User Comments - pretzellogic

Posted on: Extreme Tourism

I didn't know cpod gave us a lesson that included spelunking. Too bad there's no BASE jumping in China. 

Posted on: Changing a Plane Ticket

Once, I missed my non-stop flight from Shenzhen to Lanzhou, and had to take another flight. It turns out that I missed the only flight to Lanzhou from Shenzhen that day. But it looks like Chinese airlines don't really do the hub-and-spoke system, so when I proposed flying from Shenzhen to another city, and then from that city to Lanzhou, it was like the thought had never crossed the ticket agent's mind.It turns out there was a flightfrom Shenzhen toXi'an, and then from Xi'an to Lanzhou that I ended up taking. I was so proudof myself at the time for being able to buy theticket in my bad Chinese at the time.

Posted on: Leaky Pipes and Faucets

Thanks Connie!

Posted on: Football Mania

rj, thanks for taking the trouble to do this.

Posted on: Football Mania

Not that it matters, but I'd agree, it appears that the Olympics site has been taken down. Interesting.

Posted on: Football Mania

xiao_liang, I'm not sure what the Chinesepod model is anymore. I've seen plenty of lessons that repeat words and phrases, and more than one hundred lessons on food, and one lesson about farm/rural life. If we're supposed to have practical everyday Chinese, I think we hit most of that at lesson 1000, and we don't need series like "Love Tangle". I believe every word/phrase in the Love Tangle series, we've already had multiple lessons about (No, I haven't counted the words/phrases so I guess you could challenge me on it. I am making an assumption based on the number of lessons you can pull up if you use "love" as a search term (search on "love" in an advanced search, and search only on Lesson Dialogue and Vocabulary)). I'm definitely interested in Cpod teaching us new vocabulary, but i've seen others post here that (I think) would be happy with Love Tangle #250.

Further, I know Catherine posted on the Cpod blog a question around Cpod's future direction, and asked users what their take was on either of two directions. The two directions were, and i'm paraphrasing here, "Deeper vocabulary or magazine?". My take is that Cpod is quietly moving toward "magazine". If that's the case, then unfortunately for me, you might be right about cpod's model.

Posted on: Piano Class

ok, back to grinning stupidly and saying, "thanks teacher"!

Posted on: Piano Class

I'm venting, and this lesson seems the perfect place for it.....

Do Chinese piano teachers only know drills, scales and 3 songs? Yikes, no wonder kids don't want to play piano. I like the piano, and i'm having the love of the piano drilled out of me. I want my kid inspired to be another Herbie Hancock, and the music teacher is inspiring her to be Alex Rodriguez or Pele or Michael Jordan or ANYTHING BUT A PIANO PLAYER! Just drills, drills, and more drills. I'm bored just listening to them drill. No creativity whatsoever. I expect that lack of creativity from the kid, but not from the teacher too! Now, the teacher is a very nice person, but I want to tell the teacher, (diplomatically, of course) "do you know how to play music?". I now appreciate even more what a great teacher my guitar teacher was. I remember him saying there's a difference between playing a lot of notes, and playing music. Then he would play some incredible tunes and riffs, and I'd want to go home and practice. I'm pulling what's left of my hair out with this piano teacher!

Posted on: Football Mania

all 190 countries or so? That would be good. I still say there's value in having 32 country names listed in a lesson about the world cup. I realize that you're not saying don't put the names in the lesson.

It's interesting that since the dashboard and site changes that some lessons/discussion threads have disappeared. A short term suggestion would be for you baba to go back through the many 00s of pages of comments you made, to the set of comments that you made on the Olympics site. Now that you mentioned this, I recall seeing that portion of the site, and I thought it was a handy way to have athletics dialogue all in one spot. If that is gone, its unfortunate, but if its not, you might be able to find the information faster than cpod can. I also realize this is not an easy task. When the site changes were being made, and community discussion threads were switched to what they are now, I think it took about 15-25 minutes to fish out the "lesson suggestions" thread from one of my earlier comments.

Posted on: Leaky Pipes and Faucets

Actually, It would have been nice to know the word for "sink".  The lesson translated xiàshuǐguǎn as drain pipe under the sink, but my intuition would have suggested to say shuǐguǎn zài sink xià or something.