洪 - Hong2 - Flood

洪水 - Hong2 Shui3 - Flood Water — Flood

濕 - Shi1 - Damp, Moist, Wet, Humid

濕度 - Shi1 Du4 - Humid Degree — Humidity

卌 - Xi4 - Forty

They also have 廿 - Nian4 - Twenty and 卅 - Sa4 - Thirty, as of course you remember.

良 - Liang2 - Good, Very

紐奧爾良 - Niu3 Ao4 Er3 Liang2 - New Orleans

We are planning to go visit New Orleans this October… I hope it will still be there!

Have you noticed the ongoing arms race among local news broadcasts, trying to outdo each other with new generations of doppler radar? One station started out with plain old Doppler Radar. But that wasn’t enough. The station across town decided to make it sound better by calling it Super Doppler, or Mega Doppler. Then the numbers started coming in: Doppler 2000, Doppler 3000, (and Power Doppler 3000, Super Doppler 4000, 5000, 6000, 7000, 8000, 9000 even DOPPLER 10,000… but it doesn’t stop there… it goes all the way up to DOPPLER 13,000!!!

That is, until now. WCBS in New York may have just hit on the final solution to the Doppler Wars, inventing an utterly unbeatable, unstoppable, and unmatchable Doppler Radar technology:

DOPPLER TWO MILLION!

圈 - Quan1 - Circle, Ring, Loop

Tonight: The Ring 2 - American Version. I’ve never been impressed with any of the ring movies. I thought the original was a typical slow, creepy, but boring Japanese horror movie. The American version then predictably made the plot easier to understand and added more monster scenes. I haven’t seen Japanese Ring 2, but American Ring 2 was completely lame.

By the way, you can also pronounce this one Juan4, and then it means Pen or Sty: 豬圈 - Zhu1 Juan4 - Pig Pen.

章 - Zhang1 - Chapter, Section, Seal, Stamp

What’s this I’ve found now?

One 章 = 19 years.
Four 章 = One 歲, or 76 years.
Twenty 歲 = One 遂, or 1,520 years.
Three 遂 = One 歲, or 4,560 years.
Seven 歲 = One 極, or 31,920 years.

AND THEN TIME REPEATS FROM THE BEGINNING. At least according to this page.

鎖 - Suo3 - Lock

The number of ways that Verizon tries to lock me out of using my own phone is amazing. If I try to email an MP3 to myself on the phone, it allows me, but resamples it somewhere in their mailservers down to like 10 bits per second. BUT, the trick I learned from the little kids is: rename the file to .mid! Then the Verizon mail servers let it go through unscathed, because they think it’s just a MIDI file… but the phone still realizes it is actually an MP3 and you end up with full quality! (however for some stupid reason in this case the ringtone doesn’t repeat. also in niether case is the MP3 available in the “tunes” player.)

Another one: the phone has built in GPS. If you enable it, it figures out exactly where you are every time you make a call. It tells this information to the phone company. But it doesn’t tell ME! The only way to find out that information is to go into this debug menu and enter a secret code (the kind of code an idiot would have on his luggage: 00000) and do all this strange stuff.

I wonder if any of these problems would be avoided if I knew how to write code in BREW? Or is that somehow going to be crippled too?

移 - Yi2 - Change, Alter, Move, Shift

移動 - Yi2 Dong3 - Change Move — Mobile

This weblog is now completely mobile! Whatever pictures I take on my camera phone will be posted here immediately through sorcery and super-science.

Now that I set up this moblog system, I realize that I have nothing interesting to take pictures of!

昇 - Sheng1 - Ascend

提昇 - Ti2 Sheng1 - Lift Ascend — Upgrade

Things look a little different? This is the very latest version of Wordpress, and it’s going to take me a little while to A) bring the old style over or maybe 2) come up with a TOTALLY NEW RAD LOOK FOR THE YEAR 2K5!!!!

Also I’m very sorry for spamming your RSS readers with my stupid new ever-so-slightly-different “perma”links. That is if whatever URL you were using for the feed even still works.

輪 - Lun2 - Wheel, Turn, Round

輪胎 - Lun2 Tai1 - Tire

Flat tire today! I pulled off the highway, jacked up the car, removed the lug nuts, but couldn’t get the wheel off the hub. Somehow it was stuck! I called AAA, but instead some nice guy pulled over to see if I needed help, saw that the wheel was stuck, went back to his car without saying anything and returned with a gigantic iron tool. One huge SMASH from that tool, and the tire came off easily. He quickly mentioned that if that ever happens again another thing to try is to put the lug nuts back on most of the way, and try driving a few feet. He then left just as quickly as he came.

手 - Shou3 - Hand

手提 - Shou3 Ti2 - Hand Carry — Mobile Phone

New phones today for him and her! Mine has a camera, and once I figure out how to free the pictures from the Verizon jail, I’ll maybe start posting them here.

This is the guy who sold me the phone! By the way, never go to the Verizon store. All they were interested in doing is upselling us to a more expensive plan and more expensive phones. At Radio Shack, this guy let us keep our existing plan which “no longer exists” and gave Jenny a free phone.

李 - Li3 - Plum

While waiting for a table at KumGangSam today, an older Korean man came over to me completely out of the blue and said something like “I’m sure you know about Lord Nelson. There’s a Korean admiral who was just as good! The model right behind you is one of Admiral Yi Sun-sin’s Turtle Ships. He was a great Korean admiral who fought off the entire Japanese fleet in the 1500’s!” I said “Wow, that’s interesting. I actually don’t know much about Korean history”, which was a lie, I actually don’t know anything about history, period. He said “Well, now you know”. Just at that moment they called our table and we went to sit down, but the strange encounter was stuck in my head until now.

In my Googling on this topic I’ve found that information on Yi Sun-sin is now available in my preferred format: a Korean drama series! It actually just finished airing last month in Korea, and it can’t be long before it’s available here. Another one on the list to watch!

偽 - Wei4 - False, Fake, Forged, Bogus

優 - You1 - Excellent

Now you’re that much closer to being able to act out your favorite part of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure in Chinese.

結 - Jie1 - Knot, Tie, Settle, Conclude

終結者 - Zhong1 Jie1 Zhe3 - End Conclude Person — TERMINATOR

婚禮 - Hun1 Li3 - Marriage Rite — Wedding

Jenny just heard on Taiwan radio that the movie Wedding Crashers is called in Chinese 婚禮終結者 - Hun1 Li3 Zhong1 Jie1 Zhe3 - Wedding Terminator. This fact is probably of no interest to anyone.

蠟 - La4 - Wax

蠟筆 - La4 Bi3 - Wax Pen — Crayon

根 - Gen1 - Root

Do Chinese sysadmins log in as 根?

雷 - Lei2 - Thunder

Or more completely: 雷聲 - Lei2 Sheng1 - Thunder Sound — Thunder

Previously: Lightning

玄 - Xuan2 - Dark, Obscure, Mysterious

And if you double it: 玆 - Zi1 - Black.

蛇 - She2 - Snake

毒蛇 - Du2 She2 - Poison Snake — Viper

軍 - Jun1 - Army, Military

What do these women have aginst the greatest tactical combat video game of all time?

譯 - Yi4 - Translate

翻譯 - Fan1 Yi4 - Flip Translate — Translate

I always thought Lost In Translation is one of those movies you either love or hate. I’m of the first type. Somehow Jenny is neither! She’s officially a “meh”.

滾 - Gun3 - Boil, Roll

滾筒 - Gun3 Tong2 - Roll Cylinder — Roller

Jenny put her new Hot Dog Roller (or “loller”, as I call it) to good use today.

釣 - Diao4 - Catch (Fish)

釣魚 - Diao4 Yu2 - Catch Fish — Fishing

Jenny went fishing with 三喵 today. They didn’t catch anything! But some of 三喵’s friends did, so they got to enjoy grilled fish and fish stew on the beach.

This is the lady that we followed to the best Dim Sum in Chicago! Jenny, Cassi and I got off the L at Chinatown, figuring that we’d walk around randomly until we saw a busy looking Dim Sum restaurant. She got off the L too, and happened to go the same way as us. A few blocks later, she asked an old man something in Cantonese. None of us speak Cantonese, but we did pick up one thing: Yam Cha! The old man started pointing in the opposite direction down the street, and was apparently giving directions. We quickly huddled and figured that if anybody knew where the best Dim Sum would be, it would be an old man on the street, and decided to follow the lady.

We tried to keep our distance, but still keep her in view. After a few blocks she made a turn and walked for a while, then stopped and asked somebody for directions again. Apparently she went the wrong way, because they pointed her backwards right towards us! As she turned, you can imagine the slapstick routine we put on, walking in circles while whistling and trying to act like nothing is going on while we waited for her to pass and start stalking again. This time she knew where she was going and led us straight to Phoenix. I don’t think she ever picked up on the fact that we were following her, even when Jenny went outside to steal this picture of her (I didn’t have the guts to do that).

Engineers: You now have less than two years to update your systems for the new Daylight Saving Time rules.

Users: You now have less than two years to prepare contingency plans to work around all the problems caused by the systems that the engineers screwed up or forgot about.

Good luck!

營 - Ying2 - Camp, Battalion

營 is used in lots of other camp related words.

詮 - Quan2 - Explain

Today not just one but TWO bilingual jokes. They are almost guaranteed not to be funny, especially after I explain them.

FIRST JOKE:

What is 小白 - Xiao3 Bai2 - Small White + 小白?

小白兔 - Xiao3 Bai2 Tu4 - Small White Rabbit

Get it? 小白 + 小白 = 小白2

SECOND JOKE:

Little Ming was in English class. He stood up and asked the teacher, “May I go to the bathroom?” She told him, “Go ahead.” He sat back down. A few minutes later, nervously, he asked again. “May I go to the bathroom?” She said, “Go ahead.” Again, he sat back down. He started uncomfortably shifting around in his seat, and after a little while asked for a third time, “May I PLEASE go to the bathroom?” The teacher again said, “Go ahead!” Little Ming sat down again. Little Hua, sitting next to him, said “Why don’t you go to the bathroom?” Little Ming said “Don’t you understand English? She kept telling me ‘去你的頭 - Qu4 Ni3 De5 Tou2 - Go Your Head!’

Get it? He thought she was saying Go your head.

軋 - Zha2 - Crush, Grind

牛軋糖 - Niu2 Zha2 Tang2 - Cow (milk) Crush Candy — Nougat Candy

Want some? Just buy the turn-key plant!

焦 - Jiao1 - Charred, Scorched, Anxious

焦糖 - Jiao1 Tang2 - Scorched Candy — Caramel

魂 - Hun2 - Soul

Another way to say soul: 魂魄 - Hun2 Po4 - Soul

嚴 - Yan2 - Strict, Serious, Severe

嚴峻 - Yan2 Jun4 - Strict Lofty — Austere

For some reason almost every news report referred to King Fahd’s funeral as austere.

MegaManEffect, for OS X.

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