User Comments - sfrrr

Posted on: Zombies: Deader than Ever

Reigau--thank you very, very much. Do you find that  creating the transcript itself makes the grammar and vocab stick better?

Posted on: Are You Happy, Content, or Delighted?

When my granddaughter and I were watching The Devil Beside You, we kept laughing at the subtitler's translation of xingfu--blissful. It was way too corny to take seriously--blissful, not xingfu.

Posted on: Zombies: Deader than Ever

The zombie lessons are as practical as just about any CPod lesson. True, you may not need to know the word for zombie, although it does help one to remember the meanings of the two component syllables, but the grammar and colloquial phrasing is useful anywhere. And I've found that I remember things more easily if I have something fun to associate them with.

Posted on: Pregnancy Series 5: Super Babies and Ultrasounds

Ah, if only ultrasounds were as clear as your image.

Posted on: Guilin Mifen

Also, I keep getting a 403 error when I try to download the pdf. Any ideas?

Posted on: Guilin Mifen

I'm afraid to admit that all of my restaurant reviews (of which there were hundreds) were all published before the advent of the World Wide Web. Therefore, there are none online--or even digitized. Now, it may appear that a reviewer who wrote for publications before the early Nineties must be rather long in the tooth. Not so, I was only three weeks old when I started reviewing.

I know this is a movie (as in scripted, directed, etc), but I must say that episode one shows the lamest menu stealing I've ever seen. If you plan to steal a menu, don't go to the restaurant alone. You have to order off a menu, so how are you going to explain to the fuwuyuan where the menu went--you accidentally dropped it down the toilet? No, you go with at least two other people, and you staqck all but one of the menus together before the fuwuyuan comes to taqke your order. S/he is not going to count the menus if they're already stacked. Also, as I suggested before, kids make great accomplices. And, if you're going to steal their menu, at least have to good graces to eat a meal at the place first. And don't stuff the menu inside your clothes--how tacky. Bring a newspaper or large magazine (print, again--I'm stuck in the dark ages) and bury the menu inside the pages. or inside your shopping bag. Or something.

Take pride in your work and your technique. After all, if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing correctly.

Posted on: Guilin Mifen

For about 20 years, I was the restaurant critic for a major newspaper in the San Franciscioi Bay Area. My friends and/or my children and/or other family members and/or bums off the street accompanied me on my three meals to each restaurant so that I'd be able to order enough different dishes to make up a column. Usually, I stole the menu, but often, I'd need one or another of my kids (who started stealing at the age of two) to do it for me. (Who expects a toddler to steal the menu?) I never did figure out how to copy the daily specials from off the mirror or blackboard without being detected. (I really did have to remain anonymous to restaurateurs.)

There is a fabulous book. The Eater's Guide to Chinese, written by the late James McCauley, a linguistics prof at the University of Chicago. He reproduced Chinese menus from around the world, made up his own way to recognize hanzi and still, today, is one of my bibles of Chinese. Amazon US still sells it: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226555917/chinesebook-20.

Posted on: How Many Zeroes?

Thanks, guys. as you probably already know, the zero thing is a killer. My teacher has as much trouble translating her numbers into English as I do with Chinese. Four zeros is a different way of looking at the problem.

Posted on: Broken, Busted, and Smashed

Fabulous. A long while ago, my teacher gave me a list of brokens. My poor sick cat peed all over that notebook (she couldn't help it) and I've been lost ever since. So thanks.

Oh, and...I haven't listened to this podcast yet, but I have a question (rude, I know, because you probably address this in the podcast): if I want to say my brain is broken, do I use huaile or what? My teacher used to let me only use stopped--tingle.

Posted on: Pregnancy Series 4: Fetal Attraction

When I was pregnant with each of my daughters, their father had rock music of a fairly melodic sort on his stereo ALL THE TIME. I, however, was listening to fifties, sixties and seventies jazz and a whole bunch of classical music (baroque, romantic, whatever). And sure enough, when my kids were born and grew old enough to sing along, they knew every note--of course, they had continued to hear this same music after they were born because that was the music we were listening to.