Two Pairs of Gloves

Winter is almost over, but I wanted to tell you a story of something that happened during the winter time. Since it was so cold, I often wore two pairs of gloves to prevent my hands from getting too cold.

Since my hand was always protected from the cold, my hand actually did not suffer from eczema as badly as it did in during the Dallas winters.

One day during this winter, I was with my local friend and we just finished dinner and needed to get back to my house. I had a bike, but she didn't. So we decided that she would double me on my bike (she would bike while I sat in the back). We couldn't do the other way around because since I still have not mastered taking another passenger on the back of my bike, my friend was too scared to be the guinea pig.

About 5 minutes into the bike ride, my friend said, "Let's just walk instead." I said, "Sure." And she said, "well my hands have gotten too cold." I noticed that she wasn't wearing any gloves while I was wearing two pairs. I quickly took off one of my gloves and handed them to her. All of a sudden I remembered a quote from a movie. I am not a huge fan of the movie because of, well, all the dumb things the main characters do, but this quote is pretty applicable:

Character 1: I can't feel my fi-fingers anymore, Lloyd. T-th-they're numb!
Character 2: Ooh. Maybe you should wear these extra gloves... my hands are starting to get sweaty.
Character 1: Extra gloves? You've had...this pair...of extra gloves...this whole time??
Character 2: Yeah! We're in the Rockies.

This may be obvious to some, but I will let you all guess the movie. You can even provide your favorite quotes from this movie.

Anyway, I felt so bad for my friend. Her hands were freezing while she was biking me on my bike, while I luxuriously sat on the back of my bike with two pairs of gloves.

New Tool for Learning

A few weeks ago, Bethany and I each purchased a new language learning tool. The Palm Treo... with Pleco software. This has absolutely changed our language learning experience. Granted, Pleco was not cheap (it cost as much as the handheld itself). But it has been well worth it.

Here are the best features of the software... at least, the ones most useful to us:

Handwriting recognition: If I see a character in a textbook, or on a menu, or at a bus stop, and I don't know what it is... I just scribble the character into Pleco using my stylus, and it gives me the nearest matches for the character. I tap the character, and just like that... I know how it is pronounced, its definition, and what other words the character may be used in.

What was this process like for us before? Well, last semester, we were red dictionary people. Anybody who has studied the Chinese language has certainly seen the red Chinese-English English-Chinese dictionary. First, look at the character that you don't recognize. See any radicals that look familiar? Find that radical in your dictionary's front pages. Then, count the number of additional strokes in that character, aside from the radical. In that section of the dictionary, go to the sub-section for that radical with the number of additional strokes for that character. Search down the list of, who knows... maybe a few dozen possible characters... until you see the character you're looking for. Oh, by the way, with the font size, each character is about the size of half of a grain of rice. Short-grain rice. Now, if you're lucky enough to have found the character, you have next to it... the pinyin for the character. Now, look up in your dictionary according to that pinyin. Beware that there are likely 10 other characters with that same pronunciation. Search around... you'll find it.

That was the process... pre-Pleco. If you're on a bus, you would have by now missed your stop. At a restaurant? Everybody behind you (if there even was a line) would have cut in front of you and barked their orders already. And if you're doing homework for your Chinese reading class... it would take you 3 hours to look up any vocab you don't know in a 500 character essay.

Now, with handwriting recognition... both of us, in a major way, save so much time. We have just finished 3 weeks of school. Honestly - I am not exaggerating - I believe we have each saved probably about 8 hours per week because we've got quick, on-the-go, accurate character lookup through Pleco.

Flashcards: See a word or phrase in Pleco that you want to remember and test yourself on later? Tag it with a flashcard category. Set up review sessions and tests on your flashcard categories. Setup the test to give you the character and make you choose the pinyin from multiple choice, or choose the tones given the pinyin, or choose the definition from multiple choice, or any of over a dozen permutations. Even test your writing of the character using the handwriting recognition module.

In the last 3 weeks, I have gone flashcard category crazy. I have a category for banking, feelings & emotions, immigration, grammar terms, phrases & expressions, technology. I probably have about 20 categories right now, in addition to a category for each chapter in our textbook.

What was it like before? Well, before, I didn't even bother trying to do flashcards. But, Bethany...? Bethany has a box... about the size of a 9x13 cake pan. It is more than half-filled with business-card sized flashcards that she hand-cut and hand-wrote all last semester. Rubber-banded together by categories or chapters in our textbooks. I went into the same office supplies store 4 times last semester to buy the same notebook 4 times... so that Bethany could use the thicker cardstock in the notebook to make her flashcards. She learned her words well... but she also spent a lot of time making flashcards.

Now, along with saving time... we are just way more organized about the words that we are learning and about what we need to review more. So, I think, our retention efficiency is better than pre-Pleco.

Looking forward to seeing how this new tool will play out and help in this coming semester...

Sorry Uncle

I found out in class that between Chinese New Year and the second day of the second month of the lunar calendar, you are not supposed to get a haircut. There is some superstition that if you get a haircut between that time, something bad happens to your mother's brother (your jojo). Nothing happens to your dad's brother, just your mother's brother.

Well, both Alvin and I got our haircuts a few days after the New Year. Oops. I hope you are doing well my jojos.

Chineser Bethany

After not getting a haircut since I left from the states, a couple weeks ago I decided to try out cutting my hair at a place near our house. This place is the same place where Alvin gets his haircut.

I was preparing myself for the worst, but hoping for the better. I brought in a picture of myself right after my last haircut, and asked them to imitate the cut.

Initially, the hair cutter was being very conservative. He cut the top of my hair shorter, but left the bottom part the same length as before. I have never had a freakout moment before at the barbers, but I ended up having a 5 second breakdown. I thought to myself, "this is a mini mullet. I am not going home with a mullet." So I told the hair cutter that everything needs to be shorter. "Everything that is left long must go!"

At the end, I was pretty satisfied with my haircut. Alvin got his haircut at the same time, and the hair cutters timed it so we would end at the same time. I think I might go back to this person again. It was not bad for a 20 yuan haircut ($3 haircut).

Also, I have been doing some shopping around here, and now can wear an all Chinese outfit: jacket, long t-shirt, long underwear, pants, shoes, haircut, and purse.



Also, to top off the Chinese transformation, I am doing the Chinese pose for cat.

Seen on the Side of the Road

We keep a mental list of things that we see or encounter here which are tagged with the phrase, "Uhh, we would never see this happen in the States." Things are just different here. So... you see people throw cement blocks out the window on the fifth floor. Or you see a 9-year old boy sell a pack of cigarettes to a 6-year old girl (she was buying them for her dad). Or you see a crowd of people gather around to watch two men in the market place yell at each other and then start to throw punches.

Today, we add another item to our list. As we biked to school this morning, we saw a truck stopped at the side of the road. Just a small delivery truck, like the size of a 14-foot u-haul. Huddled together at the side of the truck were three men, working on something near the ground. Of course, you would think that they're probably just changing a flat tire.

But as we got closer, I noticed that, rather than changing a tire... they were gathering together twigs and brush and were lighting a little bonfire... directly under the gas tank of the truck. What. In. The. World.

Needless to say, Bethany and I didn't stop. We biked (quickly) past the truck and as far away as possible. And, as we biked, we were discussing with each other, "What could they possibly have been trying to do?" So, ok, the weather was below freezing. Is it possible the gasoline in the truck was... frozen? And if that's the case... is thawing out your fuel worth the risk of blowing up a your vehicle? Or perhaps they ran out of gas and the cap to the gas tank was frozen to the tank. But, if it's the gas fumes that are flammable and you're "running on fumes"... then doesn't that mean you really don't want to light a fire near your gas tank?

If this had happened in the States, I think we would have called the police. And if the police had shown up, I think that they would have stayed about a hundred feet away and ordered, through a bullhorn, for the men to step away from the truck. And then I think they would have called in a ladder track from the fire department to spray down the truck with that white fire retardant chemical. And then the men would have been arrested for suspicion of planting a car bomb.

But out here... totally normal. Not a big deal at all.

As we biked home and passed the spot where the truck was... all we saw was a little burnt pile of leaves and twigs. No truck. No giant hole where in the ground where the truck was. I guess it all turned out just fine.

I'm looking forward to what we'll see tomorrow.

The War Zone

On the fifteenth day after Chinese New Year, it is the lantern festival. That day, is supposed to be the last day of fireworks. Although I do not think everyone in this city got the memo for there are still some stray fire crackers.

Still, on the fifteenth day, there was fireworks galore. When Alvin and I were walking outside, we could see three fireworks shows going off at the same time. One of our friends commented that it sounded like a war zone. We even watched a guy stick a fire cracker in the lid of a garbage pail, light it with his cigarette, and then he ran away as the fire cracker lit, the lid flew off, and the firework explode about 15 feet from our friend's window where we were spectating. Wow, it was like a personal fire cracker show.

Post Vacation No-No

I'm not a huge vacationer. I'm usually pretty content just to be at home, hope for several days with nothing on my plate, and simply have coffee, a book or two, my laptop, and broadband.

This last trip that we took, however, was much needed. Granted... I still had coffee, some books, laptop, and broadband. The need, however... was for a change of scenery. And weather.

After 2 1/2 weeks of being gone, I came home. And that evening, I changed the background image on my desktop. To this...



Friends... that is a post-vacation no-no. After most vacations, I come home energized and ready to tackle everything that's ahead of me. But this time... as our plane touched down - and we saw the snow on the ground, and knew that all the restaurants and stores around us were closed for the Chinese New Year holiday - I was pretty de-motivated. And every time I was on my computer to get some stuff done... I would see this shot of a beautiful and mostly empty beach that Bethany and I kayaked to one afternoon... I remained pretty de-motivated.

This past week has gotten better though. The weather is warming up. Even this afternoon, we got up into the high-50's. I went out in lined warm-ups and a sweatshirt. It's not exactly beach weather, I'll give you that. But it is definitely more pleasant than what we were feeling a month ago.