315 dtg (leaving day)

My last day in Hong Kong. The flight for Qingdao, China, leaves in a few hours.

Packing List:

- 1 camera
- 1 MP3 player
- 1 mobile phone
- Some clothes
- 2 frisbees
- A single entry visa, valid for six months

Here we go!

325 dtg (Hello Mum!)

This is so excellent. My mother, presumably sick of waiting for her son to call her and let her know he is still alive, has taken to making contributions to my blog in order to send a subtle message that it is time again for me to call. Okay Mum, I promise I will. Tomorrow.

In the meantime, the list is complete - I invite all the language learners out there to increase their adopted vocabulary by attempting (twice) any 30 of the following, within one calendar year ...

1. Go to a local soccer (football) match
2. Attempt horseback riding
3. Host a tea-drinking ceremony
4. Visit a naval museum
5. Attend a wedding service
6. Haggle for something at a local market
7. Order and eat a customary dish
8. Take traditional dance classes
9. Learn a traditional song
10. Go to a supermarket with a shopping list of at least 10 items
11. Visit the post office
12. Purchase something from a travel agent
13. Get into a brawl at the local watering hole
14. Watch a locally produced film
15. Go to a public auction
16. Get a garment tailored
17. Get a haircut
18. Become attached to a local lady
19. Have a meal/drink at the neighbours' place
20. Become a member of the library
21. Visit an art gallery
22. Join a local online community
23. Join the gym
24. Travel to the "interior" of the country (a.k.a. "butt-fuck-nowhere") on a weekend trip with NO reservations of any kind whatsoever (AH! Take pictures and share stories)
25. write postcards to family members and friends back home
26. all for take in food (whatever you feel like)
27. Join a Wine Club or a Food Tasting Workshop
28. Go from the first train station of your city to the last one (in the same city, pelase)
30. Organize a dinner at your place for 3 friends and ask them to bring 1 unknown friend each
31. Go on a blind date
32. get a pair of shiny piercings in your testicles (I do not know if you will do this twice, but I am sure you will learn some interesting ways of expressing yourself both in the language you are trying to learn AND in your own... especially in your own &*%#%@$!!!).
33. Get completely lost in the poorest district in town
34. Have a conversation with a cab driver in his native tongue
35. Smoke the cheapest, nastiest local cigarettes.
36. Drink the cheapest, nastiest local alcohol
37. Eat the cheapest, nastiest local food.
38. join a cooking class
39. sell a local identity australian wine
40. learn how to cook a local dish so that you can cook it in Australia
41. go to the opera
42. buy a present for your mother
43. visit a temple
44. learn a song to teach your father

And, last but not least, thanks to Devrim for ...

45. Go to a party and attempt to pick someone up / make a new friend by lying to them (in your new language) over the entire course of the evening. The more outrageous the story (yes, I am an acrobat in a travelling circus and I was brought up by gypsies in Eastern Slovakia) the better.

330 dtg (30 things to do twice)

Flicking through a dictionary the other day (what fun!) reminded me that in order to learn all of the words a native speaker would be expected to know, you must constantly force yourself to experience new activities. Furthermore, to make sure you don't hear the words once and then forget them, it wouldn't be a bad idea to repeat each activity.

Thus, I'd like to enlist your help in compiling a list: 30 things to do twice.

Any activity can be nominated to the list, provided you don't need to break any laws (at least the ones that matter anyway) in order to do it, and provided it is not too expensive. The reason I would like to ask for your help is that the final result will be a lot more interesting if many people share their perspective.

Once compiled, I will publish the list in a single blog entry (to save you having to read through all the comments), and would invite all the other language learners out there to try their hand at as many of them as possible.

I've thought of five to get the ball rolling ...

1. Go to a local soccer (football) match
2. Attempt horseback riding
3. Host a tea-drinking ceremony
4. Visit a naval museum
5. Attend a wedding service

Any thoughts?

335 dtg (secret language weapons #2)

wode mubiao xiang zhongguoren yi yang ting-shou-du-xie zhongwen
(my goal look Chinese-person the same listen-speak-read-write Chinese)

I spent some time in Hong Kong recently with a few prolific language learners - people who were fluent in at least six languages (for the record, the best performer could speak 12). I'm thinking that if you want to do something right, best to learn from the masters. After all, if you really wanted to play golf, wouldn't you want Tiger Woods as your coach?

One thing they all shared in common was the ability to sound like a native - strap on a blindfold and you would swear you were talking to a Chinese / German / Danish / Spanish person. Though, for the record, none of them were Chinese, German, Danish or Spanish.

So it's time for Product Plug #2 - Pimsleur's Language Guides. Although they err on the side of being slightly too formal, these CDs are, IMHO, great value for money. I say great value for money because the course is not what one would describe as cheap - the entire set (Basic, Intermediate and Advanced) of Mandarin lessons set me back about US$500 (you can pay as much as US$1,000 if you go to the wrong place ... personally I went here).

But, if you've got the cash it's well worth the splash (the site also has a buy-back option so you can get around US$230 back) and if not, well, the internet is a wonderful thing if you know where to look. Or, you could think of it this way. By speaking Mandarin Chinese, I can converse with one billion extra people. So if I spent U$467.85 on the couse, that works out to US$0.000000468 per person, which I reckon is pretty good value.

Pimsleur's is all about speaking and listening (there is no writing component), and for a language like Mandarin, it overcomes some of the limitations of trying to "write" sounds using English letters. Here's a few examples

Hui (can)

Pronounced "hwhey" ... with the "hwh" bit at the start sounding something like a sword being drawn from it's scabbard.

Hen (very)

Pronounced "hhhen" ... with the "hhh" bit at the start like the Dutch "g" (that funny thing that makes you sound like you have a bad cough), except that it's an "h".

Shi (am, is, are)

Pronounced "ssshhhi" ... with the "ssshhh" bit at the start sounding like that thing you do when you want someone to be quiet.

I think you get the picture - I know I certainly did. The course is broken up into 30 minute lessons, with 30 lessons in each stage, and a suggested rate of one lesson per day. Transfer the entire course to your iPod / MP3 player and you can carry them with you at all times, which means you can be conversational in a month. Nice work.

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I checked with my friend Chris and his book, "The Third Ear" will be available over the internet later in 2005. And to anyone who would like to add this blog as a link to theirs, my answer is "yes". To be frank, I am too new to blogging to really understand what that's all about, but the principle sounds pretty good!

337 days to go (my secret weapon)

Ta shuo - "ni shi hen congming"
Wo shuo - "bu shi. wo you hen haode laoshi"

She said - "You are very clever"
I said - "Not am. I have very good teacher"

Having spawned the Espanola, Arabic and Dutch challenges, I feel it is only fair that all contestants should have access to my secret weapon.

It's a book called "The Third Ear" by Chris Lonsdale (unpublished, but due out in 2005) and if you want to learn a new language, you can not do better than to buy this book. One of the ideas it discusses is that there are about 60 basic words (the book refers to them as "glue" words) around which sentences are constructed. I, you, he, she. What, how, when, why. If, so, but, because. Big, small, tall, short. Hot, cold etc.

Get these into your head, and you can start to construct basic conversations, even with a very limited vocabulary. That thing is hot. Where is that place? Who is that? He is tall and round so his clothes are big but she is short and not round so her clothes are small.

So I'm sitting there at Sasuks Cafe today (Qingdao does not have Starbucks, we only get Sasuks - but that's okay because in a world of rampant intellectual property theft it looks, feels, smells and tastes just like Starbucks!) working on my "glue" words. Trying to create a "memory hook" (another great concept from the book) for each word.

Round = Yuan (with a rising tone). Hmm.

Well, the logo for Sasbucks is round (looking remarkably like the Starbucks' logo to be honest) and the Yuan is the chinese currency. And the coffee at Sasbuck's is pretty expensive, so it's like lots of Yuan. Bingo.

Round = circle = logo like Sasbucks = expensive coffee = money = yuan.

Each memory hook takes between 15 seconds and five minutes to create (depending on how quickly the idea pops into your head), so you'll need about two hours to learn 60 words which will allow you to have just about any (very basic) conversation you want. Brilliant!

I'll let interested parties know how you can get a copy of the book over the internet just as soon as it is published.

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Vega & Saki ... "xiexie nimen. nimen shi hen haode pengyoumen"

Non-Chinese Speakers ... xiexie is thanks, "men" just makes a pronoun (he, she, you etc) plural, pengyou is friend. That's all you need (plus the bit at the top) to translate the above sentence.

339 days to go (tofu's not bad, i just prefer buns)

Visiting a local temple in Qingdao today, I befriend Wang Xiaojie (Miss Wang) who invites me to join the buddhist monks as they take their lunch. Great! A chance to practice Mandarin ...

Slight problem: I have this (weird, I know) dislike of Tofu, and the hot steaming bowl of it in front of me is going to prove something of a challenge if I want to avoid that compulsive gagging sensation I normally get when I eat it.

Befitting lunch at a temple, a heaven-sent solution arrives when Wang Xioajie returns with more food - two enormous buns (manto) for us to eat with our tofu and sprouts. Never have plain, doughy buns tasted sooo good!

"bu hao chi?" (not good food?) she asks ... pointing directly at the tofu I have been trying to avoid.

The Challenge: Using 50 words of Chinese or less, find a face saving way to avoid having to say that you don't like the tofu.

The Solution: Wo xihuan tofu yidiar, keshi wo xihuan manto hen duo!! (I like tofu a little, but i like buns a lot!!)

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Thanks to all for the comments, it is a great feeling to know that good friends are cheering from the sidelines.

Nga - my goal is to able to read and write the 2,200 simplified characters that are used in everyday Chinese script (plus many more of the combinations), so that I can indeed pick up a Chinese newspaper and read it by Jan 12, 2006. The conditions of the bet are more to do with conversation - I have to be able to hold an in-depth discussion of life, love, work and relationships with my colleague from Shanghai, for an hour, without any obvious difficulty. And CONGRATULATIONS on the news of the baby on the way!

343 days to go (the introduction)

wo hui shuo yidiar putonghua
(i can speak a little mandarin)

It seems like such a waste to have spent the last 26 years communicating in just one language, so 2005 (my 27th) is being dedicated to the pursuit of learning another - Mandarin Chinese. Watch and learn!

The plan is to move to Qingdao (need help locating that? go here, zoom in, it's on the coast next to where it says "Yellow Sea") and literally, "go native". Having told all my non-Chinese speaking friends that I'd (frankly) prefer it if they didn't visit me (since I would have to entertain them in English), I'm hoping that one year of living in a place where the ability to speak Mandarin is the difference between, say, eating and not-eating, should do the trick.

Oh and I have a friendly bet with my boss, who suggested it might be a tall-order. The wager is US $1,000.