Wear-Off-Effect in Talking Chinese - Am I Alone with this one?

See if you recognize it: It's chunks of chicken covered with some sort of batter and then deep fried with heaps and heaps of read chilly. In Sichuan they also add 花椒 (huajiao)/numbing spice to it. Sometimes you can hardly find the chicken for the red chilli peppers... It's scrumptous! Makes my mouth water just writing about it.

hmmm i haven't heard of it...don't know what we would call it...you know how in your own place you dont call the food the name of that place...anyways.. Guizhou is an amazing part of the world... beautiful, remote, amazing...i recommend it!

Well, there. 贵州鸡 (guizhouji) is one of our favourite dishes around here. That's what we call it in Sichuan anyway. Don't know if Guizhou people would eat it...

One of the places in China I would like to visit some time.

Guizhou... the province chinese people never admit to coming from.....everyone is from somewhere else! But I love it!

Where in China are you? Horse wasps, wow...

Mike the food comment.... the places where I have eaten the best chinese food has been in china, in my friend's houses..... or at their villages...but I think my experience of china is very different to most of yours (meaning most chinese pod people)... The food in the villages is often a surprise...stuff that you can't find in town...or dishes that are delicious that never seen before.. I had horse wasps in a village the other day...amazing! and then in another even smaller village I had a beef dish that tasted like chargrilled steak! Ofcourse in the villages its usually hot pot day in day out... but I love it!!!

The food discussion... I cannot leave it uncommented. Chinese food in London - yes, that is truly disappointing. Tried it a couple of times and now I rather avoid the experience. The thing is, when one lives in Sichuan, one gets easily disappointed. I happen to be so lucky as to live where they make the best food (as far as Chinese food is concerned. I also love Indian, Italian, Thai). When I go to Beijing or Guangzhou I usually make myself try some of the local fare and sofar only ever ate one or two, and then started looking for authentic Sichuanese restaurants...

As for speaking the language. Since I live and work in China and have to use the language on a daily base, yes, even I find that language batteries run low or out at times. Tiredness, work stress, all sorts of things get in the way of being able to think and make sensible sentences in Chinese.

I sometimes have to appologize to my partners for a Chinese that has sunk way below the level I am normally able to communicate.

Here is my humble advice. Use an attention getter. Learn a little cantonese, so many abroad chinese will speak this moreso than guoyu. Especially a joke about being the guilou, in cantonese, then switch to guoyu. Ask the listener to speak slowly for you, smile a lot and say many duile duile.

MikeinEwshot,

There is a forum in CP Forum under General Discussion called Chinese Food with several food threads.

http://forum.chinesepod.com/viewforum.php?f=40

I never run out of things to say, just of of time trying to get em all words or say them in the right order. MikeinEwshot,dont give up, we may need 400 repeats when others only half that a dozen but youll get there

Thanks guys, especially Phil for helping me out with the food thing. I would like to appologise to Henning for diverting his thread - I think I might open one myself on Chinese food, unless one already exists - anyone know?

Actually, coming back to Henning's question - I think I may have a similar problem. In my case I seem to run out of Chinese to say! Or perhaps my old brain just gives up under the strain after a little while.

MikeinEwshot,

The following link may help with ordering:

http://www.howtoorderchinesefood.com/ created by

http://www.benross.net/wordpress/ a China blogger.

As he states though, it's work in progress.

My own experience of Chinese food in China is also mixed. It's almost impossible to find independent Chinese restaurant good food guides and my experience (Changchun and Tianjin) is mostly gained from "word of mouth" and trial and error. It's an iterative process but ultimately you settle on a few examples of different regional styles which satisfy your personal criteria of authenticity, quality, surroundings and price. The big city "guides" are not helpful either [for Chinese restaurants] since most restaurants are there for advertising purposes and targeting the foreign tourists and short stay business visitors. Remarkably, many visitors are actually looking for Chinese food which resembles their local "Chinatown" food and complain when it doesn't!

What's more, the restaurant scene changes rapidly in fast developing China.

I suggest that before your next visit you post where you are going and what style you are looking for and see if anybody here in the CP community is living there and can recommend a few restaurants for you.

Regarding food, I don't know... I've had culinary experiences ranging from horrible to wonderful in China but, overall, overwhelmingly positive. That said, my tastes are quite broad, and I love spicy food. (In-country Thai, Hunan, and Sichuan foods are to die for.) So, I don't know MikeinEwshot. The only advice I can think of is to stay away from restaraunts with chairs (benches seem to be a sign of better food), and leave the calorie/nutrition books at home... they probably don't include spiced horse lungs or snake gall-bladder anyway.

Insofar as the original thread goes, I find myself my experience to be just the opposite of Henning's. Once I get interested in a conversation, I get going. However, I have to admit that when I run into difficulty expressing myself, I begin to improvise and regress into the dreaded Cave Mandarin. I don't really care so long as I am understood. However, it probably isn't the best habit from a scholastic standpoint.

I remain baffled by my poor experience of food in China, as I was with Chinese people and did a variety of restaurants and home meals - perhaps I was with people with a different taste to me. If anyone could e-mail me with the sorts of places to get great food, I would be very grateful!

yes, it's probably the combination of veg, not overcooked (apart from MikeinEwshot's experience), reasonable quantities of food, low sugar intake, large amounts of green tea, all of this obviously changing

I hope that "health food" never makes it to China and spoils the excellent xuisine there. Whenever I visit China I eat in uncomfortable amounts on a daily bases but in the end I *lose* a significant amount of weight. The portion of vegetables + the variety do the trick.

I also noticed that most of the Chinese who do not prefer western food are in general slim. You see more round people now than 10 years ago, though, especially kids and young people. The advent of fast food.

Mike: The bottom line for many people is Chinese cuisine has been around for thousands of years and there are 1.3 billion people to attest to that fact. When I'm at a typical Chinese banquet meal, I just tell myself, okay, one meal won't hurt. Many of the dishes restaurants serve is for tourists, especially in large cities. Maybe you haven't not sampled food from smaller restaurants where locals go. I tried such a place in Shanghai and it was great, albeit not exactly "healthy". With affluence, come gluttony and China now, has both. If you told natives that there lives might be shortened by a few years because of their dietary habits, I doubt anything would change. Asian cultures have not been mass marketed with the health food concept yet. Actually I feel Cantonese food is relatively better for you because they serve very lightly cooked vegetables without much sauces added. You can eat steamed tofu or chicken instead of the oily foods. However, roast pig and duck are especially beloved in Southern China. It's part of the fabric and rituals of life there. It may take another decade before health food really takes hold in China, imo. With recent food scandals, that would be great news for those wanting to live a little longer! Ah, but the taste is so good.

SiYao

Thank you for your post. It does reflect my experience - How do you account for so much talk about 'how wonderful chinese food is' which seems to go totally unchallenged?

Perhaps I have got so used to 'healthy eating' in England and being conscious of fat and cholesterol ...

Hi Mike: There are Chinese who might agree that their national/regional fare is usually not the healthiest. I don't eat the way I did growing up, it would kill me! Mom used to prepare delicious fatty Shanghainese pork and other not- so-healthy fare. But it tastes so good you can't refuse it. Ask some American people to give up fried chicken and BBQ ribs! The rules of stir fry dictate the ample use of cooking oil, (usually peanut oil). The prevalence of duck and pork, shellfish add to the dilemma. Many Chinese suffer from high cholesterol. Now, I take a modified approach to Chinese cooking and seek out vegetarian restaurants or select the not-so-greasy dishes. Chinese Buddhists often prepare excellent food that avoids those unhealthy aspects of the cuisine. Or you can just drink a lot of green tea which counters the effects of rich foods.

I remain confused.

Before I knew Chinese people, I would eat in Western style restaurants in England (and Europe and US), and found the food ok but generally unhappy about the overcooked vegetables ....

More recently, I have dined quite a few times with Chinese friends in Chinatown in London where I was the only Western face in the room, but the food was greasy, fatty and stodgy.

In China, I spend 3 weeks with native Chinese (native of Guangzhou) in 5 cities, and had the disappointing experiences I have noted above.

Next time I go, I hope to do better, but how?!

Sorry, I meant Hi Mike.

Hi, Mikle,

They certainly do use a lot of oil in many of China's cuisines, but it's not the bland Westernized fare one finds in many Chinese restaurants in the Americas and Europe. It might just boil down to taste and expectations, but I can't imagine any but the unluckiest of diners having your kind of experience; I've simply had too many wonderful meals, in all parts of China.

Henning, hang in there and keep going! It can be done!

One suggestion I'd make, to the risk of sounding like a total lunatic, is to try to think in Chinese as much as you can during the day. If you find out a pattern/word/expression you would need but don't know yet, write it down and ask Aggie the next day.

Goulniky, je suis bien d'accord en ce qui concerne les Francais et la bouffe!!!

I am about to commit heresy!! and possibly be banned from this site....

Am I the only one to find Chinese food in China disappointing. Vegetables are stewed to death, far too much deep frying and oil, meat too fatty, slimy noodles ....Dim sum are heavy ... If you order steamed fish you get it served in a vat of oil....Southern Cantonese cuisine very insipid. Of course stuff served on the bone - fish and meat chopped in way that it makes it almost impossible to separate bone from flesh.

I should add that I adore many cuisines from Indian to Tai and French to Greek.

I was really disappointed as I wanted very much to like authentic food in China.

Do people confuse variety of Chinese cuisine with quality? Chinese seem to eat anything. Someone said to me "Well we are not fussy"

actually, I'm not much into that kind of French food myself, to my parents despair, I much rather prefer Northern / Eastern mediteranean. But it is rather elaborate.

I agree, Brenden, Italian and Chinese are the world's premier cuisines; anything tastes good if it's cooked in enough cream and butter. ;-)

Goulniky,

Do you mean 'who else besides the Belgians...'? Of course if it's really good food you want, rather than the over-intellectualized, ultra-elaborate culinary exaggerations oof the French, then you need to go a little south-east to the famous boot-shaped peninsula... ;-)

BTW, I think that kind of real learner's mistake is what I'd like to be tested against in the exercices section instead of the often obvious character inversion, e.g. *买多绿茶是原因之一我快要去中国* -> 多买绿茶的原因之一是我快要去中国了。

thanks Amber, sounds better, sorry it's just what burst out, I wish I could get it right (I should at least get the final 了 right). Got another 2 months before my to-be-confirmed trip to Shanghai, plenty of room for improvement by then

Hi Gouniky,

Actually, you can say either 跟…比起来 (gēn … bǐ qǐlái)

or 和…比起来 (hé … bǐ qǐlái)--they are both correct.

Here is your sentence with a little tweaking from Connie:

我每天上课以前喝两杯绿茶,跟咖啡比起来对身体有好处，我觉得多买绿茶的原因之一是我快要去中国了。

Wǒ měitiān shàngkè yǐqián hē liǎng bēi lǜchá, gēn kāfēi bǐ qǐlái duì shēntǐ yǒu hǎochù, wǒ juéde duō mǎi lǜchá de yuányīn zhīyī shì wǒ kuàiyào qù Zhōngguó le.

pleaz brendan, who else but the Chinese and the French can decently talk about food? (I mean gastronomy, not just chou toufu and *real* cheese ;-)

Food links between the French and Chinese cultures? Wazzat now? (Sorry for straying totally off topic, but I'd never heard this one).

it looks like 'having the peach' is derived from to the Chinese belief that peaches are a symbol of fecundity and immortality - it's not just food that links French and Chinese culture :-)

Anyway, mood and 'peach' fluctuations aside, some topics are obviously of more interest than others, some are easier to discuss depending on your own experience, vocab needs etc.

The language batteries thing: I've found the same when learning your mother tongue Henning. I can't shed any light on it except to say that I think it's a normal phase.

Personally I found during my months practice with Vera that things depended very much on the circumstances of the day. Some mornings it all clicked wonderfully, other mornings I could barely get a 你好 going. Most were somewhere in between. All got to do with having the peach, as the French would say (for reasons I've never known), or 精神 as our target language would have it.

上课前喝酒也有利弊就是说，又会帮说更流利的话又会杀死脑胞。

Shàngkè qián hē jiǔ yěyǒu lì-bì jiùshìshuō，yòu huì bāng shuō gèng liúlì de huà yòu huì shāsǐ nǎobāo.

goulniky,

你完全对。

这俩种饮料都是有利有弊的。因此中午继续喝茶。 下午晚上再喝咖啡 。给心脏一点挑战。

on second thought, I guess the 跟…比起来 construct above should really be 和…比起来??

Henning,

FWIW 我每天上课以前喝了两缸子(mugs)绿茶,跟咖啡比起来很有利我觉得(买多绿茶是原因之一我快要去中国)

I speak passable mandarin. When i go to chinese restaurants in the US the waiters and waitresses always look at me strange when speaking Chinese. I think that they are not expecting it. When i went to Beijing a couple of years ago, i was easily understood and no one misunderstood my tones which is a complaint i have heard in the US.

Hong Kong International School has a relatively new school in ShangHai now. Ten years old or so. The student body is at full capacity, there is a building project in the works, and it is my understanding that the Chinese government has requested they build more schools. Sounds like BeiJing is next.

Man2Toe, yes, I know the International School of Hong Kong. My son went there. Very good school.

Doh, i had a huge language block, while chatting.

Although the sound link was bad, i felt like a melon.

Study more?

will this help?

Haha KennyK that is my specialty, I played on 3 baseball teams in China and really got use to explaining the rules to Chinese people. Baseball is hard to explain in any language though. The intricacies of the game makes it difficult and no matter how throughly you have explained it you always leave something important out.

Sports can be a big problem for me, probably because I'm not a big sports fan, but the other day I found myself in a conversation about baseball with a taxi driver...what a challenging conversation!!! To successfully make it through, you gotta know the chinese words for cities, team names, baseball-specific terms (pitcher, shortstop, inning, outfield, etc...), as well as famous players' chinese names. Whew!!!

My battery runs out, but it takes longer for me, and it depends on the circumstance. Hard are unstructured conversations about complex topics with a friend, after an hour, or so, I'm a blathering idiot. Hardest are encounters with unsympathetic counterparts. I can be humiliated and blathering in seconds.

I noticed a second effect during this week's practice sessions:

As I I build up a lack of sleep during the week my Chinese speaking performance also goes down. I am obviously not yet in the stage where being sleepy makes me more fluent. Although I naturally followed Lantians advice. 喝了好几杯咖啡。

I have this problem too... general conversation is not a problem, but usually when the topic of conversation becomes very specific my fluency will dwindle.

Henning,

那，就喝一杯咖啡，慢慢来。:)

Enjoyed reading some of the posts here. I'm certain that if i were in China, I could accumulate speaking ability quickly, however, I am not. I simply lack speaking partners right now. There still is this enormously long learning curve ahead of me. I notice that new terms do eventually lock in, however, sometimes at the expense of earlier words being forgotten! When I attempt conversations with native speakers here, I do get nervous and tongue tied - all the practice seems to go out the window. And yes, many native speakers love to practice English with me or they start speaking Chinese at warp speed, so I end up saying, "wo3 bu4 ming2 bai2", in frustration. I still love this language so will continue to forge ahead, it's only been 10 months so far from knowing absolutely nothing. It takes toddlers 4-5 years to be able to speak in full sentences. Right now, it's still pidgin Mandarin at best. But at least people can understand me when I do talk. I believe success is built on not just personal diligence but whom you are speaking with. If they are understanding and patient, one can improve much faster. In behaviorist terms, if one is rewarded for speaking by compliments and encouragement, the more likely one will succeed. Conversely, if you are ridiculed or laughed at, the road to fluency becomes very difficult. That was the golden rule raising our kid. Now she is pretty self confident. Shi4 bu shi4 ???

Maybe not at 6 am. When I first tried baijiu, my first thought was lacquer remover and blindness.

c´mon give it a try... just kidding ;-)

I arrive at work at 6 AM and start the practice session at shortly after 7 AM - and immediately before work.

I am not 100% convinced that a couple shots of 白酒 would be that great of an idea ;)

Drinking alchohol will definately lower one's affective filter as it lowers inhibitions. 多喝多流利但喝到喝醉进步就留在脑子里. It would be really interesting to open up a language school/bar and start every class off with a couple shots of 白酒. Hmmm...

Hahahahahahah... that's a good one Tianfeng.

Uh, I've had similiar experiense, not quite like that, thank God, but still very similar. Mine are just getting together with a friend who I haven't seen for a while over a nice dinner. I didn't care if we spoke Chinese or English, but all she could think about was understand a 3 page English article and had to write a response on it... and no matter how I tried to gear her away from that, or tell her that is all I want to help her on it, let's eat, she kept talking about it. That is why I prefer getting together with my non-student or non-English learning friends (but I love them all).

Where do you the Chinese pod people get together to hang out? Is there like little get togethers in Shanghai that I am not aware of yet? Maybe it is part of the premium membership that I haven't yet been able to afford.

Rich, the best story ever about having a Chinese person want to practice their English happened to my friend in Beijing. They were out at Vic's and he was dancing with some girl, all of a sudden she asked him to go out side with her to her car. He was all excited because he was expecting something and when they got in the care she pulled out a notebook and said " I was wondering if you could help my with my English homework for tomorrow?"

Man, I laughed at him for weeks.

wei1xiao4

Where are you at in Hong Kong?

Have you heard of or seen the Hong Kong International School in Repulse Bay and TaiTam?

I am with ya henning. Maybe more often for me are the times I wonder where my smooth, streaming with nice sentences goes:( No Mandarin speaking wife:( Not living in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or China:( All my good Mandarin speaking friends live elsewhere:( ......................................

Good thing we have CPOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks everyone for sharing your frustrations and triumphs. It really helps to know that others are experiencing the same learning tribulations. You know, before I started the practice plan, I thought 10 minutes was not a very long time. Now, some days, 10 minutes can seem like an eternity! But I do look forward to practicing even though I feel sorry for those friends whom I impose on to listen to me and try to sort out what I am trying to communicate. It is tiring for them as well as me. Can you imagine how tired Vera and Aggie must be at the close of the day just trying to listen to us? That's why I think it is easier to practice chinese with other chinese learners. They are going through the same issues. And even if our communication together is not perfect, at least we are trying to formulate our thoughts verbally. If any of you are passing through Hong Kong on your way to China, I would appreciate the chance to practice as well.

Tianfeng, Well, I have pretty much had a big switch of friends from those who speak English (their major) to Chinese who either had no time to study English or absolutely 讨厌 English (believe me, there are many Chinese young adults who hate English, despite the trend to learn it, due to hating their English teachers and classes... memorize, memorize, MEMORIZE!).

And yeah, I should make the effort to talk in Chinese even if they speak English, but it depends on the circumstance. Like even when I met Jenny in person, I was determined to speak in Chinese to her, but uhhh... it was kinda like meeting a famous person (at least in our world she is anyway), I couldn't even think very well in Chinese, especially knowing that I had very little time to get to know her in person, so English was what we spoke until after ordering our coffees and then she realized that I had become pretty fluent in Chinese (and yet being praised about it also made me lose confidence, as mentioned above).

It is a crazy word where Chinese are determined to speak English to foreigners and foreigners want to practice their Chinese.

NICE PEOPLE - usually I get in to a rhythm at some point in the conversation, sometimes I start of bad, but then clean up the language.

But then I try to express more and more, and all of a sudden things start to break down. At this point, I usually just say "哎呀， 不知道怎么好说“ and let them pick up the conversation for a while.

I think it's good to reach this point of babbling, it means you've taxed your lexicon and are working on new ideas and phrases, not memorized stuff.

Problem with this is that the eventual babbling makes it kinda hard to pickup the chicks...LOL.

close the eyes and through it ! ;-)

goulniky, that was actually my experience when doing the Practice Plan with Aggie. I started off strong because we were still on the vocabulary from that day's lesson, but after a few minutes we'd headed off into territory that was as yet unexplored for me. It was equally frustrating and eye-opening.

gotta add this - my spoken Chinese was abyssal up until I started my practice sessions with Vera 3 months ago. This morning as I was getting into the office, I got a call from Shanghai on my cellphone, picked it up without paying attention, a Chinese caller being the last thing on my mind at that point. Turns out it's a Chinese friend I hadn't spoken to in years, had heard I may be coming in October, chatted for a while - it all come pretty smoothly and a propos, I was flabbergasted.

Thanks Vera

don't know how much you 准备好了 those lessons, but one possible effect in addition to fatigue is the more you get into the conversation, the further you stray into unknown territory, away from your set vocab lists and anticipated answers. With additive uncertainty, a bit like juggling between production and understanding, you manage to keep it flying for a while but at some stage the balls start falling down. The good news is, the more you practice the longer you'll keep'em up in the air.

I guess it all depends on circumstances like: how big is my vocab knowlage, am I prepaired for this talk, what is the talk about, am I nervous,...etc.

i think the best way to get through "talking holes" is to keep talking and go on with your practice. (man, I feel the deepness of my words as if I would have had those situations and masterd them easely ;-) )

Rich, I find a way to combat that when you meet new people you only used Chinese. If they get to know you in Chinese than the conversations will stay in Chinese. I actually am to the point now that I have forced all the Chinese people around me to speak to me in Chinese all the time. And I am in Canada. Several of them have much better English than my Chinese but if they switch to English I just say "我听不懂英语，清说中文啊。“and I get a laugh and they switch back.

I have noticed that I have gotten lazy because I know they speak English so when I run into a word don't know I can just say it in English. Overseas Chinese conversations is spoken in Chinese mostly but there is smattering of English nouns throughout. I used to keep a notebook with me to write down all the new vocab but I have gotten lazy this year. When I head back i will re-instate this of pratice of never leaving home with out my notebook.

Tianfeng, that would be a fantastic show if the Mythbusters got drunk and tried our their second languages on complete strangers!!! I have to say that my Chinese, or German or even Nepali vastly improves after a couple of drinks. I think it's something about lowering my resistance to making mistakes. It's irrational, because I know that making mistakes is part of the learning process, yet, I quite often freeze out of fear. A drink or two takes that fear right out of me. Something else that works for me is trying to practice when I'm very exhausted; I guess I'm too tired to worry about mistakes. This one may sound odd, but very high altitudes make me a little slap-happy and talkative too. There's never a problem for me to try out my language skills in the Himalayas. Put me in a class room in New York City though, and I can hardly put two sentences together.

I have found my Chinese improves (not just at the moment, but for a day or so I have much more confidence) when I speak to non-English non-native-Chinese speakers (e.g. people from Japan, Korea, Thailand, etc.) in Chinese. Usually I am very self-conscience about my Chinese and will often be lazy and resort to English when talking to Chinese people. Yet when you talk to people from other countries who doesn't know English, it is so easy to talk to them that I feel like my Chinese is fluent... and that was noticeable by other friends and classmates. Can learn so much from other foreigners by speaking Chinese with them... yet we often feel we should talk with native speakers... that isn't necessarily true... you learn so much from their mistakes and quickly correct your own Chinese if you can pick out their mistakes.

Yet when I talk to Chinese friends I get so frustrated to express myself at a deeper level. It is best for me to hang around non-English speaking Chinese if I really want to use my Chinese, otherwise it feels like a little novelty item.

-R

I've yet to have a conversation in Chinese hehe.

Yea the improvement of a second while drunk should be something they try and prove on mythbusters. I always wondered if my Chinese level really goes up when I am drunk or I just don't are about mistakes as much so I just let it all flow. I remember working at a bar in Nanchang and when I would start the night sober I would be a little nervous speaking but by the end of the night I don't think i was using any English at all.

北京？You should come to 上海！The home of Chinesepod!

I'm with TianFeng, the more I talk, the harder it is to stop me. If that makes sense. If I get started, it's hard for me to stop. If I'm out at a bar with some Chinese friends and I get started with 普通话 I don't stop. I end up talking to people I don't know. I'm sure the 啤酒 has a bit to do with it.

I am the opposite, once I get started it is hard to shut me ụp . I get more and more confident at the conversation goes on. I sue to get headaches after speaking Chinese too long. The amount of effort it took ti get the tones right was stressful. If you just keep at it it is probably a matter of being more comfortable with you level and having those words ready to draw on with out having to think about it too much. It is that thinking that would cause the drain. Only time and practice can solve it.

The effect was definately *not* influenced by Aggie. I would regard this a classical ceteris paribus setting.

Interestingly in English it is vice versa: After a while of talking my English switches from "translation mode" into "natural mode". But then, we are talking about ability differences of several magnitudes (on a logarithmic scale)

I actually do like Aggie's way of providing corrections, help or alternatives very much. Not in any way demotivating. Got to teach that to someone ;)

Maybe Aggie complimented you? Praise makes anyone self-conscious. It's the fastest way for anyone to reduce me to incoherent babbling.

I think I've experienced this, and kinda still do, though maybe through practice my battery lasts longer. Maybe it's mental fatigue, just with Chinese the fatigue builds up pretty fast.