User Comments - Grambers

Posted on: The Mysteries of 而 Revealed

I love the irony of Jenny slating 'loser' boyfriends for wasting their lives playing meaningless computer games etc.etc. and then, almost in the next sentence, talking with relish about playing mahjong:)  

Posted on: The Play's the Thing

I often find myself coming in for flak for daring to suggest that, to a 21st century reader, Shakespeare's stories are, by and large, a bit crap. It often seems to me that, for all our celebration of independence, subjectivity and literary relativism etc.etc., there are still a whole panoply of taboo subjects which are completely off limits. Suggesting Shakespeare isn't that interesting seems as offensive as advocating incest, or somesuch. His genius is, as you say, clearly in his use of language. Read him for the poetry (in both his plays and his ACTUAL poetry), not the stories (which, as I think I've made clear, I find a bit dull).

Posted on: Sales: Understanding a Customer's Needs

This sentence from the expansion...

随便找个男人还不如一个人过

was translated as....

"casually looking for a man isn't as good as being alone"

I understand the 还不如 particle translates as 'not as good as', but surely a more natural (not to say intuitive) translation of the sentence would be...

"It's better to be alone than to find any old guy [to marry]"

Which brings to mind another Upper Intermediate phrase from a while back..

宁缺勿滥！：）

Posted on: Sales: Understanding a Customer's Needs

Anyway...all this talk of "挖掘需求" surely ignores the fact that the majority of marketing people are engaged in the business of "创造需求" - selling stuff that people didn't actually need in the first place (化妆品 being the ultimate example). Or am I being naive and silly?

Sometimes I feel as if I was born in the wrong millennium. I definitely would have been a better 9th century monk than I am a 21st century 'consumer'.

Posted on: Sales: Understanding a Customer's Needs

Nothing personal - I'm sure Kay is a lovely person, etc.etc. - but, God, I hate 'sales' talks. The reduction of the world into stuff that can be sold (interesting stuff) vs stuff that can't be sold (boring stuff); the reduction of every interpersonal interaction into 'opportunities' to flog some more useless tat. Yeah, yeah - there's 'a science' to all that stuff, I know. Yeah, yeah - I am too dismissive of what is a subtle and fascinating art. However, any time I hear insights into the mental machinations of sales and marketing people, my skin begins to crawl. This Bill Hicks clip had a profound impact on me when I first heard it some two decades ago, and I'm still feeling that 'righteous indignation' now.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo

Nice lesson though. Don't begrudge any aspect of it....just thought I'd plant some seeds of my own:) 

Posted on: Fast Cars and Shallow Women

Um....think they perished too. No, no, you are right. Their mothers were probably devastated. Very sad for them. Not so sad for the idiot whose ill-gotten gains paid for his dickhead son's Ferrari.

Posted on: Fast Cars and Shallow Women

I'd suggest the gender issue is not what makes this lesson interesting. For my money, the killer line is one spoken primarily between the male participants:你是谁啊?那辆破QQ是你的?哼,我家看门的开的都是奔驰.走,美美,带你去兜风.

Rather than being a piece of soap-opera whimsy, this line could easily be drawn from a real-world streetside squabble. There are actually people who talk like this in China. I've met one or two. Yes, yes, this kind of thing is not limited to China - there are arseholes in other countries - but the parvenu problem is particularly acute at this stage in Chinese development. Actually, I'd go further and suggest that it's more than a nouveau-riche thing. For my money, Chinese eyes are culturally programmed to be accepting, even deferent to ostentatious displays of power and wealth. People in China do seem to genuinely believe that their purchase of a larger, more expensive, rarer, more powerful car entitles them to drive like arseholes/pick up women etc.etc. And, for the most part, they are right. It does.

Posted on: Fast Cars and Shallow Women

Though the inspiration for this lesson may have come from a variety of anecdotal, academic and newsy sources (not neglecting the possibility of it being thought up while gazing out of the window at Cpod's Shanghai HQ at the panoply of sports cars crawling by at slow speed), my money is on the fact this lesson was primarily inspired by the less-than-tragic case of Ling Jihua's son - a fu er dai extraordinaire - killing himself in his expensive Ferrari while cavorting at high speed with two naked girls on the Beijing Ring Road (forget which one, exactly). Happened back in the Spring, if memory serves, but the details came to light at the beginning of this month.

Posted on: Fast Cars and Shallow Women

To quote, somewhat imprecisely, from Morrissey, pretty girls (plus fast cars) make graves. 

Just ask Ling Jihua. 

Sympathy shall not be forthcoming. 

Posted on: Fast Cars and Shallow Women

You know what they say about men and their cars. Maybe CPod might have christened this lesson 'Small peckers and shallow women'? (I say all this safe in the knowledge that I own a 15-yr-old rustbucket of extremely limited proportions):)