Weekend Summary (22 Apr 14)Follow

OK, Monday night here and I've dodged an attempt by RL to hijack my evening! How did your weekend go?

WOW: Abject failure. I logged on Saturday, long enough to juggle mail, and that was it. RL was complicated.

RL: tl;dr version: RL required a translator. Rhodekylle may be a bigger idiot than previously suspected.

Sorry for the long set up on the story but Pink wants me to move in with her. This is complicate by a number of factors involving registration with the local police and certain language difficulties.

Some of you may not remember two key factors of any Pink story: 1) She doesn't speak a word of English, 2) aside from a few survival level phrases, I can't speak Chinese and my knowledge of Chinese characters is generally good enough that I walk into the correct bathroom at least 80% of the time. Now, you might think this would hinder dating and you wouldn't be entirely wrong, but China is a high context culture and light conversation tends to be rather formulaic. If you aren't up on the whole high context/low context thing, one of the relevant points is that words don't always mean what they would appear to mean -- and this can be a headache for the Chinese themselves at times. She's remarkably effective at making me understand her, and Pleco has been a big help; however, much of the time the important thing is to pay attention to actions, their context and their symbolism. For some things we need a translator to make sure we don't have a major disconnect. Moving in with each other is that kind of thing.

At this point, the story gets somewhat simpler and shorter. Friday, my friend called Pink and talked to her. Saturday, he asked me to meet him to booze it up a bit, do some consulting and get his take on things. Thus, Friday evening and Saturday were lost. Sunday was, in turn, lost to my attempt to get things in order for a move. The nice thing was that Pink had me come over all three nights, and while the tale may yet go like those moments in WOW where the NPC says "I wonder what this button does" it seems like it will be an adventure worth hazarding. This weekend, she was sick as a dog (as am I), had her period and has had an allergic reaction to something that has left her tormented with hives. That she managed to be pleasant and seemed honestly glad to have me there shows what a treasure she is.

Here's hoping that your weekend went at least as well, and hopefully with fewer strange twists.

RL: Besides working out some, not much of interest. Did pretty much nothing, and it was glorious.

Gaming: Played some Torchlight. That is all.

Other: Um... nope, got nothing. I spent the entire weekend mindlessly browsing the internet.

I have to say, you are the most amusing to read out of all of these threads, perhaps that is why you are in charge of them. That is more uncertainity than I could handle in life I have to say, hope it all works out for you. Is the language just a hard/slow one to pick up or have you not had enough time to work on it?

RL - built a 12x6 above ground plant bed and planted even more plants. Got all of our tomatoes and squash planted and only a few other miscellanous plants to go (blackberry and blueberry bushes mostly). Relaxed a little and watched Defiance (syfy) not a bad show but don't know what kind of lifespan it wilol have.

WoW - logged in saturday morning and gained a level on my paladin (almost 83 now), that was absolutely it!

Wife wants us to play games together and she is done with WoW so don't know how much more I will be playing ...

Weekday - umm Onyxia and possibly log-in or playing something else. Tend to the plants and try to relax, that planter was freaking heavy and I had to do a lot of lifting so Kronig has a sore back and is wore out!

Well, I could have just PM'd him, but where's the +1 in that? It has been a few years, perhaps the story will be mildly amusing. To keep this somewhat on topic, the rest of you might consider adding a line or two about how you found yourself playing WOW. Indirectly, this is the story of how I ended up as a foreign player on Chinese servers. Wall O'Text warning, I'm still trying to get over what has been going around and I'm typing to get my brain limbered up as I chug half liter mugs of horrible, instant "coffee". Edit: Yeah, and it is Tuesday morning here.

Tl;dr version: superficially, Putonghua shouldn't be that difficult. It was designated the official version because it was considered simpler and the written characters have been deliberately simplified too. The real catch is that many Chinese care about "standard" language only slightly more than an average American cares about British Received Pronunciation and since China is a high context culture the meaning of a sentence may have little to do with the actual content.

I just try to keep things going somewhat like those before me.

Background: I've had the better part of thirteen years to learn the language, but the quote in my sig is only partially a joke. When I came here, I could recognize a few common words ... in Cantonese or if written in Wade-Giles. I had a hard time sorting out the 'new' sounds of Putonghua and other languages I'd learned kept getting in the way. Age and sleep disorders don't make it easier to learn languages either. I was 40, treatment of obstructive apnea was less effective in those days, I was recovering from a period of extended illness and I'd been told I was unlikely to make it to 50. That last point isn't one that encourages long term goals like language acquisition.

In the beginning ... In those days, China was still adjusting to the changes that would eventually lead it to get the Olympic bid and all that. There weren't many long term expats here, particularly outside of the largest cities. I started out in a small one, with a mere 2 million people spread across a municipal area that was actually made up of several smaller towns. Travel was more difficult, you were still restricted to approved areas and could only stay in approved hotels. Foreigners weren't really expected to know Chinese, they weren't particularly encouraged to learn it, and it was considered normal to travel with a translator or two in tow. Things were different. Besides, at that time, I hadn't planned to retire from law. I was taking a break to recover my health. Later, I'd end up staying to teach because I enjoyed the rare moments that come with finding a student who actually wants to learn.

Warning! May contain WOW and ancient history: Over the years, things have changed a good bit. It seems that I'm likely to keep annoying folks with long-winded tales for several more years. One of the quasi-adoptive daughters managed to coax me into teaching in/near Beijing about ten years ago, and although foreigners still remain a novelty in smaller cities, there are a growing number here. Somewhere along the line, another of the quasi-adoptive daughters got me started on a new game that would give the young men in my classes something to talk about. I was an old pencil and paper gamer who had started with the old Avalon Hill games. I wasn't sure that I had the patience to play an MMO and the last Warcraft game I'd played was Orcs v. Humans. World of Warcraft had just been released here, so there was a lot of excitement about it, and it gave me the chance to game with my daughter. I tried it, and that's how you guys got stuck with me. I eventually ended up on Alla after having lurked a lot, because it used to take a lot of work to revert bits of the Chinese client back to English and the guy who got me started had moved on from Atlas Loot Enhanced. My first posts were promptly maimed by various filters and posters who were trying to fend off the gold sellers and their ilk. Somehow, Pol and a couple of others made the mistake of thinking I was eccentric but relatively harmless, so here I am.

Back to the question: Having made my bid to keep this somewhat relevant to the forum, back to language. I've been here long enough to sort out the sound and rhythm of Putonghua and the Beijing dialect, but spoken Chinese is like the surface of the ocean. It is the written form of the word that really defines it and the Chinese insist on printing everything in tiny font that gives me a headache even with prescription reading glasses. It doesn't help that most of the people I might need to talk to aren't college educated women from Northwest China -- that's the group who usually seem to be able to understand me. Pink doesn't quite fall into that group, she has a three year degree in office management and she is from South Central China (Changsha), but she speaks to me much like she insists on talking to her puppy; i.e., with the belief that if the other party would just try hard enough, they should understand her. That's what I've needed.

Rhode, put the coffee down and slowly back away: "Erm, what? Snort! But, this is only my third mug! I promise I wasn't starting a novel."

Edited, Apr 22nd 2013 10:49pm by Rhodekylle