This morning I and my wife went to a Chinese café for breakfast. Somehow they offered free Chinese newspaper. I looked for the headline expecting some specular world event to unfold. To my disappointment, the headline read “華裔移民第二代 喜中西合璧婚宴” (2nd-generation Chinese prefer Chinese-Western fusion wedding banquets). It also showed the photo of a businessman who [...]
There was an interesting exchange between Steve the Linguist and Benny the Irish Polyglot. I downloaded the podcast more than a week ago but only managed to get through it on a red-eye flight back from Seattle yesterday.
In brief, Steve thinks that we should first immerse ourselves into a lot of input activities and then [...]
Finally, I have persuaded my wife to go to Mandarin class. She had her first class last Thursday. OK, this was not her first attempt, but at least I regard this as a new beginning. There is always hope.
Coming back from the class that night, my wife started firing all kinds of pronunication questions at [...]
Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan caught the attention of the international media back in 2006, when he accepted the flag at the closing ceremonies of the Turin Winter Olympics. He is Canada’s first disabled mayor and also the first quadriplegic mayor of a North American city.
The mayor was paralysed after a tragic skiing accident when he [...]
Today, I have accidentally discovered an innovative way to practice conversations. This approach has the following advantages:
It is free
It is purposeful (you don’t carry out a conversation just for the sake of carrying out a conversation)
There is potentially unlimited number of topics to talk about
You can converse with different partners all the time
The other party [...]
