Wei, wei, are you doing anything this Saturday? Or: Are you doing lots of things but have two hours free to learn Cantonese in the afternoon?
Join Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau’s YAM CHA (drink tea and eat dim sum) CRASH COURSE! In just two tiny hours you’ll learn everything you need about this excellent cultural feature of Hong Kong and Guangdong province, in its own language.
We meet at the restaurant at 2.30 or 3, (it’s quiet then) spend an hour learning all the Cantonese you’ll need in dim sum situations, and then order from the accommodating staff. The food is delicious, the tea piping hot, and the course material is included in the fee! Only $200 per person plus the shared bill.
Come along this Saturday for a linguistic and culinary bomb-explosion. Meet new people, drink new tea!
Everyone who has working tastebuds will surely agree that Sichuan food is the best of all food, not only in China but in the world. Sadly, many restaurants call themselves Sichuan without being the real thing. So why not avoid disappointment by learning to cook it for yourself? It's easy!
Thank you for not being an arse? That was my first reaction. Then I thought: That doesn’t make sense. Why would someone put a sign saying Thank you for not being an arse on their high, thick, hard-slamming security gate?
No, in Cantonese as in Spanish I think the first rule must be: If it doesn’t make sense, it’s probably not that.
But guess what: I’m in Mexico City! Here’s my gaff:
The area is so beautiful it hurts my eyes. Not a single skyscraper anywhere and I can hear the history reverberate between the high walls and wooden gates, bouncing all the way down the cobblestones of famous street Avenida Francisco Sosa.
The first thing we did yesterday at 3 was to eat tacos:
Anything with lots of chillies is a friend of mine!
And good news: Everything is about food here. Everything. Now, what does that remind me of?
玉米餅 (yok mai behng – tacos)
墨西哥城 (Mak sai go seng – Mexico City)
門 （muhn – gate)
This never happens: A former senior town planner with the Hong Kong government has suggested getting rid of a Hong Kong icon! So novel; where do they get these ideas from?
This time it’s the venerable tram that’s caught the beady eye of a developer civil servant, Sit Kwok-keung. He feels the tram is too slow for the hectic Central traffic and wants to get rid of it altogether, saying he, for one, can surely walk faster than that useless relic can roll.
My first reaction upon reading this was: Who stands to benefit from a Central without a tramline? Which developer has stuck a bottle of VSOP and a few million in Sit’s pocket while outlining in flowery terms how wonderful it would be for Central and all the people of Hong Kong to have a curvy, very narrow line of luxury high-rises running from the tram depot to Admiralty?
When this happens, and it surely will if there’s enough money for someone in it somewhere, the whole tramline is of course doomed. Woo-hoo! Another irritating reminder that Hong Kong didn’t spring ready-made into being in 1997 bites the dust.
叮叮 (deng deng – tram. Also 電車 [din che – electric vehicle])
香港政府 (Heung Gong jeng fu – Hong Kong government)
中環 (Jung Wan – Central)
金鐘 (Gam Jung – Gold Bell/Admiralty)
Sit, boy! I mean, Sit-boy, I’ll tell you what’s faster than taking the tram, and it’s walking around Hong Kong island until Shau Kei Wan (筲箕灣 － Saau Gei Wan is the real pronunciation, Colander Bay) and then getting the tram back to Central! (Fast forward to 12:30 if you only want to see the tram)
The shooting of new, from-scratch Cantonese course CantoNews continues. This time we went to a thrilling location, the luscious OYC Hotel in 肇慶 (Siu Heng) in Guangdong province, a mere four hours’ comfortable train journey →
Here is an excellent way to practise and learn more Cantonese: Going to the market with your very own Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau. This is how it works: First we sit down with →
Am I the only one who thinks there are too many holidays in Hong Kong? I feel I’ve just come back from my Christmas trip – BOOM! Another big holiday immediately heaves into view. I →
If you’re unfortunate enough to live outside Hong Kong and can’t take Cantonese lessons from, er, moi, there’s no need to despair! Now you can have a mini-Cantonese fundamentalist right in your living room. Fun, →
So people are going in search of ice on which to seriously hurt themselves and icicles to photograph in astonishment. Yes it was 3C this morning. Not boiling, I’ll admit. But imagine going out this →
Hong Kong is in a frost frenzy! The temperature has crept below 10C – the temperature in my living room, that is – and everyone is busy posting, of all things, screen shots of their →
The Mandofication continues at breakneck speed. I’m sure the “great” idea of making Hong Kong simplified character-ised to “adapt” and accommodate the 700,000 mainlanders currently living here so they’ll feel more at home, has already →
I’ve finally got my new website up. According to my web guy, it will help sell my two Cantonese teaching videos Cantonese – The Movie and Going Native. I have just watched those two videos →
Behold the new cover to my Cantonese teaching video Cantonese – The Movie! I’m just waiting for my web guy to change the covers that are there now (for you can click on them and →
Behold one of my students, 五天 (- M Tin, Five Heavens)! He is doing everything right; practising every day, doing language exchange with locals and learning characters. Here he is in the middle of showing →
