User Comments - pretzellogic

Posted on: Too Many Food Allergies

an EpiPen is what is used on a person that has a severe allergic reaction to something. Their throat and tongue can swell, and they can have trouble breathing, or in really severe prolonged cases, stop breathing. I guess this is called anaphylaxis. The epipen is used to provide a short term treatment for the swelling, and apparently helps lessen/lower swelling enough that the person can start breathing again, and go to the emergency room if necessary. You can use the link below to see an example of one.

And it might be of interest to know that you can get the epipen through airport security in China with no problems at all.

http://www.epipen.com/page/how-to-use-epipen-auto-injector-index

Posted on: Too Many Food Allergies

I suppose the re-use in this case would be ok, since the guy is sneezing for the same reason as explained in this lesson :-)

Posted on: Too Many Food Allergies

another reason I think this lesson is good is that it points out through the multiple sentence pattern examples that there isn't a measure word for allergies, if i'm reading the lesson correctly. Or maybe we don't say "wǒ yǒu yī ge guòmín - I have an allergy". Maybe someone can correct me on that.

Posted on: Too Many Food Allergies

This is a helpful lesson. I have a family member that has an allergic reaction to peanuts so bad, she'll go into shock if she has more than a few.  I was shown how to use an epipen in case she ever goes into shock when i'm around. 

Posted on: National Day Holiday

7 straight days off works great when you might not have much vacation time accrued because you just started your job, and you were working 6 days a week anyway.

Posted on: A Stroll through the Hutongs

it's also worth pointing out that the hutongs/neighborhoods in Shunyi near the airport are also in danger of being torn down. That's where many of the wealthy Chinese live. Interestingly enough, it's the foreigners that were participating in the efforts to save those hutongs.

Posted on: A Stroll through the Hutongs

The most likely well traveled are the ones near the bell tower just north of the Forbidden City. That's where you can arrange to have a rickshaw tour of the hutongs, and possibly see one being lived in by some family. But there are plenty of hutongs near the city center and Beihai. The ones near 5th ring road toward the airport have the appeal of a rural town next to a 13 million person metropolitan area, but you have to know how to get there.

Posted on: National Day Holiday

Here in Beijing this year's National Day celebration is anticlimatic compared with last year.  Today it just seems to be a day off.

Posted on: National Day Holiday

the luckiest employees are likely the foreign country embassy workers, who get their home country holidays as well as the Chinese holidays off.

Posted on: Construction

Thanks for taking the time to reply; that's very helpful. I deleted my question because I realized that my question was a bit simplistic. I was trying to get more to something along the lines of standardizing around the number of tags, as well as the type/list of tags. I suspect that in a few cases it's pretty difficult to create multiple tags. But with too few tags, not many lessons pop up, and with too many tags, you get dozens of lessons no matter what you type in. So the number of tags is a bigger challenge that I was wanting you to address, and I appreciate that you touched on this in your answer anyway.