User Comments - mark

Posted on: 中国第一夫人

I hope some of the humor in my task is about its content, and not at my expense. Download

Posted on: A Traveler's Song

The song in this podcast that Tom called, "straight up rock and roll" suffers a malady that afflicted much of American rock, starting in the 90s. Specifically, it is franectic and all in the higher registers. Real rock hits notes so low that you don't hear them, so much as feel them with your whole body, and isn't afraid to really hammer a beat, then give a short pause for your body to recover.

五百has some songs that meet my standards. I also really like 《如果你是李白》by 莫文蔚 for its spunkyness and sense of humor.

Posted on: The Life of a Programmer 3: Heading Home

I've been married for almost all of my programming life, and American parents are more inclined to view mariage as a personal decision.  So, I never felt pressure to overcome my nerdy tendencies and go meet some girls.  However, programming jobs always require overtime and it does put some pressure on home life.  I think for some people, this kind of career would be unending torture, but I still get a kick out of instructing a computer to do something and watching it do what I intended.  So, it's a lot of fun for me.  I'm really glad I wasn't born a generation earlier.  If I had, I think my life would have been much less fullfilling.

Posted on: Kung Fu King Comparisons

I think John's grammar analysis has become much more incisive recently.  This gives me a good reason to keep listening to the intermediate lessons.   加油！

Posted on: Drinking Ages

Vera, around when I turned 18, American 18 year olds got many new rights, voting and drinking included. The reasoning was, if we were old enough to go to war in Vietnam, we were old enough to do these things too.   The drinking right didn't last long, though. There  was an increase in the number of traffic accidents due young people's combined inexperience with driving and drinking.   So, the federal government required states to raise the drinking age to 21 in order to receive highway construction money. So, I was able to drink legally when I was 18, but not when I was 19 and 20.

Posted on: Chinese Street Food (Part I)

I think you can hear the Chinese sound of disgust in the recent lesson on hot springs, right after the sentence about not being sick when you go in, but getting sick after.

Posted on: Chinese Street Food (Part I)

Oh. Someone told me the traditional starter for stinky tofu was horse piss. Now, I guess that's just a malicious rumor.

Posted on: 蛇的价值

Here is the transcript for my task.  It would be wonderful, if someone would like to give it a better reading than I managed.

看到一条蛇我感觉好奇而不想吃它的肉或让它的胆入药。没有某个忌讳让我不饿，就是蛇肉好像难得到而不多。我也不太相信蛇的器官会有延年益寿的功效。我跟蛇没有矛盾，最好就留这种有价值的动物在户外，让它狩猎老鼠。蛇是很显著的肉食动物。

我小时候喜欢抓蛇。找到它们和安全地抓到它们都需要一点技术，给我挑战，而且我觉得蛇是很神秘的一种动物，能够玩一会儿是很愉快的事。湾区的蛇中只有一种有毒，而且当地的蛇不大，所以我抓的蛇都不太会威胁人。抓住后我会给它们放掉或者它们会自己逃跑。放它们在某个盒子里，它们就会找到一个微小的洞而溜走，溜走后我将不可能再一次见到这些精灵。基本上蛇不想接触人而很善于躲避的。有一天我抓住了一条很特别的蛇，肚子上都是红色的鳞片，除了脖子上的一条细细的红色的环以外它的背都是蓝色的。这条蛇不大，一尺长左右，我的手指都比它宽，很可爱。这种蛇比较少见的，所以我想养着它，但是我把它带回家后这家伙很快找到了一个地板上的小洞而逃出。它逃跑后母后说有一条蛇在房子里让她很紧张。我安慰了她说这种蛇没法伤人而它肯定不会再出现了，但是这样说还是不能让后母感到安慰，所以由于这条蛇的失踪我们俩都懊恼极了。

Posted on: 蛇的价值

For my task I told a story describing my feelings about snakes. Download

Posted on: Hot Spring Vacation

John, I suspect you play dumb more often than not. Maybe, someday it would be fun to have you and Dilu or you and Jenny switch roles. You could play the native speaker and they could pretend they don't know the key vocabulary.