User Comments - garry

Posted on: Barbecuing

Hi Everyone,

Thank you for your wishes, I will pass them on to Guangying. When I arrive I will sign in and show her. She will be very happy.

Good luck to all!

Posted on: Barbecuing

To all at Cpod,

I am going to Chengdu tomorrow morning, and the purpose of the trip is... I am going to be married to my laopo Liang Guangying. If anyone is wondering what this has to do with today's lesson, when Guangying is allowed to come to Australia, I was planning to have a traditional Aussie barbeque to allow my family and friends to meet her. There will be lots of beef, lamb, and sausages. Oh, and a bit of salad. So I thought this was a good time to make this announcement. 天快乐！在成都你们看见阿！

Posted on: KTV

I love to sing karaoke. I did know I liked it until I visited a bar in Beijing called jia lan na bar in 2006. A pretty young woman invited me to come in and have a drink. The bar had karaoke and my friend was able to persuade me to have a go and now I just can't get enough. I have since learned some Chinese songs and last time I visited China, I found it a great way to become known if you are a westerner singing Chinese songs. In my hometown, Sydney, karaoke is popular, but people need to have many drinks before they will get up and sing, and what they find then is that they have lost any ability to sing that they may have had before, and will shout out their favourite AC/DC or Cold Chisel number and think it is great. Karaoke is great and so too are Chinese songs!

Posted on: Ending your sentence with 嘛 （ma)

Clay, I have often noticed the word 哪个 popping up all the time. Is this also used as a pause word?

Posted on: Ordering Noodles

Hi Cpod people. Is it more polite to say 我想吃面 and not 我要吃面? texastochina, did you have orange juice each time?

Posted on: Train to Beijing

I just thought I would tell my train story. I was in Luizhuo and I wanted to get to Chengdu. I asked the people at the frontdesk in the hotel, but they said I had to go to the train station to purchase the ticket. They wrote down a note to give to the ticket seller. They even told me how much the ticket would cost - 177 Yuan, I was expecting it to be more, but I thought it must be a shorter trip than I had thought. I at this time had nearly no Chinese language abilities, and the ticket seller did not seem to want to sell me the ticket, but I insisted and so I had a ticket. While sitting in the waiting room, a university student started talking to me and during the conversation, I asked if he knew how long the journey to Chengdu was, and he told me, 33 hours. I then showed him my ticket and asked him which carriage and seat number I had and he said it was a standing only ticket! The nice university student wrote me another note to give to the attendants for an upgrade. Again I didn't know what I was asking for, and I went from standing only to soft sleeper, and to my surprise I was the only one in the compartment. It was a great trip even though I ended up travelling during Chinese New Year's Eve.

Posted on: Can you Speak Chinese?

Hi! I am not sure what happens at the end of this lesson. Can anyone shed some light on this for me? There is a strange noise and some laughter. I wonder what is happening.

Posted on: Art Museum

Hi CPod! Once again I listened to the podcast expecting one thing and getting another entirely. I thought the lesson would be about art and art museums, but I received instead a wonderful vocabulary lesson centered around interesting personal dynamics in relationships. Of course learning new words is always good. On the subject of students, the art students take you to an art exhibition where you can buy their, and others, works of art. But what is worse are the language students who say they want to talk to an english speaking tourist and practise their English, but their true intention is to take you to a Tea House. There you have a tea ceremony, and then you see the bill. Beware!

Posted on: Where are you going?

Woops! Wrong 哪儿。

Posted on: Where are you going?

Hi babybaby! The Cpod people are repoding the 'old ones' buried deep in the archives. Mainly due to the fact that times change and a fresh approach is always a good thing. I often wonder, 我去那儿?