User Comments - sebire

Posted on: The New News and Features Jingle Contest Winner!

Ha, pretzellogic, I thought Monty Python too!

Michael, that's a fun jingle!

Posted on: Riding the Subway

Slightly belated, but thanks Changye.

Posted on: Using 'Almost'

I thought 差不多 meant "more or less", like "approximately", rather than "I almost did this". Maybe someone who is actually good at Chinese can confirm?

Posted on: Transliteration into Chinese and the Long Pinky Fingernail

I thought Boris Johnson's transliteration sounded really funny during the Olympics handover, but I haven't been able to work out what it was. I was hoping Gordon Brown's name would be 咖啡色, but it's not, which is no fun.

Posted on: Riding the Subway

Can you say 车门 and 上车 etc. for cars and buses as well as trains?

Posted on: Riding the Subway

bababardwan, London's tube is ok, but I am not a commuter, so it doesn't bother me much. I'm sure if I had to fight rush-hour commuting every day, I would go mad. I hear they are bringing in air-con trains in a few years, which is good!

Delhi has a really modern and clean subway system (and cheap!) Sydney's subway system was really confusing. We couldn't find the right platform at all.

Posted on: Riding the Subway

Bababardwan

Is Shanghai's di4tie3 as efficient and convenient as say London's subway [very regular trains and good network] 

Hahaha, good joke. Last weekend in London, half the lines I wanted to use were closed "for engineering works"!

Shanghai's subway is pretty good, it's certainly newer and cleaner than London's, but there are much fewer lines (aren't there only three or four?) I think if I remember correctly, it's nicer than Beijing's. Isn't the Shanghai subway designed by the same company that did the Hong Kong subway? HK's is really good, as is Singapore's, but none of them have anything close to the number of lines that London has.

Posted on: Come on up!

Not all the Chinese people were trying to march up this hill, just quite a lot. The funny thing was that it was a bit hare and tortoise - we'd plod along and eventually see them trying to catch their breath and looking distinctly ill. Maybe they were trying to make the top in time for lunch?

Posted on: Lesson Preview, New Team Member

Hey Pete!

Posted on: Teaching English in China

Light487, I think the majority of people I met in China who were teaching English didn't have a TESOL cert. I even met a German teaching English. I met a Maths teacher on sabbatical teaching English. I got the feeling that an awful lot of schools in China don't care in the slightest that you have no qualifications (but equally, there are probably a fair few that do). There is a school of thought that says TESOL is a waste of time because you spend hours poring over grammar books and stuffing your head with facts about the English language (my friend said it was the hardest thing he's ever done), and then you get to China and discover the kids know it all already, and what they really want is someone to talk to. I think there a couple of Dear Ambers on this subject actually.