Last Saturday my sister was dead set and determined to go out early that morning and have me take pictures of her… Well I know that Fayetteville is probably not as cold as some other places in the US or the world, but that day it was rather chilly. As we were walking around downtown Fayetteville, I said to my sister, “It is freaking cold out here” and she replied back with “No, it is really not that cold”. Well I have the picture to prove my point. As we walked around the corner of a little cafe, we ran across this foundation. As you can see it is just beginning to warm up enough to get some of the water flowing. Holy Crap! lol It was cold
Really? Are You Serious?
•December 21, 2010 • 1 CommentOn The Way To My Car…
•November 11, 2010 • Leave a Comment
Photo Storage Provided By: Flickr
I actually took this picture about a month ago. I was walking towards the car in my university’s parking lot and I came across this… Luckily I had my iPod Touch and I grabbed a picture of it, even though the picture did not come out that great. I thought this was one of the funniest things I had ever seen. I actually did a double take because at first I thought I was seeing things! I was beginning to think “what kind of university is this?!” lol
Flickr Page
•October 16, 2010 • Leave a CommentHi everyone! I am in the process of incorporating all of my recent China pictures into the blog! I am sorry for the delay, but if you are impatient then you can check some of them at my flickr page. http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandonnc/ Thanks everyone! Hope you enjoy them! God bless
Cheap Chinese E-Dictionary Alternative
•October 7, 2010 • Leave a CommentEvery time I go to China or Hong Kong, I look for an e-dictionary and every year I pray that they have gone down in price. For those of you who might also be looking for a good Chinese/English electronic dictionary know, e-dictionaries in China are rather EXPENSIVE! A nice dictionary can easily put you back a couple hundred dollars all the way up to four hundred dollars (This is in USD!). Well needless to say I have never bought one because I spent a lot of money several years ago on a Korean/English dictionary and I hate to spend that much again on another e-dictionary.
A friend of mine showed me this iPhone app and this was one of the number one reasons why I bought an iPod Touch. The name of this app is called Qingwen 2.2, which is probably one of the best Chinese dictionaries for the iPhone OS platforms. I have tried a lot of different apps that were Chinese dictionaries and this is by far my favorite. This iPhone app does both Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese! So perfect for living in Hong Kong and then traveling to Shenzhen! 😛
Pros and Cons
Lets start with the pros! This app is extremely cheap, only five dollars. Now when you compare this to one of those electronic dictionaries, this seems like a good deal. A 200-400 dollar e-dictionary or a $5 iPhone app? It does not take a genius to work that out. This application will allow you to even write the Chinese word without pinyin. This means that even if you cannot pronounce the Chinese word, you will still be able to look up the meaning of the word.
Instead of having to carry around a different piece of electronic, you can just carry one device. An iPod Touch costs between $200-$300 and can playback music, watch movies, listen to internet radio, and a lot more than those e-dictionaries. So if you compare the functionality of both the iPod Touch/iPhone with an e-dictionary, I believe the iPod Touch would be the better buy.
Cons-
Even though this app does Cantonese, it does not show the Cantonese pinyin of how the word would be pronounced for us English speakers. Jyutping is the form of Cantonese pinyin that I am most familiar with, but this application does not include that. Even though it does not include Cantonese pinyin, it does show the word in Traditional Chinese and has the option for hearing how the word is pronounced in Cantonese and Mandarin. I am praying that they will eventually add this feature in the next update!
The last con is that in order to hear the pronunciations, you must be connected to the internet. Unlike an iPhone which is always connected to the internet, the iPod Touch is limited in this respect by just wifi. I wish there was an option for just downloading the whole thing to my iPod. I have a 32 gigabyte iPod Touch, I do not really care about file size of the app.
Well thank you for reading my post. I hope this helped anyone interested in buying an e-dictionary. Hopefully I also helped save you all some money! I highly recommend this Chinese Dictionary App for your iPhone OS device.
Across the Yalu River
•September 20, 2010 • Leave a Comment
My apologizes for not posting some of these pictures sooner! Unfortunately my pictures were held hostage for some time and then by the time I obtain my photos, my classes had started again. So this picture in particular was taken from the Great Wall in Dandong, China. Dandong actually is a border city between China and North Korea. As most of you might know, North Korea is a closed country that wants very little influence from the outside world. Anyways we climbed the Great Wall and it was absolutely breathtaking.
This trip was my first trip to northern China. As you all might know, I have spend a good amount of time in Hong Kong/ Shenzhen. But it was nice traveling to northern China where I can actually communicate with the locals!!! 😛 The land you see to the left is all of China and across the Yalu River is North Korea. I know some people say that North Korea is our enemy, but it really is not. The people are just like you and me. Except they are being fed lies about the world and other nations. The problem we have is with the government, so next time you bad mouth North Korea, remember its not the people who we are angry with. The people who we are really angry with are the leaders/ political leaders in North Korea.
Hong Kong Protests Philippine Government
•August 30, 2010 • Leave a CommentToday’s blog entry is a little different. As some of you might know, within the last couple of weeks, there was a terrible incident involving some Hong Kong Chinese in the Philippines. Unfortunately do to some political situations going on in the Philippines, a Filipino officer decided to take a bus hostage. His rational behind this was that he was trying to get the Filipino government to give him his job back as an officer. Well as time progressed, he eventually ended up killing eight Hong Kong Chinese people and then a sniper took him out. Some of the responses that were coming out of the Philippine government did not satisfy a great deal of local Hong Kongers. So the other day some locals in Hong Kong decided to form a protest, because of this incident that happened. They are demanding that the Filipino government look closely into this ordeal and some other demands. So I just decided to do this little entry in honor of those who died and for the families and friends. I am praying for you all and that God will comfort you. God bless you all!
If you would like to read more about the protest, check it out. I am providing the link below to the New York Times’ article that I read.
NY Times
It's Time For Some KTV!
•August 28, 2010 • 1 CommentSo while I was touring China during the end of July through the beginning of August, I had the ability to go to my first KTV! I have always wanted to go inside one, but my friends in Hong Kong told me to be careful about going to them. Sometimes KTV bars are just places where you can get some loose women. 😦 Well needless to say that is not really what I wanted, so I never went. Anyways, I had some friends up around Dandong (丹东) that wanted to take my friends and I to a KTV bar! The experience is totally different in Asia than what you might experience here in the United States. I have never been to one in the United States, but I have seen a lot of movies of Karaoke bars here in the US. Instead of going into a big room full of strangers, in Asia you are in a small room with only friends. If you want to explore the KTV bars I encourage you to do so! The only thing I would recommend is to get a big group! Particularly because it is just better with more people (fun wise) and it will be less likely you will be approached by some ladies of the night.
So this fun little video is of the friends that invited us to the KTV bar. We just had a really great time and I have a lot more video clips, so perhaps I will be able to post them later. Not only that, but I have a great video of a friend of mine dancing really crazily. Except he really does not want me to post the video. 😦 I was really disappointed, but he took my memory card while I was not looking. So I told him I would not post the video if he gave me back my memory card. Anyways I wish this KTV craze would come over to the US. But this will definitely not be the last time I go to one.
Minimizing Your Phone Bill
•August 28, 2010 • Leave a CommentEven though I am not in Hong Kong right now I still do want to post to this blog. So my goal is to begin posting more and more on this website but keep it around for when I go back to Hong Kong and or Mainland China. So today’s topic hit me pretty hard this past summer. This may be a problem for you all if you plan to stay abroad in Hong Kong for an extensive period of time or if you have friends in Hong Kong and you would like to call them.
I tried differently mobile carriers while I was in Hong Kong and different plans because I was trying to find the most economical way to stay in contact with my family here in the US. Hong Kong has a lot of different service providers, but the ones I used were PCCW and Peoples. The service with either company was pretty good but while I was hiking in the Tai Po Market area to see a waterfall, Peoples had a much better range.
But some of my friends buy a calling card and in doing so they can make fairly cheap phone calls from Hong Kong to the United States. Well after thinking about this problem since the summer I have come up with a couple of solutions. If you plan on staying in Hong Kong for a while then why not buy a Skype-In number that is local to Hong Kong. I taught my mom how to use Skype and I could easily call her at a local rate. To make this even easier you can have all your phone calls forwarded to another phone. With Skype calls are a lot cheaper and are usually pennies by the minute.
Back To China We Go!!!!
•July 22, 2010 • Leave a CommentHi everyone! I just wanted to let you guys know briefly that I am traveling back to CHINA!! This time I am traveling with a group to Shanghai and some other northeastern cities. I am actually getting ready to leave for China in FOUR hours! We are going to tour China. I will try and keep you all posted, except I am not bringing my laptop, just my smart phone. So it might have to be once I get back till I can let you all know whats up! But I am going to be taking a LOT of pictures and video. I want you all to enjoy this trip, just as much as I will! Later everyone!!
Travels Abroad!
•July 22, 2010 • Leave a CommentHi everyone! I just wanted to let you guys know briefly that I am traveling back to CHINA!! This time I am traveling with a group to Shanghai and some other northeastern cities. I am actually getting ready to leave for China in FOUR hours! We are going to tour China. I will try and keep you all posted, except I am not bringing my laptop, just my smart phone. So it might have to be once I get back till I can let you all know whats up! But I am going to be taking a LOT of pictures and video. I want you all to enjoy this trip, just as much as I will! Later everyone!!
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