Let me start this by stating that Jazz is not my thing. Not at all. It instantly brings to mind Starbucks-esque nondescript croonings that send me to sleep faster than just about anything.
With that in mind the rest of this post is about Jazz. Twice.
It was with some trepidation that I found myself paying a visit to the Backstreet Jazz Bar, situated in the lovely environs of Guangzhou's Ersha Island. Around the corner is the Xinghai Concert Hall, and at the end of the street is the Pearl River. You can't be any better situated.
Read more here…
Guangzhou is all a-buzz at the moment with the semi-annual Canton Fair. This is South-East Asia's biggest trade exhibition. We're talking serious big here, and the numbers speak for themselves: last years show had a turnover of US$29,430 million, with 150,000 different products, and 210 trading countries. Not something to be ignored.
As you'd expect, the effect on the local economy is very pronounced. Hotels are all booked-up, and charge wildly exaggerated rates. Restaurants are trying their hardest to catch potential customers, with lots of bright English advertisements and special offers. The whole place feels alive.
Read more here…
The Christmas and New Year season is finally over, and I've made it out alive. Time for an update.
Christmas itself was very peaceful. Christmas eve was spent walking around a park in 25 degree sunshine, and eating water chestnut ice-cream. Definatley a big change from the artic conditions that occurred back in Europe. Christmas day was spent watching movies, and eating as much food as could be managed at La Seine - a very fine French restaurant that had a lunch-time 'all-you-can-eat' buffet. As is usual at this time of the year, I ate too much, and had a very bloated night and little to eat the next day. Still, well worth the money, and the mini quiche tartlets really were to die for (so much so that the chef-on-prowl commented he couldn't look for fear of eating them all).
Read more here…
So it's been a very long time since I posted anything here, and it is not from apathy. Since returning from Norway I decided that I wanted to go to Asia, and so after a lot of hard work renewing passports and obtaining visas, I am now living in Guangzhou, the third largest city in China.
I was very much hoping that China would be relatively free of the whole Christmas mania that blights everywhere in the West, but it seems not. In fact, the Christmas experience is heightened with the high pitched warbles of some child screeching Christmas songs out in every shop that are loud enough to do permanent damage to ears. Everyone seems oblivious to it apart from me.
Read more here…
I've added a small Pinyin converter to the InScript plugin. Pinyin is a method of transliterating Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet. As Chinese is a tonal language, it is important that these tones are included in the pinyin. This is achieved through the use of accents and other marks over certain vowels.
The reason for the converter is that these accents are not easy to type, especially for people with keyboards in an accent-less language (i.e. English). It is possible to enter the characters using some form of character mapping tool, or by entering the HTML code directly, but this is not an intuitive method.
Read more here…
I've been trying to learn Chinese for over half a year now and, well, it's kinda tough going. Not only do you need to learn a whole new way of speaking, but you also need to learn two written languages: pinyin (the English transliteration of Chinese words, so you can actually read anything), and Chinese characters themselves.
The spoken language is difficult in its own right due to tones. These are like the accents found in other languages, but more complicated and unfortunately much more important - getting the wrong tone in a word can change the meaning completely, to the extent that you could call your mother a horse by using the wrong inflection.
Read more here…
Freshly returned from Hong Kong, I remembered this photo I took in Zhaoqing, in Guangdong province, Southern China. As far as I can tell, this may be the best example of Chinglish discovered. I should add that I did not go on an onion-smelling tour (the bus actually stopped at a mushroom farm, but that's another issue), and the area was not known for its prize onions.
Read more here…
So today I am flying to Hong Kong, via the less exotic Frankfurt. I've already checked-in online, which is pretty amazing really. According to the web blurb I can collect my pass 30 minutes before take-off but... I don't think I'll risk it just yet, and will arrive my dutiful 2 hours in advance. Despite being a computer nut, I'm still sceptical of these things actually working in the real world.
Read more here…
