User Comments - bodawei

Posted on: Essential Math Terms

'Triginometry' - is this an American spelling?

Thanks for the trick for remembering 代数 - cute! :)

Posted on: Essential Math Terms

Hee hee, RJ you old dog. This is the fourteenth time you have raised this at ChinesePod, and I'm grateful, don't get me wrong. You’re looking after us. Yes, we Aussies are hopeless uneducated hicks. I acknowledge American English as the world's gold standard. (Tugs forelock and backs away looking down at the ground.) But ‘math’ is a ‘word’ that does grate on my sensitive ears, sounds SO wrong. It’s the wrongest word yet to come out of you ess of ay.

Famous Aussie mathsmaticians? I had a mathsmatic teacher once who told me I would be good for nothing. But he spent 10 minutes of each class teaching us etiquette. He gets my vote.

Posted on: Essential Math Terms

I'd really like our maths and language experts to extract whatever meaning can be extracted from this bit of the 三字经 ：

一而十

十而百。

百而千，

千而万。

而here means ‘then’ – it links one number to the next. If so this could read rather like our ‘multiplication tables’. Can it be read asa test? Solve for 而. The missing factor is 10. Or is it just saying learn to count from 1 to 10,000. Regardless, it suggests that China 数学used a decimal system (at lease for the past couple of thousand years?), a base of ten. It didn’t count using, for example, a binary system.

What is the underlying meaning here or is there none? I'm wondering if it is an analog for education in general. We quickly acquire knowledge and flourish. 小树很快会长大的哦!

Posted on: How to Eat a Hairy Crab

'she's just sick of laowai. Can't really blame her'

Absolutely, I'm sick of laowai and I'm not even Chinese. ;)

But, as rj says, Dilu has enough knowledge of both cultures to keep it all very good-natured.

Posted on: Shopping for the Husband

Hi baba. Sorry I edited my comment, I hope that doesn't dilute your 同上comment. For everyone else's benefit I think Baba is endorsing my welcome to Grambers, he's not saying that he loves Shaoxing hats. Although I guess I should let Baba speak for himself on that point.

Posted on: Shopping for the Husband

Grambers

By the way, I would like to formally welcome you to these boards. Your strong opinions fill a hole. It is at least three or four months since we've seen a decent debate here. I feel (and possibly some of the older regulars feel the same) some despair at the lack of spice. We needed someone to fire us up.

Another by the way - I have an answer to my somewhat narky 'have you lived in China? question - I finally had a look at your bio. I'm not sure that living in Shanghai counts as China but it is better than nothing. :)

Your east coast experience reminds me of a brief encounter I had with a Sydney taxi driver yesterday. Me: Do you come from China? Him: Yes. Me: Where? Him: I come from the CENTRE of China. Me; (suddenly interested, thank God not another eastern sea-boarder) So which city exactly? Him: Zhejiang. Me: (deflated on several levels - not only an eastern-seaboarder but one who apparently believes that Suzhou is western China.) That's not a city, and neither is it the centre of China. [I had slipped into Chinese, with a few innocent questions about Chinese geography, and he looked like a cornered rat. He started talking quickly and excitedly about his hometown Shaoxing to cover up. All the while embarrassed by being caught out about something, what exactly was it? He was still trying to work out what he had slipped up on when I got out of the taxi. Damn foreigners.] Me: I have been to Shaoxing, a beautiful place. I love the canals. And I love the hats.

Posted on: How to Eat a Hairy Crab

Hee hee .. this really made me laugh. I noted Dilu's comment at the time with a smile, but you've nailed it. As Dilu nailed it. Good work both of you. :)

Posted on: Shopping for the Husband

I'll let the 'politicizing' comments through to the keeper - personally I am not interested in the big idea of the demonizing influence of the CCP, really. There are much more interesting things in the world to be inspired by.

But your point about believing ourselves to be individuals being a 20th century phenomenon is only half way there, mate. Yes individualism is a modern idea, but marketing science (did I really say that?) has reminded us that that the 'everyone is different' idea is an illusion. Marketers know all about illusion. We actually want to be like about 60% or 70% of the rest of the population. In fact humans abhor individualism in the purest sense.

Posted on: Shopping for the Husband

'We are, basically, the same. We really are.'

Hi Grambers - have you lived in China? You way overestimate the influence of the Chinese government.

Actually I don't mean to be contentious. If you are saying that at the level of humanity we are all the same I do not disagree. (Although some of those genetic differences are quite remarkable. Would you like to make love to a chimpanzee?)

No - my point stands. 'We are all the same' (humanity) is such a mundane fact it does not deserve this many column inches.

Posted on: Shopping for the Husband

Hi Grambers

'We are all the same. One World, One Dream.'

I couldn't agree less. It's a nice sentiment perhaps (although I don't even like the sentiment, it's akin to the prospect of us all going to Heaven) - it just not close to being true.. but I do appreciate that you are joking.