User Comments - pretzellogic

Posted on: A Disgusting Man

Yeah, this lesson has some good action packed Chinese that we don't usually get. I'm all for flowing nosehairs.

Posted on: Serving Tea

no, it comes in a big giant bag, loose. You put the contents into the pot, and let it steep away. Strawberry is only one of the many dried fruits in the bag.

Posted on: Serving Tea

I'm inclined to agree with you. I like tea, and I like tea in China. But in general, I'm not that much into tea. Most of the time, the tea i've had is like hot water, or lightly flavored hot water. Subtlety can be lost on me. Flower teas, leaf teas, they're kinda the same. But i'm sure this is because I haven't had the tea shop dude explain to me why this jasmine tea is 150 RMB, this jasmine tea is 100 RMB, and this jasmine tea is 10 RMB. The Chinese people I hang out with seem to do western stuff like go to starbucks, or just hang out at the mall and window shop.

That said, I just did have the world's greatest tea EVER, just this past saturday. The tea was a gift from a friend. I'm going to go sing its praises and act as if I know something about tea when I drink it. It a fruit tea, and a soon as I figure out the name, i'm going to buy more.

Posted on: 风水与五行

This lesson lacks the English in the dialogue.

Posted on: Registering for 3G Service

This is cool.  Having only read the dialogue, the sentence "What number have you been using?" would have made me give the person my mobile phone number.  I wouldn't have thought to say "I'm using China Mobile", or "I'm using China Unicom". 

Also, the thing that drives me nuts with plans in China and the US anyway is that I don't know if 96RMB for 300MB of data is expensive or cheap.  My email folder for work has 20,000 read/unread email messages (no joke. I think I have a 20GB email folder.  And i'm not even the biggest offfender at my company. When you have IBM Lotus Notes, you can do this.  Apparently not with Microsoft Outlook though).  You'd need to know if you're email folders are sending the entire email folder size through the pipe, regardless of whether or not you read the email. Does anybody know this?

Posted on: Playing Mahjong

Maybe Formula1 marketing would be interested in cross-promotion with Cpod as a result of doing translation if cpod can demonstrate broader reach in Chinese for Formula 1 races. Metrics around the number of times viewed in on tudou/vimeo might be helpful for races for which CCTV 5 doesn't own Chinese broadcast rights

Posted on: Playing Mahjong

Outstanding video topic: sports commentary explained in English. For the upcoming Formula 1 season, take 2 minutes of CCTV 5 video of the Australian Grand Prix, and go through the Chinese/English that in Chinese. Yes, it's very specialized dialogue, and yes, you'd have to ask for CCTV5's permission, but that's actually what this mahjong lesson is; specialized dialogue. That would expand the audience for Cpod (to all F1 fans interested in learning Chinese at least). Plus that's something no other Chinese language website really does.

Posted on: Playing Mahjong

I get it. If we want to watch the video in a larger format, then we have to put up with commercials on tudou or vimeo, but it will be bigger. But is there any plan to make this bigger on the cpod site, so that we don't have to go to someone else's site to see larger size video? Again, tell me how to see it larger on the cpod site, and i'll crawl back under my rock ;-)

Posted on: Playing Mahjong

Just curious: I get the impression that cpod is using digital cinematography for this video.  How is the video being captured, on videotape, or flash memory or hard drives?  Will cpod have the opportunity to experiment with video formats?  Is this filmed in 720p, 1080p or 2K? 4K? I'm sure that part of the challenge is that if you're using Bigfoot Studios capabilities/technologies and resources, then you're limited to what they have.  I'm also curious if Cpod is actually able to see the quality of the as it is on the small screen on the website.  It seems to look ok here, but would it look the same on a much larger screen, like on an iPad screen? I noticed there was no way to make the video larger even on my reasonably large screen laptop computer (unless someone can enlighten me as to how that's done). 

I noticed there's no way to make the approximately 2 inch by 1 inch screen any larger on this website for easier viewing.  Is that something cpod is going to be able to change, or experiment with in the future for us visually challenged subscribers?  I don't mind squinting, but i want to squint for another Formula 1 lesson or something else really cool ;-)

Posted on: Playing Mahjong

Good Chinesepod video language topics: Detailed items that would benefit from visual explanations in Chinese. Examples include Taijiquan, KungFu (Northern Long Fist forms/poems), Pal Gae (details around placement of the hands and feet ("The art is in the details!" as my sifu used to say)), cooking specific receipes (folding jiaozi is a great example). Overhead shots showing only the jiaozi being folded, with a voice over from someone is a great way to show this. Doesn't really require an actor. So yeah, I agree with Zhenlijiang and others about this.

Bad Chinesepod video language topics: Anything Chinese TV/Movies already do really well in the first place at which Chinesepod will not do better. Examples include simple love stories, soap opera type dramas/comedies, travel commentary, the "Travel in Chinese" language series and related topics with DaShan and company, children's cartoons.