User Comments - standuke

Posted on: The Sherpas Story with Mark Secchia

Great podcast, I'm looking forward to more in this series...

This can't be the first comment?!  What an honor.

I especially liked the bit about how the Chinese restaraunteurs can't believe that they will eventually get paid... Seems like there should be a better solution--like what they do with tao bao, for instance.

SD

Posted on: Guilin Mifen

Bravo,

BTW, I love the way the series dramatizes not only chinese learning, but also the importance of learning good lighting techniques. You could do a cross-promotion with Strobist.com.

Posted on: Thoughts on Returning Home 回乡偶书

Any HTML/CSS geeks here?

I was pasting the text of this poem in the 'lyrics' in iTunes.  Since the default size of the lyrics makes it impossible to read the Chinese text, I like to enlarge the characters if I want to be able to see them. I can't figure out how to increase line spacing, though... is there a one-line command for that? Double-spacing works, though, so for the moment that's what I'm doing.

If you want to see what I mean, paste the text below into your iTunes lyrics.  It should show up nice, big and readable on an iPod touch or iPhone.   

<big><big><big><big>

少小离家老大回，

乡音无改鬓毛衰。

儿童相见不相识，

笑问客从何处来。

离别家乡岁月多，

近来人事半消磨。

唯有门前镜湖水，

春风不改旧时波。  

</big></big></big></big>

Posted on: Farewell, Son 游子吟

@cassie, my guess is RJ is referring to the final step from what you learn in the books to becoming fluent.  So trying things out, making mistakes and getting corrected is the only way to make the final step to fluency. 

@pete,  Great show, and the video is an instant classic.  I haven't read through all the comments but it appears to have been well-received.  On the video, I liked the way you guys highlighted the text as you talked about it.   I've always thought that showing characters like that (nothing more) synchronized with the audio lesson would be the logical place to start with video lessons.  Easier said than done, I know, as I've tried it... you can't just import an audio file in Powerpoint and synch it to slides, but you get the picture. 

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the next installments!

Posted on: The Final Show

Amber, was it JP who called you 'The cure for Yellow Fever??'  Regardless, I hope CPod can find new native-English-speaking-female talent to balance the recent influx of guys.  I'll definitely miss your show.

Oh, and from New Jersey, welcome to the neighborhood.

Posted on: Early January News

Congrats Matt, I get the feeling the CPod team is in good hands.  It certainly is a 'dream job'.  

Posted on: Learning the Lei Feng Song

@xigua,

As they say, 'winners write history' so until there's another revolution it looks like 雷锋is part of Chinese culture. Regarding persecutions in general (especailly big ones, like the Cultural Revolution, Jews in Europe or American Indians) it is often informative to think about how the forces of optimism contribute to these tradgedies.  I really hate the 'Dr. Evil' model where every bad thing is due to some really Bad People with a really Dastardly Plan.

Posted on: The Good Husband

lujiaojie, are we married?  That's exactly how my wife explains it. 

I like this lesson.  Even if it doesn't reflect a typical Chinese household, it does help illustrate traditional Chinese values for us Westerners.  I think traditional values are much more alive in China than in the US, including heaps of charming old fashioned sexism. Mao's vision of women's rights was quite different from Gloria Steinem's.

Posted on: Gifts and Groups!

I have to admit I never really 'got' the groups thing, in Facebook or here, but I'll have to explore it further.

Re tvan's comment that it might be nice to help guolniky in his epic quest, one thing I think virtual groups lack that real groups often have is a paid leader or coach.  For instance youth orchestras or community orchestras often have paid conductors, and amateur sports teams usually pay their coaches.  It might be nice of CPod were to offer 'coaching' for groups of people working on collaborative projects.  That would be an interesting way of encouraging creation of user-generated content while assuring a higher level of quality of the user-generated projects.

Posted on: Surviving Winter and Singles Scene for Expat Girls

I think one 'cultural' factor that hasn't been mentioned re dating is money.  A typical westerner could be walking around with more money in his/her pocket than a Chinese citizen from the countryside can earn in a year.  Chinese are probably more used to extreme differences in income than we are... I think most Chinese are used to carefully considering the financial implications of their love interests, more so than us Westerners, at least. I'd guess Chinese guys might be asking themselves, 'what do I have to offer (financially)?' when they are around Western women.