User Comments - orangina
orangina
Posted on: Satellites, DVDs and ABCs
April 22, 2011 at 3:14 PMMy 妹妹 gave me this t-shirt... somewhere along the line I lost it and have been in mourning ever since! Oh, how I miss my Midvale School for the Gifted t-shirt! Just above the bottom hem there is a small black and white drawing where he has put down his books and is pushing with both hands.
Posted on: Checking out at a Hotel
April 22, 2011 at 2:35 PMI think 坏了 doesn't have to be dramatic damage. In this context maybe "not working" is a better translation. It is amazing how useful it is... quite a spectrum of brokenness included. Sometimes after a particularly bad attempt at saying something in Chinese I say, “啊哟，我脑子坏了。“
Posted on: Handsome Foreign Student
March 27, 2011 at 2:39 PMhehe... I do the same thing with the tall nose comments. I will turn to the person on the subway and say, "对，我的鼻子很高“ Maybe not the same as admitting to my loveliness... but gets a fun reaction anyway.
Posted on: Car Crash
March 22, 2011 at 3:24 PMI was taught that the 被 construction is often used in sentences about bad things happening. So in Chinese I think the situation is reversed. The passive voice is the more accusatory of the two, if there is any difference in connotation. Thus is my understanding.
Posted on: Using a Cell Phone in China
March 21, 2011 at 3:37 AMI thought pre-pay was for pimps and drug dealers. Nice to know you can use it if you just have bad credit. There is no hoodlum union you have to join first?
Actually, I love pre-pay and will probably switch to it when I go back to the US, whenever that may be.
Posted on: Using a Cell Phone in China
March 21, 2011 at 3:34 AMThey asked me what plan I wanted when I bought my SIM. You choose your number off of a list of numbers for each plan. (You can change it later.) I got the cheapest call plan (since even in the States I was a texter,) and I pay a few RMB extra for a set number of text messages. If I go over there is a small per text charge. Data plans are really inexpensive, and I used that before I had internet at home. But now I use it so infrequently it is worth the per use charge if I do happen to want to look something up online while riding the subway.
On the text culture note, I think it is just really practical here. First, a cell (statement of the obvious alert) is with you all the time no matter what you are doing, so you can't tell what the person you will be talking to is doing; I think it is polite to send a text which they can immediately respond to, or ignore until it is a better time for them. Second, it is very noisy here, at least in the places I've lived. On the bus, in the subway, walking on the street... it is really hard to hear what someone is saying. And I don't want to be that person yelling into their phone, especially as I cannot do it in Cantonese. As for time, I think it is more efficient to send a text. No pleasantries, just ask your question. If the other person doesn't know the answer of their head they don't have to explain this to you, find the answer and call you back. They just answer when they know. (And yes, I do value actual conversation, but it isn't necessary every time.)
Much better than a voicemail message.
Posted on: Rainbow
March 19, 2011 at 1:09 PMI will look for that...
I hate it when I am getting towards the end of a beloved book. I keep expecting the pages to multiply. For every page turned another materializes while you are looking elsewhere... But it has so far failed to happen.
Posted on: Rainbow
March 19, 2011 at 4:59 AMAnd yet it didn't occur to me to simply look up "turquoise" in the dictionary...
The book I mentioned is fascinating. Findlay (who lives in HK,) traveled the world finding where different pigments, dyes and paints came from and how they are made. But it isn't an academic treatise, rather the story of her journeys, the people she met, and the remarkable stories of socioeconomics, politics, religion, science, secrets and poison that have gone into covering a canvas (or stone wall) with well placed blotches of color.
Posted on: Rainbow
March 19, 2011 at 4:14 AM"Dance the orange." Ranier Maria Rilke
This was a nice lesson too... but I certainly think both are necessary! colors by degrees
I have no idea why Issac Newton stuck indigo in the rainbow... you certainly can't see it there.... but then he was into alchemy and many other "interesting" philosophies, and 7 is a holy number while 6 is not, so 7 colors in light may have been more logical to his mind.
Can 青色 be any blue-green, or just a dark one? I painted my walls a pale turquoise and have wondered how to describe it other than 蓝绿色。。。淡青色？
And in English we have plenty of words for orange: vermilion, tangerine, saffron, safflower, traffic cone orange, russet, rust, turmeric....
Recommended reading: Colour by Victoria Finlay
Posted on: Chinese Mythological Creatures
June 6, 2011 at 10:41 AMWell, my aunt had a pet cow. It would follow her around and she would set up four 2x4s around it, which it would not cross on account of it being a fence. Unless she got real lonely, in which case she would come up on the porch and look through the window at the people inside. I am the first documented (lacto-ovo-piscan)vegetarian in my family, so I'm thinking this contradiction is fairly common.