User Comments - bodawei

Posted on: An Interview for a Private Driver

事故 (accident) is a 故事 (story) that ends badly. :)

Posted on: Essential Math Terms

No one has commented on the logic of the word billion - bi million (billion) and million million makes sense to the lay person. I can remember views expressed that the Americans changed it to one thousand million so that they could boast about more 'billionaires' than if the hurdle was a million million. :)

Posted on: Essential Math Terms

I'm sure these things didn't change overnight, in terms the way people thought about it, as opposed to formal acceptance of an international standard. So I guess it was less ambiguous when I was at school, and then in the decade or two following more and more people started using the thousand million definition. I wonder if popular culture had an impact, as well as industry, and the academic world. The concept of 'standards' is a dry and dusty subject but there are some fun stories to be told, like the evolution of the shipping container (lots of vested interests fighting off the inevitable.)

Posted on: Essential Math Terms

Ah, the cavalry.... thanks for clearing that up - in other words a billion was a million million for most thirty years of my working life - I wasn't imagining things. So the question I dreaded from chris had a happy ending.

Posted on: The Seven Year Itch 3: Extramarital Involvement

Yes I was aware that your problem is different Grambers - now I think you can change the font but it may take a knowledge of html. Hopefully someone will come with a quick solution but you could Google html instructions and see if you get something helpful.

Posted on: Essential Math Terms

'did the dictionary say when the UK switched'

I was sincerely hoping I didn't get asked that question - I thought that the search would be depressing. :)

Fortunately baba came to the rescue. A billion was a million million right through school and university for me, or would have had I not failed so much. ;) Assuming that Australia changed at the same time as Britain.

Posted on: Essential Math Terms

Actually that is correct in the US, but Grambers lives in the UK where a billion is 10 to the 12th power, not 10 to the 9th power as in the US. In Australia we tend to say that 'billion' is an American word and if we use it we follow the American convention. I prefer to say one thousand million, or a million million because the word billion is ambiguous.

Oh .. I just looked up the Oxford dictionary and it says that the UK has now changed to conform to the US convention. Another nail in the coffin. :)

Posted on: I want to buy this one

'western grocery store'

Even Western-owned supermarkets are mainly Chinese, there may be only a few token shelves for Western products. Bread is actually one of those products in, say, Carrefours. There may be just a handful of real specialty foreign grocery stores - there is only one in the city where I live and it is owned by a Chinese man.

Posted on: I want to buy this one

It is a general term for bread, including foreign style. But a French style bread (baguette) for example may be labelled as such: 法式面包 fǎ shì miànbāo (French-style bread)

Posted on: The Seven Year Itch 3: Extramarital Involvement

Hi guolan

I think what has happened here is that you are a victim of your pinyin input client. If you turn it right off (back to English) the font goes back to normal. That's my experience anyway, doesn't happen all the time, just sometimes.