Spaced repetition software is a highly effective way to avoid this problem and increase efficiency astronomically. I realised the importance of this when I started learning Chinese seriously, but it’s only recently I’ve tried to maximise the benefits of using spaced repetitions software to learn more and faster with less effort. I’ve used a program called ZDT almost from the start, but only a few weeks ago, I decided to change to Anki, another program more heavily focused on spaced repetition. I also want to refer to a previous article focusing on spaced repetition in ZDT, not because I suggest you use that programme anymore, but because most of what I said there still holds true for any programme.

Anki has a few advantages over ZDT, which isn’t to say that the latter is not a good program (in fact, it’s better than most). Still, I decided to change for a number of reasons and that’s what I’m going to talk about now. Even if you’re using some other program, I think many of the points I bring up below will be relevant. If you’re not using a computer to help your studying, I think you should seriously consider doing so because of the fantastic increase in efficiency that will lead to; I can’t possible overstate the importance of this. Here are a few selected advantages in Anki, sometimes with remarks about ZDT:

Heavier focus on spaced repetition - This is the core of Anki, meaning that a lot more effort has been invested into this area. These advantages are the main reason that I decided to change software, but they are too many to discuss in detail here, but they include intervals based on scientific studies, more control over intervals and more detailed options when reviewing, such as being able not only to say if the answer was correct or not, but also if it was hard, medium or easy to recall, thus speeding up the process of separating the difficult cards from the easy ones.

Flexibility and versatility - Anki is a lot more versatile than ZDT. It can handle lots of more different kinds of data, and is built to be expanded with plugins. The user can use the program to study anything than can be broken down into smaller pieces. In Anki any kind of data can be entered (in ZDT it’s impossible to add non-Chinese in the Chinese field, for instance, making it impossible to add words in Chinese using Latin letters).

A large community - Anki seems to enjoy a sizeable supporting community with lots of people writing plugins and a lot of things going on development-wise. This is not a prerequisite for me, but it is reassuring to know that people are constantly working to improve the software.

Online version - I didn’t really think about how good it would be to have online features until I tried it with Anki. I can now review my lists from any computer and keep the cards as well as the attached statistics synchronised on more than one computer. This means that moving around, travelling and so on will be a lot easier with no need to suspend reviewing for a long period of time. It’s also a safety precaution to have all cards online.

Superior card management - Cards can be sorted and viewed in almost any way imaginable, which makes it very convenient to make adjustments (which was a pain in ZDT). It’s also possible to search for cards, prevent duplicates from being added and much, much more. These features contitute an extreme improvement from any other program I’ve tried.

Practical and smooth reviewing - While reviewing, corrections of cards can be made on the fly as they are discovered without having to interrupt the session. It’s also possible to undo answers to cards, removing the annoying problem with easy cards being reviewed too often only because of typing mistakes or a wrong click with the mouse.

So, having said all this, is Anki the perfect solution? I would hesitate to say perfect, but it’s a lot closer to that than ZDT is. I see no reason whatsoever to continue using the latter and I recommend both new and old learners to consider your choice of software again. Please take into account that I used ZDT for literally thousands of hours over more than two years, so I think I know what I’m talking about. It remains to be seen if there are even better programs out there, but I feel like I’ve taken a major step in the right direction and that any other gains that might be found elsewhere are merely adjustments or smaller improvements rather than something qualitatively different.

By way of conclusion, if you are the students mentioned in the beginning who use pen and paper to review your vocabulary, please think again. It’s of course difficult to say how much efficiency can be increased by using the proper tools, but I’m prepared to say that the change is in the order of several magnitudes. If you are already using a program, it’s always healthy to question what you’re doing. This is not an attempt to convert people to Anki in particular, but rather a call for people to think more about what they are doing and urge you to look around you and see what options there are. After all, you don’t want to spend your life trying to build a mountain by carrying stones in your pockets only to later find out that you could have hired a truck for free.

Title: The Kite Runner
Author: Khaled Hosseini
Year: 2003

Can a society be better understood by reading novels about it? Can tremendous changes in a society be more easily grasped from reading stories about them, even if the storied might be fictive? Afghanistan is a country we have lots of facts about, constantly supplied by international media and usually focused on air strikes and suicide bombers, but we very seldom hear about the people in other terms than a number telling us how many were wounded, how many died. It is my guess that the popularity of the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini at least partly draws from this gaping hole in most people knowledge about the world.

The book tells the story of Amir, the son of the well-to-do business man in the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul. In general, he has a happy childhood, although he constantly tried to prove himself to his father, who is displeased with having a son who seems to be more and more a man of words rather than actions. Amir also has a complicated relationship to Hassan, the son of his father’s servant, who on the one hand is his best and perhaps only friend, but is also, in a strange way, a rival in the struggle to earn recognition from Amir’s father.

Things start deteriorating very fast, however, both in society as a whole when the Taliban take control, and in the personal life of Amir as he has to admit at least to himself the cowardly nature of his being; even though Hassan had stood up many times for his friends, Amir was unable to repay the debt once it was actually needed and Hassan had to pay for it. Is he a true friend or is he a servant? The relationship between these two persons is, in my view, the most important part of the Kite Runner.

Khaled Hosseini has managed to produce a fairly well-written and succinct debut novel and it feels much like reading an experienced author. He is good at not being to long-winded, readily skips passages that might have been dull to move on to the interesting bits and the core themes of the book. The language is sometimes beautiful, but is quite far from being brilliant. The reason to read this book is the portrayal of the main character and his relationship to the surrounding world, especially to Hassan. Focusing only on the story would lead to a somewhat shattered plot with too many small episodes, but I don’t consider that to be a big problem.

So, did I learn anything about Afghanistan? Perhaps a little bit, it provided some understanding about a very small part, but what things I did know before were more or less reinforced. Sometimes the picture I get seems to be too oversimplified, especially the portrayal of the Taliban as being manifestations of pure evil. But even if the window to Afghanistan is tinted and perhaps also narrow, the Kite Runner is still an interesting tale about Amir and his life. It’s not spectacular, but it’s compelling and fascinating most of the time. For that, I award four snails to this novel by Khaled Hosseini.

I have chosen not to refer to specific decisions throughout this post, because what I write here can be seen very easily in any of my posts about major decisions. The most recent one was about moving back to the south of Taiwan and then onwards to Sweden (read it here), but there are others.

My own method isn’t as formal as it looks here, this is only an attempt to write down what I do naturally. The procedure is divided into a number steps, but in reality, these are of course not so clearly separated; they merge and intertwine depending on the situation. The steps are the following:

Research - This should be obvious. To make a good decision, one needs to know what the various choices are, and not only superficially, but the deeper the knowledge, the better the chance of a good decision later on. Input from other people is helpful not only in providing information, but also in suggesting alternatives and new ways of approaching the issue.

Analysis - This step consists of breaking down whatever information was gained in the previous step into smaller parts, and then labelling them as either positive or negative. It might also be useful to give them some sort of priority, let’s say a number between one and three. Items that are neither positive nor negative won’t influence your choice very much, so leave them for now. Input from others is extremely important here, because there might be advantages and disadvantages that only outsiders can see.

Some of these factors might be certain to be valid if a decision is made, but that’s not true in all cases. Sometimes, it’s necessary to assess how likely a certain factor is to come into play. If you really want to do it the rational way, you can multiply the negative/positive points with the likelihood that they will occur, but I’ve never done that myself, just keeping in mind what’s likely to happen is usually good enough.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself that at least helps me to see things more clearly:

- What’s the worst possible outcome for each choice?
- What’s the best possible outcome for each choice?
- What are the odds that any of these might occur?
- What is the most likely scenario?
- Which decision are you most likely to regret?

Preliminary choice - By now, at least I usually have a quite strong feeling of what I want to do. Add up the numbers for the items in the analysis step and you should see that what you intuitively think is right also earned the highest score. This is the preliminary choice, a working hypothesis of what the future will be like. If it’s something different from the intuitive answer, that’s all right, we aren’t done yet.

Get used to the idea - Now that we have a decision, although it might not be the final one, it’s time to get used to the idea. Go swimming, go out with friends, do something completely different for a while. Let your mind digest the information it’s been fed. Wait. It’s easy to reject an idea simply because there hasn’t been enough time to get used to it.

Final decision - If, after a reasonable amount of time, you think about the question again, and you feel that there’s nothing wrong with any of the steps, you’ve already made up your mind and the decision is made. If, however, you are still not sure it’s the right thing to do, then you need to go back a few steps and re-examine what you’ve already done. Repeating this process might lead to a new preliminary decision, which is hopefully better than the first one.

This is the way I do it. What about you?

Title: The Botany of Desire
Author: Michael Pollan
Year: 2005

I selected this book quite randomly, but after reading the introduction, I thought it sounded interesting with a book examining the parallel evolution of plants and humans and claiming to be able to illuminate the subject in a new way. The common way to view things is of course that humans are in control of most things (especially domesticated plants, just look at that word), but in this book, Michael Pollan promulgates another paradigm which focuses on mutual exchange and evolution.

Sadly, the really interesting bit ends with the introduction. Setting up this fairly epic goal of radically changing the reader’s outlook on the place of other living things in our lives, he then goes on to discuss at length something mundane (and, at least to my mind, boring) as Johnny Appleseed. It’s not that I can’t understand what a discussion about him has to do in the narrative, it’s just that the original goal of the book gets lost on the way. The first part of four is about the apple and almost made me give up the book.

Fortunately, I continued with the second and third parts, about tulips and cannabis. These proved to be really interesting, not in the light of the ambitious intentions laid down in the introduction, but because of the fascinating tales and information about these plants and their role in history as well as modern day society. The fourth part is a bit more down-to-earth (it’s about the the potato) and also a bit dull.

There are two critical problems with this book. The first is that it isn’t about what the author says it’s about. Michael Pollan claims it’s about co-evolution and about changing the way we view the world, but instead, he gets bogged down in detailed descriptions of completely different things (like whether or not Johnny Appleseed liked young girls). The second problem is that two of the four parts don’t interest me at all.

That being said, there are some advantages as well. To begin with, Pollan is far from being a bad author. Even the bits with boring details are still readable because of his smooth and fluent prose. He knows how to tell an anecdote, to put it briefly. In addition to this, the chapters on the tulip and on cannabis is really interesting, regardless of the aim of the book. In all, I would say that the patrs I like roughly counters the disappointment of not getting what I thought I would get and the frustration generated by the first and fourth chapters. I’m a bit sad to give this book three snails, because really, it could have been a lot better.

Personal life
Education
Creativity
Media
Website
General
Epilogue

Personal life

I started my 26th year in life in Gaoxiong, Taiwan (having moved there only a few weeks before). During the spring term, I spent an awful lot of time studying Chinese at Wenzao, using a kamikaze approach to learning the language. However, since I wanted to apply for a scholarship, I applied for a real university degree program at NTNU. The decision to stay in Taiwan another year was not easy (going to Dubai wasn’t a serious idea, even though some people thought it was) and was further complicated when I didn’t get the scholarship. During my stay in Gaoxiong, I started role-playing with some a couple of foreigner friends, something which boosted my motivation to keep working on Magneter och mirakel.

I spent the summer in Sweden, working, relaxing and trying to recharge my batteries for another year abroad. I left Sweden again in the beginning of September, heading for Linkou outside Taipei. My new life in Taiwan started out in a catastrophic manner, but got a little bit better after I found somewhere to live. Bad class management from the university added pressure, but worked my way up slowly during the first week. I had lots other problems, but after a month, I felt settled in. However, life in the north was a roller-coaster ride, with amazing classmates and friends, but with everything else lacking. I finally decided to move back to Gaoxiong, where I’m currently living.

My life has also been documented in pictures, some of them on Facebook, which I joined in late 2009. Here are some of the pictures published on this website over the year:

Gaoxiong everyday life in pictures
The bright side of campus
Miscellaneous pictures 1
Miscellaneous pictures 2

Education

Even though education has always been important to me, I think it’s even more important here in Taiwan (after all, that’s why I came here in the first place). Since last year, I’ve finished two semesters, one at Wenzao and another at NTNU. Apart from this, I’ve spent a decent amount of time learning Chinese in other ways. Naturally, I’ve improved a lot and my progress can be followed through my proficiency reports (number 4 describes my starting position and number 10 my current level). See my studying Chinese page for more.

In speaking, I’ve gone from being able to communicate to being able to communicate more or less fluently as long as I’m familiar with the topic. I mostly need to correct my language, not learn it from the start. In listening, I’ve reached  a level where I can understand fairly difficult Chinese if it’s not too fast, and I’ve recently felt that I can partake in social chatting even if it’s not aimed at me specifically. In writing, I’ve developed from struggling to make myself understood to being able to write more or less formal Chinese, even though I still struggle with word usage (i.e. using a word that means roughly the right thing, but in the wrong context). In reading, I’ve progressed from being able get the general idea of stories for elementary school children to being able to do the same for ordinary newspapers. I’ve roughly tripled my vocabulary (around 10 000 words now) and can handle most texts apart from very formal or literary ones. In short, I’ve learnt a lot, even though it doesn’t feel like that since I’m so close to the learning process.

I’ve also taken the time to actually write about the learning process and the result is a number of articles pertaining to learning Chinese or to learning languages in general. Here are some of the more important ones:

Chinese regarded as a multi-layered web
Learning to pronounce Mandarin Chinese
Learning Chinese using ZDT’s interval filter
Don’t go abroad for your first year of language studies
He did there confound all the languages of the Earth
Learning Chinese isn’t as hard as you think
The kamikaze approanch to learning Chinese

Creativity

This area of my life is perhaps the one that has been most stagnant during the past year (along with physical activities). Sure, I did finish the first part of my novel and I have planned for the rest, but it’s very far from completion. Together with a friend I also launched a new text-based role-playing game with the same setting as the novel, although we have only played a dozen or so sessions. And yes, I have started thinking seriously about the setting of that story, but to be honest, I thought that I would be a lot farther down the road now. During the summer, I started writing articles to the new version of Haragada, even though that project is also far from completed.

Still, I have accomplished one thing which didn’t require that much effort (most of the work was done from 2004 to 2008 or so): I have finished writing Magneter och mirakel. I have some feedback that has to be attended to, but I can say that I’m finished with the game I started writing almost six years ago. This is very important for me and I will write more about it later. The game will not be published any time soon, however, because I need illustrations and layout to do that, but the text is completed.

Media

As usual, I haven’t only written things, I have also consumed a fair amount of media, mostly in the form of books. Since I’ve already talked about the individual books/films in their respectve reviews, I’ll just provide the best books and films I read during my 26th year in life. They are sorted roughly in order of importance.

Books (out of 61 in all)
China Miéville – The City & the City
Mark Lynas – Six Degrees
Cormac McCarthy – The Road
Tove Jansson – Vem ska trösta knyttet? and Sent i november
The Umbrella Academy – The Apocalypse Suite and Dallas
Salman Rushdie – The Satanic Verses and Shalimar the Clown
Matthew Glass – Ultimatum
Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
Connie Willis – Bellwether

Films (out of 18 in all)
Cape No. 7
Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain
Chinatown
City of God

Website

Snigel.nu saw some major changes as well. A new design was implemented during the summer and I spent lots of time creating a more organised Chinese section. I reached a total number of 1000 posts in July, which is incredible. Posting frequency has decreased a little bit since then, but is now on the rise again. I also took the time to tag all posts, making it a lot easier to find similar or related posts.

Important content has been added mainly through the Chinese section, but also in a series of reflections on life, literature and the pursuit of dreams. Here are some of my favourites:

The backside of perfectionism
The magic coffee shop
Unique reading experiences
Role-playing in English

General

There are some things I’d like to bring up that doesn’t really fit in the above categories and doesn’t deserve their own. Firstly, I haven’t spent very much time on any specific sport during last year. Sure, I’ve kept in shape and had a good time, but I haven’t reached any of my goals. Recently, I have started working towards them in a more structured fashion, but I’m still far from most of them. Next year, I hope to be able to show some real results. Perhaps I should note that I’ve decreased in weight from around 79 kilos last year to about 75 now.

Since last summer, I’ve spent quite a lot of time with Rubik’s cube. I’ve learnt a lot, although I still regard this as something I do when I’m on the bus, waiting for someone or similar situations (sometimes I do spend high-quality time on the cube, but not that often). For instance, I’ve lowered my personal best for the ordinary cube to 33 seconds, learnt to solve the 4×4 and the megaminx. I can also solve the 3×3 blindfolded about fifty percent of the time.

Epilogue

As opposed to last year, there were no major changes in my 26th year in this world, I merely continued doing what I did last year. In some areas I’ve done well (studying), others not so well (writing, physical training). I’ve also spent another year in Taiwan and generally speaking, life as been very good to me. I hope and trust it will continue to be so in the future, even after I go back to Sweden. Recently, I’ve felt a surge of energy and motivation to do get more from life, and it’s surfing this wave I enter my 27th year. I’m hopeful and confident it will carry me wherever I want to go, regardless of where I happen to be in the world! So, happy birthday to me…

…and there was much rejoicing!

Speaking: Not much has happened with my speaking recently, so what I said in the previous report still holds true. My goal for the coming semester is to implement the theoretical knowledge I have (pronunciation, vocabulary) in my everyday speaking. I think I can handle pronunciation quite well when I’m reading something or when I concentrate, but I need to transfer that knowledge into the real world. I will achieve it using two different methods: direct tutoring and learning to speak more slowly (this is when I make most mistakes), and of course attending 15 hours of class every week should help a lot too.

Listening: My listening ability is also similar to last time (I can understand most of what people say if I’m in a conversation, but it’s still really hard before I get used to the person and/or the situation).  I feel that listening is difficult because it requires so much practice. Quantity is truly king and that makes it hard to achieve anything quickly. However, I do live in Taiwan and hear a fair amount of Chinese automatically. I will try to improve by hanging out with friends, listening to the radio and so on, but to be honest, I can’t be bothered to put in a huge effort here, since I might as well do that in Sweden (radio, film, Chinesepod).

Writing: Frankly speaking, I have only written one text in Chinese during the vacation, but on the other hand, it was quite long I feel that if I’m careful, I can almost almost make myself understood, even though the topic might be difficult or complicated, but I still lack a feeling for when to use lots of words. I know how they are translated into English, but I need to read a couple of hundred books or spend a few years here before I actually understand what’s the difference between them and in what contexts they are used. Learning to write better is not a priority right now, but it might be later, when I’m back in Sweden.

Reading: This is actually the main reason I wrote this post, because I’ve accomplished two things since last time. First, I’ve finished going through the 3000 most common Chinese characters and I’ve learnt all those I didn’t know before. This doesn’t mean that I know how to use all of them, but I have greatly increased my vocabulary (I’ll write a separate post about this project later). Second, and partly as a reult of the first, I’ve realised that my reading is a lot better than I thought. I’ve read a few newspaper articles while waiting for my food in restaurants, and more often than not, I understand most sentences without needing a dictionary. Naturally, it becomes very hard if I have no idea what the article is about or if it’s about something I’ve never encountered in Chinese before, but generally speaking, I can understand newspapers, provided I have enough time, and today I had my first lesson using a book which in the preface is mentioned to be designed for people who have studied Chinese for four years or more. I can handle the contents, but of course it’s difficult. I’ve also started reading manga books, which is also great, especially for more colloquial language (I’ll probably write a post about this as well).

In short, I have achieved a reading ability in Chinese where I can understand texts meant for adult native speakers, provided that it’s about something reasonably familiar and not at a very advanced level. I don’t understand everything, but I understand enough to make it worthwhile. I’m not at an adult native speakers reading ability yet, but I’m working my way towards that goal.

If we look at the numbers behind this, it’s not that hard to figure out why I feel that I know more words. I had 8500 words in my vocabulary list last month, now I have 9600, an increase of 1100 words in 22 days, which gives an average of 50 words per day. Since many of these where single characters I didn’t know before, I feel that I can guess the meaning a lot more often than before. Furthermore, four months ago I had 6400 words, which means that I have increased my vocabulary with 50% in only one semester! No wonder I feel my reading ability is a lot better.

So, what about reading for coming semester? Well, reading is something I mostly do because I like it, so apart from text books, I’ll probably read lots of Chinese, perhaps a lot of manga. This isn’t because I feel I have to or that it’s good (in fact, it would probably be a lot better if I focused on speaking and listening instead; reading I can easily do in Sweden), but simply because I enjoy it. However, reading is still good, so I expect to improve here as well, although perhaps not as much as last semester.

- Verifying word usage
- Comparing word usage
- Check grammar patterns
- Learning through pictures

Verifying word usage – As soon as we leave the very basics of a new language, we usually have some idea how to say or write something, although we might not be sure if it’s correct. Sometimes, we know what a word means if translated into our native tongue, but we’re not sure if it can really be used in the context we want to use it in. In this case, using Google will be a great help. simply search for the word you’re looking for and browse through the results and see if any of the matches what you want to say.

If the word is part of a brand name or very common, you might have to skip the first several hundreds of hits, because you don’t want the word to be part of a headline or title, you want it in a sentence. If you think that a sentence requires a certain preposition, search for the relevant part of that sentence (don’t forget quotation marks!). The number of hits will tell you if the preposition is right or wrong.

Comparing word usage - An even more powerful tool is comparison, although this is a bit more limited in scope. If you can’t decide whether alternative A or B is the correct one, use Google fight (or simply do two separate searches) and see which version comes out on top. This is probably the method I use the most when writing articles in English, such as this one.

Check grammar patterns – So, you’ve learnt the grammar pattern, but you’re not really sure how it’s used? Well, do a search for the pattern and see what you find. More often than not, there are plenty of examples telling you how those words are used. Sometimes you’ll be surprised at how seldom textbook patterns are actually used, compared to abbreviated or modified informal ones!

Learning through pictures - Using Google to search for pictures of the word you don’t know what it means is quite useful, especially if it’s something fairly concrete, such as a bird, a colour or an object. The dictionary might not have it, but once you see it, you definitely know what it is. This is especially useful if there are no good dictionaries for your native tongue and the target language (this is the case for me, so if I look up something and I’m not sure what the English word means, a quick picture search will usually do the trick).

Three words of warning

Using Google instead of asking real people isn’t a panacea. In fact, there are at least three real dangers, which I will talk about briefly now. First, the hits on Google might be completely irrelevant. For instance, the words might be next to each other, but in two different sentences with a full stop in between! This problem can be overcome by checking the hits you’re viewing. Of course, you can’t verify all of them, but you can make quick estimate.

Second, there is no guarantee that the articles you find will be correct, because a lot of people posting things on the internet aren’t native speakers (I think what I write is mostly correct, but I’ve probably polluted the internet a bit as well).  Of course, native speakers are sometimes mistaken to, or simply slipped on the keyboard. This problem is hard to overcome, but consider using a corpus (a corpus is a collection from a certain language and might include spoken as well as written sources, see the links below), even though this isn’t guaranteed to be correct either.

Third, you will find examples how the language is used, which isn’t necessarily the officially correct way and thus might not go down well with your teacher. This problem is language dependent, since some languages might have very strict formal rules which differ a lot from colloquial usage; other languages might not. This problem is very hard to get around, so if it’s really important, real human help is necessary.

Then why?

If there are so many disadvantages with using Google, why not ask a friend directly? That’s a good question. The reason I think this method is so useful isn’t because I don’t have friends to ask or because I don’t want to ask them. Rather, it’s because I want to ask them questions that I can’t find out for myself (like the third problem above). Most of the time, the problems above are not relevant or can be overcome, and then there is no reason why you should need to ask other people to help you. Save your friends’ valuable time until you really need it!

Some useful links

Google
Google fight
British National Corpus
Corpus of Contemporary American English

Akinator, the Web Genius – I bet most people have played the game called Twenty Questions. This is a web version of the game and itt’s frankly amazing how often “Akinator” gets it right well within twenty questions, even if you think of really odd characters or persons.

Media Convert – free and on line – convert and split sound, ringtones, images, docs – This is simply a very handy online tool to convert any file format inte any other. Extremely useful since you can use it from any computer (I assume most people have decent tools for this on their own computer) and even have the converted file e-mailed to yourself when it’s done.

The Art of Non-Conformity – A promising blog I haven’t really had time to check out, but which looks really interesting.

Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks – Why realism is not good in gaming. Everybody who thinks that statement is wrong should have a look. Everybody else can have a look, too, because as usual, The Onion is quite funny.

Tony Fisher’s Rubik’s Cube Type Puzzles – If you’ve ever thought Rubik’s cube is tricky or special as a puzzle, you have to see this. Tony Fisher is one of the best known puzzle makers and it’s simply amazing what variety of puzzles he has created so far.

Being foreign: The others – An article from The Economist dealing with living abroad. This is spot on and extremely interesting reading. In fact, it’s so interesting I think I’ll write a post explicitly about this, but in the meantime, I’ll let you have a look at the original.

Let’s Enhance – Everybody with some grasp of technology knows that zooming on photo, catching the reflection in a persons eye and then “enhancing” the picture to show the murderer does’t work in reality. This is a tribute (or perhaps a mockery) of this phenomenon. Sometimes it’s downright stupid, but I think it’s a bit unfair to science-fiction films where they in fact could have absurdly high resolution videos and pictures.

Title: 好小子，喬比！
Language: Chinese
Author: 杏林子
Artist: 閒雲野鶴
Year: 2002

I received this book as a present from my good friend Ruby, because she knew I wanted to read more Chinese, and since she like the book (admittedly when she was younger), perhaps I would to. Generally speaking, reading books in Chinese is almost always good, because even though I sometimes don’t enjoy the story, characters or setting, I’m still learning a lot of Chinese so it feels more worthwhile.

Fortunately, learning Chinese wasn’t the only good thing about this book. The main character is a cat (a fairly special cat since we can follow his thoughts) and his life with two loving and caring humans. Then, one day, he can feel that something is wrong. People are beginning to treat him differently, he hears rumours about him having to leave and so on. It seems like his mistress is going to have baby, a real baby, a human baby. The cat naturally feels sidelined, realising that perhaps what he perceived as love wasn’t the real thing. Dispirited, he decides to leave on his own.

This book is written for children, but the contents are philosophical and serious. After reading the first few chapters, it feels like a no-brainer of a book, but that quickly changes. To be honest, I would be quite scared if I read this boook on my own when I was young, so perhaps in company of parents would be recommended. Reading it as an adult, however, this deeper level and more sad tinge make the book worthwhile. I can’t comment on the language, really, apart from saying that it was well within my capacity (I understood almost everything and never used a dictionary), but I can say that the contents where well worth the time it took reading the book!

Ready for action! It’s time for 滑罐. I like the James Bond pose. This method involves applying low pressure to various parts of the skin and then moving the cup producing this pressure around. It’s supposed to increase circulation and all kinds of stuff, but I’m not really an expert. Since I played lots of badminton and my back was sort of wrecked, I thought I’d give this a try.

Good someone is happy, at least! To be honest, this didn’t hurt at all…

…although it looks horrible.

Having completed the 滑罐, he went on to do some normal massage, which was really nice. Thanks for everything!

This is what it looked like later that evening. I was quite shocked myself, actually, because even though people had told me what it looked like, this was really the first time I saw it with my own eyes (so to speak).

My classmates (and teacher), whom I’ll miss sorely.

Class out in the sunshine! It would be a crime to waste sunlight when it rains so much.

On the way to Taipei after our last class on Friday.

Spreading the disease!

Meisui after washing her hands. It’s either this or zombie style, but I like both.

From the dinner with Peicen’s coworkers (she couldn’t go, she was in Thailand).

Very shy, but also very cute.

大哥 and I. And about the shirt, it’s Ian’s and the theme for the evening involved flowers.

The dinner was quite nice in general, but I had way too much to eat. The company was a lot better than the food!

Everybody, I think.

From another dinner, with Peicen and coworkers.

Christmas! Yeah, I know the chronolgy isn’t the best.

Playing with my phone, lots of mist and street lights at midnight.

Peicen in the fog.