I am reliably informed that it is once again 七夕 (qī xī or night of sevens). How can this be you ask? Well the Chinese calenadar has ‘leap months’ in certain years – so this year we get July twice. So once again it’s time to find a Chinese person to buy flowers for…
Listening to non-native English speakers using the phonetic alphabet the other day it struck me how completely irrelevant it was. Remembering phonetics is much harder than remembering words as you have no ‘hooks’ to hang the information off. The current NATO phonetic alphabet is full of out-dated words, proper nouns and non-english words, hardly helpful.
A - Alpha K - Kilo U - Uniform 0 - Zero B - Bravo L - Lima V - Victor 1 - Wun (One) C - Charlie M - Mike W - Whiskey 2 - Two D - Delta N - November X - X-ray 3 - Tree (Three) E - Echo O - Oscar Y - Yankee 4 - Fower (Four) F - Foxtrot P - Papa Z - Zulu 5 - Fife (Five) G - Golf Q - Quebec 6 - Six H - Hotel R - Romeo . - decimal 7 - Seven I - India S - Sierra . - stop 8 - Ait (Eight) J - Juliet T - Tango 9 - Niner (Nine)
Phonetic alphabet in the phonetic alphabet, as an example, is:
Papa Hotel Oscar November Echo Tango Indigo Charlie Alpha Lima Papa Hotel Alpha Bravo Echo Tango
Now if you we were to adopt a new standard that used relevant contemporary words it might look something like:
A - Atom B - Blog C - Cola D - Dance E - Ecstasy F - Football G - Gandalf H - Hypertext I - Internet J - Junky K - Kinky L - Link M - Mega N - Nano O - Ouzo P - Pandemic Q - Quick R - Rewrite S - Stock T - Terrorist U - Unilateral V - Virus W - Weapon X - X-ray Y - Yoda Z - Zuul
Our example of Phonetic Alphabet then becomes.
Pandemic Hypertext Ouzo Nano Ecstasy Terrorist Internet Cola Atom Link Pandemic Hypertext Atom Blog Ecstasy Terrorist
As examples here are some common names of people / places:
Suggestions welcome.
Just came across a link to Dialectizer on ChinesePod so you can now read my profile blather in 3 more languages…
Cockney
‘ailin’ from Newcastle upon Tyne in the norff east of England I now live in ‘angzhou in China’s Zhejiang province. This blog primarily exists ter keep mates and family up-to-date wiv wot I’m up to. It also gives me a forum ter ramble on in wivout right copping on any fairy’s nerves.
Elmer Fudd
Haiwing fwom Newcastwe upon Tyne in the nowf east of Engwand I now wive in Hangzhou in China’s Zhejiang pwovince. Dis bwog pwimawiwy exists to keep fwiends and famiwy up-to-date wif what I am up to. It awso gives me a fowum to wambwe on in without weawwy getting on anyone’s newves. Oh, dat scwewy wabbit!
Redneck
Hailin’ fum Noocastle upon Tyne in th’ no’th east of Englan’ ah now live in Hangzhou in China’s Zhejiang province. This hyar blog primarily exists t’keep friends an’ fambly up-to-date wif whut ah’s up to. It also gives me a fo’um t’ramble on in wifout pow’ful gittin’ on ennyone’s nerves.
In Japan for Summer Sonic. Arrived Osaka last night, ate very nice Korean BBQ (sort of by accident) and then found a pub. Some aussie barman gave us a shot of 96% (no, by volume!) polish vodka and then some absinthe! Looking good so far and thankfully not blind or earless this morning.
More to follow…
As was pointed out at the time the etch-a-sketch in Taxi Ride couldn’t be the real thing.
It was in fact one of these, I’ve just found this in the local C-Store (think 7-11) for 10 kuai (70p).
Despite probably being an infringement of someones patent, it’s quite cool and in colour too!
Well it kept us occupied for half and hour.
La différence | How women won the sex war | Economist.com
Let’s see if we can start a discussion or at the very least a slagging match…
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Chinese ‘anger bar’ is a big hit
(Thanks to MJ for the link)
While (joking apart) I’m not convinced that this is actually a constructive way to deal with frustration it is (I’m sorry to say) nice to know it’s there.
Take my commute for example, now you know how much I love my e-bike but if I’m not careful the morning commute could become a blood vessel buster.
Not so for my fellow commuters, they seem to be, almost without exception, completely calm and together. Sure there is a chorus of bike bells, e-bike chirps and car horns but there is no anger or malice in it. It is for the most part just declarations of right of way or in many cases just a reflex action, I think.
Meanwhile as I progress along my 25 minute journey to work I’m getting more and more frustrated “could you not have looked before you did that!”, “why, why, just why?!”, etc.
It’s not always quite as inexplicable as I first thought; as spring turned into summer it took me a while to work out why the incidence of people stopping 5 meters back from the line at the lights had gone up so dramatically. The answer, of course is the people are stopping under the shade of trees. Only mad dogs and English men as they say…
Dick Dastrdly has opened a McDs / KFC rip-off restaurant down the road from the office. How cool is that?
I’ve no idea what the meat was in the burger but the Beijing Duck (Chicken?) wrap was scrummy.
Well I had all kinds of things planned to mark, in this blog, the passing of my third anniversary of being in China. In the end the event went unrecorded in blog-land. In reality though the day was celebrated in about the most appropriate way possible. By (sort of) happy coincidence it was the last night in China for a couple of guys who have been here from the UK for a couple of months (sort of happy as we’re sad to see them go). So what transpired was 10 guys from work going out in Shanghai for ‘a night to remember’.
Now this worried me from the start. Not only are the best nights the ones you don’t plan (like last Monday) but planned ones rarely pan-out and are often a flop. We arrived around 15:00 and a few of us did the sensible thing and decided to do something non-alcohol related for a few hours. I’d already heard that Xiangyang market was no more but we headed off to shanxi metro station anyway to see what we could see. As we were six rather large foreigners we even risked a few trips down back streets to visit what must be the remnants of the market now in people’s homes. RIP Xiangyang market. We survived this and had a wander round some real shops. After a few hours, and a brief and humorous interaction with an enterprising ‘lady massageee man’ who was trying to flog us quality time with random girls passing on the street, we headed back to the hotel for a much need shower.
The signs were there already there for the failure of a planned night out. Some people were already a few pints ahead, everybody seemed to be out of synch with everybody else food wise and making any kind of plan was proving excruciatingly difficult. In the end we agreed to split into a few groups and rendezvous in Bar Rouge which had been recommended by a colleague.
Happily, a few people went along with my suggestion of “let’s go to a bar that does Mexican food that I’ve never been to but someone said is good” and off we trotted to Zapatas. The bar was quiet and almost restaurant like when we went in, we ordered and ate a fabulous Mexican meal and the next time I looked up there were a couple of hundred people in their, most dancing and two bar girls were up on the bar dancing. How did that happen? We had already by this point decided that Bar Rouge was going to be too expensive and pretentious, without having set foot in the place and organised the remainder of our number to rendezvous in Zapatas.
The night was awesome. We drank, we talked to random other foreigners, we talked to a bunch of Chinese people. Many of the single guys managed to find someone to have a boogie with at some point. Several people joined the throng on the bar dancing. A mission set out in the early hours to find additional funds, we found a barbecue in the beer garden somewhere. Later we set off in search of another bar only to decided it was nothing in comparison and come back, we lost some people along the way who had their own special adventures. Ultimately we were turfed out when the bar closed at 04:00 and went off with random people in search of a night club. The club was in some residential place where this middle aged Chinese guy appeared to be employed to meet people, tell them to be quiet and then walk them the last 200 meters to the club. Mental. The sun was coming up as we made our way back to the hotel in the taxi.
The next morning (for morning read afternoon) we went to the Jin Mao Building. This is the tallest building in Shanghai at 152 meters / 88 floors and fourth tallest building in the world. We had lunch in the Hyatt, laughed about the previous evening and then had brief jaunt up to the observation tower at the top before heading for home.
Edited highlights can be found in this flickr photo set.
3 year anniversary suitably enjoyed I think.
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