User Comments - zhenlijiang

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 8: Trimming the Fat at the Office

I'd also like clarification on this sentence from the Expansion:

没等老板炒他鱿鱼，他先炒了老板。
He didn't wait for his boss to fire him. He fired the boss first.

There was this exchange between Suxiaoya and Changye:

Just checked with a native Chinese-speaking friend and she told me that, if I were to quite my job in Chinese, I could also 'fry my boss's squid'. It's not only an employee being fired who's fried, the employer can be fried too. Is that right?!

What your native friend said is very right. It's "another" way of saying "I got fired." There is a nice example in today's Expansion.
没等老板炒他鱿鱼，他先炒了老板。
He didn't wait for his boss to fire him. He fired the boss first.

This still leaves me a bit unclear.

Then Chris, above (in November 2009) asked:

In Expansion sentence 1c, the translation is given as "He didn't wait for his boss to fire him.  He fired his boss first".  I'm not sure I understand this, since an employee doesn't ordinarily have the power to fire his/her boss.  Is the meaning actually that the employee quit first, before the boss had a chance to fire him?

I'd be most grateful if this question could be answered.

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 8: Trimming the Fat at the Office

The Vocab section has 炒鱿鱼 as "squid"--pls correct! 谢谢

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 4: Communication in the Office

I should have said, thank you for getting it fixed so quickly Jason (oh but so it wasn't you. it had been fixed already, when I made my previous post. guess someone saw and took the initiative.).

Posted on: Feelings

I'm guessing Chanelle's question helped bring about this very useful QW.

Want to add also that Xiaophil's Please help me translate these emotions. (see Related Conversations) is a great post. Do check it out!

Posted on: Feelings

I would bet she is devastatingly beautiful iwatachief; what force is stronger than the allure of sleep? Too bad I can't really use that variation, I like it too.

Posted on: Fog or Smog?

Nothing further to add to Jason's answer, but I remembered this discussion we had a few weeks ago.

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 7: A Firing Afoot?

Hi icha_noni, I'm here really late.

This 等会儿 is "in a bit".

I saw this as a "到 someplace 来" pattern. 到我办公室来 is "come (down) to my office".

Then 一下 is added to the verb to lighten the imperative. You could express this in English a number of ways including not translating it directly, or translating as "for a moment (bit)".

It would be nice if a teacher could come up and add to everybody's input on this question.

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 4: Communication in the Office

Ah thank you Jason.

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 4: Communication in the Office

From the Expansion:

今天我做出了一个很重要的决定。

I'm having difficulty understanding how this is

Today I have to make a very important decision.

Posted on: Travel by Tour Group

To address my own comment (obviously I'm not going through the lessons in order here), just came across this discussion in which 不爽 was suggested as a translation for "grumpy".

Also tried a Glossary search which turned out to be a good idea.

Then I had forgotten there was this QingWen that talked about 不爽, in which Pete translated it as "pissed off".

I guess I wish there was an easier way to find all these different contexts and uses for any vocab word, in one place. That would be so helpful. And in the Vocabulary Manager we're only directed to one (randomly selected?) lesson for any entry, even for those terms that have appeared in at least two different lessons' Key Vocab lists. Could we please be given all those lessons in the Vocab. Manager?