John Tsang the financial minister of Hong Kong announced 2 days ago
that he's middle class. I wonder if he's friends with Obama.
Apparently, his lifestyle is very similar to that of the middle class.
he makes $300,000/month at his job in Hong Kong, has spending habits
like not other, but he read an article that said that the middle class
enjoyed coffee and french movies, and that's when he realized that he's
a part of the middle class.
It's been a long, long, long week. my first day of mandarin classes was on monday. I would have to say, the first class was less than ideal. It was possibly the most frustrating time of my life. i thought it would have been like learning language in the past. you learn numbers, you learn the alphabet, if there is one, days of the week, etc. that's not the case for chinese. thank goodness i learned how to count before class. we focused on the crazy rules for pinyin which is the english lettering system for chinese. the x makes an sh sound, there's two types of u's, c makes a sort of ts sound, there's three types of s sounds, multiple ch sounds, same with z and zh, q makes a ch sound, the list goes on. additionally, there's 5 tones. they're represented by 1. __ 2. / 3. \/ 4. \ and 5. nothing. the tone determines what the word means. i said what i thought was the word for "to be", as in, "i am a canadian person", it's supposed to be a the 4th tone, i used the 3rd, which changes the meaning to "sh*t". My teacher laughs at me a lot.
i came away from that first lesson realizing just how big of an error i had made. that apparently everyone who said that i would come home soon was right, and that i would never learn chinese. i called my friend thomas and asked him if it got easier. i got a lecture that went on for an hour. i finally said, "Thomas!! for heavens sake, when i ask you questions like that, i don't want to know the real answer, can't you just lie, like a good friend, and tell me that yes, after the first week, it's a cake walk?". he did give me the advice to slow it down, and to take control of the lessons. when i went in on tuesday, i told my teacher that we needed to start all over, and take things very slowly. since then, things have been going very well. my teacher, or laoshi, is a fantastic teacher. she has taught mandarin to many different nationalities including korean. she was teasing me on the second day. she asked when my birthday was, i told her in chinese. i asked when her birthday was, and i was supposed to write it in pinyin and chinese. she said it was on "yi" month (pronounced "ee", y is sometimes silent in chinese...kind of). well, yi in chinese is 1, in korean, the exact same pronunciation is 2. koreans is causing me more problems learning chinese than anything else i could have ever studied. i suddenly realized what my problem was when trying to buy things since i got here. i'd be told "yi bai kuai", and i'd give them 200 RMB, they'd give me a strange look and hand back 100 RMB. i never did figure it out until my laoshi did the same thing.
i can honestly say that it's going to take me a long, long, long time to get to fluency in chinese (mandarin, putonghua, whatever). the interesting thing about the one on one lessons is that we could technically be off topic sometimes, but it's because i get answers to anything that i want to know about chinese culture too, and if she doesn't know, she looks it up for me and gives me an answer the following day. it's giving me a great insight into what we're doing. she also talks about how the language has changed over time, and where the characters have come from. i finally realized as well why the focus is on learning the language first, and then the writing of actual characters. memorizing characters first and their meanings will only hurt you. the meanings change when you put the characters together. but, by learning the pronunciation of the word, and becoming familiar with characters and pinyin, you can start to understand how the words are formed. additionally, chinese isn't like learning one language. it's closer to one and a half. you can't use a keyboard to make the original characters, they're all done in pinyin. so, you type the word in in pinyin, and a selection of characters comes up, choose the one you want, and keep going. the predictive text of the computers and the smartphones are very, very, very good!
while i was taking a break for lunch, i started talking to a guy who's decided that he's my new friend. he asked where i was from, i said canada. he said, america? and i said, bad america!! yup, my vocabulary is exactly like that of a caveman, but with less words....same sentence structure though. he asked how old i am, i said 40, and he said that he was 22, so he was going to start calling me uncle. he said that he wanted to be friends, and that he needed an english name, asked me to give him one, i said, okay, you're Steve. he asked if i had a chinese name, i said no, and he said, okay, your chinese name is Wang Pang zi. he laughed and we took a picture, then said goodbye. i asked my laoshi what Wang Pangzi meant. she said, "Who would call you that?". i told her the story, and when she was able to stop laughing, she said, that's extremely rude, we can't say that to anyone. Wang is Wong, the 2nd most common name in chinese, Pangzi translates literally to "Fat Bastard", and you can't say that to anyone you're not extremely good friends with. i told my dad the story, and he asked why i wasn't angry. i don't think anyone realizes how much you get insulted here. i felt a great deal more respected as a used car salesman in some ways. i look forward to the time when i can turn around and tell people that i know exactly what they're saying to me.
i ate some street food last night, and had some pizza. i like to think that it's chinese pizza that did me in, but i suspect that it was the noodles. last night, i spent hours being violently ill. i was in complete misery until just a couple of hours ago, when it broke. i was sitting in my living room, working on my caligraphy, when i saw a small dog jump out of my toilet and run into the kitchen. easily the biggest rat i've seen in a long time. i closed the kitchen door, and closed the toilet seat lid. i'm really not sure what to do about the giant rat in my kitchen. i think that i'm going to get someone to call the landlord to take care of it tomorrow.
my internet has been less than ideal for a while now. i finally went down to my bank and asked them to call to get me internet. HSBC service here rocks. so, they called, arranged everything, and i went to the office to pay. when i got there, i had a friend who can speak some english come with me, they asked who was doing my cable now. i said that i didn't know, and they said that they couldn't install. i asked if i upped my package if they could install, and we finally settled on 20 M service. i don't think i've ever had that speed, i'm quite looking forward to it.
i called my teacher and my school today to let them know that i was in less than ideal shape today, and that i needed to take a day off. my laoshi called early this afternoon and asked if i needed help to go to a doctor or a hospital, she knows that i'm new to the country and don't know many people. she wanted to make sure that i could receive medical attention if i needed it. i have to say, i really appreciated the gesture.
blair.
It's been a long, long, long week. my first day of mandarin classes was on monday. I would have to say, the first class was less than ideal. It was possibly the most frustrating time of my life. i thought it would have been like learning language in the past. you learn numbers, you learn the alphabet, if there is one, days of the week, etc. that's not the case for chinese. thank goodness i learned how to count before class. we focused on the crazy rules for pinyin which is the english lettering system for chinese. the x makes an sh sound, there's two types of u's, c makes a sort of ts sound, there's three types of s sounds, multiple ch sounds, same with z and zh, q makes a ch sound, the list goes on. additionally, there's 5 tones. they're represented by 1. __ 2. / 3. \/ 4. \ and 5. nothing. the tone determines what the word means. i said what i thought was the word for "to be", as in, "i am a canadian person", it's supposed to be a the 4th tone, i used the 3rd, which changes the meaning to "sh*t". My teacher laughs at me a lot.
i came away from that first lesson realizing just how big of an error i had made. that apparently everyone who said that i would come home soon was right, and that i would never learn chinese. i called my friend thomas and asked him if it got easier. i got a lecture that went on for an hour. i finally said, "Thomas!! for heavens sake, when i ask you questions like that, i don't want to know the real answer, can't you just lie, like a good friend, and tell me that yes, after the first week, it's a cake walk?". he did give me the advice to slow it down, and to take control of the lessons. when i went in on tuesday, i told my teacher that we needed to start all over, and take things very slowly. since then, things have been going very well. my teacher, or laoshi, is a fantastic teacher. she has taught mandarin to many different nationalities including korean. she was teasing me on the second day. she asked when my birthday was, i told her in chinese. i asked when her birthday was, and i was supposed to write it in pinyin and chinese. she said it was on "yi" month (pronounced "ee", y is sometimes silent in chinese...kind of). well, yi in chinese is 1, in korean, the exact same pronunciation is 2. koreans is causing me more problems learning chinese than anything else i could have ever studied. i suddenly realized what my problem was when trying to buy things since i got here. i'd be told "yi bai kuai", and i'd give them 200 RMB, they'd give me a strange look and hand back 100 RMB. i never did figure it out until my laoshi did the same thing.
i can honestly say that it's going to take me a long, long, long time to get to fluency in chinese (mandarin, putonghua, whatever). the interesting thing about the one on one lessons is that we could technically be off topic sometimes, but it's because i get answers to anything that i want to know about chinese culture too, and if she doesn't know, she looks it up for me and gives me an answer the following day. it's giving me a great insight into what we're doing. she also talks about how the language has changed over time, and where the characters have come from. i finally realized as well why the focus is on learning the language first, and then the writing of actual characters. memorizing characters first and their meanings will only hurt you. the meanings change when you put the characters together. but, by learning the pronunciation of the word, and becoming familiar with characters and pinyin, you can start to understand how the words are formed. additionally, chinese isn't like learning one language. it's closer to one and a half. you can't use a keyboard to make the original characters, they're all done in pinyin. so, you type the word in in pinyin, and a selection of characters comes up, choose the one you want, and keep going. the predictive text of the computers and the smartphones are very, very, very good!
while i was taking a break for lunch, i started talking to a guy who's decided that he's my new friend. he asked where i was from, i said canada. he said, america? and i said, bad america!! yup, my vocabulary is exactly like that of a caveman, but with less words....same sentence structure though. he asked how old i am, i said 40, and he said that he was 22, so he was going to start calling me uncle. he said that he wanted to be friends, and that he needed an english name, asked me to give him one, i said, okay, you're Steve. he asked if i had a chinese name, i said no, and he said, okay, your chinese name is Wang Pang zi. he laughed and we took a picture, then said goodbye. i asked my laoshi what Wang Pangzi meant. she said, "Who would call you that?". i told her the story, and when she was able to stop laughing, she said, that's extremely rude, we can't say that to anyone. Wang is Wong, the 2nd most common name in chinese, Pangzi translates literally to "Fat Bastard", and you can't say that to anyone you're not extremely good friends with. i told my dad the story, and he asked why i wasn't angry. i don't think anyone realizes how much you get insulted here. i felt a great deal more respected as a used car salesman in some ways. i look forward to the time when i can turn around and tell people that i know exactly what they're saying to me.
i ate some street food last night, and had some pizza. i like to think that it's chinese pizza that did me in, but i suspect that it was the noodles. last night, i spent hours being violently ill. i was in complete misery until just a couple of hours ago, when it broke. i was sitting in my living room, working on my caligraphy, when i saw a small dog jump out of my toilet and run into the kitchen. easily the biggest rat i've seen in a long time. i closed the kitchen door, and closed the toilet seat lid. i'm really not sure what to do about the giant rat in my kitchen. i think that i'm going to get someone to call the landlord to take care of it tomorrow.
my internet has been less than ideal for a while now. i finally went down to my bank and asked them to call to get me internet. HSBC service here rocks. so, they called, arranged everything, and i went to the office to pay. when i got there, i had a friend who can speak some english come with me, they asked who was doing my cable now. i said that i didn't know, and they said that they couldn't install. i asked if i upped my package if they could install, and we finally settled on 20 M service. i don't think i've ever had that speed, i'm quite looking forward to it.
i called my teacher and my school today to let them know that i was in less than ideal shape today, and that i needed to take a day off. my laoshi called early this afternoon and asked if i needed help to go to a doctor or a hospital, she knows that i'm new to the country and don't know many people. she wanted to make sure that i could receive medical attention if i needed it. i have to say, i really appreciated the gesture.
blair.
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