To Hong Kong Xiao Pang, With Love (?)

It's 5 AM on Saturday and I just can't sleep. The Girl got home a few hours ago from Beijing and we stayed up for a little while going over some books she bought while she was there. No doubt having noticed that my Mandarin books are still collecting dust since early December, she got me a set called "Interactive Mandarin". It seems like it's similar to the Rosetta Stone series as it uses words, sounds, pictures, music and animation to help in the learning process. It only costs about US $100 (which, to her, is like a million bucks). 16 CDs, 5 workbooks and 300,000 Mandarin words. 

Shit. 

But it's good though because this particular set has been used (at least they claim it's been used) at places like the University of Michigan, Erlangen University in Nuremburg, Geneva and Zurich Universities, University of London and NYU. And, having flipped through it, the material does seem infinitely better than the dreck I was given at the Hong Kong Language Center what with it's misspelled words (even the Pinyin Mandarin ones) and poor English grammar. And that was just the first page.  

And check this out- I just noticed that on the inside cover of the first of the workbooks it says:

"To Hong Kong Xiao Pang, 

You have one year. There will be a final exam on February 1st, 2009.

Love, 

The Girl"

Once again with feeling.......SHIT! 

All of the other books she purchased are for her and they're books on American idiomatic words and phrases. They'll help her out a great deal in understanding casual conversations in the US as well as certain phrases at business meetings. For example, one day she came asking me what it means when someone says "well, it looks like we'll have to play hardball". 

These books I can see we're going to have great fun with. Shortly after opening them up she was wandering around the house with her nose in one or another saying stuff like "Xiao Pang, you're an apple polisher" or "Do the dishes or I'll be on you like white on rice". Some stuff she's not really using right yet so we have to work the kinks out. "Give me a massage for all the tea in China" doesn't quite work. 

Also, the book was written by a Brit so I had to explain why it might not be cool for her to tell a business associate "knock me up the next time you're in town".  

Oh yeah- I can see we're going to have fun with this. Could be multiple blog entries worth of stuff right there. 

Some of the phrases are either out-dated or don't seem (to me at least) like they could have ever been popular. When's the last time you heard someone saying "That guy really gets my Dutch up"? Umm, never? "gets my Irish up" I've heard. "My Dutch up"?? Not so much. Similarly, when's the last time you heard "He's a real acid-head"? 1975? At the latest? So, yeah, I've got to get the red pen out and get busy tomorrow. 

On another topic altogether, I've just started messing around with a program that comes with the new iMacs called "Garage Band". It's basically a slick multi-track recorder / mixer that you can use to play along with a virtual band or play and record your own music as well as podcasts. But it seems to me that if I were to use it in conjunction with another Apple program called iMovie, it could make a hell of a Vlog (video / audio blog). I'm toying with the idea of adding a video / audio entry in here one of these days if I can get all of the bells and whistles (she's gonna Love learning that one- she'll be saying it all the time, I guarantee it) worked out. 

Of course, what with my new expensive Interactive Chinese modules, money that I must make sure was well spent "because there's a recession in the US", I may not have the time. 

Shit.