Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
ATTN: Ixta
I'm reading that bangkok is a mess right now and just wanted to say I hope you are OK. I know you have been mia on SK and the PFs. Let us know how things are going there if you are able.
Comments
K I S S I N G!
It's always Mercer
Even if he's not playing, it's him.
Also, puppy, : + X is apparently :X
I wanted to be more like :-X as in oops I was robbing her too.
Shhh, don't tell Gagazet, but I'm planning to take over NZ first.
Taiwan is cool, I haven't lived anywhere else in Asia (yet) though. I really like it though. Taiwan is a bit more laid back safer than some other countries, I think. All the people I've run into are pretty friendly too. I've been assisted by random strangers numerous times; people pointing me towards the correct platform to be on at the train station, things like that. I've become a habitual customer at a few restaurants/food stands in the town I live in, and I guess the cooks took a liking to me, because if I order the same thing more than a couple times, they'll give me a sample for something different, and drill me on the name, so I can actually order it in the future if I like it. (They know I can't actually read the menu.)
I have been working on learning mandarin, but literacy is an entirely different kettle of fish here. There's some symbols I'm starting to recognize, but even if you recognize one character, it might be part of a 2 or 3 character word, and not mean anything close to what you'd assume. And they don't do spaces between words here, so you might see a string of 14-15 characters as the name of a dish, and not even be sure which ones that are adjacent are supposed to be grouped together.
Translations on menus can be pretty hilarious though, some that I actually have seen are these:
-Japanese-style hoarfrost descending cow tied ham long-live happy fever
(I really wanted to try that, but they wouldn't let me, for some reason. I ended up getting curry hot pot instead.)
-Philippine strength veal Buddhist procedures egg rolls flavor meal
Sounds delicious, no?
Less dramatic:
-White liquor roasts the fish steak
-Fragrance roasts pine slope pork with mushrooms
(These, you could actually tell what they were.)
Pros: It's peaceful and less crowded and everyone rides motorbikes instead of cars
Cons: There is way too much rain lol
Chinese is one of the hardest languages to learn because there's really no pattern to it. As you stated, characters that look alike or are part of other characters could mean completely different things and unlike English, the sound of a word doesn't have anything to do with how its written. In the end, it all comes down to memorization. Also, spoken Chinese can get very confusing too due to all the tones (4 for Mandarin, 6 for Cantonese) and words that sound alike can mean completely different things.
And lol I bet they grabbed those straight off of google translate. Google translate is shit for Chinese and even worse for Korean.
I ended up having one of them go to the shop with me, so the dude could point out the various bits.
Rain is dependent on season by the way, and also location. Taipei is always rainy. The south is rainy in the summer, but dry and very pleasant in the fall and winter. And by fall, I mean, come in like, November, because that's when it starts to cool off finally.
And Cory, if you want to try Taiwanese food, I'll send you some duck heads and pig blood cake. they're both pretty popular. :P
its called black pudding you seppo
When I went to Taiwan over the summer, it was literally raining every day. I was mostly in Taipei and Kaohsiung though.
Were you on vacation here?