User Comments - dunderklumpen

Posted on: Bean: Volunteering and Making a Difference in Shanghai

I second chiongzibide's thoughts.

Posted on: Assembling IKEA Furniture

Thanks guys!

Posted on: Assembling IKEA Furniture

Sometimes when I speak with my chinese friends I'm not sure whether I understood what they said or not. I would like to say "Er...., let me see if I got that right..." and then try to repeat what they just said.

Is there a chinese equivalent to "let me see if I got that right..."?

Posted on: Assembling IKEA Furniture

Jiaojie 谢谢你的解释！

Posted on: Assembling IKEA Furniture

Jiaojie

I see. So in this case A says it to call B's attention when handing over the dowels, right?

Posted on: Assembling IKEA Furniture

What does the "喏" add to the line "喏，muxiao gei ni"?

Posted on: Assembling IKEA Furniture

I grew up 20km from one of the IKEA stores in Sweden. I didn't realise how "exclusive" my situation was until i moved to another city 300km away. My new friends would actually rent cars and travel (go on pilgrimage...) the 300km to IKEA. Since Sweden is so small, 300km is considered to be a very long distance.

When I was a kid (in the 80's) IKEA hadn't yet spent too much money on guarantee of quality. Each time you bought a piece of furniture you would actually need 还得特地买个工具箱 as well. There was always some little 东西 missing in the package. Not to mention the holes were not drilled in the right place. Just almost in the right place :-)
These days those things don't happen. (Well, never say never...)

I think the real tragedy is in selling cheap furniture.

I totally agree. In Sweden there's a big market for second-hand stuff. Blocket (Swedish ebay/taobao) is overflowed with old furniture; some IKEA some other. The furniture (not IKEA's) from around the 50's are still in remarkably good shape. Second-hand stuff from IKEA, although not too old, most often look terrible. And since it's not solid stuff, you can't restore it. Such a waste of material.
However, in the last 10 (?) years or so we have seen an improvement in the quality. It is actually possible to buy stuff that are solid wood these days. I think those will last for many many years.

Who goes shopping? Ever since I was a kid, it has always been the women that wanted to go to IKEA for shopping. The men always thought it was too 麻烦. They were satisfied with their home whereas the women always wanted to change it, make it new, spend money and so on. Ok, that's a sweeping generalization but anyway ;-)

Here's a clip from a Swedish television comedy: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSM5Xo5bP9c

(If your swedish is bad you may want to read the subtitles below.)

LEKRUMMET (tha play room)
Hi!
Hi! What's your name?
Her name's Tilde.
Put your clothes in the box. I'll give you a number.
Bye bye honey! See you in one hour!
Bye!
Let's play!

LEKRUM FÖR PAPPOR (play room for dads)
We'v arrived.
What's your name?
His name's Martin.
Do you want number 14?
Bye bye honey, see you in one hour.
Martin, how about you take off your shoes and put them outside the room. Then we can file your income tax return form or something.

Posted on: Farewell, Sweet Pete

Oh man, that's sad news :(

Pete, when I signed up on chinesepod you were the first one to make me feel Cpod is like a big family. I will truly miss your presence here. Many thanks.Wish you all the best!

Posted on: Pinyin Section 16

Also, I'm sure you have used 'lo' somewhere in your lessons. I believe it is the character  咯.

lo, lo

Posted on: Grammar Lesson

I was a bit surprised over the structure of this sentence:

你可以教我学游泳吗？
Can you teach me to swim? 1 (Can you teach me to swim?)

I guessed the 学 isn't needed at all.

It seems like the person is asking "Can you teach me how to practice swimming?" rather than "Can you teach me to swim?" Can 学 have the meaning of practice and train?