SUNDAY: Podding Along, Heading For The Cast

Before Cantonese, a little sad and wistful

Woo-hoo! It’s moving forward so fast. Got a great little group together for Radio Lantau’s Cantonese course CantoNews! Making podcasts from all over this wondrous island, we’re going to help foreigners who don’t have the time (or, dare I say, courage?) to take Cantonese lessons learn Cantonese from scratch. The last four days I’ve made four podcasts, three for total beginners and one for more intermediate, more hardbitten warriors.

What? Warriors? Yes! It’s a war. It’s little David C. Antonese against the hulking brute Goliath M. Andarin all the way now, I’m afraid. But more about that in tomorrow’s epistle; for today I’ll just say hooray, hooray. Podcasts are roaring back to life.

After 20 Minutes Of Cantonese, barely able to contain their exploding exuberance!

Why waste life being monolingual? Start lessons now, or hang on for another few days for Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau’s podcasts CantoNews here and on Radio Lantau.

新聞 (San man – news)
外國人 (Oi gok yan – foreigner/s)
上堂 (Seung tong – have a lesson)

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At Last: My Own Podcasts. Called OUTCASTS.

It’s happened at last: After months of hard work and sacrifice, behold my own podcast. It puts the FUN back in Fundamentalist!

Let’s Meat, You Cow

I’m fortunate enough to live in a place with water buffalo all around. This morning when I took my dogs for a walk, I reflected on how the rain makes the water buffalo 水牛 (seoi →

The Next Station Is Hopping Mad

The Transport Department has just made my life a little bit worse. As if ten or more minutes of every ferry trip, twice a day, being taken up by screaming public announcements in three languages →

My Groove! My Groove! Why Are You Forsaking Me?

Last week I received some shocking news: My banjo teacher is leaving. What??? Now that everything was going so well? Not only do we do the old-fashioned and also modern thing of bartering skills; I →

哎呀，落雨呀！Bucketing Down

Yesterday I went on a high-speed boat trip ruining my hair, but it was worth it. As soon as we got off the open boat, it started raining like – well, normal Hong Kong style. →

川菜！Sichuan food! The best in the world!

Yammmmm! Yam me doooown! That’s right, I don’t spell the word you say when something tastes good, with a U. I prefer the letter A. Take a word like 蚊， (man, meaning mosquito but also →

Consistent Service

I’ve almost given up going to restaurants in Hong Kong. I find the food tasteless, the chefs complacent. But there’s one place right here in throbbing metropolis Mui Wo, the venerable Rome Restaurant, that I →

Cantonese and English: The Twain Shall Never Meet so Just Accept It

“Oh sorry, I’m so sorry” this woman is probably not saying. Naw, she’s just serving me some excellent Sichuan food, probably. Anyway, I can’t begin to think how weird it must be for the people →

Neighbour In The Middle of Nowhere

It was cold, foggy and not without drizzle, yet we were glad to be up so early and by ourselves at this Trollveggen that I had heard so much about but never visited. It looked →

Long Live Cantonese

There’s a big hullabaloo in the South China Morning Post this week. Historian Jason Wordie wrote about the so-called Third Culture Kids (born in one country, moved to Hong Kong, sent to boarding school in →

Taxing, Vexing Taxis

As any newcomer to Hong Kong trying to get a handle on the local language can attest to, taxi drivers are excellent language teachers. At the same time, they can also get very angry if →