User Comments - maike28

Posted on: 会 (Huì) and 能 (Néng) Face-off

Very useful lesson!  And now I know the verb "to type."  Just to clarify, I believe "keyi" is more permission oriented???

PS Didn't realize Clay wasn't doing Qing Wen any more.  Let's sip a cup of coffee in his honor =)

Posted on: I Can/Can't Afford it (...得起 & ...不起）

cheapest gas that I found today in Silicon Valley - $4.45 per gallon -- Dajia dou mai buqi

Thanks for the helpful lesson guys!  Keep it up.  I wish there were more qing wen episodes each week.

Posted on: What is a Chengyu?

Very interesting lesson. To get a better idea of the cheng yu concept, I'm curious to know would it be correct to compare them to idioms that we have in English? For instance, phrases like, "That's a piece of cake" or I'm feeling under the weather" -- are these the English "cheng yu" or are just pure slang?

Posted on: Ending Your Sentence with 吧 (ba)

Great lesson! Yes, I'm all for you guys doing a series on those little particle words... la, a, ya, le, lo??, ma (not in a question sentence), and are there more? I try to read about these in books and I feel somewhat informed, but it's difficult to understand the shades of meaning in real-life situations.

Posted on: Saved by the Gong: Math class

Hi everyone -- does mian(4) ji(1) refer to both the area of a 2-dimensional shape and the surface area of 3-dimensional solid? I'm a math teacher so this sparked my curiosity =). Thanks!

Posted on: Buying a Pet and Food Poisoning

What a fascinating discussion! The first time I went to Taiwan, everything was fine for the first week... until... I ate a bowl seafood noodle soup. While it tasted amazing at the time, it nearly killed me when midnight came around =). One question I have: When I'm in Taiwan, I only drink bottled water, never drink anything with ice, and only eat cooked vegetables, because I'm like super paranoid about food poisoning. But am I going overboard? It's so hot in Taiwan during the summer and some of the shopping malls have amazing-looking iced drinks... so tempting! Any experiences out there to share?

Posted on: Mainland & Taiwan Lingo: Electronics

Last summer when I visited Taiwan, I went to a rural area of town called Nantou. We drove for miles up a twisty road to the top of an insanely high mountain. Guess what I found up there... that's right, good ol' 7-11! And Starbuck's too!