Friday, March 27, 2009

Back in th U S S A



In the US of A for a few days.

Any1 need anything?








"How high is your corn?"

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Advice

The question is "When should I drink the devil juice, hooch, or ant wine?"


The answer is "When you have run out of all other forms of liquor."

Currently on the ant wine. Which is some Chinese home made liquor made with ants. They flew all the way to Shandong to get the right kind of ants.

Makes you crawl up the walls.

Bonus link to a diagram of an Obama sentence.

Anyone think that sentence diagramming would have been useful for their ESL students?

Stony, if you can answer, I'd be most appreciative, because I am wondering if sentence diagramming is like math for language.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Miniature Golf in Taichung






Last Sunday was the official opening of Taichung's only miniature golf course. The owner and friend, Steve Brown, has done a great job in designing and constructing the course. The standard 18 holes has been reduced to 12 - Hey, that's 3 more than I figured anyone could fit inside the city - and the official name has correspondingly been shortened to Mini Golf.


It's located on Da Dun 7th Street, No. 493 (大墩七街493號) near the amphitheater (近圓滿戶外劇場). They have refreshments, a second floor practice range (real golf) and offer instruction for those not familiar with the concept - and believe me, there are plenty of those. Just like the hypermarts have attendants at the top of the escalators to "remind" the customers that they need to keep moving, I think Steve will need some golf marshals to remind them to walk on the paths and that the little flags have a number on them for a reason.


One round is $100 NT, but for now, Steve is handing out 2-for-1 business cards. He is also very willing to seriously discount groups. He didn't give me an exact number, but I get the feeling that even groups as small as 5 would be cut a deal. Steve wanted me to stress that if you do have a group wanting to play, call him first. He can arrange a better deal for you and ensure you will have time and space to play. Give it a try. I'll be going back this weekend with my niece and looking to improve on my first round score of 29 - which was Karl's score for the front 6.


Telephone: English (that would be Steve) : 0983-109-541

中文: 0937-296-520
Karl the Groundskeeper celebrates a 5.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

ㄅ ㄆ ㄇ ㄈ or Zhuyin Fuhao



About the Bopomofo

The bopomofo (pronounced buh puh muh fuh, for the first four symbols of it) is, like the english alphabet, a phonetic alphabet. That is to say, each character is a sound. In Taiwan, students use the bopomofo to learn how to read traditional Chinese characters. It is also a common way to type traditional chinese characters into a computer keyboard, and is used to look up words in dictionaries.

The other main alphabet used for learning mandarin is the pinyin system. The pinyin system, adopted by mainland China in 1958, is just another phonetic alphabet used for sounding out mandarin words. Unlike the bopomofo, however, it uses roman characters to sound out the words. The pinyin system has been adopted by the United Nations and is increasingly the standard system worldwide for transcribing mandarin into a roman alphabet. However, many agree that the bopomofo is much better suited for capturing the phonetic structure of the mandarin language than the pinyin system.

The bopomofo consists of 37 symbols, which were derived from Chinese characters. Just like in pinyin, there are 21 initials (consonants which start syllables), and 16 finals (kind of like vowels that end syllables). Pinyin has additional "compound finals", which the bopomofo doesn't feel like it needs because it so accurately captures the sound of Chinese pronunciation.

Bopomofo Pronunciations

Listed below are the 37 bopomofo symbols, with approximate english spellings and a link to a practice card. If you are using internet explorer for windows, you should be able to hear a pronunciation of the character when you click on the symbol.





1)

buh
card

2)

puh
card

3)

muh
card

4)

fuh
card

5)

duh
card

6)

tuh
card

7)

nuh
card

8)

luh
card

9)

guh
card

10)

kuh
card

11)

huh
card

12)

jee
card

13)

chee
card

14)

shee
card

15)

jzer
card

16)

chzer
card

17)

shzer
card

18)

zhe
card

19)

dze
card

20)

tze
card

21)

sze
card

22)

ee
card

23)

oo
card

24)

euu
card

25)

ah
card

26)

oh
card

27)

uh
card

28)

ey
card

29)

ay
card

30)

eh
card

31)

aow
card

32)

owe
card

33)

ahn
card

34)

uhn
card

35)

ang
card

36)

ong
card

37)

ur
card


Class on Monday 3/23 4:30 pm and Wednesday 3/25 4:30 pm?

Pls. confirm you can make it.......







Reservations are required?


Wednesday, March 18, 2009

I GOT CRABS

No, not the ones you get from toilet seats. These were from the beach around Wuci, a little north of Taichung Harbour. Yes, harbour has a "u" in it. A nice place to waste a weekend afternoon, especially with kids and/or some beer.





Apparently, many locals deep fry and eat them. We took them home and crabocide resulted.


One step ahead of Bread is this comment from Chipper Jones, regarding the WBC:
“Just way too many days off,” he said. “We stayed in Toronto for a week and played three games. I don’t know if you ever stayed in Toronto, but it’s not exactly Las Vegas. To say that we were plucking our eyebrows out one at a time would be an understatement."
Obviously, Chipper has never been to Brockville.


AIG fiasco is a freakin' joke.
.
My dad sent this to me. Tell me, who doesn't love hockey?
(WARNING: TOPLESSNESS!)


HOWIGATI

That is all, be careful out there.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Parthian Thought

I am off to China again soon, so here is a parting thought, or maybe more of a factoid really...


America's stimulus package is around US$ 825 billion dollars.

In 2008, America imported around $340 billion worth of products from China. 

So, the spending bill is around 2.5 times the amount the USA imports from China...

That's a lot of bobble heads, sweaters, ipods, and tainted milk powder.

Nothing political here...just an interesting way to get your head around the numbers.

Friday, March 13, 2009

BIG HOUSE FOR RENT

Nan tun District; 5 floors plus roof top; 10 rooms & 4 bathrooms

Front view w/parking and street view.

1st floor: living room w/add on room and bathroom. 38 sq meter

2nd floor: spare bedroom, master bedroom w/patio and bathroom. 34 sq meter

3rd floor: spare bedroom, master bedroom w/patio and bathroom. 34 sq meter

4th floor: spare bedroom, master bedroom w/patio and bathroom. 34 sq meter

5th floor: sun room, staircase and master bedroom. 34 sq meter

6th floor: roof top view. 25 sq meter

1, 2, 3 or 4 tenants.......
Sublease to friends?

Rent by the floor?
Furnished, unfurnished?

Hassle
FREE

Total: 30,000 NT per month.

Close to Costco, Carrefour and 711




The Iron Eagle