My Star
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Archive for the ‘personal-life’ Category.
Bike trip impressions
Actually, I haven’t planned to write a blog post about my bike trip, and write a series of twits instead. Unfortunately, I failed to find a reasonably priced pre-paid replacement SIM card for Netherlands, so most of twits had to be saved for the future.
So I just write them here up.
Chinese and IQ
Sometimes, explanations of Chinese characters remind me an IQ test. Lets look at 身 for example. Here is it again, larger:
According to one book, you should be able to see a human profile here, according to another, it is a body with stomach and leg walking. Do you see them yet?
No?
How about the same character, but the way it has been written 3000 years ago (click on the image for more samples):
Better?
Colors of digits
0 is white
1 is black
2 is yellowish, paper-colored
3 and 8 are green
4 is orange
5 is red
6 and 9 are pink
7 is blue
Do digits also have colors for you?
Freundschaft
Früher habe ich gedacht, dass meine Freunde möglichst ähnlich wie ich sein sollen: sich für IT interessieren, romantische Filme verachten und Sport nur im Fernsehen mit erleben. Wir werden gemeinsame Interessen haben und einander nicht nerven. Und unsere Freundschaft hält lange.
Dann… dann habe ich mich verändert.
Speak One Word
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Chinese New Year Wishes
February 14 is the first day of the new Chinese year, so this Saturday all Chinese (and also many non-Chinese) in the world will get together with their families to celebrate Chinese New Year (aka Spring Festival, 春节).
In this post, I’ve gathered some traditional (and untraditional) spring festival wishes. By clicking on the links, you can easily send the wish to your beloved ones, parents, children, friends, collegues or actually anybody.
万事如意 all best wishes
心想事成 may your wishes come true
幸福安康 happiness and good health
平安快乐 safety and happiness
一帆风顺 single sail, gentle wind
恭喜发财 prosperious new year
笑口常开 life full of happiness and smiles
工作顺利 job to go smoothly
事业有成 success in all projects
无条件爱 unconditional love
自由 freedom
儿童 children
尊重 respect
理解 understanding
友谊 friendship
欣赏 appreciation
Or, you can see them all. This gallery is powered by silverhd.net, a new beta created by my collegues. The wishes are best viewed with Microsoft Silverlight. I thank 于海婷 for the wishes and translating.
Geopolitics
Some time ago, I’ve added “When China Rules the World” by Martin Jacques into my Amazon wishlist. I was attracted by the provocative title and believed it should be a small book containing sarcastic passages about prejudices about both world and the chinese culture, witty anecdotes and such. Something like “User’s Guide to <put your country name>”.
Culture variability
The more I learn about different cultures, the more I find cases when same thing has different meaning in different cultures.
The most well-known example is, probably, the white color, in european tradition meaning purity and innosence, but in Japan related to death.
My favorite is what you should do with birthday presents. One line of thought teaches to unpack them right away. By doing it, you allow the presenter to see how delighted you are because of the gift. Besides, if you don’t look at the present, the presenter may think you’re not interested in it, and therefore in him.
Another tradition believes it is better to unpack the present later and alone. If the present is too cheap, the presenter may be publicly ashamed of it. And by ignoring the present you are sending the message that the presenter is more imporant for you than the present.
Go figure what is better.
Today I’ve learned another example. The moon is something cold and evil (the opposite of the sun) in Europe. But in China, it seems to mean something pure and constant, like in the song 月亮代表我的心 (my love is like a moon).
And this made me thinking about invariants in the world cultures. I believe, the vision of friendship and love being the most important immaterial values is the same across most cultures (unfortunately, I cannot say “all” cultures, because I know one where it is not so). What else is invariant? Is “treat others like you want you’ll be treated” it?..
Developing country rant
Today’s rant is motivated by the announcement that Google is going to stop censoring in China. This is exactly the kind of things happening in the so-called developing countries, and it is a part of the reason of me leaving Russia.
The life in a developing country is… pretty much possible. A development country is not such a deadly place like Iraq, Nord Korea or Ruanda, mind you. In fact, it is even possible to live the western life quality.
