User Comments - paulinurus
paulinurus
Posted on: Sorry and Thank You
March 2, 2009 at 3:37 PMJohn, "fault a show about pragmatics for being about pragmatics".. hmm doesn't seem to me people are faulting this QW show because of its pragmatism. Poddies love CPod as witnessed by their frequent showering of compliments so it must have bothered them having to offer negative feedbacks. They were trying to help with suggestions. The "grammar" topic came up in the context of a suggestion that if it is difficult for the new team to produce a filling QW show then how making QW be about grammar?
I just subscribed to CPod last month so when I called this QW show lame I wasn't comparing it to the "good old days".
This QW show is lame because:
(1) it assumes that foreigners go around literally saying 对不起 to people who are sick or had a loved one passed away. Really? Furthermore, in the West when we say "I'm sorry" to a passing, it is in the context of "I'm sorry to hear of ...." or, "My sympathies..."
(2) It advises foreigners to say less "thank you's" when in China, then, the show concludes saying that it's OK to say many thank you's because "it sounds good". Whoa! Which is which?
(3) The substance in this QW show would fill up a pdf page with just two short Chinese phrases:块好起来 and 别难过 . And unlike past shows, there was no fleshing out with more examples and instances.
Feelings about a show would range from WOW to WTF ! Cpod is known for its WOWs ... its superb manufacturing and serving of delicious and filling 饺子 jiao3zi. The last QW had shrimps removed from the filling. This QW had hardly any filling in the jiao3zi, resulting in the WTF reaction... where's the filling?
And since I'm already on a roll, I like to make a suggestion that in the spirit of transparency, please have a policy that a post on the discussion board not be deleted after a poster has advised of an error in the pdf dialogue document. A subsequent thanks and error corrected post would alert those of us who have downloaded the original version to download the corrected version.
Posted on: Too Heavy!
March 2, 2009 at 6:31 AMHi Changye,
Can 重 also be used as a verb meaning to weigh? Once I heard the owner of a Chinese take-out selling Emperor chicken saying just one word "zhong4" to the person at the counter and she weighed the chicken.
Posted on: Too Heavy!
March 2, 2009 at 4:43 AMLast summer after a game of golf, we were at a Chinese restaurant having dinner with our golfing friends (a Chinese couple) when a young Chinese man walked in with his girlfriend/wife holding her handbag. After they've passed by, our Chinese friend's wife expressed her disapproval of the man carrying the handbag. Maybe this is cool with the younger generation?
bababarwan, haha! killer application!
miantiao, 我去过意大利，有的男人一定带很漂亮的手提包！I;ve been to Italy and have seen some men carry really beautiful handbags.
Posted on: Sorry and Thank You
March 1, 2009 at 1:01 PMAnother lame QW, as lame as the previous QW when after teaching 戴 dai4 (to put on), the team felt it was beyond the newbies and ellies abilities to learn 摘zhai4 (to take off). Yep, we'll tell you how to put on your glasses but not how to take it off because then QW won't be "accessible" to the ellies.
Clearly the individuals in this QW team are wonderful people, but for some reasons the team itself is dysfunctional.
Posted on: I Miss Daddy!
February 24, 2009 at 12:06 PMHi cassielin,
Thanks for mentioning the song. I've just listened to 周冰倩 on Baidu and liked the rendition very much. Chinese songs are very heartfelt and meaningful.
Cpod, maybe expand the poems section with Chinese songs?
Posted on: Finance Segment on TV
February 24, 2009 at 2:59 AMThe bear markets in the past were due to typical boom/bust business cycles. The current bear market is unprecedented in that banks have been literally collapsing because of their over leveraging and lending of worthless or overvalued assets. Due to assets swapping between financial institutions, the crisis is now global. Could take many years to put right a global financial crisis of this magnitude.
Meanwhile, valuations of stocks are at incredible lows, except that each time we think some are at bargain basements, there is another basement even lower, as we saw last week when the S&P500 broke down 800 support. Who could have guessed GE would be worth only 8 bucks something today.
A reasonable strategy if one cannot wait and wish to buy now for a long-term diversified portfolio is to immediately write a covered call. This way, at least if the stock goes down further, you would have bought the stock cheaper. And if the stock is called upon option expiry, at least you'd have a profit. The only caveat to this strategy is that if there is a trend reversal, be willing to buy back the call so that you won't miss the upside.
Posted on: Finance Segment on TV
February 23, 2009 at 11:44 AM小心哦，听说经济衰退可能持续5年或更多， 那末牛市在很长时间之前回来。
Posted on: Taking it all off
February 23, 2009 at 5:00 AMhey bababardwan,
Can you show me how to insert a html link on the discussion board as you do? Thanks mate!
Posted on: Sorry and Thank You
March 3, 2009 at 3:04 AMJenny, thanks for listening. Looking forward to the next QW.
John, thanks for the clarification on the pragmatics. The language used to get your meaning across would include body language, especially facial expressions which only videos can transmit.
BTW, from all the recent goings on, I sense that there is a management directive for 2009 in conjunction with the transparency directive, to dumb the lessons down, give less content, spoon feed more, so as to make learning more comfortable for the newbies and the ellies, who form the major subscriber base of Cpod. Far be it from me to say, but I think a policy of spoon feeding and making the show contents less challenging will eventually back fire. Perhaps the small outcries in this QW show is an indication?