User Comments - martinku

Posted on: Computer Problems and Tech Support

Ahoj pettoro!

jako duha? I never learned that, or if I did I've forgotten long long ago. My favorite Czech drinking idiom is having "monkeys in the head" for a hangover - very descriptive, and nice pun on opice/opit se ;)

(and I know my screen name is ungrammatical in Czech...)

Posted on: End of the Year Bonus Surprise

In the UK a lot of private sector employers operate bonus schemes - but mostly they are linked to company and even individual performance, so are definitely not guaranteed. I think very few companies hit their bonus targets in 2009, except of course for certain banks (sore point!)

Posted on: Why is everyone looking at me?

It seems this is also an issue in Wales:

"Tesco ban on shoppers in pyjamas" - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8484116.stm

Posted on: No Need to Take off Your Shoes

@svetlanaom - Yes, it's not just an Asian practice. When I lived in the Czech Republic in the early 90s everyone had racks of shoes and spare slippers by the entrance of their apartments.

I don't know why the Anglo-Saxon cultures are different but there's an interesting vignette in LP Hartley's "The Go-between", set in England in 1900. A schoolboy tells his visiting friend, who is from a slightly less elevated fraction of the middle class, that he should not come down to breakfast wearing his carpet slippers: "it makes you look like a cad - the sort of thing a bank clerk would do." Perhaps trailing around the house in dirty shoes was something aspirational, imitating the aristocracy who have servants to clean up after them.

Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Beijing

Thanks Changye and Pete. Now I know, I'll look out for it. Easier to spot when there's more than one character to the column ;)

Could be worse though: there was a form of ancient greek writing called boustrophedon which went left-to-right to the end of the line, then back right-to-left (lit. 'as the ox ploughs'). Fun, eh?

Posted on: Good, Bad and Otherwise

I like the 請問 logo too - seal script is very charming. Maybe one day it will be appropriated by popular subculture, just as gothic script has been by heavy metal. Or maybe it's already happened...?

Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Beijing

One question from outside China:

I notice in Jenny's photo of Quanjude that the hanzi on the sign are written right-to-left. I've seen poetry written in this fashion (actually top-to-bottom then right-to-left), but how common is this on signs in China? Is this just because of the venerable tradition of this restaurant, or can this be seen much elsewhere?

Thanks to anyone who can help!

Posted on: Numbers in Chinese

One hundred is, of course, the Yorkshire number in Chinese: 一百gum! (groan)

Really, really sorry for that...