On Learning Chinese in 3 Months
[P.S - you are in for big post here! But do read please] So, the language learning community is buzzing, especially the Chinese one, with the news that Benny is attempting to become fluent in Mandarin in 3 Months. Now, phew, where to start on this doozy of a topic. I remember writing about this [...]
A Chiptune Song I wrote while travelling in Shanghai
I don’t normally cross-post my creative projects, but this one is relevant to my China travels this year. While I’m not doing research, learning Chinese, browsing the web and a million other things, I compose music. Sometimes really strange music. Like 8-bit music or otherwise known as chiptunes. I use a Game Boy. You can [...]
Confused Laowai blog turns two years old
I seemed to have missed the birthday post for last year. So without further ado, happy two years for me and this blog. 生日快乐 and all that jazz. Since the blog has started in December 2009, 88 posts have been published. Hooray. Not that much, but I prefer quality over quantity. :) This blog has [...]
Big Update to Social Mandarin
I’ve been thinking lately about where Social Mandarin should grow too. It’s current incarnation is good, but it needs more. After being featured on Penn-Olson, the author added that it would be cool to add more Chinese content with a difficulty tag. I postponed that advice for a while, but yesterday I just thought, why [...]
Now with more Social Media & Beer
I have created a Facebook page. Join me there too. I’ll be posting lots of other links (not just my blog!) to interesting China stories and content. Sometimes I just like engaging with people on Facebook. Twitter is a little limiting sometimes. Hmmm. So yes, that’s all I wanted to say, but I hate wasting this delicious [...]
The Epic Adventures of Princess Moonface
One my lab buddies linked me this Kickstarter Project yesterday: The Epic Adventures of Project Moonface I’m a big fan of Kickstarter and have already pledged to other projects before (not related to Chinese), but this it the first time that I see something exciting like this within Chinese learning. The basic gist of this [...]
Tencent’s Intelligent Eye Appears
A new app for iPhone and Android has been released on 8 September created by Tencent Labs. Some of you might recognize these kinds of applications, in for instance Wordlens and Pleco’s App. Although Pleco has released an experimental version (which I haven’t tested yet, but will do soon), Tencent’s 慧眼 is ready and free for any [...]
Social Mandarin Redesign is live
I’ve been using a slightly modified stock drupal/drigg theme that came with the site when I started Social Mandarin a year and a half ago. Recently it has started to annoy me. The redesign has been coming a long way. I’m not the best coder, but I know how code works. I can easily backwards engineer [...]
Translation in Chinese: An experiment in Chinese & SEO
Apart from learning Chinese, I’m a bit of a geek. I like to play games, browse the web all day and watch sci-fi movies. However, another thing that I like online, is starting creative projects. Sometimes with entrepreneurial aspirations. I like to play around on the web. I buy domain names like I’m collecting stamps and start [...]
Update on trip to China
As you know I’ll be in China from 22 June till 11 July. Three weeks of China goodness. I arrive in Shanghai on the 22nd of June. I’ll spend a few nights there till 28 June at Old West Gate International Youth Hostel. I’m keen for some recommendations on what to see and what to [...]
