User Comments - rich

Posted on: An Introduction!

After living 3 years in Shanghai and worked over a year at ChinesePod, I'm finally listening to this series. :D

Posted on: Doomsday

Thanks for posting this. FYI for those who follow the link, no need to signup/login to see more than the first answer, and the first answer is what contains what you need to know:

History: Why does the Mayan Calendar end on 12/21/2012?

Why does the 18-month playful puppies calendar end on 31 July 2014? Why does the Justin Bieber calendar end on 31 December 2013?

Quite simply, they ran out of space on the calendar. We run out of space on our calender every December 31st. It isn't a big deal. We just start over the next day.

The Mayan calendar is no different. It is designed to optimize space by using a series of concentric circles that act like gears. A full revolution of one circle is equivalent to a cog on the next circle.

The hierarchy works as follows: a day -> 20 days -> 360 days -> 7200 days -> 144,000 days. That last unit (144,000 days) is called a Baktun. Their long count calendar is designed to equal 13 Baktuns.

There is absolutely no evidence to believe that the Mayans felt that 13 Baktuns from the initiation of the long count calendar would align with the end of the world. They could have designed their calendar so that the Uinal (20 days) wheel was actually 30 days, like our month, in which case the calendar would last another 2000 years. The number for each wheel was selected because it was a number of significance to them - not because it would work out so that the calendar ended when the world ended.

Any Mayans around today, still using their calendar, rather than celebrating the end of the world on December 21st, will be celebrating the start of a new long count calendar on December 22nd.

Posted on: Doomsday

Will you still be here to care? ;)

Posted on: Doomsday

So how do we even know it's the last day if it just hits us? haha.

Posted on: Really Good Food

I can't currently hear the dialog, only read it, as I don't have my headphones at work today, but I can only remind you that "zhe" can also be said "zhei" as in "zhei ge"...I often say it that way...it is up to the speaker which he/she uses. However, I realize this doesn't rhyme with "ye" either, but seems to be closer, as "ye" is actually an "ie" sound (but we put "y" instead of "i"). So yes, while "de" is pronounced like "duh" "zhe" can range from zh-uh to zh-eh to zh-ae. Just think of it making Chinese a little more colorful. :)

Posted on: Drawing Suns

So is 画画儿(huàhuàer = paint painting) something spoken in all of China, or in Shanghai/South is it 画画? I found that the 儿话 (er hua => putting 儿"er" after some words) is not at all used in Shanghai, and having learned Chinese in Tianjin, I had to change my way of saying things like 公园儿, 饭馆儿, 玩儿一玩儿, etc. So is 画儿 always said to mean "painting" or do some places in China drop the 儿 here too? What's standard?

Posted on: Drawing Suns

I'm sorry!!! It was me! I drew suns all over the wall to brighten the office up, but it was frowned upon....even though I purchased the crayons myself. :(

Posted on: Drawing Suns

It seems this is showing up in my feeds properly now. Is it working for everyone else?

Posted on: Fight on a Plane

Oh wow...I saw this happen on my last flight from Shanghai to San Francisco.  A woman got on the plane, Chinese, and was very late, yet was so mad that there was no place to put the bag. It was actually the flight attendent she got in a fight with though, he was a white American, and she was a Chinese, but seemed her English was ok, but it was all SHOUTING ENGLISH, and was so embarrassing. He got to the point where he told her that she would have to let him put his bags in another area of the plane, put them under her seat, or get off the plane... so embarrassing...and then she turned out to be the one sitting right behind me, and wouldn't let me put my seat very far back back, always pushing it etc., despite the fact she wasn't big or tall...*sigh*

Posted on: No TP

American English usage, I guess....or maybe other western countries. I'm surprised it was abbreviated too, as I tend to only use "TP" when talking with family members ("Buy some TP!") or if you refer to the prank (in America at least) where teenagers take rolls of "TP" to someone's house and put it all over the trees in the middle of the night. Funny, on Google Street View, next to the house I grew up in (to the right of this house) you can see an TP event which Google street car captured in 2006:

http://goo.gl/maps/GvaEr