interesting...

The Guardian has a noteworthy article titled: Websites that changed the world

I agree that these are all influential; however, some are better described as "websites that changed the world wide web."

1. eBay.com
2. wikipedia.com
3. napster.com
4. youtube.com
5. blogger.com
6. friendsreunited.com
7. drudgereport.com
8. myspace.com
9. amazon.com
10. slashdot.org
11. salon.com
12. craigslist.org
13. google.com
14. yahoo.com
15. easyjet.com

a good book

bought it Friday, read it Saturday, done by bedtime.

What Should I Do with My Life: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question by Po Bronson. ISBN 0-345-48592-0. $10.99 in Canada.

It's definitely a good read. It's a collection of human interest stories on how some people have made work work for them in different ways at least temporarily. The author admits that he doesn't have a representative sample of Americans - very few minorities, mothers, immigrants etc... mostly white boomers and GenXers.

• There's a guy who gives up law to open a store that sells homestyle cakes (Becky).
• There are several people who find work in and out of their field overseas (Kern and Kristin).
• Several writers (Jaclyn).
• Many people who find or devote themselves to their cause. Why don't I know people who work fulltime for their cause?
• There's only one case of a guy who had spent his life preparing for one profession (marine biology), hated it, made an immediate switch to another profession (dentistry), and lived happily ever after.
• Otherwise there aren't really any fairy tales.

I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone, regardless of whether s/he is satisfied with his/her work.

This was in The Guardian. The Guardian!

"According to Levine, parents should take care not to pressurise their children to try to be outstanding at everything...."

pressurise. pressurise!

I believe in language growth and change. I really do. But I cannot accept this.

Woe is I!

Photos from China

I actually have very few useable photos because of my camera's death and the number of times my film canisters were X-rayed. Which made the following compilation come together very quickly. To the right is my favourite shot and probably the biggest highlight of the trip - hiking the Great Wall at Simatai.


Our guides were invariable surprised that we went to the Great wall twice in Beijing. But they were very different experiences. Compared Badaling, Simatai is a little more remote (about three hours from Beijing versus 1.5 hours) and allows for more climbing. Simatai was restored during the Ming Dynasty and is more rustic than Badaling that has been more recently and heavily restored. There's no climbing the Han Dynasty wall near Dunhuang at the Western-most section of the Great Wall. It's made of straw and clay. This section is about the height of tall person.

The Great Wall
The Great Wall near Dunhuang Han Dynasty	Simatai. The Great Wall near Beijing Ming Dynasty	Badaling. The Great Wall near Beijing Ming Dynasty

The Forbidden City

The Other Four shots that actually developed properly
The Seventeen-Arch Bridge on Kunming Lake at the Summer Palace in Beijing	Jiaohe ruins. There were at one time Buddhas in each of the cubby holes. Jiaohe was a stop on the Silk Road until it was abandonned during Mongol invasions.
One of our stops on the Silk Road. This is the view from our hotel in Dunhuang	Yang, our favourite guide

The prime directive.

Dion insists that Yolande and I violated the prime directive in Dunhuang.

Our guide, Vicky, was a sweet but mousy young woman. Late on our last night while we were waiting for the driver I decided to make some fun. I asked Vicky if on a night like that, when she gets home late, whether her husband has dinner waiting for her. Well, by the look on her face, you'd think I was from another planet. Of course not. He gets fed at his mother's house.

I explained that in general, Dion and I split the cooking. If I cook, he cleans up. If he cooks, I clean up. cook together, clean together. Vicky was astonished. Not only was I recounting this freely in front of my mother-in-law but even more shockingly, my mother-in-law seemed pretty happy about it. She's proud that Dion pulls his own weight. She pointed out that it's fair that way when both people work and that Vicky could tell her husband that. Vicky's response? "I will. Thank you?"

I also told her that she should teach her son (now 3 years old) to cook. He'll get any girlfriend he wants. Vicky's response? "I will try." I don't think she meant it.

making friends in China

On my last night in China, I discovered the easiest way to make friends in China. Sit in an internet cafe with English prominently displayed on your monitor. Eventually, someone will sit beside you and start reading and making conversation. Exactly as 19-y.o. Xiaolaoshu did in my case. It was particularly fun since Xiaolaoshu speaks about 10 words of English so we had to make do with my Mandarin. In fact, we've already exchanged a couple of emails.

Having internet access also facilitates conversation. Babelfish from Altavista is helpful. Google Earth is a big hit but, unfortunately, it doesn't cover any part of China I've looked up.

I was also able to find a way to display the images that I have previously posted on my blog. Several were a source of great amusement for Xiaolaoshu, including that little paragraph in pinyin and characters that I wrote about a weekend. I was pleased that the pinyin seemed funnier than the characters. Xiaolaoshu also had a good laugh at a picture of me and Dion, although, I think he was just laughing at Dion because that is when I pointed out that Dion does not speak Chinese.

so far - will be updating from here

Sorry, Big Brother sees fit for me to update my site but not view the final product or to view any comments from my readers. In fact, because the interface is all in Chinese, I cannot even tell if there are comments. Do comment though, I will reply when I get to an off-label machine or home, whichever comes first.

Style will vary based on queue for computer and connection quality.

Friday the 7th/Saturday the 8th: uneventful travel via Chicago and Tokyo. JAL seats tiny but luckily we had an empty seat next us - the only one on the flight from Chicago to Tokyo, I think. That 5 hour layover in Tokyo was deadly. Sooooo tired.

Sunday the 9th: forbidden city
Tiananmen (the gate, not the square) is awe-inspiring. The forbidden city is fascinating too.

Monday the 10th: climbed the wall at Simatai. incredible though visibility was not always good. In fact, there was a down-pour just as we started back down the mountain. Yolande has never been 5 hours away from dry clothes before.

Oddly enough, I think Yolande has experienced a lot more culture shock than I have. She finds the city quite dirty and our neighbourhood rather rundown. I haven't seen any parts as dirty as Chinatown or Kensington. I also think that she's a little put out by the traffic chaos and the complete lack of "the customer is always right" attitude in the city.

Tuesday the 11th: summer palace. perfect day to do it - hot and muggy. still big crowds even though it's a weekday. irritatingly, the long corridor closed for renovation.

We used public transit to get there. I was very impressed with the subway system. Extremely easy to navigate, all the information you could want clearly and frequently displayed. Unfortunately, we chose a simpler but longer surface route for most of the route. Not so enjoyable except that: there were TVs in the bus (got to watch some of the world cup highlights) and we went by some of the most important University campuses in Beijing.

We still haven't figured out how to get the TV in our room to work.

Wednesday the 12th: Ming tombs and great wall at Badaling. pretty nice tour guide but some required stops at Jade, silk, and tea "factories", i.e., guided shopping. very fun day. stayed up much too late chatting with Yolande.

Thursday the 13th: Tiananmen square but skipping Mao's tomb. WAY too many people.All afternoon in the Temple of Heaven. A very nice park/historica attraction. Some souvenier shopping in the evening and chatting with the hostel staff.

Friday the 14th: pretty much a day off. transfer to another (really nice) Beijing hotel to start the JBC tour. did some walking around. watched some older people doing some traditional dancing in a bank parking lot.

Saturday the 15th: fly to Urumqi (Wulumuqi), Xinjiang province. population 2 million, lovely climate, beautiful valley setting. city farther from the ocean than any other in the world. 5 star hotel. too weird. spend evening walking through the local market. kinda like the shabby parts of kensington but much larger.

strange tour system. It seems we're the only ones who signed up. So far it's just me, Yolande, our guide, and our "driver" in a big-ass Honda. Our driver is obviously some bigshot friend of the tour operator and he is treated like royalty in every restaurant we go. and we're going to nice restaurants.

Sunday the 16th: morning at heavenly lake and heavenly mountain. Just gorgeous. hope my photos turn out. afternoon in nice new museum. mummies made Yolande uncomfortable.

Monday the 17th: drive to Turpan (with same guide and driver), 3 hours away but near one of the lowest land depressions with some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded. waiting until 5pm to start touring when heat should subside. famous for grapes. hotel on the shabby side but email access under one Cdn dollar per hour.

Monday afternoon: Jiaohe ruins. An ancient city on the silk road. Fascinating and beautiful. Whereas I was a puddle of sweat and sunscreen in Beijing because of the constant 30+ temperatures and 90%+ humidity, Yolande really suffered in the 40+ heat and 0% humidity of Turpan. Poor woman doesn't sweat.

Tuesday the 18th: Gaochang ruins, Astana tombs, a vinyard, and a high-wire act [watching, not performing :P ].

Food in Xinjiang province (Urumqi and Turpan) has been delicious.

Tuesday the 18th/Wednesday the 19th: overnight train to Dunhuang in Gansu province. shared a cabin with two Hong Kong business men. slept great. new guide and driver in Dunhuang. still just the two of us in a Honda, but just a Civic maybe, not an enormous one.

Wednesday the 19th: Silk Road Museum in Dunhuang - small but effective. Several hours touring the MoGao grottoes (caves) with a bizarre but fascinating guide and two Americans. The MoGao grottoes is as LonelyPlanet says, "one of the greatest repositories of Buddhist art in the world". dinner first bad meal in China but our guide got us an apology, at least.

FABULOUS hotel in a gorgeous sand dune setting a little outside of town.

Thursday the 20th: drive out to the Jade gate (WuMenGuan) and the Western-most (I think) section of the great wall, both build during the Han dynasty. updating blog while waiting for the heat to break so that we can go climbing sand dunes. It's not even so hot, really.

Thursday evening: climbed sand dunes at Crescent Lake. I took a camel ride, Yolande took a slide on a toboggan.

Friday the 21st: pretty much just killing time. went to the white horse pagoda, which is a monument to a monk's horse, not the important white horse pagoda. helped our taxi driver change a tire on the way. just waiting for our flight to Xi'an.

Friday evening: arrive in Xi'an, Shanxi (aka Shaanxi) province, start of the silk road and capital of numerous Chinese dynasties, notably Han and Tang. quick dinner at the airport then about a one hour drive into Xi'an. Our guide, Yang, is terrific. terrific English, outgoing, intelligent, great conversationalist. laughs at all the right times. He is also a rabbit. It's a good thing he's one of our last guides. Anyone else who follows will/would disappoint.

Saturday the 22nd: Qin Terracotta Army Museum. amazing. Thousands of life-sized terracotta soldiers placed in battle formation as part of the tomb of the second last Qin emperor, Qin Shi Huang. roughly 2200 years old, rediscovered by farmers in 1974. I hope my photos turned out - no flash photography was allowed. Of course, I had my photo taken with a general. Please refer to my previous entry titled: If the shoe fits.... Also, Huaqing Hot Springs then the Shaanxi Provincial Museum, which has great artifacts and exhibits from Neolithic to Tang times. The post-Tang exhibits pale in comparison to those in Beijing.

Saturday evening: Xi'an dumpling banquet with song/dance performance of supposed Tang style. kinda entertaining.

Sunday the 23th: buddhist temple in Xi'an, fly to Chongqing. City has roughly 8 million, municipality has roughly 31 million. Ever heard of it? was completely rebuilt since being utterly destroyed in WWII. dinner, tea "ceremony", i.e., sales pitch, and quick tour of a park before boarding the MS Sunshine after dark for a 3 night, 2.5 day cruise to Yichang along the Yangzi, properly called the Chongjiang.

We learn that there will be Chinese, German, French, Spanish, and Canadian citizens on board. Seems odd. No Americans? In China, only some hotels are allowed to take foreigners, so maybe boats are only allowed to accept specific varieties of foreigners? We tried to guess the reason. I had two ideas. 1. They don't want Chinese people mixing with Americans for the same reason they don't want Chinese people reading blogger.com. seemed weak. perhaps 2. Americans attract attention and thus require more security to quell any lobbyist or protest activity that follows them. We were later told that it was simply a matter of marketing. Our boat targets European and domestic travellers. I'm still not sure what the deal really is.

Final count 120 passengers (2 French, 2 Canadian, 18ish Spanish, 30ish German, remainder Chinese) capacity 160, 110 crew.

Monday the 24th: meet our table mates: a middle-aged French passengers, three middle-aged Germans who were travelling together, a 28-yo German woman, and us. 5 speak French well. 5 speak German well. 6 speak English well. 2 speak Spanish well, 2 poorly. based on talkativeness and assertiveness of the personalities, most group conversation was in French or German. Side conversations were had in English and Spanish. We came to like each other very much.

excursion to Ghost temple. kinda boring actually. after 3 meals, we conclude that the food is going to be mediocre for the whole cruise. "Fashion show" by a dozen or so of the cruise. good sports. takes a lot of humility. A drunk HK business man made an ass of himself by joining in several times.

Tuesday the 25th: findout that Herr Professor Ralf has sprained his ankle. cannot join us on the excursion to Badong, where most locals are from the Tojiao (sp?) minority. I overheard our local guide complain that she had so many foreigners but luckily she was able to switch and we got John, an adorable Tojiao guide with good English. At one temple, he tried to convince me to pray to a goddess who is supposed to grant sons but I refused.

On the way back to the boat, four of us split on a kitsch cane for Ralf. Also, I had made a tiny bit of small chat with some Spaniards earlier and then when one Spanish lady asked me to translate what the English guide was saying, my brain hung. Insufficient memory error. The cache was full. Although I'm not sure whether to say my head was full or empty. But I was paralysed.

Early in the day we entered the Three Gorges. Right when we entered, my camera went kaputt. ah well. No more photos from here on out.

talent show by the crew and passengers. Passenger portions we three karaoke songs and the limbo, which a german group taught to the crowd, who had never seen it before but ate it up.

Wednesday the 26th: excursion to see the locks and dam just upstream from Yichang. pretty impressive. no amount of reading or listening can do justice to a structure that can produce 84 GW of electricity. yes GIGAWATTS, 84 of them.

Before we left, Ralf gave me a small present. A Chinese painting that the onboard artist had made. Carolina, the younger German got one too. I think he was very touched by the cane and wanted to reciprocate.

find out that the French couple received their very first communication in French from the boat. There was no French guide. There were Spanish and German guides and the Chinese guide doubled as an English guide as necessary. The handouts were available in German, English and Chinese only. What is the first communication they get? A handout explaining how and how much to tip. We were horrified. They even asked us to label our tip envelopes with name and room number!

disembark at noon at Yichang. lunch - where we happened to meet up with Carolina. embroidery "factory", where we again meet up with Carolina. but that's it. She's off to Wuhan, we fly to Shanghai. Like Dunhuang, Yichang has only one gate at its airport.

flight late arriving in Shanghai. traffic is insane. Like Beijing only lanes are narrower and streets are more irregularly shaped. Nothing close to a grid, lots of intersections. just enough time to make it to dinner and then an acrobatic show, which was very, very entertaining.

Thursday the 27th: silk "factory". souvenir shopping. Yu Yuan garden. lunch. walk along the Band (river side boardwark). Yolande had a small rest in the afternoon at the hotel and I walked around the hotel. very cute area. A short pedestrian street called duo lun lu. The restaurant at our hotel is called duo lun duo or Toronto.

5 minutes after we arrived at a vast but empty restaurant for dinner, who appears but the three middle-aged Germans? too strange. Our guides don't even know each other or work for the same company.

After dinner we had free time to stroll along (one of?) Shanghai's most famous shopping street(s), Nanjing. We killed tons of time and spend the last of our RMB at Shanghai's biggest bookstore. This place was huge. You can take the teacher out of the school but... Anyway, I left with 13 books (including three Chinese language textbooks) but spent under 50 dollars.

Now, I'm just killing time updating the blog. There's plenty of time for sleeping on the flights home.

for later reference

I'm just putting these together for when I'm using internet cafes.

Weather in Chinese Cities
gmail
canada.com
tel
Indy One long streak was broken and one was maintained. Follow the link for more info.

I should just retire now.

I should take my 6% pension and go out at the top of my game. This year has been unbelievable. Was it perfect? No. But I cannot see how it could possibly get better than this year. This year's grade 12s are just phenomenal. I wondered out loud about this to Bill Huang, who replied that they're mostly Dragons. "A superstitious lot you are." "Yes," he replied, "but you have to believe in something, right?"

Marcus Chan once commented out of the blue that I must have had a really great year, with the volleyball team and my classes. That is quite a perception from a student. Marcus is a very good student and musician and a very good-natured, down-to-earth, mature person. He came to see me today and brought me a present. Books. He gets me, obviously. Marcus is really into the history of science, and so, he has had really enjoyed storytime in my class (I read to my classes for the last 3-5 minutes of every period). He wanted to get me the two books he first read that got him into science but he was having a hard time finding or ordering copies. So, Marcus gave me his own copies.

Are you kidding me? This is too much! I should quit now, right?

My Mandarin class is over.

I can't believe it's over already. But I was in a state just before class started on Thursday. I was just a mess. I had just emailed out my part of the skit we were performing the night before so I figured it was going to be pretty tough for my group mates to get the lines memorised. Plus I happened to look at the syllabus, which said that there was an exam on the last day. EXAM? He never said anything about an exam. Although I had skipped Tuesday's class to do the bridge PowerPoint presentation. And I hadn't studied in a week. Yikes.

Well, it was all for naught. There was no exam and nobody was memorising their skits. We just read them. My group had the shortest skit by far. We stuck to the suggested 8-10 lines of 8-10 words per person. But I think it went as well as could be expected. Here we are in character as Kramer, Elaine, and Jerry. Oh and Jerry left me hanging for quite a while. Elaine "dances" in the skit.



Keep reading. I did about four entries this week.

Open Gym

I stay after school on Fridays so that some of the kids can play in the gym until the caretakers kick us out around 6. It all started during the senior girl's volleyball season when I had had it with absenteeism and made a Friday afternoon practice optional and asked a couple of the senior boys to come to give some one-on-one instruction. And it just grew from there but still it's mostly varsity volleyball players and their close friends.

The students are always very appreciative and since yesterday was the last open gym of the year, they got me a little something. I wish I had a photo of the giant thank you note, but it's still at school so that I can laminate it. But here is what the got me. It's too much! I was definitely touched.


They said that they were disappointed that they couldn't get me a pair of the team shoes (the boys all have the same ones) but they didn't have them in my size. Anyway, these fit perfectly and I jumped pretty high in them.

If the shoe fits...

On Wednesday, my gr.12 superstar was signing yearbooks and I looked over to check out his handwriting. His English penmanship is pretty bad. So a brief discussion of handwriting followed. Later in the period he asked me to sign his yearbook and suggested, hahaha, that I could sign in Chinese. Well I signed in English but added my name in Chinese.

Well something just felt wrong about the last character. I couldn't figure out the stroke order, which is weird because I knew that there was nothing exceptional about it. But I gave it back to him. When I got home, I looked it up and saw that I had forgotten the third stroke, so the next three felt weird.

On Thursday, I mentioned this to Mindy and showed her what I wrote. And she looked a little surprised and said, "Do you know what you wrote?" Uh oh. I was hoping it was something random, like "bench" maybe. But no, it was much funnier. It was very apt.

I asked for the yearbook back so that I could correct it - I like it when things are right. And I insisted that it was an honest mistake, that I wasn't trying to be funny or arrogant, so I needed to demote myself to my proper rank.
Instead of Teacher Lew, I had written Old General Lew.

They looked good before...

but now they're toast. We're doing destructive testing. The bridge must take a load of 300X its own weight for full marks. The largest was just under 500g, the smallest around 120g. With Kevin's help, I created an award for each bridge.

I did a Power Point Presentation with these photos and their group shots. I had to do a preamble for almost every award because they're very language- and culture-rich. But I think that I pulled off some humour. The kids got a really big kick out of the presentation.
In no particular order:

The brute force award. 150 kg wouldn't break this 480 g bridge.	The most elegant bridge. held 551 X its own weight. really good use of material and colour.	The most patriotic bridge. Apparently, there is a story behind the flag.
Close but no cigar award. Held 270 times its own weight.	The never judge a bridge by its cover award. This 120g bridge held 90 kg. I also considered the biggest over-achiever, the little bridge that could, and the ugly duckling.	It looked even better in real life but it wasn't especially strong. It held only 153X its own weight. Best eye-candy award.
All that glitters is glued.	The Mark McGwire award. The box they bought did say "popsicle sticks" although the rules explicitly said no tongue depressors.	Most original bridge. Cable stay? out of popsicle sticks?
The less is more award	the more is more award.	The little bridge that could. held almost 400 times its own weight.
The quality is job 1 award. This was meticulously designed and constructed. Using steam and ammonia to create the arch.	best supporting actruss	The wood wide web award? I love this photo, more for the seamless than anything.

Did I really do this?

I don't think it's particularly good and I know the text is very choppy, to say the least. But I'm certainly shocked that I can do this at all. click to enlarge. Some of the blurring and curving is caused by the binding of the workbook.

My new cousin.

My cousin John and his wife Sophie have just brought a son into the world. He's awfully cute, you must agree. James Qi John Li Iveson. 8 lb 4 oz, if I recall correctly.

3 angry coaches

The jury is still out for Sr Boy athlete of the year at my school. Beth, Peter, and I are the committee. I'm holding out and lobbying hard for one of these two. Let me condense our HOURS of discussion to a few lines:

Eric Tsui (I was going to use a fake name but I'm being so specific that there's no not knowing who it is if you're from AY)
- vball: #4 or 5 on a team just short of OFSAA. consistent and effective but no flash.
- tennis: can't recall, never saw him play, but this is "his sport"
- badminton: 2nd in North York in boys' doubles (an extremely competitive league). lost only to one team ever - twice in a massive double knock-out
- ultimate: most skilled thrower, leads an effective and aggressive offense, solid defensively

Matthew Lezon
- vball: #1 on a team just short of OFSAA. student of the game, cornerstone of offense, positive leader technically and socially
- bball: #3 on a team that finished 2/7 in North York East league play, did not advance very far in playoffs. able to finish, held his own against some extremely competitive competition
- ultimate: natural leader, capable thrower, leads a solid offense, great read of game, anticipation on defense

This is just too close. At first, I thought I would be happy either way but I'm just not comfortable with our decision yet. I think that both of these kids are terrific but they are very different types of athletes.

Who should be athlete of the year? Why?

Don't forget to read my next entry too - I had two entries this week.

Help me with my homework...

For my Mandarin course I am to choose and investigate 8 of the following questions. I want to see what generates some good discussion. Comment on any (as many or few as you want) that seem interesting to you. Although some are posed as yes/no questions, I am expected to elaborate.

If applicable, please also tell me
a) if you are of Chinese descent
b) whether your mother tongue is Mandarin or Cantonese
c) how long it has been since you lived in "China" or any version thereof
d) which city or region in "China" is "yours"

1. In general, how do Chinese prefer to say "No" (as in, no, I don't want to do what you're asking of me)?
2. Would Chinese prefer to be introduced to strangers or to meet them casually?
3. Do Chinese bow at the waist like Japanese or Koreans? What do they do?
4. Where do you put someone's name card after they give it to you? Why?
5. What's the appropriate resonse when someone flatters you? Why?
6. How impartant is the Welcome and Send Off for the Chinese? Why?
7. Do most Chinese preer a phone call or a face-to-face visit? Why?
8. Are individual expression and rugged independence praised by the Chinese?
9. Do some Chinese have an Us-Them view of foreigners? Why? (My addition: how is the affected by marrying in or marrying out?)
10. Is China a classless society? How can you see this? Explain.
11. Name eight of the confucian values which are still important for many Chinese in the 1990s. (I guess he's been using this assignment for a while.)
12. How important is Mianzi (saving/giving/taking face) to Chinese today? Explain.
13. Explain the term Reciprocity (huxiang). How important is it?
14. How do Chinese deal with the concept of "privacy"? Why? (My addition: within the family? outside the family? for children/teens? This one really hit a nerve for one student in my class.)
15. How different are Canadian Chinese from other Chinese? Explain.

And might I add that it bugs me whenever the instructor says "a Chinese" or "Chinese" instead of "a Chinese person" or "Chinese people."?

Why did I wait so long?

So, I'm loving my Mandarin course. Things I thought were going to be ridiculously hard haven't been so far. I love learning languages. I really should have done this such a long time ago.

Don't worry, the novelty will soon wear off and I'll started posting about topics other than Mandarin. Anyway...

I think I'm not bad at word attack, word recall, and the meta-game. For example, the instructor pointed to his nose and asked the class what type of nose (bizi) it was. I had no idea what he was getting at but I came up with the answer he was fishing for - mostly by luck. I've only encountered about 50-100 words, and I figured he must be looking for one of them. So I sorted through my adjectives (which are a small proportion of my vocabulary) and said out loud the only one that came to mind - da bizi (big nose). His wasn't even a large nose. But hey, you can call a nose big, right? He was so pleased and asked if anyone had ever called me da bizi. No, I've never heard of this before. Apparently, this is a reference to white people (makes sense). I also know that America (Meiguo) translates roughly as beautiful country so maybe one could call a nose mei but big definitely seems like the better answer.

I've had to ask one of my students for help with my homework once, which was an interesting moment/role reversal. I asked him to keep this Mandarin thing to himself. One, I'd be humiliated to respond if a native speaker wanted to hear me speak, which I can assume s/he very well might. Two, I want to be able to eavesdrop surrepticiously. Three, I don't want my admin or guidance to know or I'll spend hours talking to parents.

On a related note, the topic of mahjong came up in one of my classes today. I told the story of Tiffany's purchase of my contraband set and confessed that I play pretty poorly - my inlaws usually relieve me of my money when we play. To say the least, the class was very amused. I wonder how far the cuteness of a foreigner will take one?

Also, our instructor is really into language as culture, culture as language. And I do find those things interesting, too, but a part of me just wants him to get on with it give us speaking drills and feedback. You can never get a short straight answer on anything with any cultural implication at all, e.g., which title to use for a stranger of a certain sex who is clearly older/younger than you are). It always depends - where are you? where is the stranger from? how long has it been since s/he lived in China? how educated is s/he? But I'm thinking this culture focus is a good thing. Any Mandarin-speak to whom I've mentioned this has a quick and positive response to this description of the instructor. I'm just so pragmatic about most things. I figure that my appearance is going to let me get away with all kinds of minor or even major breaches of protocol.

Mandarin Lesson 1

Woah! That was really fast.

We covered
- a few statements (most about belonging to national groups)
- forming questions in two different ways
- negative statements
- a vocabulary word for each "letter" or group of "letters" that appear in Pinyin

I understand better now why Mandarin sounds like "sure, sure, sure, sure". I think it has a lot to do with the verb to be.

Cantonese vs Mandarin

I've been using this debate to put off learning to speak Chinese. But I think I've finally decided. At risk of offending my new family (sorry, guys!), I've decided on Mandarin. Let me be a little defensive. On the side of Mandarin we have:
- only four tones vs SEVEN
- daily practice at school
- eavesdropping on my students
- increasing Mandarin proportion of Toronto's Chinese community
- more usefulness for travel

I'm going to take an interest course or two this summer.