Today’s Classifier: 套

套， mainly classifier for films, as in － 套戲，yat tou hei – a ‘wrapper'(?) of film. Possibly from when films came in big metal cases. By the way, the origin of 戲 hei is ‘Chinese →

Today’s Classifier: 隻

Yes I know I’ve done 隻 （jek) before, but then I saw this 水牛，seoi ao, yesterday morning, and was lost in classifier-ation once again. It seems that classifiers are simplifying and that people often use →

Caring and Sharing

I’m currently in Hunan province and thought I would share this, one of many wonderful English signs we’ve seen during the last few days, with you. Throwing garbage into the dustbin is indeed lofty behaviour, →

Canto Persona

Have you read ‘Outliers’ by Malcolm Gladwell? Splendid book, absolutely fascinating. Eye-opening, funny, full of a-ha moments, it spurs you on so you have to get up at 5am to finish it, having started at →

Canto Frustrato Grandissimo

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 →

How (not) To Learn Cantonese 2

How to learn Cantonese: By doing the above. Carefully sliding down, into the water, then swimming. In my first post about this topic a couple of weeks ago I used the swimming analogy – how →

Are All Whitey Total Morons? (Or is it just me?)

I think one of my biggest weaknesses is my temper, or rather that I sometimes can’t control it. I specifically blow my top at government officials and other puffed-up people in uniform, telling me what →

New Podcast: TRAINCAST

Ah-Laan and I were on a train the other day, playing cards with dudes. Suddenly we were talking some seriously bad language … Outcast 2. Traincast

People: Bugger me down if I haven’t written a new book! Mind you it’s five years since the last one so I can’t see why not …

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!