User Comments - pretzellogic

Posted on: Taxable Salary

China sounds a lot easier to create apparently legal countermeasures than the US.  Interesting.

Posted on: Music Corner in the Park

RJ, As bodawei says, I noticed that there are 000s of videos on youku.com, but they're mostly TV shows. I haven't seen much in the way of spontaneous video from the masses of wacky accidents, cool, you-had-to-be-there happenings and so on.

Also, Let me unimpress you by telling you that partly because I couldn't even find a gǔ qín instructor in Lanzhou, that I had my gǔzhēng teacher teach me what little she knew about the gǔqín. That ended up being 3 lessons. The way she explained it, learning the gǔzhēng is easy, learning the gǔqín is hard. After trying both, I really appreciate the gǔqín player in Hero.

We were in Lanzhou, so the gǔqín I bought cost around 1500-1700 kuai (~US$220-240) (I don't really remember anymore) in 2005. As you'd expect, there are entry level gǔqíns around the 1400 kuai (~US$180) range that really do look like junk. There are also high quality looking gǔqíns in the 3000-4000 (~US$400-500) kuai price range as well (high quality gǔqíns makers do the same thing that Gibson would do to a guitar; mother-of-pearl inlays, higher quality woods, higher quality finishes, so on)

Posted on: Help with Housework

There should be a lesson like this one at the intermediate level, but with more stuff about dusting, shining, polishing and trimming. 

Posted on: Reinstalling Windows

30 yuan sounds like an excellent deal for a Windows 7 upgrade. Did you upgrade to Windows 7 Home, Professional or Ultimate?

Posted on: Music Corner in the Park

hey Jason, actually, the gu3 qin2 was hard to find a teacher for, at least in Lanzhou. It appears to be an instrument that is on its way out in popularity terms. I can find a piano teacher and a gu3 zheng1 teacher in about 2 seconds. There were people that I could call on in southern New Hampshire to get the gu3 qin2 tuned; I just got lazy about getting it tuned, and then I ended up realizing that once it was tuned, learning to play it was a challenge that I wan't up for at the time.

But of course, you are correct, the gu3 qin2 plays excellent melodies, and it would be cool to get it up and running again. I loved the music after seeing Hero, and seeing Jet Li and Donnie Chen (?) mix it up with a sword and spear. One of my favorite scenes in all cinema.

Posted on: Music Corner in the Park

baba, regarding your posts:

1) tuning by ear requires you to know by hearing what the standard tuning is for a gǔ qín, something I didn't know prior to detuning it. It would be like trying to tune a guitar without knowing what tuning you want.

2) your reference to the wikipedia page helps,, but I can't seem to get the mp3's to play so I can hear what the tunings sound like.

Oh, and I casually mentioned this, but the gǔ qín is now sitting in storage 7,410 miles from my apartment :-)

Posted on: Music Corner in the Park

I took a couple of gǔ qín lessons, then ended up buying a gǔ qin. I had it shipped back to the US, and in doing so, I loosened all the strings prior to shipment. When I got back to the US, and the gǔ qín arrived, I realized I didn't have a way to tune it. So now it sits detuned in storage....

Posted on: Music Corner in the Park

Actually, I should have mentioned my favorite, the gǔ qín...

Posted on: Music Corner in the Park

a gǔzhēng doesn't count as a traditional Chinese instrument?

Posted on: Too Many Food Allergies

FWIW, I didn't think this was the all-important ""I would like to marry your daughter" dinner. I thought of this dinner as a "This dude is on the 'to be considered' pile for marriage". Maybe in China, there's no difference?