You know you're addicted to learning Chinese when...

You keep the packaging from an ink cartridge because it has chinese on it

wildyaks, learners who have moved to China do not count as they already achieved a state of maximum immersion. Different game, different league, different drug.

...you say 'Ni Hao?' to every Japanese, Thai and Korean person you meet.

...instead of singing in the shower, you practice your Chinese tones.

...when you are totally exhausted from work, but absolutely must check the latest lesson on CPod before collapsing into bed.

rsmith, my try: "Gewei Plastic Moulds Ltd."

...when you ask your Chinese collegue for translations of the most obscure vocab ("burned beamer lamp", "Printer Cartridge", "Coctoral Colloquium",...) Mike: You think that keeping the Mandarin version of the instructions for my new webcam is pathological? Doc?

...you've slept in by half an hour but you still find time to look at ChinesePod whilst you quickly get dressed, hoping that today's lesson will download in time before you have to leave for work.

henning, the English title of the company is Gro-Wel Mold & Plastics Co. Ltd. ;)

When you learn that 'chao fan' can be so much more than just a tasty meal...

And that means... (Sorry, I'm not that good at Chinese yet!)

When you constantly bore friends who have no interest in languages with tales of how chinese characters are just like a jigsaw puzzle .....

..you buy something new and you check to see if the manual has a Chinese section.

Even my trolley/suitcase had a Chinese version that came with lots of cool and beforehand unknown vocab (like "torsion test" - 抗扭试验). Too bad I lost it later.

I downloaded the chinese pdf version of my digital camera manual.

all of which just goes to show that I am not addicted...- Why do I bother learning the language???

When the only thing you read in the parish magazine is the short paragraph of two lines at the front in Chinese just above the Hindi (I think) addressed to our ethnic minorities

...you know the Lost writers were pulling a fast one with the Chinese tattoo storyline.

... when half your hard drive is taken up by a directory called "chinesepod" and you would not even think about deleting anything from that directory to make more room for other things AND its the first directory that gets backed up. ... you wonder what happed to episode 0048. wildyaks, It's a slow addiction to catch but if you stay with it you will eventually catch the bug.

You go on a holiday to Shanghai just because some Chinese based podcasting company has an office there. Henning: I even use printer cartridge instructions as a bookmark to my Chinese grammar book...