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Monday, March 27, 2006

A Great Night



Winning team's drawing when we were playing pictionary. Did you know what these things are?











Only these two people didn't like the movie much.







Mar 25th was such a fun night.

The only problem was that it was kind of difficult to find Gloria's bar at the first time, at least for me and Tim. But once you know where it is, it's just right there.

We watched the movie Yi Yi. It was a nice movie. You can listen to how people liked it through our podcast. We had a drink, and later on played a board game Pictionary. It was hilarious. What you see here was the drawing from the winning team, Paul, Tim and me.

It was such a great time! The plan for the future is that we will have a Mandarin night every Monday. Gloria will be your host and she is very happy to speak Mandarin with you!

Please pass around the words. Let's help each other and creat more opportunities to practice your Mandarin outside of classroom, and also meet some interesting people.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Basic Level A audio lessons now available

There are ten audio lessons in total covering the entire Basic Level A.

If you are interested, check it out at our online catalog.

Monday, March 13, 2006

A Movie Night

A couple of days ago, I was planning our next gathering but didn't know what to do was the best. And soon the answer appeared right in front of my eyes. I met Gloria. She is the owner of a pub Ren (yes, that means person.) So naturally our next gathering will be a movie night!

Here's the details:

Date: Saturday, 25th March, 2006

Time: 5 – 8 pm

Venue: REN

Address: Unit C, 6/F, 8-12 Wo On Lane, Central (On the street of Ben & Jerry in LKF, next to OYSTERS. Alternatively, you can come out from the back entrance of Pacific Coffee on Wellington Street) Call 6055 0638 if you need direction . A map is attached here .


About the movie: It is a Chinese movie (of course), and has lots of good things said about it. The name is Yi Yi (one one). You can read some more about his movie here.

See you there and enjoy the movie!

Thursday, March 09, 2006

wu wei - Taoist concept

In an article in Fortune, Making Your Work Working For you, by Jerry Useem, he gave a very clear and easy to understand defination of wu-wei. I really liked his explanation, and wonder if he can speak, read and write Chinese, and if he read Laozi's Dao De Jing.

Here's the quote:

Wu-wei, which translates literally as 'non doing'. A better translation would be more like 'effortless effort'; wu-wei describes a state in which the world seems to be working for us. We feel calm yet alert, focused yet receptive, drawing force from the storm while standing in its eye. Like the marathoner whol feels pulled forward, we accomplish the most with the minimum of energy. In this state hard work does not feel like hard labor. Nor does it feel like play. It feels a lot like the Aristotelian concept of hapiness: the full exercises of the thing we are meant to be doing.


Have you achieved wu-wei in learning Mandarin? In Chinese character wu wei is 无为.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Transcript of podcast

This is a new experiment.

For podcast 11 - About Oscar Winner Li An, the transcript in pinyin and simplified characters is available on the online catalog at the cost of US$1. If you find it interesting and also helpful to read the transcript after you listen to the podcast, let me know.

And if you got any suggestions, do let me know. So I can do future improvement.