introduced another way for the Australian to hide from the sun.

Posted on: An Unplanned Tan

I think you are spot on ashaman5 - I believe that it likens the film of sunscreen to the frost-like covering of a surface. I seem to remember someone telling me that, but I am happy to stand corrected.

Posted on: An Unplanned Tan

Hi Marco

You are aware that threading was introduced so we could vent in peace? :)

Okay, 。。 you're the boss:

我偶然遇到马可 wǒ ǒurán yùdào mǎkě (I met Marco by accident, or I met Marco on accident)

偶然 ǒurán (by accident OR on accident).

I am determined not to say anything rude about the state of education in Indiana. ：）

Posted on: An Unplanned Tan

That is really interesting that you think it 'sounds' correct. Okay, .. and 'by accident' sounds not as as correct....

'cuz' or 'cos' sounds way better to me than 'on accident'. They are both used in everyday speech, probably more often than 'because'. I don't think that will take 50 years.

I just had a thought about all these ESL teachers in China, all teaching, assessing, marking, advising their students in quite different ways. It definitely does not just come down to accent differences, does it? I suddenly feel sorry for the Chinese students.

Posted on: An Unplanned Tan

Hi xiao-phil et al

'Showing your age' - yeah, tell me something new. :)

But there is a difference between evolving language (which I am a great fan of) and bad expression. Even if it is increasingly difficult to find the line. This is just bad expression, at this point in time in our history. It grates, it sounds horrible, it is wrong, it has no credibility. Doesn't it?

Yes, ... I know language change creeps up on us.

The only way this expression will succeed is if it creeps up on us, burrows silently into our flesh, spreads through our bodies and eats our brains. ;-) Oh,... and if it is given air by ChinesePod.

ma_tai - I fear that NOW I have been too harsh, on accident.

Posted on: An Unplanned Tan

How do Chinese (or Japanese) people get enough Vitamin D?  

Australia is reputed to have the highest incidence of skin cancer in the world, all those Anglo-Saxons soaking up the sun and surf.  But the slip-slop-slap (cancer awareness) programs have created a whole generation of Australian people with serious Vitamin D deficiencies.  We now do not get enough sun.  

People think if they walk to work or go for a run they will get enough sun.  Unfortunately 'slip-slop-slap' is so ingrained that they wear a hat and sunscreen, even sun-screened clothes (I remember buying shirts with a sun-screen rating.)  

I am now under doctor's orders to sun-bake.  :)  Fortunately I live in one of the few places in China where this is both feasible (blue skies) and enjoyable (not too hot).  

Posted on: An Unplanned Tan

ChinesePod staff: please fix the blooper in the written introduction. We can do something 'on purpose' but not 'on accident'. Yow! It should be 'by accident'. Your bad. Actually it is not strictly a 'blooper' as bloopers are funny. This error doesn't make me laugh.