No one can call me a Luddite anymore! Only 7,000 years after the invention of the computer I’m doing screen grabbing! I’m looking through my two Cantonese teaching videos Cantonese – The Movie and Going →
To give or not to give up? Last week one of my students was almost … not close to tears exactly but … what’s the word? Oh yeah, ready to use a blunt weapon. She →
Hoi hoi! Everybody everywhere, I can’t say this often enough: When you’re learning Cantonese: Get your course material in order. Something like the folder above, purchased by R, separating the material into categories, clearly labelled. →
The simplified characters menace is growing. Businesses all over Hong Kong are falling over themselves to accommodate mainlanders only, showing in a not very subtle manner that they’re not interested in local customers: by using →
This morning I had a Canto-lesson on my roof (Lantau people: Come to Pui O to learn Cantonese this summer!) and mentioned the word 雀仔(jeuk tsai) -bird. What? my student cried, aghast. Her daughter went →
Working hard on our new film Simply The Worst, a frightening sci-fi look at what happens when the government forces simplified characters on us. So I suddenly remembered the above film about speech-making communist language →
It’s no secret that Hong Kong people are very enthusiastic about fraternising with people from the medical profession at any opportunity. Last night one of my students turned up to the glorious Canto session with →
This year is the first summer for ages I’m not going north and I don’t like it! I want to go to Xinjiang in August. Meanwhile if you’re going anywhere in China this year and →
So it’s the private companies that will be driving the communist hieroglyph takeover? Last week it was Hang Seng bank, now it’s HSBC itself. HSBC – isn’t that a British bank? A few years ago →
Who is supposed to be the mainlander, who the HK guy in this photo, advertising a big fiscal cooperation between the two entities? Who knows. But they will make shitloads of money, with the help →
Ah – so beautiful, so civilised. Doesn’t she look like an advert for a particularly expensive brand of tea? But guess what, she’s not. She’s just having her weekly dose of lovely Cantonese, right in →
I have some victims who have been at it (learning Cantonese) for a while, and have dozens if not hundreds of pages of course material. In loose sheets. When I suggest they try to put →
It’s been a year but finally more Cantonese. If you want to be in a film, give us a shout! This one wasn’t as easy to make as normally, logistically. But with iMovie and some good friends it all worked out in the end. A big thank you to everyone who gave their time and dignity for this film.
