User Comments - tiaopidepi

Posted on: Getting Off the Metro

Shanghai subways are too crowded for this conversation. I relied on standing tall and saying 让一下！ in a nice, loud voice! Rude, but effective.

Posted on: Assembling IKEA Furniture

@Pete: 我觉得溢价是很环保。溢价还魂客户的节能灯和电池而且他们不给自由的塑料袋。可是卖便宜的家俱不是环保。大家人有很多东西。

Hmm...maybe English is better for arguments. In IKEA's defense, they have long offered a way to recycle customers' household batteries and compact fluorescent light bulbs--in a time when many American cities still don' t offer this service. Moreover, they stopped giving away free bags a few years back (an unusual thing in America.)

I think the real tragedy is in selling cheap furniture. It's wonderful that their stuff is simple and efficiently shipped. But it's not very reusable--it cannot be dissembled--and it costs less in dollars to replace than it does in environmental impact.

There was some controversy about IKEA sourcing wood from endangered Russian forests, but they responded with a pretty serious environmental plan. (Maybe it's greenwashing, I don't know.) What I do know is that I rarely see IKEA furniture with actual wood (as opposed to medium-density compressed fiberboard.) I'd love to get some cheap furniture that's actually made out of solid wood :D

Posted on: Interesting or Boring?

@zhenlijiang: Yes, I read that bit* in the Chinese Idol discussion about the use of 特别 in the ironing clothes podcast as well as a couple other discussions. 特别 doesn't quite capture what I mean: the 有意思 piece of "interesting".

Thanks, though...I suppose I'll ask a few Chinese at work. They can definitely relate to the "thick technical problem" side of the equation.

*Secret to efficient CPod searches: use an outside search engine and limit results to the CPod site.

PS: Sorry for all the duplicates. Unrealistic feature request: transactional "Add Comment" button : )

Posted on: Interesting or Boring?

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Posted on: Interesting or Boring?

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Posted on: Interesting or Boring?

Pete says that "Chinese doesn't really have the coy "Interesting..." that we have in English. So if a Chinese person says that your story/joke is interesting, that's praise."

A friend told me that 有趣 and 好玩 have exactly the same meaning. It seems that all of these words for "interesting" have an intrinsic positivity.

I think of a Western saying that we attribute (probably incorrectly) as a Chinese blessing: "May you live in interesting times". The ironic bit, of course, is that it is a curse as much as a blessing.

In my line of work, "interesting" can mean that there are problems waiting to be discovered. Does Chinese have a way to express the richness of a painful experience?

Posted on: Chinese for Trekkies

@henning: Picard...sure, whatever. Sisko? Um, never heard of him. Or her?

Posted on: Chinese for Trekkies

@Tal, it was Trekkies first from way back when the series started. After Shatner made fun of Trekkies on TV (in 1986) the popular term changed to Trekkers.

@Mark, I recently helped make puzzles for a company event that was Star Trek themed this year. I am surprised just how much Star Trek exists after it went off the air forty years ago. To me, the Captain will always be Kirk.

Posted on: A Mouse Upstairs

@shenyajin: Your "try" : ) Thank you. I imagine your try is a bit more correct than mine!

One easy thing I will remember is that 它们 can apply to (apparently genderless) animals. Given that MDBG lists 它 as a "it, used for things" it's ambiguous that 它 can be used for animals. And the general ordering of objects--we gave birds 的 millet and corn--echoes things I've supposedly learned in the past.

As for the past tense...I suppose I'll have to read up more about 了。It certainly seemed awkward to use it as much as I used it. But in your "try", could someone not believe that all of this is happening in the present up until the very end?

Thank you again!