User Comments - orangina

Posted on: Buying Sandals

I don't think I could have stood it if the woman was 撒娇。As it was, though, I met a friend later in the day after listening to the lesson. We stopped in a shop and my friend said to the clerk regarding one item, “是真皮的吗？” To which he dutifully replied, “是。牛皮的。” I don't think they quite got why I was standing there grinning at them both.

Posted on: Chinese Fruits

Excellent! I will add this to my recipes of delicious things I never get around to making.

But at least I know it is there if I want to someday....

Posted on: Check Your Spam

拉猪，拉猪，拉猪，拉猪啊地拉猪，拉猪！

Hmmm, might work better if spam were a chicken derivative rather than pork... 拉鸡

Posted on: An Unplanned Tan

I'm not sure if it has the same meaning either. In English, "I was just being dramatic" doesn't mean that I was actually agitated or excited, just that I was speaking in an overly dramatic manner. So maybe 戏剧性 is correct because it is speaking in the manner of an actor in a (bad) play.

Posted on: Organic Food

Having worked at a pretty big natural foods market for 8 years the first thing that comes to my head when the word organic is used is food that is produced according to standards set by the USDA. (Hippie culture in turmoil... Yay! for standardizing what organic means, oh, wait, does that mean we have to trust the government? Well, I already work for a huge corporation....) But my mothers favorite thing to say when we went down to the local co-op was, "All food is organic, it is carbon based." And my organic chemistry class in college, enjoyable as it was, had nothing to do with granola recipes. I just treat it as a homophone and let context be king.

Posted on: Buying Sandals

Definitely a sandal, as the top is made entirely of straps. But, with that said, if a friend said they were going to buy some sandals and later showed up with these I would have been surprised. And I also wouldn't expect anyone to wear these in actual sand.

On the flipflop issue, when I was a kid they were called thongs. So it isn't that far off base. A friend of mine was once asked what she thought of thongs. She replied "They are fine as long as you don't mind your big toe showing!" We've been teasing her for that for over a decade now.

Posted on: Organic Food

I knew "artificial" wasn't what I was looking for, but was too lazy to think of "synthetic." I think you are right.

Posted on: Organic Food

Well, the same is true in English. All food is organic, in that it is carbon based. But is is so much more convenient to say "organic" than to say "food grown without artificial pesticides and fertilizers."

Thanks fourmoredays2010, I was wondering the same thing.

Posted on: Check Your Spam

It is probably terribly annoying for native speakers, but I tend to treat them as unexpected 汉字 lessons. So far phone spam is not so thematically... interesting... as email spam. My favorite is when they send you a bank account number. No explanation. Yeah, let me just run down to the bank and make a deposit. I'll be right on that.

Posted on: Fun at the Beach

My understanding is that valuing fair skin long predates contact with European peoples. So it wouldn't seem to be about racism. But avoiding harmful long term effects doesn't explain smearing oneself with chemicals to obtain such fair skin. (Hypocrisy alert: I have been known to smear myself with chemicals for purely aesthetic purposes heedless of future consequences.）