I completed the last lesson in my beginner-class book today, which means that I should now know 1000 words.  An 11th-century Chinese dictionary reportedly contained 53000 characters.*  I might be here a while.

Ha, just kidding.  Luckily, 'literacy' in Chinese falls somewhere in the 3000-4000 character range.  That does not, however, mean that I'll be at full-literacy levels in another 6 weeks.  For one, the intro paragraph is misleading -- I know about 1000 words, but not anywhere near 1000 characters.  I've started off by gaining speaking vocabulary, so while I can say what I want to within the 1000-word range, I can't read or write all of those same words.  Secondly, a lot of those words share certain characters, so even if I could read and write all 1000 of them, it would probably only involve about (I'm guessing here) 300-500 characters.  Thirdly, at least half of what I've covered so far has been review (I took a year of Chinese in college way back when... when the Internet was ruled by Archie and Veronica and didn't have pictures, I mean), so progress will certainly not continue at the same pace.  I did, however, today learn the word for "Internet", which I'm pretty sure did not exist (the word in Chinese, not the thing Al Gore invented) the last time I was sitting in Chinese class.

*Oh come on, what percentage of words in the OED do you think you know? And I mean the 20-volume edition, not the dinky 2-volume one.

Anyway, my point (I did have one, back at the start of this post) is that I'm supposed to know 1000 words.  The tricky part, of course, is remembering them all. I went on a week-long hunt for index cards (which, by the way, are incredibly hard to come by here -- I finally found blank business cards that served the purpose), and developed a color-coded, alphabetized flashcard system, because I am a nerd. I then gave up on this as an effective means of studying after I covered 100 cards with one day's worth of new words. It just didn't seem like it was going to be a good long-term solution. 

Instead, I have embraced my inner techno-geek, and am now databasing my vocabulary.  In addition to being able to sort by multiple fields (without having to re-sort 400 cards), this has the added (paradoxical?) benefit of actually making me concentrate on the task at hand.  See, I could write out the flashcards while watching TV, or chatting on IM; it only required superficial brainpower.  Having to input 8 fields into a spreadsheet means that I actually have to think.  Who knew data entry could be so rewarding?  Anyway, I just came up with this idea yesterday, so I have a long way to go.  Good thing I can spend my weekend populating; I have a test next week!

Good morning!

I have a guilty pleasure during football season, and its name is Potato Chips.  Particularly when I had my double recliner and Sunday-morning soccer games, one of my favorite things to do in the fall was come home, shower, and plop onto the recliner with a bag of chips to watch the games and blissfully waste the rest of the day.

Since I got rid of the recliner and didn't catch that many games this season, Mr Chips and I have been a bit out of touch of late.  Sure, we've had short, usually public, dalliances here and there, but nothing that involved the seductive opening of a fresh bag, the trying of a new flavor.  No, in general, I have only recently seen Mr Chips at parties and other gatherings, where it's hard to be in the right mood.  Which is really for the best; after all, our relationship can only be described as unhealthy.

But here I am, in a new place, and the familiar is comforting. And it is, after all, NFL playoff season.  So while I'm taste-testing different brands of milk, juice, bread, and snacks to see which I like best, why not reacquaint myself with Mr Chips?

Let me establish here that I am neither particularly brand- nor flavor- loyal when it comes to potato chips.  Sure, there are certain flavors or brands I dislike (I think of them as bad outfits I discourage Mr Chips from wearing, at least when meeting me), but sometimes I'm in the mood for sour cream n' onion, or salt n' vinegar, sometimes plain, occasionally BBQ, Lay's Wavy Ranch if I can get it (I haven't seen it outside of New England, alas), sometimes ruffled, sometimes not.   So exploring new flavors is far from anathema.   Which is good, since flavors overseas tend to be quite different from what's on the shelf at the UnSafeway. 

In any case, it wasn't hard to find Mr Chips; he's everywhere (you can run, but you can't escape the long arm of the Lay).  Here in China, his main guises seem to be fruit,  poultry, and seafood.  Now, far be it from me to reject the allure of lychee or mango potato chips without trying them, but I'm not so keen on the sweet-and-salty flavor combination ("swavory", as it was deemed at my former workplace), so I went the animal route.

In retrospect, perhaps I should have compared the Mexican Tomato Chicken and the French Chicken flavors, but at the moment that I was standing in the grocery store, I craved variety.  And I figured I could guess what Mexican Tomato would taste like, so my sample selection comprises French Chicken, Sauteed Prawn, and Lime (I like the Tostitos with lime... how bad could it be?). 

I might have to wait until the Super Bowl to actually do the taste test... check back for the verdict!

Things found on a bicycle and food are likely to be two recurring themes here.  It's a good thing Shanghai is flat, because it really is amazing what you'll see being carted around sometimes.

I had to run to catch up with this guy, but as it turned out, it's not that easy to see what's going on in the second picture either (I adjusted the contrast on the first a little in hopes of making it clearer).  I couldn't get a glimpse of whether there was actually anything in the wheelbarrow he's toting, but I suspect it was empty and that he just needed a long metal pole.

It's cold again today.  I was so optimistic when the weather got into the mid-40s this weekend.  I thought it was supposed to stay like that all week. I walked on the wild side -- I left my scarf at home (I did, mind you, continue to carry my gloves and earmuffs).  And then today it went back down to freezing.  On my way to class, it started snowing.   Boy, did I want that scarf back.

Meanwhile, these people at Happy Lemon, a street-side stall (note the fur-lined hoods and earmuffs!  these people are not indoors, they're waiting for their bus!), are buying frozen drinks. 

Some people drown their sorrows.  Some people take refuge in a different kind of pint.  For those of you who can't decide...

In other news, yep, I'm still looking for a better segment name, although at least this one would pay homage to Dave Barry.  WT? is nice and succinct, but I'm not sure it quite captures what I want.   Well, we'll see.

Holy moley.  My Terps just took down the number-one ranked team in the country.  No, I mean the men's team, really!  I don't understand them -- lose to American (American??) at home, beat (previously) undefeated North Carolina in Chapel Hill.  Well, I'll take it.

I've been asked what I'm going to do about watching the NFL playoffs while I'm here.  To be honest, I'm not all that invested, so I may ignore them (especially the Pats game, which will kick off at 4am my time).  But I could watch if I wanted:  this morning I happened to wake up ridiculously early, and I knew Maryland had a basketball game (trust me, the latter was not the reason for the former).  Through the magic of Sling -- and thanks to some friends hosting back home -- I can feed my NCAA-hoops addiction.

Basically, a piece of hardware sits on my friends' network and cable hookup, while the software sits on my laptop.  I turn on the software here, and it connects to their cable feed there.  They retain control over what they watch, and I can change channels to my heart's content on my end.  Provided I keep the screen size small or moderate, the feed works really well (it tends to get choppy at full-screen resolution).  Nifty, eh?

Oh yeah, that's my real, rarely-used television in the background.  The ESPN-equivalent here plays a lot of soccer and NBA games (China hearts basketball, especially the NBA), so I probably wouldn't even have to Sling the NBA playoffs... but then again, I don't watch them in the States, so why would I do it here?

There's a Japanese mall/supermarket a few blocks from me.  Unsurprisingly, it caters to Japanese tastes (while also stocking some Western foods for expats), which include lots of sweets.  I kid you not when I say that fully half of the supermarket is dedicated to sweets and snacks. In addition, the supermarket portion of the mall is surrounded by a bakery, a Beard Papa, a pretzel stand, two ice cream stalls, two chocolate stalls, and a mochi stand. 

For those who've never heard of mochi, it's a traditional Japanese glutinous (sticky) rice cake; in its modern incarnations, it takes on different flavors.  And I mean a lot of flavors -- these were the ones on display the other day:

From L to R --
Blueberry cream, Sakura, Pumpkin
Sesame cream, Cafe au lait, Caramel
Passion orange, Peach cream, Chestnut
Lemon cream, Red bean, Green tea
Sweet potato, Cream chocolate, Walnut cream

For the record, those weird red tendrils belong to the Beijing Olympics mascot doll that was propped in front of the sign. 

I haven't even been gone a week, and the questions are starting to pour in!   Well, OK, these are all from the same person, but it gives me something to write about.  Here we go:

Have you settled in yet?
Mostly.  Today I managed to stock the kitchen (pots, pans, dishes, small appliances), so I can actually start cooking for myself.  I've been unpacked since the second day, and have found places for most of my stuff.  Still working on where to stash the gym clothes.

What's the weirdest thing you've eaten so far?
Sorry to disappoint you, but I haven't tried to find anything too weird yet.  I had sushi for lunch today, and I ordered some dumplings yesterday without knowing exactly what was in them, but they turned out to be egg & chive, so I don't think it counts.  However, there was a weird jar of liquid-with-large-things-in-it for drinking (well, there was a tap on the jug, so I assume it was for drinking) at the dumpling place, and I thought, "I'm not drinking that until I know what it is."  I narrowed it down to either large roots (alternative medicine, perhaps?) or various sea creatures (hmmm).  Either way, it seemed a little sketchy.  Next time I'll try to remember to take a picture.

Have you learned any swear words yet?
No, but I'll be in Hong Kong in 3 weeks, so the chances are good.  Sorry, bad joke.  Seriously, yes, I have started classes, and no, swear words are not on the curriculum.  At least not yet.  And as far as I know, I haven't done anything to make anyone swear in my direction, so I haven't picked any up on the street.

Go on, keep 'em coming!