User Comments - tvan
tvan
Posted on: #35
January 30, 2008 at 8:46 PMYeah, why the name?
Posted on: Evading Nosy Questions
January 30, 2008 at 8:42 PMoubaoluo1, the PDF's of the conversation come in both traditional and simplified flavors. Likewise, the dialogues, vocabulary, and exercises all have drop-down boxes with the traditional/simplified option. That said, given screen resolutions and the fact that my browser won't magnify the characters (except the PDF's), I usually wind up working with simplified.
Posted on: Scams and Bus Culture
January 28, 2008 at 8:42 PMI got caught in a money-changing scam once. The money changer (an Urgyur woman) offered me a rate around 10% above the going black-market rate. We were just getting ready to settle up when a policeman came strolling across the street; at that point the lady began pointing, took my money, gave me a stack of dollars, and we both furtively broke apart. Naturally, she shorted me about $20 USD: live and learn. My wife went back the next day, found the same gal, and started haranguing her in fairly advanced Mandarin. The same policeman came across the street and told us to move along.
Posted on: Group Photo
January 26, 2008 at 5:10 PMIf I take nothing else away from this lesson, it will be 胜利的手势, the ubiquitous Asian picture-taking symbol. Even third-generation Asian-Americans suffer from this apparently congenital condition.
Posted on: Pedestrian Peril
January 23, 2008 at 2:53 PMklgardensong, in terms of setting up your Mac to display and type Chinese characters, www.yale.edu/chinesemac/index.html has an excellent section. Leopard isn't necessary, its been in Mac OS X from the beginning. If you're just starting, the standard system features are fine, though be aware that better alternatives exist. I am not a web cognescenti by any stretch, but an aggregator is a feature that consolidates RSS feeds into a single page. iGoogle and MyYahoo are examples of homepages/portals that have these plus, if you're using a Mac, Safari and Firefox as well. If you haven't done so already, go to the bottom of your Cpod homepage and click the link "Your Feed". Traditional PDF's is one of the options, at least with Premium. There is an address at the bottom; you need this. Go to whatever aggregator you use and follow their instructions. I hope the above is clear. Sorry I didn't respond earlier, first day of school.
Posted on: Pedestrian Peril
January 21, 2008 at 10:42 PMSorry for the poor pronoun use above. I meant to say that "I get traditional PDF's by adding them to my feed..."
Posted on: Pedestrian Peril
January 21, 2008 at 10:41 PMklgardensong, I get mine by simply adding them to my "feed" and then picking them off my aggregator. Then again, that might just be a feature of the premium plan and above.
Posted on: Turbulence
January 17, 2008 at 2:59 PMclayroup, Yeah, those experiences were pretty common in old China when, as Lonely Planet commented, CAAC stood for "China Airlines Always Crashes". As you obviously know from first-hand experience, it makes a good story, but is nothing to be nostalgic about.
Posted on: Turbulence
January 16, 2008 at 8:54 PMI'm curious, the introduction mentions Russian-made aircraft; do they still have these in China? If so, are they still the leftover WWII prop jobs? In the 1980's they were de rigueur, but, since then Airbuses and Boeings seem to be the norm.
Posted on: The Super Bowl
January 31, 2008 at 6:14 PMtangmashi, try going to the "View" menu in your browser, dropping down to "Text Encoding" and selecting Chinese. If you have the correct language packs/fonts installed, that should work. If it doesn't, it would help to know what computing platform/ browser combination you are using.