User Comments - bodawei

Posted on: Assembling IKEA Furniture

I built a big table once, with a friend, to my own design (okay it was about 33 years ago.) We still have the table and it gets better with age, or maybe I love it more with age.  The timber species I used is actually now protected by law and can only be bought second hand in Australia.    

But I got a big Chinese desk the other day and it uses principles I have never seen before; you turn the screwdriver and it tightens the screws at ninety-degrees to the screwdriver!  There must be some kind of gearing inside the timber, like the universal on a motor car.  Is this a Chinese invention the rest of the world does not yet know about?

While I think about it, I was recently introduced to automatic manual transmission (AMT) on a recent Chinese car - I have not seen this in Australia, ever.  I remember that Peogeots used to have it in the late 1950s in Papua New Guinea where I lived.  But I think that the Chinese may have improved it - it seems to work really well.  You supposedly need no skill at all in changing gears (my friend with the car  told me gleefully)!  ;-)  But this seems to partly explain, for me, why Chinese drivers I encounter labour the car engine until it almost stops, or actually does stop, rather than change down.  Are they taught this in driver training?  It puts enormous strain on both engine and transmission and no doubt keeps the repair business flourishing.   

BTW people go to IKEA in China for the food.  Good lesson!  

Posted on: 都......了Already

@three 

人工授精 (artificial insemination) according to my 电子词典 - 人工 (man made or artificial) 授 (give) 精 (semen).  The Chinese language can often be baldly desriptive.  When you think about it there is nothing 干 (dry) about artificial insemination, in a physical sense, is there?  

sorry，I missed your post when you put it up a couple of days ago.  

Posted on: Farewell, Sweet Pete

Pete

I hope you are still there to read this!! .. I have visions of you and the cardboard box with your dictionaries and biros and executive toys, being escorted from the CP building by the 保安.  No, I am sure it is nothing like that and your farewell on News & Features was dignified.  

It is a shame because you were a mighty asset to the CP business and at the moment I can see just a gaping hole.  

On the positive side you left Poems With Pete as I think the best thing CP has produced.  (I actually take issue with the distinction drawn and implied between the 'practical' focus of CP and the more 'intellectual' flavour of Chinese literature.  I spent yesterday with an 'ordinary' guy on a jaunt up a mountain; he must have recited a dozen poem fragments and he sang countless songs .. it fitted seamlessly with just general chat about work and family and life in Kunming.  I saw PWP not as 'nice' addition to the service but an integral part of learning the language.  For practical purposes.)   

So, I just want to thank you for your good-humoured contributions, the poetry, translations and insightful comment on the boards.  Good work, make that excellent work, and all the best with your next steps.  

Posted on: Antiperspirant in China

@rj

Would I lie to you? :-) 

your ad is kind of interesting - it says that it came from the (mysterious?) Far East & I didn't know that.  Why can't I get them in China then!?  

Secondly, it says they last a year and I can vouch for that (no comments about how often I use it.) Last one lasted well past a year.  In the closing weeks they are a bit dodgy, breaking up. Crystallising or is that de-crystallising I'm not sure.

The 'new age' comment hurt; I'm not an adherent.   

Posted on: Antiperspirant in China

@shenyajin

In Australia it is increasingly popular to use just a 'crystal' - we don't use either a roll-on or a spray. It is just a rock.. these days they come quite smoothly moulded.  :-)  The crystal works mcuh better than either a roll-on or a spray.  I haven't used the regular types for many years - for both health and environmental reasons.  But I can't get the crystal in China - I have to bring a supply or ask my visiting friends to bring some for me! 

Anybody seen crystals in China?  (Not the type you hang in the window!)  

Posted on: City Series: Bali

@rj,oringana

I'm not sure what you mean by 'extractor' (can't get to your link) but a short time ago we bought a glass coffee pot here in China that has a red button on top - you put your coffee in, it sits for a while, and then you press the red button and the coffee streams into the pot underneath.  Intriguing little thing that costs just a few dollars.  Makes excellent coffee.. I'm told (just in case my doctor is reading this, I'm not supposed to drink coffee.)  I have never seen one of these machines before - strange that we should find it in China; Chinese are not renowned as coffee drinkers.  Although, Yunnan at least does grow its own coffee.  We drink either Yunnan or Vietnamese coffee here (or at least my wife does.)  

For six years I lived just down the road from Bali (in Darwin) and never went. Lots of Darwin people in those days slipped over for the weekend. I always got the possibly wrong impression that it was a place to go and get drunk, or at least a little spoiled by tourism.  It is a vexed issue of course for those parts of the world blessed with beautiful mountains and beaches.  I like the ones that are less accessible (eg. Gove Peninsula) but that is elitist and it really just creates the same problem.   Maybe it comes down to whether your preference is for entertainment or wilderness; it is difficult to marry the two.  

Posted on: 都......了Already

@tal

that 干妈 (gānmā) for godmother is an interesting one - we have at various times referred to Chinese kids we are particularly close to as 干儿子 and 干女儿 .  This does have connotations of 'adoptive' but I have always assumed that the 干 implied that they are not a blood relative - but still considered part of our family.  I am impressed with 干 (dry) character, denoting, I thought, that no bodily fluids were required to form the relationship.  This would usually (but not necessarily) apply to a godmother as well.  I am not up on 'godparents' but I think you can have godparents that are blood relatives.  I look forward to Pete's take on it.

Posted on: Discussing Eating

@henning

Actually after a few months in China (and before I realised I needed a gluten free diet) I did start eating Chinese pizza.  I think you need a mindset that says: this is not actually pizza, this is a new culinary creation.  In Hangzhou some places did cater for the Western palate and found bases without so much sugar, but the toppings were still essentially Chinese (highly creative.)  When we arrived in Hangzhou there was an Australian pizza business in town but it did not last, closing after a few months.  It turned into a Japanese tepanyaki restaurant,, but they kept the old pizza chef so you could have pizza with your tepanyaki beef.  

Do any poddies know where the convention that Western food must be sweet came from?  i wonder if it is an attempt to imitate food in the US?  But the bread in China is even sweeter than American bread, right?

Posted on: Discussing Eating

@nudeaintrude

Coincidentally I ran into this 中餐 issue today - I was looking for some Chinese food at lunch time! Unfortunately I was looking in one of those places that only has Western food on the menu (hostels in China sometime have this problem - it so frustrating when the staff all sit down to a good Chinese meal but the only things on the menu are bastardised Western dishes.)  so I said 有没有中餐?  sadly the answer was 没有. Context ensured there was no ambiguity (and my face said I didn't want a ham sandwich*.)

* Ham sandwiches come with sweet white bread and ham that is an impossibly bright lolly pink colour.

Posted on: A Mouse Upstairs

@orangina

Hah, not as large as my kangaroo.  Okay, this one is said to be a true rat.  

BTW, I am surprised by this BBC Earth News link - it says in part that the 'island' comprises Papua New Guinea and New Guinea.  Sloppy reporting.  The 'island' comprises Papua New Guinea and West Papua; the latter is now a province of Indonesia. Some older poddies may remember that before it ceded to Indonesia that part of the island was called West Irian.