User Comments - light487

Posted on: Which is better: China or the USA?

1st tone.. if you hover your mouse over the character in the expansion, you can see it.

Posted on: Which is better: China or the USA?

Oh ok.. fair enough :) I didn't mean to imply anything.. but yer.. it's just what I have experienced :)

Posted on: Which is better: China or the USA?

Hehe.. I like being an Australian in China though.. the reaction I've gotten when they find out I am not American but instead Australian is, what I can only assume, a lot friendlier...

On a similar vein to your comment.. I have to admit that I have a heck of hard time understanding ANYTHING taxi drivers have said to me compared to the rest of the population. It's like there is a taxi-driver dialect or something.. :)

Posted on: Which is better: China or the USA?

I often sit on the train, listening to my iPod of Chinese music and look out at the wonderfully beautiful landscape of Sydney... but Sydney is very boring.. very, very slow and boring. It's like a huge retirement village.. so it's a great place if you like lazy weekends of doing not-much and relaxing ALL THE TIME.. but it is very boring if you want constant stimulation.. There are certainly some good things about Australia, Brisbane is better than Sydney in my mind but still very boring.

After I weigh up all the things good and bad.. I still think China is better in many ways. When I think of Shanghai, which is a massive city.. I still think of it as a community rather than a city of individual groups mixing together. Sydney is so small by comparison but does not have that community feeling. This "harmonious" feeling is existent in so many of the cities and places in China I have been to.. even in Xi'an.. which I didn't like all that much to be honest..

A place is only as good as the people that live there.. and China has the people to fill the cities with good people. Sure there are bad apples.. they are everywhere.. but for the most part, I have found that the average is well above the norm found in Australia..

China = a place you can live your entire life.

Australia = a nice place to visit or retire to.

Posted on: A Special Christmas Gift

Hrmm.. may be it is his mother or sister.. and she is a better shopper who knows whether something is fake or not :)

Posted on: 癌症

Oooh.. I can actually understand some of what is being said. I thought to myself, "There's no way I can understand these lessons yet but I'll have a listen to see what the format of the lesson is like."

Then, as I was listening, I realised I was recognising some (not as many as lower levels) of the words and was able to keep up in terms of speed at recognising the different sounds (ie. separation of syllables) being spoken.. think I might use these levels from now on for listening practise and getting used to the flow of a regular speed conversation! :)

ChinesePod is such a wealth of learning information in so many ways. :)

Posted on: Common Measure Words

Thanks Connie :)

Seems I was almost there that time with the grammar but at least I've understood the usage and that's the main thing at this point.

Posted on: Do you have vegetables?

Oh right.. so I won't get strange looks if I use "you mei you"? I like to use this form of question because then I don't have to remember to stick a "ma" on the end.. I always forget the "ma" because in English we don't vocalise the question-mark :)

Posted on: Common Measure Words

Ahh yes.. so I could say maybe: "wo qu Hangzhou, jitian wo hui lai Shanghai" ? As in, I will go to Hangzhou for a "few days" before returning to Shanghai... but I can't use jitian as a time-word in the same way as I did above.

jitian - several days

jixingqi - several weeks

jinian - several years

..and so on, right?

And to describe the first one, I would need to say "wo woukong de shihou tongchang xihuan tan jiat he tongchang wan youxi", as in: "When I have spare time, I sometimes like to play guitar and sometimes like to play games.".. keyi shuo ma? :)

Posted on: Dublin

Hehe.. with that one though, you could have blamed either the Translator or the Editor.. :)