Thu, 08 Nov 2007

Chinese words of the day

民间组织 min2jian1zu3zhi1 humanitarian organisation
联合 lian2he2 unite, join, combine

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 16:50 in /life/learning_chinese. -- Permalink

Where's the 2nd volume?

I even got round to sending an e-mail to amazon.com, asking why I received just 1 volume when in the description of the item I ordered it says "2 Volumes". To be sure, the Princeton "Intermediate Reader of Modern Chinese" is nice to have even without volume 2 (vocabulary index and exercises), but US$ 52 seems an awful lot of money for it.

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 16:49 in /life/learning_chinese. -- Permalink

Finished that other letter ...

... which is addressed to the Inland Revenue Department, so it'll cost us dearly. But no, not really. A considerable percentage of our salary is deducted by our employer in Germany anyway - the rationale for this being that we don't pay income tax there. The actual income tax we'll have to pay in Hong Kong (a lot less than what is deducted from our salary) will be paid by our employer. So it doesn't make any difference to us, we're losing out anyway.

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 16:33 in /life. -- Permalink

Finished one letter

Finished one of those bloody letters. Was actually rather important - formalised a big decision we have made. Nothing to be especially happy about, but this chapter is finally closed, and that's a kind of relief.

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 15:42 in /life. -- Permalink

Quatember

Sonntagskinder, Quatembertage, Ember Days. I'm in the process of refreshing some items in my collection of useless knowledge. Wikipedia is great for this! (Those Ember Days may not be useless, but knowing the meaning of the term surely is.)

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 14:12 in /life. -- Permalink

Hans Rosbaud
Hans Rosbaud promoted contemporary music early on, was one of the first radio symphony orchestra conductors, introduced instruments and music to audiences in order to help people appreciate music, was general music director for some years during the Nazi dictatorship in the town where I was born, was the first conductor of the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra, helped establish the modern music festival at Donaueschingen.

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 12:01 in /life/music. -- Permalink

Wed, 07 Nov 2007

Chinese words of the day

暂时离开 zan4shi2 li2kai1 temporarily absent
(离 leave, go away; from)
离奇 li2qi2 odd
离弃 li2qi4 abandon v.
奇怪 qi2guai4 strange, odd
(奇 also ji1 odd [number])
寄 ji4 send, post, mail

Posted on 07 Nov 2007 at 18:46 in /life/learning_chinese. -- Permalink

A strange occurrence at the Beijing Restaurant
There was this weird guy we met during lunch. He was introduced by someone our boss knows. Kept talking to the boss throughout lunch - quite an obtrusive man, in fact. Toward the end, he introduced a device to us, part of which you can insert into your nose in order to "clean the blood" with laser light. He sells this kind of stuff for a living. Later we found out that he also wears a magnetic belt (priced at HK$ 3000) which allows him to walk more quickly.

Was he actually hoping to get involved with Amity? Does he want us to start a laser-powered, through-the-nose blood-cleaning project somewhere in the Chinese countryside?

Posted on 07 Nov 2007 at 14:27 in /life. -- Permalink

Mon, 05 Nov 2007

Sunday shopping

Once you forget your qualms about breaking the 4th (others would say the 3rd) commandment, and about the exploitation of shop assistants, and about unfair competition between chain stores and family-owned businesses, it's actually rather nice to be able to shop at leisure on a Sunday. Be a consumer and feel good: Hong Kong makes this very easy.

Today we spent all the cash we had - and that was after emptying our HK$ accounts - on a CD, a cinnamon roll, a mug of coffee, a bottle of wine and 3 shirts. Literally all our dollars; we wouldn't even have had enough money to take a bus back home (but walking in the sunshine was fine). True, the shirts are nice and one of them is rather special ... There's still plenty of money in the bank - but in our euro account, and for some reason (I guess there's a reason!) you can't convert euros into dollars using an ATM, you need to do that on the internet. We should have taken a computer.

Or just enough cash.

Posted on 05 Nov 2007 at 13:46 in /life. -- Permalink

Readings for 3 November

我的神！我的神！你为什么离弃我？ 我呼求，你不应允。

Not what you would like to see on your birthday ... Sometimes it’s good to have a New Testament passage with a different tendency from the one of the Old Testament one (Psalm 22) in the Moravian Watchwords for a given day:

出于信心的祈祷，可以使病人康复，主必叫他起来；他若犯了罪，也必蒙赦免。

Moreover, in this case the New Testament verse happens to be from James (5:15), one of my favourite books.

生词表 - List of new words:

• 离弃 li2qi4 abandon v.
• 呼 hu1 call, cry, shout v.
• 求 qiu2 seek, demand v.
• 应 ying4 answer v.
• 允 yun3 allow, comply v.

呼求 and 应允 - beautiful parallelism!

Posted on 05 Nov 2007 at 13:46 in /life. -- Permalink