Last night I went to a party that turned into something of a name-dropping fest. People had met Lady Gaga, various representatives of the Hong kong government, etc. I thought: Lady Gaga has a job and it’s to sing (?). A plumber has a job and it’s to dig through people’s poo. Why is it better to have met Lady Gaga (OR the chief executive CY Leung) than a plumber named Wong? OR could it be that I was jealous because I hadn’t met a single famous person I could slam down on the table, as it were? In any case, the result was I got incredibly bored and went home. Also I couldn’t wait to finally start redesigning the covers of my Cantonese teaching videos (for sale with a click below).
While working on the cover, I suddenly remembered that I have a trailer to that film, too.
So if you want to learn Cantonese without really trying, click on and download the film Cantonese – The Movie, on the bottom of the main page. You can learn all the basics in an hour. You learn how to count, how to look up characters in the dictionary and how to order stuff in bars. Among other things.
Warning: Contains live cattle!
Smoke! Is it just me or has Central become unbearable after the smoking ban was implemented? I’ve become one of those middle-aged hags who sniffily wave her hand in front of her face while walking, or rather, negotiating the palls of smoke hanging over each dustbin between the ferry pier and my office. (“My office” being of course Honolulu Coffee and Cake Shop where I work as dogsie bodie.)
In Cantonese,’to smoke’ is 食煙,(sek yin – eat smoke). In the olden days we used to be asked 食唔食煙呀？(sek m sek yin ah? – Eat not eat smoke?) and if not eat smoke, be seated at least 5 cm from the nearest smoker… Happy times.
深圳 (Sam Jan – Deep Drain/Shenzhen)
世界之窗 (Sai gai chi cheung – World’s Window)
百佳 (Baak gai – Park’n’Shop)
I spent last weekend in Zhongshan, birthplace of Sun Yat-sen and the original bastion of Cantonese. Not sure about the numbers but an incredible amount of immigrants to the various gold and hard-work slave-conditions hellholes →
I’m SO glad I can speak Cantonese! Here is one of a million reasons: I just took the MTR from Central to Tung Chung and as usual there were no taxis although it’s about 200 →
I just rediscovered this film when a viewer had a question about the rules. Watching it again, I think it’s actually quite good. And suddenly I’m dying to play cards! Let’s start a cho dai →
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 →
Hi people! I’m going to take Adventure Trip off my new website as there wasn’t a big market for going into Guangdong province (weird) but the trips still go on, of course. There are so →
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 →
Do you live in Hong Kong? Have you lived here for a number of years? (Any number higher than, say, one?) Then you must already be starting to get sick of people leaving. Now it’s →
Friday I went to Victoria Park to see what the people are against this year. Many of them were very against Stephen Lam (林瑞麟）Lam Seui Leun, who they called a (something) dog. Not running dog, →
